CareerAugust 16, 20210

Curating Careers

Why should I work with you? What makes you different?

I answered this same question in a blog some years ago, when I first moved to Dubai, and despite my journey being far more vast than I ever anticipated, my answer truly has barely changed. 

Why should I work with you? What makes you different?

This is such a good question. What makes me different.. Well, a little history for you – I left my corporate role, a secure position, to seek a better future. But to really answer, we need to rewind a little further. I came from an excellent boutique agency in Australia. I spent 6 years growing, learning and encouraged at every level to explore my recruitment passions, with enough room to make mistakes. I grew quickly with the guidance offered, and was soon contributing to the business in a real way. 

In late 2017, I was approached about an opportunity to move to Dubai, and as with all good stories, well.. It didn’t start with saying “No”. 6 weeks later I was in the Middle East and a complete fish out of water. Everything was different, the language, the business style, the company culture – everything. Truly it took me 12 months to settle. I thought about giving up on many occasions. I struggled to fit in at work, I struggled with how business was conducted, I struggled to add any value at all. Or so I thought. But once again, the reality is that once you figure out what you are passionate about, and stick to that, everything else will fall into place. My passion was not in going out and winning 700 new clients a year and having a single placement with each of the new logos; no. My passion was a little deeper. I focused on enterprise companies, who I could really delve into and understand their culture, their future plans, who I could really get aligned with. What followed was three years of strategic account acquisition and growth. I am proud of the work my team and I did. We brought in the most senior contract and permanent placements in company history, we brought in strategic, multi-geo customers, but more than anything, we built strong relationships. Honest relationships, with two-way communication, co-created values. 

I mentioned that I left – to seek a better future. For me, a better future meant I have a bigger say in both the business direction, and that of my career. The investment in education, in self development, in defining and really working to my core values in all aspects. What makes me different is my undying belief that the right people, with the right attitude, are the vehicle to allow companies to do incredible things, and we must focus on finding, attracting and perfectly positioning these people to do well.

 


And this question – “Why should I work with you” whilst it is a good question – I don’t find it hard to answer,  as the answer is something I have built my whole career on. It’s the integrity that I live by. As a person, the quality of my work, my ability to influence. It really draws on the old saying “people might not remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel”. 

You can get from A to B in many different ways. It is a question of how you want to feel when you get to B though. Do you want to feel tired and exhausted from dealing with a cumbersome process, inflexible, ego-centric recruitment partners? Or do you want to feel enthusiastic and excited about your new joiner, and what the future holds?

The job search is one that is highly personal and highly emotive. Especially when you are working in a market that is hinged on foreign labour. Having a job here is the difference between being able to live in the Middle East, or not.

Several years ago, I was working in Digital Recruitment. And this means many different things, to many different organisations. During this time I studied the principles of Digital Transformation, blogs, articles, studies, readings, and the interesting thing is that this study really translated to and shaped the way I approached recruitment as a practice. It highlighted that Digitization and Digital Transformation, are concepts founded on customer centricity at their core. Every touch point of a process influences the customer’s engagement, their perception, a patchwork of moments that collectively define the experience of that customer.

So how then, do we draw parallels between the fundamental digital principle of experience, and recruitment?

 

 

Recruitment – the ultimate relationship oriented industry. A world based on the ability to network, to deliver high quality, to influence and to consult. One of the nuances of recruitment, is it is not solely a buyer and seller transaction, it is one of the only industries, where the product has a say in it’s sale. Where your product can turn around, at the very end of the ‘transaction’ and decide it does not want to be sold, on its own accord.

It comes down to your relationship, to being attentive and empathetic, and engaged. It comes down to your ability to listen, and how you make your customer feel. And in that journey, your recruiter should be your co-creator. Be that the co-creator of your team, or the co-creator of your career.

So maybe, it is time to change the mindset of the modern recruiter. In the digital world we now live in, when customer experience is ultimately the make or break of an organization, our value proposition should be centered around the experience, rather than being defined as the product or service.

Here at Hyrd Consulting, we see ourselves as Curators of Careers. If you are seeking a new position, or a new team member, get in touch, let us assist you.

-Clare Holst 

Happiness Ambassador & Recruiter

 

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