I started in recruitment over 32 years ago. I was working for a photographic gallery and was asked to recruit people to staff sales offices for them. I enjoyed the recruitment process much more than the sales role I was in, so in 1989 I joined an industrial recruitment company. It was a large company with seven branches and a head office. I had an initial week’s training and was then sent to a small branch to work under a manager.

My first experience in recruitment was a real eye opener. I literally couldn’t believe how unreliable people could be. I’d arranged for ten drivers to report to a company and only five showed up! This resulted in a half hour expletive-filled rant from the client – time which would ultimately have been better spent with me looking for replacements but I understood his fury. A subsequent chat with my manager enlightened me to the fact that this was a daily occurrence and this was, after all, industrial recruitment!

Despite this baptism of fire, I managed to survive my first days, weeks and then months in the recruitment industry.

I moved from my first agency to join a small, independent company called The Workshop in September 1989. We were a small team comprising of the two owners, myself, another consultant and someone on a Youth Training Scheme (YTS). At that time, we were only working with industrial and horticultural clients and were taking everyone to work and collecting them at the end of the day. We had a fleet of minibuses and semi-retired drivers who worked in the mornings and evenings. The hours were incredibly long, meeting early shifts as they went out and then meeting late shifts as they came back, as well as a 12-hour day in the middle. It was exhausting but often eventful and ultimately fun.

32 years later I’m still in recruitment and still at Workshop Recruitment, now as a business owner and Director and part of the reason for this is the fact that no two days are the same. There are certainly different challenges, but they keep you committed, engaged and interested.

There have, however, been many improvements over that time.

Back at the start, when we used to recruit temporary workers, the pay was poor and they didn’t have the right to paid holiday. Now there’s the National Living Wage, a minimum of 20 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, and many more employment rights including much higher protection from discrimination.

Modern practices and legislation protect workers much more than when I first started, and as a result the recruitment industry has a much better reputation that it had all those years ago. People choose to do temporary work now – sometimes as a lifestyle choice and sometimes as a route to permanent work. Agencies are seen as a valuable tool in recruitment and often as a business partner, essential to companies in helping manage fluctuations in manpower requirements.

Have I ever wanted to leave recruitment? Lots of times. We all have those days when we wish we were somewhere else. But what would I do that is as rewarding as placing people in jobs and helping them to reach their goals? Maybe after 32 years I’ve become institutionalised, but I really can’t imagine wanting to do anything else; recruitment is now part of my DNA and I’m so fortunate to be surrounded by a fantastic team that support and share my passion for this industry. At Workshop Recruitment we all share the same desire for honesty and integrity, it’s not an optional extra or just website blurb, it’s at the very core of who we are and what we do and I’m proud to be part of that.