Today is my last day of work experience with Love Recruitment and I wanted to write about what I'm taking away from it before I leave.

Across the week, I got to sit down with almost every member of the team and have a one-to-one conversation just talking about their life experiences, how they got into the recruitment industry and what advice they had to give to someone just starting out. Along with this, I was given a few tasks to complete across the week; researching into psychometric testing which the business could potentially use, creating five social media post concepts, and now this blog about what i’ve actually learnt.

Out of everything this week, three overarching points kept repeating themselves in different ways from different people. Here's what stuck with me.

1. Find what your good at, then do it over and over again

A few different people said different versions of the same thing: if you find something that you truly love and enjoy and you put the needed work in properly and consistently and not when it's convenient for you, you will inevitably get better at it. And the better you get at it, the more efficient you come which means you can do more in less time and ultimately (as one of the team’s members said pretty directly to me) charge more for it. It seems obvious when saying it but hearing this advice come from people who have built their careers is a huge eye opener for me. My whole life has been around the idea of how some people are smart and some people aren’t and thats it. But it's not. It's about being willing to do the same thing over and over until you are the best.

2. If you’re going to do something, then do it properly

This came up as somewhat of a warning to me. Doing something at 50% doesn't actually help you in any way. If anything it is a waste of your time as you don't get the right result or experience that you would have. A few people admitted that the times where they regretted something wasn’t when they failed whilst trying their best, but when they really didn't put in the effort. I’m not talking about being perfect, I'm talking about always giving it your all. And when you give it your all, you can know that you failed at something that was out of your hands.

3. Don't be afraid to fail

I heard this one the most, and it surprised me to hear it so many times from this kind of business. I expected to see a workspace where people were at all times trying not to fail no matter what, which is of course true to an extent, but that's besides the point. Everyone talked about failure like it was normal, expected even. Calls that go badly, declined offers - it happens to everyone and what matters is how we react to it. 

What really stuck with me was the whole idea that without those mistakes, people wouldn't be who or where they are now. The bad calls, the candidates ghosting, the failed offers, they're not looked at negatively in a career, they're what built it, if everything had gone right the first time people wouldn’t have the same structure and polish as they do now.

Looking back at these three takeaways, they actually connect quite clearly. Firstly, none of these three are complicated. The hard part was never understanding them, it’s doing them. Secondly, all three points put together create a sort of formula: Commit to something properly, keep going even when it’s hard, and don't be afraid to fail.

Finally I wanted to give a massive thank you to the whole Love Recruitment team for this week: the one-to-ones, the honesty, actually giving me real, interesting work rather than making me watch from the sidelines, and so much more. I came in not knowing much about the recruitment industry and I'm leaving with a whole different perspective of what the job involves and what it takes to be good at it.

Arthur Brotherhood