My move from hospitality to recruitment

After 12 years of working the front of house in hospitality, I decided the best move for my future was to move into recruitment.

This was a decision based on the next 20 years with my new wife, probable future children etc. My wife has always worked office hours and I've always worked evenings and weekends which has never been an issue; however I decided I didn't want to spend the next 30 years of our relationship how I had spent the first 7.

I was very fortunate to have a chance connection on LinkedIn with the Director of a hospitality recruitment company which were looking to hire ex-hospitality staff. In hindsight, I was incredibly fortunate to speak with a company that didn't try and gloss over what the job was - it's challenges, frustrations and rewards.

A lot of people who move like I did see recruitment as the "easy option" when we've spent years working 70 hour weeks in incredibly high-pressure environments where small mistakes can be punished severely. This makes the idea of sitting at a desk for 40 hours a week and calling people about jobs seems like a permanent holiday. Certainly physically you very quickly feel the benefit of not being on your feet all day, though ensuring you have good posture so not to cause back problems in the future is very important, but changing a sleep pattern to day times is not a lot of fun and will take months to adjust to.

A lot of your days can feel wasted and pointless, all your effort getting you no where and even when you have a successful day the carpet can be yanked out from under you as clients decide they aren't interested in the candidates you've put forward, candidates accept an offer from another place before interview or candidates just disappear off the face of the Earth as you try to track them down for an interview you've set up. Looking at your sales target and the number of jobs you're currently working and wondering how the hell you'll get there this month. This takes on extra significance for me as I work on a self-employed model so no sales, no salary and I like to have money for luxuries such as food.

Now obviously it isn't all doom and gloom otherwise I wouldn't be doing this, I'd be back in a restaurant somewhere dealing with the work/life balance issues. It only takes finding that 1 perfect candidate to make everything work to make the job seem easier, or finding the perfect job for someone you've been working with for a few weeks or months. These are the peaks of the job, when it all clicks into place - the client is happy, the candidate is happy, and months on when you speak to them they're both still delighted with the situation and the effort you put in to make it happen.

To help businesses find the perfect people to grow, improve and achieve the awards and accolades their hard work deserves. These highs not only balance out the lows but comfortably exceed them for me which is why I enjoy the job so much. But it's important that you go into this job understanding that there will be lows, there will be bad days, bad weeks possibly even bad months but if you can persevere, keep grinding away and not lose hope there will be rewards for you.