FROM TV PRODUCER TO RECRUITMENT CONSULTANT, A TALE OF TWO PROFESSIONS...

After many years in the industry, I decided to leave television and I cannot help but think it was because of my moment with Paul. I was constantly striving to one-up the time Paul Daniels did a card trick on me but as you can imagine each preceding experience did not quite ‘cut-it’. 

So I started to think about what else I could do.  

I deliberated for a time and after doing a lot of research decided to retrain as a Recruitment Consultant as I felt the similarities between the two professions were uncanny.  

And just like Recruitment, there are a wealth of contributors/candidates to contact (most of which will want to be on TV/want the job) but not all will be suitable for the show/job.  

AND there is also a huge number of businesses/clients to contact. Exciting clients/cool venues will get tens, if not hundreds, of calls a day from rival recruiters/tv channels. The chances of you as a TV Producer/Recruiter gaining access to large businesses/vacancies are incredibly slim on your first call. It usually requires weeks if not months of careful and sensitive relationship building.  

I remember one show I was working on with the Mexican government to film at their Aztec archaeological sites throughout Mexico. It took the best part of 2 years to get sign off for the show to be made whilst the actual filming only took around 2 months.   

The biggest difference between Recruitment and Television is you don’t especially need one (contributor/candidate) or the other (location/client). 

I could find the coolest contributor and film them in my back garden and it would just about work on television. And vice-versa – I could gain access to a really cool venue and the shots alone would work on television. In TV you are lucky that the general public are in fact, incredibly tolerable. They are there to be entertained and with the right tone, entertained they will be.  

In Recruitment you aren’t as lucky… 

You could have the best candidate in the world but without a suitable vacancy all the hard work of finding that candidate is wasted. 

Much like having the coolest vacancy (or in TV terms – a location) without the right candidate to fill that vacancy it is only half the job and Recruitment doesn’t work in halves.  

This is what makes the job so rewarding. The feeling of placing a candidate/landing a job (or the holy grail of achieving both) requires an incredible amount of hard work. You can’t cut corners like you can in TV, you can’t magic up a job – you don’t have the benefit of the editor who can build locations in post-production to make it look like your presenter is at the Taj Mahal when you didn’t get sign-off from the Indian government to actually film there (this actually happened to me). You can’t conjure up a unicorn contributor, or get a member of the crew to dress up as a cow because the real cow couldn’t make it as it had just given birth (again, true story). Every placement requires dedication, grit and true resilience.  Without it, you may as well sit at your desk and do nothing all day.  

I believe the ultimate test of a successful consultant can be gauged on the happiness of two people: 

And we all know how fickle the audience can be… A simple magic trick and they’ll be like putty in your hands…. 

Now, does anyone have a deck of cards?  

I want to show you something…