Sandra Chiles, the Managing Director of inPlace Recruitment, will celebrate 35 years in the recruitment sector this year – this is what she has to say about the evolution of the role compared to when she began in 1981.
Recruitment was a lot different 35 years ago, with doss Recruitment software and fax machines. No job boards, mobile phones or email, even answering machines were a scarce household commodity. So as you can imagine the process was significantly slower.
Until late 1990’s, the only advertising media was the classified section of the Saturday Sydney Morning Herald. Ads needed to be placed over the phone two days prior (so you had to hope an urgent role didn’t come in on Friday morning).
Applications would then arrive via the post; back then the postman delivered overnight with TWO deliveries per day! With little access to computers the majority of Resumes were hand written (and often difficult to read) occasionally they were typed on a typewriter. I would then contact the applicants via their home phones, usually after hours, to arrange an interview as mobile phones weren’t launched till 1987 and answering machines were not widely used till the late 1980’s.
Once interviewed, I would retype their resume (with my two fingers) and post, fax or courier it to the client. With 6-8 interviews a day you can imagine how time consuming the process once was compared to nowadays when everything is done with a click of a mouse.
I have interviewed in the vicinity of 40,000 candidates over my 35 years, so platforms such as Linkedin come in very handy when recalling all these potential candidates. Everyone has a story to tell and I have loved meeting each and every one over my 35 years recruiting.
As the years passed, technology evolved and the structure and pace of the work place changed.
Applying for jobs became significantly easier with the arrival of the digital age with email and resumes now being stored in word & PDF format on personal computers and the emergence of job boards such as Seek and Monster (in its day). The volume of unqualified applications tripled with the ease of applying for jobs online – no longer did candidates actually have to take the time to write up their resume and cover letter and post it off to their ideal position. Building rapport with the client became paramount to the success of inPlace Recruitment.
The skills and experience of a recruitment consultant is as valuable to day as 35 years ago. Sure there have been vast improvements in technology and speed to market, but one thing that remains the same is that recruitment is about people and no sophisticated software can assess a person’s personality, attitude and team fit as accurately as an experienced recruiter.