Can You Start a Career in Recruitment Without Experience?

You’re working in a job that pays the bills, but it definitely doesn’t excite you. You love engaging with people and challenging yourself, yet you’ve found there’s little opportunity to reach your full potential in the role you’re in right now.

You sense there must be something more…but what?

Ideally, you want a career where you have autonomy and are rewarded for the effort you put in. You hate working weekends and after hours, so that rules out real estate and other professional gigs like banking. Then, over coffee one day, a friend suggests recruitment. It sounds intriguing, but you figure surely you need a qualification or some experience to get started?

Well, not necessarily. While it’s true that some recruitment roles require previous experience, you can absolutely take your first step into recruitment using the skills you’ve learned in other roles.

Why? Because at some recruitment firms – such as HorizonOne – we like to practice what we preach to clients, which is:

Hire for the right attitude and skillset, not just experience.

What skills do you need to be a recruiter?

Looking around the floor at HorizonOne, many of our successful recruiters did not come to us after working in recruitment. Some worked in retail, others in fitness, and others in administration. One even has a PhD in chemistry!

What they all possess though are traits that are essential to building a successful career in recruitment. All of our recruiters are:

• Confident communicators
• Great listeners
• Naturally empathic
• Motivated and resilient

They enjoy getting to know people and hearing their stories, so they can understand how best to help them achieve their goals. They may need to help a junior candidate looking for their first role, a senior candidate seeking a career change, or a client about to embark on a major recruitment drive to fill 200 open positions.

‘Big picture’ people excel in recruitment

Whatever the case, recruiters have an innate desire to dig deep and develop rich pictures of the candidates and clients they support – and the excitement they get from doing this is ultimately what makes them successful.

They’ve also found a home in recruitment because the job aligns with their personal and professional goals – be it pride in their work, respect from their peers, or financial rewards. It’s widely acknowledged that recruitment can be very lucrative for high performers. We’ve seen several of our junior recruiters well exceed their financial expectations and go on to buy a house, travel, pay off university debt, and achieve other personal aspirations.

Transitioning to recruitment from another industry

Recruitment is both an art and a science. You need to be creative and flexible, while appreciating the value of research and technology to be effective in your work. A good business sense is also important because you will play a key role in helping clients achieve their strategic goals through the people they hire.

In the beginning, it can feel daunting as you not only need to learn about recruitment – you need to learn about the roles you are recruiting for. Some recruitment firms have ‘generalist recruiters’ who basically recruit for any types of roles. At HorizonOne, our recruiters have their own specialisms so they become experts in their chosen area (be it IT, admin, finance, marketing, and so on).

Quality training and mentoring is key to success

It takes time to learn what a “good match” looks like for any role…let alone when you’re recruiting for 10 roles at once. But this is where a good recruitment firm will give you all the training and tools you need to succeed. For example, our junior recruiters complete 3 months of intensive training with a senior recruiter. They sit in on every aspect of the recruitment process, and only launch out on their own when they feel ready.

Over time, you will gain more confidence – especially as your networks grow. You will also develop your own personal brand and may even become the “go to” person in your recruitment specialism.

Create your own micro business

If you’re working for a recruitment firm that values autonomy as we do, you’ll come to see that you’re essentially building your own business within a business. You run your own desk, manage your own candidates and clients, and may even grow your own team as you get busier. We find this approach really resonates with our recruiters – they don’t just join us for the pool table, paid human days, free food, or flexible work (though they’re always nice to have)!

If you’re looking for a new career and recruitment resonates with you, don’t put it off. You can always reach out and have a chat, and rest assured we’ll be completely honest about the good bits and the hard bits so you can work out if it’s really for you. And who knows…you could very soon become Canberra’s newest recruitment rising star.

To learn more about starting a career in recruitment, please get in touch.