Senior Recruiter, doing CIPD L3 in HR, but market is poor....

Hi All

I live in Northern Ireland and I've been working as a recruiter in an agency for the last 5 years and have a solid background in recruitment but the sales approach in an agency is starting to wear me down.  I started doing my L3 CIPD in HR in September and I'm due to finish in June. I'd really love to move into HR due to the variety of tasks and different things to get your teeth into, so to speak.

I've been looking for jobs as an HR Officer for over 6 months just to get exposure to interview and I'm being choosy about what I apply to. I've noticed there are a few problems: NI is small, HR professionals are generally aware of each other in the industry here so I have to be careful.  Salaries are low and no-one advertises their own jobs - they go straight to recruitment agencies more often than not!   Those also offering jobs in NI don't seem to recognise the knowledge that recruiters have in Employment Legislation either, and they say my experience in recruitment is irrelevant an HR Officers role.

Another problem here is  that companies here don't seem to use CIPD for hiring themselves (there are no NI jobs except for Hays on CIPD - says a lot really!), and it's usually a case of who knows whom so so far, CIPD isn't proving beneficial despite every job advert asking for it as a desirable! 

I'm wondering if it's worth my while continuing with trying to push to get into HR and continuing my CIPD membership, or am I actually wasting my time?  I'm enjoying the course, I would actually consider doing the Level 5 if I knew that it would be worthwhile.

ND

Parents
  • Hi Nicola, I'm late to the party too! So hope things have been successful for you in the interim.

    I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, 7 yrs recruitment, many years operational in my sector and over qualified for Admin, under qualified for Officer. From advice on peers in my time since completing the CIPD L.3, I am finding the best option is to make a move to internal recruitment which is absolutely fine and I can focus my specialism in this area, you will naturally gain exposure to wider HR related tasks and sit closely with an HR team dependent on the organisation, which may present the opportunity to move over completely into an HR function.

    Having undertaken your CIPD accreditation, it will hold you in good stead for employers to look at you moving internally as some do not favour just taking agency recruiters due to the nature of us not having much formulation of strategy knowledge and our competency based interviewing techniques are generally a lot looser.

    If this is a route you'd like to explore, certainly conduct further reading in relation to recruitment strategies, explore workshops and conferences. Connect with leading Talent Acquisition Managers in your relevant field of work and gain insight from them, this will give you the confidence of interviewing well for these roles.

    I'm more than happy to share some resources with you that I have been studying and reading.

    Simon
Reply
  • Hi Nicola, I'm late to the party too! So hope things have been successful for you in the interim.

    I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, 7 yrs recruitment, many years operational in my sector and over qualified for Admin, under qualified for Officer. From advice on peers in my time since completing the CIPD L.3, I am finding the best option is to make a move to internal recruitment which is absolutely fine and I can focus my specialism in this area, you will naturally gain exposure to wider HR related tasks and sit closely with an HR team dependent on the organisation, which may present the opportunity to move over completely into an HR function.

    Having undertaken your CIPD accreditation, it will hold you in good stead for employers to look at you moving internally as some do not favour just taking agency recruiters due to the nature of us not having much formulation of strategy knowledge and our competency based interviewing techniques are generally a lot looser.

    If this is a route you'd like to explore, certainly conduct further reading in relation to recruitment strategies, explore workshops and conferences. Connect with leading Talent Acquisition Managers in your relevant field of work and gain insight from them, this will give you the confidence of interviewing well for these roles.

    I'm more than happy to share some resources with you that I have been studying and reading.

    Simon
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