I love what I do and have been blessed to have worked in the recruitment sector for nearly 15 years now. I will never forget my first few weeks, recruitment blew my mind; the types of conversations you have with people, the stress, the joy, the candidate crying down the phone because they missed an opportunity or landed the job of their dreams, a wife calling me to thank me for helping her husband, it was unreal and I wouldn’t change it for second. Whilst recruitment is certainly evolving, I am still an advocate for the good old style.
Back in the days, we would walk a CV to a client’s office and candidates would call you for advice or for a career chat more regularly, there was a whole lot more personal interaction with clients and candidates but with technology comes much change. Some people hide behind emails, send messages and hope to get a reply but they are reactive!! Personally, I find the best talent hunters in the market, who are standing out head and shoulders above technology, are using their voices, their personalities, their pride and their emotional market knowledge which is something tech just cannot provide.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the technology around is pretty special and we embrace it, but I encourage my team to be more human every day. Finding a job ranks up there as one of life’s biggest decisions, it’s stressful and complicated and tech cannot singlehandedly assist you in this. Tech is unbelievable for providing data, looking at trends and possibly understanding why people do certain things but the human element when engaging with a candidate who is about to take on a new role, who needs advice, who is relocating to take the role on, is what matters most to candidates.
In recruitment currently, the sector is saturated with agencies that spray and pray, literally, taking a CV off a job board and sending it to their entire client base until it ‘sticks’. There is no understanding or individuality involved, just a one size (hopefully) fits all solution. There are so many reasons why these agencies are so damaging but what they fail to realise is that it’s this very type of recruitment that technology can so easily replace; a trial and error process with zero relationships that only works for a select and very lucky few. We are better than that, as an industry I hope but certainly as a business at GKR Property Recruitment. Get in touch with one of our consultants to discuss your best interests within the property sector. We recruit across residential estate agency, new homes, development, commercial projects, surveying, property management, office support, marketing and finance etc. If you know someone that we don’t, put us in touch!
