Recruitment Consultant?!

I arrive back from my well deserved break to the States at the beginning of August and to my surprise I have two voicemails from different companies asking me to call them back with regards to my applications. This is great news, so with much excitement I ring them both back and arrange a phone interview with one, and confirm my attendance to an assessment day for the other (I'm a little unsure as to whether I am allowed to mention company names or not, so to be safe I will call them Company A and Company B). At this stage in my adventure, I had applied to a lot of recruitment consultancy roles, looking back I'm not sure why but there were a lot of jobs out there in that area...

The phone interview with Company A is two days later (5th August) so without further ado, I head feet first into preparing for it. This mainly involves researching the company, the job role, anticipating any questions they might ask such as; why have you applied for the role? Why should we pick you over other Graduates...etc. (I must also mention that at this point I was still pretty fixated with getting a job on a Graduate Scheme and both Company A and B are such schemes). The phone interview goes well and at the end of it I get asked to complete the next stage which involves me ringing a nominated member of the company and explaining to them why I would be good at the role, I was not impressed with this. What is it with Companies wanting to make the recruitment process as long as possible?! However, I complete the next stage and to my surprise, I am asked to attend an assessment centre in a couple of weeks time, things are starting to look up!

So, I now have two assessment days lined up: Company A on the 13th August and Company B on the 18th August, I can't believe my luck! I was still applying for other jobs as nothing was guaranteed and I end up with a third company being interested in me! Company C are another recruitment consultancy company and I attend an interview on the 11th August, I always have a number of questions that I ask during an interview and one is, 'what are the next stages in the recruitment process?', Company C tell me that in total there are four stages in the process, FOUR?! What the hell, I'm applying to be a recruitment consultant not some kind of secret agent! However, I am invited back there and then to the next stage: another interview three days later on the 14th August.

My assessment day for Company A (13th August) is in London which involves me being up and raring to go at 5am in order to get there on time as the day starts at 10am. There are six other applicants attending, all with different work experience and university degrees to myself. We have to undertake a number of tasks throughout the day, some by ourselves and some group ones, and finally an interview with one of the assessors at the end. The day doesn't go fantastically, not helped by the arrogant Director whos sat there swearing and generally being up his own arse, I pretty much know that I haven't got the job. Ever the optimist, I know that I still have Company B and C on the cards and all I can do is take what I have learnt from Company A and move on.

August 14th and my second interview with Company C arrives, this interview is with a more senior person then before and a little more formal too. I also have the great pleasure of taking part in a role play, the logical thing would be to assume that as I am applying to be a recruitment consultant that it would be related to that, WRONG! I have to pretend that I am in Dragon's Den and I have fifteen minutes to make up my own company and create a business plan as I would be asking the 'Dragon's' (two recruitment consultants) for £100k in order to implement my business plan. Luckily for me I have a good imagination so I create my own dance company and make up some bull about needing the money to set up a second studio, however, unfortunately for me, finance is not my strong point and I hadn't fully thought through what I would need the money for... The exercise didn't go so well as I didn't get the money from the 'Dragon's' BUT I did handle their objections rather well if I do say so myself i.e. I was asked what are the names of my two biggest competitors, from somewhere Twinkle Toes and Twist and Shout pop into my brain, pretty good huh? After the interview I wasn't feeling too bad but unfortunately I was rejected and the reason why? Because I didn't have enough experience! What did they expect, they are advertising for a Graduate for starters plus they were able to see from my CV that I don't have any experience in that area. As always, I take what I have learnt from Company C and focus on my assessment day with Company B a few days later...

Little did I know that role plays were going to play such a big part in my assessment day with Company B, as that's all we did! I have to be in Basingstoke for 10am, so again I am up bright and early at 5am in order to get their on time (I always seem to be the one who has been up the earliest/travelled the furthest for these things, and this was no exception). There were ten applicants there (four hundred had applied!) including myself and straight away one makes themselves known mainly by talking the loudest and about themselves (it of course had nothing to do with the fact that they were from the Northeast..) I didn't let this phase me and in we all go to the assessment room. As I mentioned earlier, all we did was role plays, this time they did actually relate to being a recruitment consultant but we had so much time to prepare that I spent most of the day chatting to the other candidates. It was very hard to gage how the day had gone because each role play was done only in front of the assessors, so I couldn't see how I had done in comparison to the others. But as with my other interviews, I was rejected. The thought that I had got down to the final ten from four hundred made me feel pretty good so as always, I took what I could from Company B and moved on..

By now, I was starting to think that maybe recruitment consultancy wasn't for me due to all the rejections, so I decided to expand my horizons and start applying for any job going!