A guest blog today from my colleague Craig Williams. Craig
is a Senior Consultant within Balance Recruitment, joining us last year to set
up our Procurement Division. He’s had a very hectic and successful start to
life at Balance, which is covered here in his first guest blog:
Apples with Apples
Having returned from a sabbatical overseas last year – which
saw me taking a cargo ship from London to Buenos Aires and from there,
travelling through South America and then over to SE Asia (this time flying!) I
returned to London ready to re-enter the niche recruitment sector of
Procurement & Supply Chain and joined Balance to set up the division,
complimenting their existing presence within accountancy & finance.
A year down the line and these are my thoughts so far…
Having once been told that Procurement, from a recruitment
point of view, is relatively straight-forward and having spent a number of
years recruiting for senior accounting positions in London, I was looking
forward to the challenge of exploring this new and important business area, a
business function rapidly coming to the fore due to the straitened times we are
currently experiencing throughout the globe.
I had the benefit of already knowing a fairly large network
of well regarded procurement professionals personally and through my connections
in finance, all of whom were more than happy to talk through what they do – the
knowledge share would cost me a glass of wine or two, though being a fan of
good wine I felt that was a good exchange! One friend, when summarising what
Procurement professionals actually do, rather succinctly commented that ‘…in a
nutshell we compare apples with apples and we buy stuff…’.
Having dealt with finance for so long, a market well
furnished with specialist recruitment consultants, I was pleasantly surprised
to find that procurement professionals were much more open to spending time
with me discussing their profession – being recognised as a potential supplier
to an organisation certainly helped open doors during my initial few months and
I quickly found myself working on several mandates for a well-known technology
business. I was quickly able to fill three out of five of the roles given to me
- a great boost to my confidence whilst developing my understanding of this new
sector.
However, many of the roles I have subsequently been working
on have been challenging and far from straight-forward! A high profile IT
Category Manager position I was instructed on late last year required an
extremely rare beast, though through persistent searching and networking with
existing contacts, I was able to track down the elusive individual my client
was hoping to find, and placed them in to an interesting ongoing interim
assignment. There’s no better way to build strong relationships with clients
than by placing these difficult to fill roles that other recruiters have long
given up on.
Before long I was running several mandates, working with new
and existing Balance Recruitment clients; for example an Interim HR/Professional
Services Category Managers for a global media business – the remit being to
shape their global contingent workforce, a great opportunity for the right
person who would essentially be in the spotlight – not just here in London but
also within their New York headquarters. I’ve also had the opportunity to
partner with Global law firms, large engineering businesses and transport
organisations all bringing fresh challenges and increasing my knowledge of the Procurement
profession day by day. During each piece of recruitment I’ve met with some
amazing practitioners along the way, building a large network of professionals
across a variety of industries.
So it’s “so far so good” and I’m thoroughly enjoying my role
establishing Balance as high quality recruiter for Procurement staff.
Apple anyone?
