Every so often one is inspired to write something and today I had inspiration from an unlikely source a book review. In all honestly I am not keen on writing them, mainly down to the fact that I am not he greatest when it comes to literary talent, but on this occasion it got me thinking and I started to reflect on my life!

In all honesty I think I was helped by the two beers I was having Friday afternoon, as it was making me a little nostalgic of my early days in recruitment. NB a Friday afternoon beer was part of the job description.

When I started out I was one of the youngest recruiters for the company and finished as one of the oldest. Although I am proud to say that I did make it to a director, but then managed to blow it.

Hindsight is a great thing and although I did well considering how shy I was in the early days, (I was even too scared to pick up a phone) but over the years I changed. So I hope that what I am about to say you will take on board and not ignore, like I used to switch off when my father gave me his advice.

So what is it that every recruiter should know, well it is not how to be a recruiter that is for sure. Because if you are not being trained within your company on recruitment then you should leave. Being a recruitment consultant is like any job, you may as well be working working in MacDonald’s sweeping the floor. ( I had a little insight on MacDonald’s a few years back with an advertising agency, they advised them that the reason they could not hire good staff, was because of their image to graduates, so the agency in question was fired, one of those occasions when honesty did not pay off)

So what I am trying to say is that you have to invest in you, because generally the employer doesn’t. You may think you are being trained and developed with management courses, sales training, people development, motivation, development interviews, promotions etc. and yes in some ways you are. These courses are all part of honing your skills for the benefit of the company and not specifically, but you will gain from them of course.

What you are missing though are the tricks to get on, I think I was a little naive to be honest at the start I believed you get on by hard work alone, but that is only part of the story.

Looking back when I started out, I was often told when you join a company do not to get involved in office politics, but you could say the truth is opposite, the real success comes from understanding the office politics and how to use it to your advantage.

Which brings me to the book review that really is not a review, but one of the many books you should be reading. It is a book like many self help books which will help you develop and to attain those dreams you have always wanted.

The book in question that prompted this post of a small reflection of my life is NLP for Business Success: How to get better results faster at work by Jeremy Lazarus which I certainly would recommend. Not just because it will help you in conducting interviews, but it will help you understand all the processes that are going on within the work environment. What frustrates me these days is that I wished I had taken more time to read more of them. I am sure if I had done I would have attained more or at the very least understood the dynamics of the environment I was working in. Each book you read will give you something to help you succeed and If I only got one thing from this book, it was that everyone can have a different perception of any comment you make and although obvious, this book helps you realise this from a different angle and how to restructure your comments to ensure the way you communicate is understood and absorbed by everyone (Certainly important in negotiations and presentations)

In all honesty I should have known better because it was a book that got me on the road to success in the first place. In actual fact two books “the Magic of thinking big” and “how to make friends and influence people” These two books shaped my life and for almost the next 30 years I never read another.

I now realise I missed out on developing me, I just believed that the company I was working for was doing that by putting me on various training courses, when really I should have spent time developing my own personal skills.  I should have realised that this was just the start and I should have re read and re read and seek out other motivators in particular Tony Robins.

I recently found out that the one of the richest men in the world (Warren Buffett) read Dale Carnegie’s book “how to make friends and influence people” and apparently his is dog eared from reading over and over again, mine was not!

So when you finish work tonight you should ask yourself where do I want to be in a years time or 5 years from now. I think most off us including me just want to switch off and enjoy what we have, but if you do want to get on in recruitment take time out and invest in you.

Just one final though success is not by chance it is by doing that little bit extra every day.

 “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

Mark Twain