Now I imagine upon reading the title of this blog, images of some self-proclaimed, incredibly handsome, world class recruiter come to mind… While all of the above are true my title has a somewhat more modest story attached. Growing up I would have been classed as a bit of a wild spirit by some, raving lunatic by others. With little to no regard for personal safety and a slightly selfish, thrill seeking personality, I spent most of my teenage years studying, partying, working various jobs and partying. At the near adult age of 21 I had a bomb shell dropped on my utterly self-centred world “I’m pregnant” came the words every young man longs to hear… Being a rather pragmatic individual I hugged my girlfriend, smiled and cried with er joy… With my life literally turned on its head I thought long and hard about my prospects and how on earth I could possibly feed and support a child when all I had in my fridge was a half can of fosters, empty BLT packet and my friends long and forgotten left converse shoe. Along came recruitment and specifically CPI Selection with the help of a family member. The opportunity sounded incredible, I mean all you have to do is find someone a job right? AND get paid for it, I mean how hard could that be?! I hated it… I couldn’t work out why companies didn’t want me to call them, I mean come on my service is free unless you like the guy and did I not mention I’m a genuine specialist? Candidates were rude, didn’t turn up, didn’t want the incredible life changing opportunities I was representing and quite frankly had no idea what they wanted. Then my views completely changed, I made a placement! Walking to the bell felt like a school child being awarded a gold star for good performance, I remained cool and rung the bell as a genuine superstar. From there on in I honed my skills and became a genuine specialist. My client list was flooding in as where the candidates in my network, progression was never ending and I was on fire… So at what point did I become a God? Well during the down time when I felt like recruitment might not be for me I went home and sat there with my little lady and just thought about the financial impact of raising a child. She looked straight at me with huge loving eyes, raised up her tiny hand and gently stroked marmite across my brand new suit… Shortly after this as she lay asleep in her cot It suddenly dawned on me, in her eyes I am a god, I am her world and all that she knows, I will impact her in such a profound way that how could I possibly give up on the opportunity of a lifetime just because I find it hard.. I had been given the opportunity to keep my family financially secure and in a world where many people do not have opportunities how could I just give up? So I didn’t, and now 4 years later I have 3 baby girls with 3 sets of marmite covered hands and more dirty suits than I dare count. Josh Moy The evolving world of sales & communication…my take on youth to (almost) middle aged selling!8/9/2016 November 23rd 2004 was the day it all changed, I had gone through a couple of interviews and had met the ‘new team’. This was my first day in my new job and in all honesty...I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, or how fast actually this roller coaster of a career was going to be for me. I was 27 years old, relatively a late starter into recruitment, I had just bought my first property with my girlfriend, driving around in a brand new Vauxhall Astra SXI. Disposable income was a wonderful thing and my weekends tended to start on a Wednesday! Prior to this I held a couple of sales positions for a large retailer and then a national hotel chain. Yes I had been on all the training sessions on sales processes, negotiation, and how to make a proper hand shake! (Yes, I actually went on a course on how to shake hands professionally!) But in all honesty I never really knew what selling meant! It wasn’t until I became a recruiter that I actually learnt how to sell, suddenly I was faced with all sorts of objections now that I was in recruitment, I had only really come up against pricing objections in my previous jobs but now I was on the rollercoaster…and had no idea how to handle all these objections; rebates, pricing objections after an offer had been made, clients rejecting a CV because a candidate hadn’t put something of relevance on their CV, and no one even told me about the number of sales calls I would have to make. All of a sudden I was now the middle man, I was now juggling more balls than I ever had to deal with I had to keep everyone happy. I had to manage 3 people’s diaries and I had to make sure the candidate arrived and performed well enough so I could send the invoice as quickly as possible. I still maintain to this day that the buzz you get from telling a candidate they have been offered a job is an amazing feeling…but don’t get me wrong the calculator is firmly in my grasp working out what fee I have just created. Anyway, earlier I mentioned about the sales bit…now that bit I still find interesting! I’ve done this for 12 years now, and yes there have been good years, awesome years and like any sales job I have had my challenges along the way, my girlfriend is now my wife, we have 4 amazing kids and the car is now a Citroen Grand Picasso. When I first started in recruitment LinkedIn was only just an embryo, although he was probably applying for his place at university Mark Zuckerberg was only 20 and Twitter was a word only associated with birds! The tools we have now without a shadow of doubt are a huge advantage to us making money in recruitment – 35% of new applicants will approach social media before applying to a job and will use some form of mobile device to search for that new position. I love my gadgets, I love my iPhone, iPod, iPad and I love waiting for Apple to launch their latest device. As much as this technology makes me shiver with excitement, the biggest device I have and the best bit of technology I use and what I believe is the best tool in the box is my mouth. I control it, it doesn’t need updating, yes it has got me into trouble at times but with all the tools we have I’m still a firm believer in using this method of communication, by far in my opinion it beats all the latest mod cons. My only real concern that as we all move with the times we will soon start to forget about how powerful this sales tool is. Career is totally irrelevant if we lose our personality! Technology and social media is a wonderful thing, and I thrive on using it but let’s not forget the tools we use to get us to achieve our goals, sometimes the oldest tools are still the best method. Bob Hoskins once said – ‘It’s good to talk’ When I say I never really knew what selling was, what I actually mean is I never really knew how to use my mouth as a tool, a bit like social media – many of us know what it is but do we know actually how to use it? (And like I have, make money from it!) Paul Chalwin |
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January 2017
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