So this will be my sixth and most likely penultimate entry to the job seekers diary; the reason being is that I have accepted and start a new role tomorrow.  I shall be working for the Bristol firm Integreon as a Resourcing Project Manager.  I won’t divulge the full extent of the remit of the role, but needless to say I am delighted by the mix of transactional recruitment and project work.

The role is initially a short term contract and I see a number of benefits to accepting the role.  The contract will allow me to build experience within an in-house function and importantly it will allow me to continue to look at permanent opportunities.  This is a perfect solution for me as it doesn’t impact upon the roles I am already looking at, but provides me with the security to make sure that whenever I do accept a permanent role, it will be the right one.

Translating this to broader job seekers it is important not to overlook short term opportunities – clearly if you’re in a permanent position it is unlikely you will consider one – as there can be a number of benefits.  As in my case it provides experience within a new sector, which will reflect well on your CV.  It may lead to other opportunities within the organisation once you’ve shown your ability.  Finally, if it is a short term contract the employer is likely to support you in your search for permanent opportunities as long as you agree a reasonable notice period in advance. 

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I’m going to add an addendum that will tie in with a number of my previous job seeker entries as well as other blog posts.  I cannot stress highly enough how important it is to use your network to help you for opportunities.  All the opportunities I have been in contact about have come via my network.  From a hiring manager’s perspective this offers a low cost recruitment channel, but more importantly a referral is worth far more than an unsubstantiated approach.  It is no surprise that the bulk of roles I have been referred to have led to an interview.  In fact I only applied for 2 roles via the more traditional route of a job board; I didn’t progress with either!  Credit to one company they informed me pretty quickly that I had been unsuccessful, whereas the other still hasn’t responded 5 weeks later.  I am not sure it is appropriate to divulge who this company is; on the one hand they deserve to be outed for their poor recruitment, but on the other and more selfishly I’m not sure it would reflect as well on me to reveal them.

This leads me to my final point.  I attended an interview nearly a fortnight ago.  It was with a company I had recruited for a number of times in the past.  I hadn’t had the best of experience with their processes previously.  I was aware they had changed their set up since I last worked with them, so felt it would be interesting to speak to them about an opportunity.  The long and short of it is that I was promised feedback and a decision by last Friday and I have still not heard from them.  I can only presume I wasn’t successful, but know no different at this time.  I wanted to state that first before explaining how I had already decided I would decline any offer.  I attended the interview with minimal information about the role.  I had seen the job advert and that is all I had at my disposal.  I’d had a telephone interview, which quite frankly was appalling!  It was like receiving a cold call at home.  The person was clearly reading off a script, asked me the same question numerous times and couldn’t give me any information about the role.  I then had a further call to arrange a face to face where they applied much pressure to have me attend on Christmas Eve as they were desperate to make a decision (making my lack of news now a farce), but I was able to delay this until January.  Again the person couldn’t tell me any more information about the role.  So when I attended the face to face, you can probably guess what their first question was: “why are you interested in this role?”  I was able to surprise a laugh, but did explain I knew very little, hadn’t received a job description, etc.  This should have given them the opportunity to sell the role, instead we spent 55 of the 65 I was their discussing me.  When I was finally given the opportunity to ask questions about the role, progression, etc the answer were rather stilted.  I appreciate this is somewhat of a rant for a role I am not interested in, however, I feel passionately that companies need to realise that it is vital that the recruitment experience is a positive one both to secure talent, build a strong employer brand and as in this case potentially attract customers.  

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Ed Scrivener will tomorrow make the transition after 10 years from an agent to an in-house recruiter!  Thanks for all your help.