Recruitment Consultant

☛ What sector are you working in at the moment?

☛ What roles are you typically filling on a day-to-day basis?

☛ Describe a typical day?

☛ What salary ranges are you typically working on?

☛ What was an average placement fee?

☛ What was your best month?

☛ What was your worst month?

☛ What was your largest placement value?

☛ How many people were you placing per month?

☛ How long were you on the phone each day?

☛ What is your current base Salary?

☛ What is your commission structure?

☛ What other benefits do you receive?

☛ Who did you report to?

☛ How are you targeted and how does that breakdown (KPI / Billings)?

☛ How much did you bill last year?

☛ What was your biggest month and when?

☛ Out of your team, where do you rank?

☛ What does the best person in the team do that you may not be doing?

☛ What is the typical sales cycle of a placement?

☛ What is your working hours?

☛ How did you prepare candidates for interview?

☛ How did you win new clients?

☛ How comfortable are you with cold-calling?

☛ Why are you looking to leave your current position?

☛ Describe a typical day?

There can be various internal and external factors which affect the recruitment process.

Internal factors - The factors which are under the control of organization are called internal factors.

These could be -

i.) Recruitment policy of the organization

ii.) Human Resource Planning

iii.) Expansion plans

iv.) Cost of recruitment

External factors - These are the factors which are not under the control of the organization.

These could be -

i.) Availability of talent

ii.) Brand image of the organization

iii.) Politico-social environment

iv.) Legal conditions

v.) Economic condition of the market

vi.) Recruitment policy of the competitors

Recruitment Consultancy is a fantastically rewarding career both personally and financially but don't be under any illusion - it is not an easy ride!

You will get out as much as you put in and you will have a direct influence over your career progression and salary, not something a lot of industries can boast about, which will either excite or terrify you.

Recruitment is a targeted role. These targets may be daily, weekly and monthly and may consist of KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) and revenue generation targets (billings). These targets act as signposts to help you come to grips with the various tasks that make up your role and you will be monitored closely and given lots of support to ensure you achieve these. As you become more confident and have a better understanding of what the role entails, your targets will be more related to your Commission or Bonuses. Are you the sort of person who enjoys a challenge and will take advice from others on how to achieve your goals?

Days in Recruitment are long-the average consultant will work from 8.30am to 6.00/7ish depending on workload and determination to succeed. If you want to do well, you are likely to want to work long hours and put in the ground work for your success. It can be very satisfying working that little bit extra and seeing your pay packet grow as a result. Are you someone who really wants to make that commitment to your future career?

Managing the many components of the role can be demanding. There are a lot of areas to juggle with many things happening all at once. This in itself can be very stressful and tiring. Do you thrive on having many things to do at once?

There can be many ups and downs in the role. When things are going well and you are making placements and taking home good commission it can be the best job in the world. However, sometimes things will not go your way. Sometimes people may not take jobs at the last minute, or a client may decide not to recruit and you will feel frustrated. At times you may feel that you are not being successful when making New Business Sales call; you may speak to someone who is not receptive to what you had to say. You may feel at times that things are not going well. How resilient are you? Are you the sort of person who will look at how you could be better at your job, who will pick themselves up from being down and try even harder to get to where you want to be?

Other things to think about as you consider this Career Path are; How much do you enjoy persuading other people to do things you want them to? How confident are you? How do you get on with different groups of people? Are you happy talking at lots of different levels? Do you want to become an expert in a field of business? If so, what area?

The question looks for information on two fronts: How do you define difficult? and, what was your handling of the situation? You must have a story ready for this one in which the situation both was tough and allowed you to show yourself in a good light.

Avoid talking about problems that have to do with co-workers. You can talk about the difficult decision to fire someone, but emphasise that once you had examined the problem and reached a conclusion you acted quickly and professionally, with the best interests of the company at heart.

"What are some of the things that bother you?" "What are your pet hates?" "Tell me about the last time you felt anger on the job." These questions are so similar that they can be treated as one. It is tremendously important that you show you can remain calm. Most of us have seen a colleague lose his or her cool on occasion - not a pretty sight and one that every sensible employer wants to avoid.

This question comes up more and more often the higher up the corporate ladder you climb, and the more frequent your contact with clients and the general public. To answer it, find something that angers conscientious workers. "I enjoy my work and believe in giving value to my employer. Dealing with clock-watchers and the ones who regularly get sick on Mondays and Fridays really bothers me, but it's not something that gets me angry or anything like that." An answer of this nature will help you much more than the kind given by a California engineer, who went on for some minutes about how he hated the small-mindedness of people who don't like pet rabbits in the office.

There can be two kinds of sources of recruitment for organizations - Internal and External.

☛ Internal recruitment - It means getting the candidate from within the organization to fulfil a vacancy. Internal recruitment can be done by:

► Transfer - transferring an employee from one location/ department to other.

► Promotion - Taking the employee higher up in the hierarchy

► Ex-employees - These could be the retired or retrenched employees

► Demotion - Lowering the position of an employee in the hierarchy for various reasons

☛ External recruitment - It means getting the absolutely new candidate to the company. The sources of these employees could be many:

► Job notifications in the print/ online media

► College campuses

► Placement agents

► Unsolicited applicants

► Employee referral program

► Employment exchange

► Labour contractors