My name is Paula Tofan, I am 17 years old and I am a student at Northampton Academy. Today I want to share with you my one-week work experience at Impact Recruitment in their Northampton office.
Within my week at Impact, I have learned a lot and been a part of numerous different activities that have helped me develop my knowledge and skills within a business environment.
Impact’s Marketing Specialist, Estera, has been incredibly helpful and resourceful in teaching me more about the marketing aspect of recruitment and what she does for Impact specifically. Throughout the week she has taught me how to use a design tool, Canva, and I got the chance to try and explore this by creating a job advert draft in the style of those Impact would use to attract candidates. We have looked over social media posts and how they are created and planned in advance using a scheduling tool. I researched different types of social media content and gave new ideas and also created a plan for the month of May, proposing different content and posts that would be suitable for use during those weeks and relevant to a recruitment company.
Moving forward the commercial team, Louis, Vicky, and Nelly, have all been friendly and thorough at explaining their job as commercial recruiters. I got the chance to learn more about job and person specifications and tried CV sourcing. I had the opportunity to use Reed and CV Library to search for candidates for different job roles, based on different job descriptions and requirements. This helped me gain better understanding of what to look for in CVs, as well as what to include in a CV and what to leave out. Linking to this point I was able to sit in two types of interviews, commercial and industrial. Considering I’ve never had an interview this was beneficial in learning the different types of questions interviewers ask and look for, gaining more knowledge, as I could get both point of views from interviewers and interviewees. I was able to gain information about more formal interviews and how they compare to more general interviews and registrations. In both instances the interviewers were interested in what the candidates would prefer to do (as well as their skills), rather than just looking at what jobs were available, this was to make sure individual preferences were considered, hopefully leading to better matching up of vacancies and applicants. Which goes to show Impact is not only looking for what benefits the business, but also looking at what would be best long term for both businesses and candidates.
During the week, I also sat in on a business development meeting, where I got to observe how Impact’s goals and aims were discussed and how the organisation of the team, was planned. Making sure everyone is on track with the tasks they need to be doing and what needs to improve.
Later, I gained knowledge on some of the financial parts of the business, when one of Impact’s payroll team, Phoenix, was effective in explaining exactly what she does on a day-to-day basis and many aspects of her week, like payroll processing and how she deals with the issues that come up. I got a good taster of what it would be like if I worked in such a role and if this is something I’d be interested in.
As well as always making sure I was doing good throughout the days, and that I was never bored and had tasks to be getting on with, directors Angela and Paul, both were involved with trying to help me create a LinkedIn profile and building a CV. They both gave me significant advice on what to put on my profile, how to connect with others and why it is such a beneficial source to be on. I found this incredibly helpful because I’ve struggled with making a start, as many students do. They made sure that any questions I had, would always be answered, which I found easy to do as they are very friendly and approachable. While I was here, I also got to see the Employer of the Quarter award being presented, which enabled me to see what a teamwork environment looks like, and how rewarding it can be …
A varied week with a few treats along the way (they love to bring in cakes at Impact – having a weekly bake-off, let alone birthdays etc.), it has been an interesting experience and I know I can contact the Impact team if I ever need help or advice about finding work in the future.
