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"You made me feel like
a client rather than a
number! Thank you!"
Caroline Edey
"Thanks Sarah, I will
definitely be recommending Gordon Yates to friends.
The service has been
excellent."
Alex Osborne
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THE PERSPECTIVE OF A 'COLLEAGUE' WITHIN GORDON YATES: Learning the business, all the way from the bottom What is it like to work as a recruiter at Gordon Yates? The one word that sticks out for me when I try to describe the culture here is: "fair". If you do your best but the results are slower to come, the support is there. And whatever your skills and attributes, you're valued for who you are as an individual - you don't have to be something you're not. Working together We work in small teams. But even between different teams there's an openness and sense of everyone working together. It feels like belonging to the same family! I joined Gordon Yates as an Administrator, helping my recruiting team to provide a superb service. Being keen to win a 'front line' role, I took every opportunity to go the extra mile, helping out with candidates and even helping to fill temp bookings when opportunities arose. My managers and the directors proved willing to support my ambitions. I was promoted to 'rookie' Trainee. The training involved a combination of structured training, general helping out, focused business developing, shadowing, listening and learning. From a very early stage I was expected to take responsibility for the results. The whole programme took me about three months. Playing a real part My next step was Recruiter/Assistant. During the next few months I gradually began to take on candidates and clients under the supervision of a senior recruiter. Targets for activity and output were set in little steps, with small bonuses paid to encourage progress. By this stage I was beginning to feel properly 'stuck into' the job and playing a real part. Recruiter status brings full front-line responsibility, in my case as a temporaries (as opposed to permanent) recruiter. At this level, you are expected to live up to very high standards. The job starts to really come alive as you start building your desk, nurturing client and candidate relationships and working ever more closely with colleagues. You also qualify for much bigger bonuses! From here, the natural progression is to begin taking on more responsibility for training/mentoring others while all the time developing higher level skills and experience. Progression of this kind is formally recognised via Senior Recruiter and thereafter Executive Recruiter status. Scope exists to develop in parallel on the management side of things. To start with, this may mean helping a Team Leader to run a team (Deputy Team Leader) before going on to lead a team of your own (Team Leader). At each stage your own aspirations are taken into consideration and your contribution as a coach and mentor increases. Guide and support These days, as an Associate Director of the business as well as Team Leader of a successful team, I'm still very much 'hands on' as a recruiter but my performance is also judged by my contribution to the team and the business as a whole. My role includes responsibility to coach, guide and support while leading by example. My professional development at Gordon Yates has included the complete series of internal training courses that we run here, alongside external training, exams and qualifications run by the REC. Today I help to run some of our internal training courses - it's great to be able to 'give something back' in this way. Since coming into recruitment I have heard and seen enough to know that Gordon Yates isn't typical. I'm proud to work for a company with so much to offer. Long days, hard work, intense pressure, huge highs, desperate lows... I wouldn't swap it for anything!
©2008 Gordon Yates Ltd. |
SARAH MUSTAFA (nee THORPE) Associate Director Office tel: 020 7494 4466 |
