A-Level Results Day
A level results day is potentially the biggest emotional rollercoaster you can put yourself through without risking your life or being a contestant on The Chase, fact.
Students around the world today woke up nice and early and casually tried to ignore the fact that the information they were about to receive could alter the course of their lives forever. However, there’s no reward without risk and if you work hard, put in the hours and remain focused you should be rewarded for all your pain and suffering. This is something that those who work in recruitment know only too well. Now with it resulting day and students everywhere hopefully feeling the rewards of their hard work, I felt it was only fitting that we look at the 5 most rewarding things about a career in sales and recruitment.
Potential for Commission
Everyone cares about money, I know if you’re a student or graduate reading this you’ve probably lived off about £2.50 a week before and it’s easy to say, ‘oh I’m not that bothered about money.’ But when the student loan has gone, you’ve got bills to pay, and the wife and kids keep asking why you never take them on holiday, you’ll be a lot less relaxed about your financial situation. Everyone cares about money. This is why in sales and recruitment you’ll never have to check behind the settee for coins again (unless you’re like the guys in our office who spend all their money on food.)
The average recruiter in their first year starting out will probably earn about 20-27k and up to 35k in their second, so there’s huge earning potential. As well as this, on top of a great salary there are opportunities to earn even more money through commission which means if you’re highly money motivated and have a taste for the finer things in life, a career in sales and recruitment could be the right move for you.
Progression
It’s well known that recruitment and sales roles offer huge opportunities for progression and quick progression at that. The speed at which you can progress varies from company to company but in general, it’d take your average starting trainee recruitment consultant about 2 and half years to 4 years to progress to a management role based on performance. Now if you’re the type of person who likes seeing their hard work pay off before their very eyes, a sales or recruitment role won’t just provide you a job, it will provide you with a career for life.
Variety and Freedom
I can’t remember what I wanted to be when I was a kid growing up, but I know for sure I didn’t blurt out at the age of 4 ‘I want to be a Digital Marketing Executive for a sales and recruitment company’ as it would’ve looked rather odd. One thing I have always wanted from a job though (as I’m sure lots of you do) is variety and freedom. Luckily, I’ve landed in a work environment that provides just that.
In recruitment, you’re not stood or sat in the same spot for 8 hours straight (my time on the Morrisons checkout still haunts me today). You’re out and about meeting clients, candidates and building relationships. It’s not a dull process – it’s fast-paced and all about people. One day you’ll be sourcing candidates from the database, next you’ll be meeting them, then helping to run assessment days (or training days in the case of Prime). On top of this, you manage your own time which includes finding your own candidates and candidates and booking meetings with them. Basically, as long as you produce the results your boss wants from you, you have complete control.
Target hitting incentives
Sunny holidays, fancy meals and free drinks with your colleagues – all of these and more are just some of the target hitting incentives that come with a career in sales and recruitment.
In April this year the team at Prime went off for a holiday in Benidorm for target hitting, and it was just last Friday that Neil took the office out for a fancy meal after hitting their m onthly individual targets. Hard work and long hours are the norm in recruitment so if you put in the effort you deserve to be rewarded, and when there’s free food involved it doesn’t get much more rewarding than that.
Helping others
Yes, it sounds cheesy, but in sales and recruitment you have two main objectives and that is finding candidates jobs and finding clients candidates to fill those jobs. You are ‘helping ‘people as cliché as it is to admit. From finding a candidate to coaching them through the interview process (and in the case of Prime giving them free training in sales and recruitment) you naturally begin to build a relationship where you trust the candidate to succeed and they trust you also. So yes, when you place that candidate you’re mainly celebrating that large chunk of commission that’s going to find its way into your bank account. However, it’s also the thrill of knowing you’ve just placed a candidate in a role that could change their life forever and if you do recruitment right as we do at Prime, it will change their life for the better.