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I am a qualified CIMA accountant and worked in finance in the Marcomms industry since I graduated from university. Until last year, I was a finance manager at a media agency in London and on a good career path in finance within that industry. However, towards the end of 2018 I made the decision to change my career and, to cut a long story short, I decided to become a recruitment consultant for a small recruitment consultancy specialising in placing finance & HR candidates into marcomms agencies i.e. the sector and skillset that I was familiar with.

The recruitment consultancy I joined is different. The owner and my current manager is a qualified ACA accountant from the Marcomms Sector and my other colleagues are either qualified or have worked directly with accountants. I didn’t know any other consultancies that could claim that of all of their consultants.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

I’ve now been working at VisionFR for just over one year and learnt so much more than I thought I ever would. Here are the top 10 things I’ve learnt in my first year:

1. You have to learn to multi-task like you’ve never multitasked before
2. Organisation is key!
3. The highs are the best! There’s nothing like placing someone in their dream role and having a happy client. 
4. You must learn to pick yourself back up from disappointment quickly and crack on with the next task.
5. Expect the unexpected – you think you’ve absolutely nailed a placement and the candidate seems very positive and the client seems super positive… then someone will change their mind OR…
6. You can work on a role for weeks, and then the job brief will change so you have to start from square one
7. You must learn to be very flexible with your time. Before work, lunchtimes and after 5pm are usually the best times for candidates to catch up with you. So, I try to time my break between 3-4 rather than the usual lunchtime!
8. It’s super important to meet candidates regardless of whether you have a job for them or not. Candidates often don’t realise that although we don’t have a vacancy right now… we may tomorrow. If they are on our system and we feel they are suitable, they will be put forward for a role first!
9. A lot of people don’t respect recruiters. This is mostly because they don’t fully appreciate or understand what good recruiters do. We’ll cover this is more depth in a subsequent post!
10. People apply for jobs but don’t respond when you reply to them….I don’t understand why!