Job Descriptions: Recruitment Consultant

A Recruitment Consultant is someone who matches candidates with a company's vacancy and matches company vacancies with available candidates.

A Recruitment Consultant's role is focused with finding the right candidate for the right job. This can work in one of several ways. Either companies can outsource their vacancies to a Recruitment Agency who will use their expertise and registered candidates to fill the role or they will research to find the perfect candidate for the role who might already be in a job.

In Recruitment, the Consultant role is very much a people-focused role, requiring them to spend a lot of time working with companies to ensure they are looking for the right candidate and a lot of time talking to candidates whom they will put forward for the role. Some of the important skills that graduates need to have if they are considering a career as a Recruitment Consultant are confidence, good interpersonal skills, able to form lasting relationships and good commercial nous. This is a popular role for graduates to start their careers with because many of the required skills can be picked up through university and the role does not tend to require too much specialist knowledge.

Recruitment Consultants are often employed as part of an agency, each with their specialities in certain sectors. They earn their money by charging companies for finding the right candidate or taking a cut of candidate's salary whom they have managed to find a job.

Recruitment consultant salaries

The average starting salary for a Recruitment Consultant is £22,985. This is a fantastic starting salary for graduates to be earning early on in their careers. What's more is that much of the pay structures involved in being a graduate Recruitment Consultant is bonus-based, meaning that graduates can often earn much more on top of this if they are successful.

The bonus and reward system is part of the day to day life of Recruitment Consultants and depends on their performance and success in placing people in roles. This meritocratic system allows graduates to earn a lot of money if they are successful, while if they progress in dealing with higher level clients and positions further on in their career graduates can watch their earnings match this.

The daily duties of a recruitment consultant

As a Recruitment Consultant the main purpose of the role or function is to match great candidates for perfect positions. This seems straightforward, but there are many aspects to this and the whole process will have graduates in this position working hard through peaks and troughs, as is the nature of the industry.

• Candidate resourcing - Candidate resourcing, or head hunting, is the process in which Recruitment Consultants seek out potential candidates that they want to match to roles. This involves researching a candidate's background, interests, ambitions and availability. This can be through cold calling, LinkedIn or having candidates who have already registered their interest with the agency.
• Client interaction - The counter point to candidate resourcing, client interaction is the process where a Recruitment Consultant finds out more about an opening at a particular company, usually through a lon lasting relationship with HR departments. This means finding out more information about the kind of candidate they are looking for, what attributes they are looking for and what they might be willing to pay them, for example.
• Helping candidates - Recruitment Consultants make their money by finding companies their ideal candidates and part of this is properly preparing candidates for interviews and assessments. This could be giving them information on the company, in depth information on the role or letting them know what to expect. This duty also extends to helping candidates with CVs, covering letters and application forms.
• Managing vacancies - An important duty of a Recruitment Consultant is attending to vacancies that they are responsible for. This could be using social media or job boards to attract candidates to particular roles. From there, Recruitment Consultants can also be responsible for filtering and screening candidates for particular roles.
• Negotiations - This is the formality after a client has been found an appropriate candidate for the role, Recruitment Consultants can also play a mediator role between the candidate and the prospective employer.

A career as a Recruitment Consultant is a fast paced and exciting career. It runs on peaks and troughs of times when Recruitment Consultants are very busy and are required to juggle several candidates and vacancies at different stages of the recruitment process. However, this is a career for graduates who are great with people, brilliantly organised and have fantastic communication skills.