My Personal Experience Within Recruitment by Katie Pinion

Katie Pinion is Digital Business Accelerator Apprentice at Morgan Hunt and is writing for the Community Blogging Team.

I started this apprenticeship not knowing what to expect or how I would develop over the next year of my life. Now, I wonder how I've changed so much throughout the course of this apprenticeship- and think about how much of the change in me is due to Multiverse and the experiences and lessons I've learnt being an apprentice thanks to the community and my coach.

Just before I got my job, I had been out of work for almost a month and a half and realised I’d spent a big chunk of my last paycheck on going out with friends as it was the summertime, and the weather was as good as it gets in the UK. Then, I stumbled across Multiverse, who offered me an interview within 2 days of finalising the setup of my account.

My interview for this job was nothing like how I had expected it to be- I walked into a room of about 30 other people around my age and spent around 5 hours in the office going through the group interview process where we were required to partake in paired activities whilst the managing director and the managers of each team stood and listened.

I don’t remember being told too much about the job itself during this time - that was until we were individually brought into smaller meeting rooms with the managers to talk more about ourselves but on a 1 on 1 basis. Myself being the only person who was brought in to interview with every team in the company.

A couple hours afterwards, I received a call from my now manager, telling me I’d got the job and asking if I would like to accept. Because I still wasn’t entirely sold on what the job entailed, I said I’d call back tomorrow with an answer; and sure enough, the next day I accepted.

My first few weeks within the role were overwhelming. I was learning new job titles, new charities, new computer systems and new ways of working that were entirely different from past jobs. It’s a lot to take in and get used to. On average, it takes about 6 months to really pick things up. Of course, different team members taught me different things, but a lot of it was just listening in to other people’s conversations and shadowing them, picking up ideas on the kinds of questions to ask and how things worked. For example, what documents are required for compliance, what organisations we worked with the most, which consultant dealt with which sector of social care etc.

Most of what I did entailed speaking to candidates about themselves- asking if they were looking for any work and what exactly they were interested in doing, as well as chasing up candidates for their work timesheets once a week so they could get paid later that week for the hours they’d worked. This allowed me to learn directly from the candidates themselves about the jobs that they did and what their personal opinions were about the service they worked at or the team they worked with.

The role they had had in mind for me was to begin as a candidate resourcer and soon enough work my way up to eventually become a consultant; however, after a month in the job, we were made to work from home due to moving offices. It was during this time that I probably learnt the most.

During this period, I was listening even more closely to morning team meetings to focus on what the jobs entailed, teaching myself how to register new candidates and taking down notes on whatever I could. This is when I learnt the most about the job- and when I began going further down the road of compliance, rather than resourcing candidates, which is what I was originally hired for. Especially since there is already a compliance team within the company-except the way I manage compliance is much different.

Flash forward to now, I’m the team’s compliance officer. My job is to ask the candidates we register to send me documents to add to their profiles on the system and reference contacts to cover their previous work history. I’ve really made it my own as I’ve created an Excel spreadsheet to keep myself and the team up to date with all the currently important candidates that are in different stages e.g., have interviews or have accepted job offers.

So from what was once a Recruitment Resourcer job opportunity, has now developed into a Compliance Officer role that the company wants me to stay on after my apprenticeship is completed which is nothing like what I expected. Just goes to show that opportunities can arise from nowhere.

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