Looking for a Career Transition? 6 Backgrounds Perfect for Getting into Recruitment
Share this post:
There is a point on almost every professional’s path where they start questioning if they should stay with their current job or make a career transition. Whether it is because they are looking for a better income and work-life balance or need a new lease on life and change their day-to-day activities, career changers can use their working backgrounds to get into jobs that don’t require previous experiences, just ongoing training, such as recruitment.
Fortunately for those people looking for a career change, recruitment is a job you can start with no previous experience needed. Although your drive and motivation can set you up to succeed, some transferable skills will ease your adaptation process.
If you’re wondering if becoming a recruiter is the right move for your career, keep reading and find out how your background can get you into the recruitment industry.
How to get into recruitment?
Becoming a recruiter is pretty simple for those interested in a career in human resources. In fact, many people who have joined the industry got into recruitment without planning it. If you watch some of the Tales of our pac or dive into the stories of our Alpha Pac recruiters, you’ll find out that for most of them, recruitment just popped up, and they decided to make a career transition from their “original” craft.
You’ll even find out that some gpac recruiters started seeing recruitment as an alternative career. Only to later find themselves making more money and having a way better work-life balance. So, what makes recruitment an effective option for people looking for career change jobs requiring no experience?
It all comes down to the transferable skills professionals from several industries have that fit the recruitment craft. Suppose you’re looking for a career transition, and you have soft skills. In that case, if you’re adept at talking to people or consider yourself a methodical person who follows processes in detail, all you have to do is apply to become a recruiter, and gpac will set you up to succeed.
Most common degrees recruiters have
Although recruitment is a career that doesn’t require a certain level of study, approximately 69% of the recruiters’ workforce have a bachelor’s degree, followed by professionals with associate (12%) and masters (9%) degrees. Even if individuals from any background can become a recruiter, the five fields of interest of recruiters with bachelor’s degrees are psychology, business, marketing, human resources, and sociology.
As you can see, these five areas of study are in some sort related to the responsibilities and tasks of recruiters. So if you’re a career changer looking for courses to set you up for joining the recruitment industry, look for classes related to these subjects. Although most recruiting firms won’t require you to have a higher education, having it will make you stand out.
Career backgrounds to get into recruitment
Most recruiters studied an unrelated major or started their professional path elsewhere before getting into recruitment. Despite most of them making a career change, some backgrounds will give a competitive advantage to becoming a recruiter.
Professionals in legal, engineering, finance, or marketing industries have a mix of skills that will ease their career transition for recruitment, aside from the fact that they can use their knowledge in their former industry in their recruitment strategies.
Although anyone looking for a career change can consider recruitment as a job option with no previous experience needed, these backgrounds have some key transferable skills in the recruitment industry; so if you’re exploring alternative careers and come from any of these backgrounds, take your chances and get a job as a recruiter.
Public relations
PR professionals manage a company’s reputation and positively influence others’ perceptions about it through social media and communication. You’ll have to source and talk to prospective candidates and companies in recruitment.
A recruiter must showcase the benefits of both parties to one another in order to make a positive connection between them and accomplish the placement. As a PR executive, you’re used to dealing with all kinds of people and resolving objections, a skill that helps you with streamlining the hiring process and dealing with usual day-to-day recruiter situations.
Teaching
Speaking specifically about gpac recruiters, some coaches have a special bias towards professionals with a background in teaching. From regular classroom teachers to sports coaches, their skill set, drive, and proficiency to be in front of crowds make them the perfect match for gpac’s culture and environment.
Another positive aspect of professionals with teaching backgrounds doing a career transition to recruitment is their aptitude for both being coachable and teaching others what recruiters do. This becomes a game-changer when you consider a recruiter’s lifecycle at gpac, where recruiters can become coaches once they prove their experience and efficiency to lead a team.
Marketing and sales
Many people argue that one of the best jobs or backgrounds that prepare you to make a career transition into recruitment is sales and marketing. Although a recruiter is not selling a product per se, they sell companies’ job openings and candidates’ qualities. It’s about matchmaking.
Therefore many recruitment specialists and hiring managers state that knowing how to sell is the number one skill a person needs to succeed in this industry, and they have a preference for proficient professionals in marketing and sales. Adding a few soft skills to your sales background, such as proactiveness, active listening, and empathy, can polish your profile for becoming a top recruiter.
Event Planning
Although recruitment is a rewarding craft, there are two aspects people fail to deal with at the beginning: planning work days and handling contingencies and setbacks. This is where individuals with event planning experience become convenient prospects for a recruiter.
Career changers with an event planning background should consider recruitment as an alternative career due to their efficiency in planning their day, considering time for interviews, networking, filling job orders, sourcing candidates, etc. Also, their experience in solving unexpected events and dealing with clients and providers allows them to enhance quality connections even when no placement or job order is involved.
Counseling
Top-tier recruiters go beyond just sending resumes and job postings. They go the extra mile by counseling candidates and advising companies. People with experience in counseling have the tact and personality to guide candidates through the hiring process step-by-step or even walk them through rejection to define their next career path steps or opportunities.
If you work and have a vocation for counseling but want to improve your earnings, recruitment is an excellent career with no experience needed. In this industry, you can apply your skills to gain people’s trust to learn more about candidates’ and companies’ goals and motivations, ultimately allowing you to match them better.
Business Management
Recruitment is also an excellent choice for people with an entrepreneurial mindset looking for a career transition that gives them the opportunity to run their businesses, especially if they have experience with business management. Speaking about gpac, even as professionals have the company’s formula for success and back-end support, recruiters run their desk and handle it as if they’re running a company.
If you have experience managing a business, becoming a recruiter at gpac would be a natural career transition with many transferable skills; and just imagine all the perks at work you’ll have as a recruiter running your own business. All while being supported by a company with over 30 years in the game.
Although some backgrounds give an advantage to your transition as a recruiter, the key takeaway is that everyone can join the recruitment industry and succeed. If you don’t necessarily have experience in any previous careers but have a profile or skill set similar to them, then you’re good to go. Take the chance to turn your professional path into a rewarding career and embrace the challenge by joining gpac.
Contributed by Luis Arellano
