At our little recruitment agency in Westville, Durban we have found ourselves on the winning side quite a lot in 2014.
At any given moment during our busy periods if you asked what we thought we were doing right we probably would’ve laughed and shrugged our shoulders, “I don’t know!”
Now as we are winding down the year and heading into the quiet period I have time to reflect, but not for more than 10 minutes because we are already looking at 2015 and I have a candidate waiting to be interviewed, a client needing some advice and a team mate with a broken computer! So I have written down my thoughts on the elusive winning formula.
What breeds a successful team? Is it the environment? Is it the workload? Is it the boss luring us with fruitful incentives? Is it the people or is it luck? In my short few years in bottom-line sales I have found it to be people – their attitude and actions make it a success.
Sure you can have state of the art equipment and resources, a balanced day of meetings, emails and time spent on the road, you could even have the fruitful of fuitfulness (I make up words, according to my friends at work) of incentives driving you to push for one more telesale, one more client visit, ONE MORE CV – but without a good team none of this even exists.
At Pro Appointments without saying it, we have bred a team that never gives up, a team that stares straight into the face of adversity and says “Bring it on!” Because with our team, we know that if anything goes wrong, we have each other’s back. Sure we have rolled the dice on a few occasions and bitten off more than we can chew, but at the end of the afternoon we have done it together. No matter how busy I am, no matter what I am doing I always know exactly how everyone else is in my team and what they are up to. There is a blind openness to all our banter and it goes without saying, take a days leave and your desk is covered. I look back at 2014 and I can comfortably say it has been an incredible roller-coaster. If any of you reading this are familiar with recruitment you will understand the constant battle we face every day. The client that never gets back, the candidate with false promises, the incorrect invoice, the bad reference or sometimes the feeling of being used in some sort of juvenile board game as your candidate uses you as leverage against a current employer (we LOVE that – NOT) Recruitment is not an easy job, in fact it is the hardest I’ve ever had, and I’ve been in customer service my whole life. What has made it abundantly easy is my team. I can rely on them to pick me up and dust me off when everything looks lost, I can count on them to pat me on the back for a placement well-done, I can even rely on them to make me a cup of tea when they can see I am absolutely off-the-wall-busy.
Each individual makes a vital impact on the well-being of the team. I have my part to play and so does the next. Each person has a completely different personality and not one of us are the same. Sure there are the strong, gregarious types (present company included) the solid-in-the-face-of-adversity type, the quiet unassuming grafter in the background, the newbie trying their best to learn bits and pieces from all of us and then of course the leader of leaders, our boss. She threw us crazy individuals together and instructed us to play nicely and it worked. We are individuals who make an unbelievable team.
I have an utmost respect for my friends at work, and I would do anything for them and they know I will always have their back too.
That’s why Pro Appointments does as well as it does. That is why we were voted 3rd Best Employment Agency in KZN (over 290 competitors) that is why we are fast becoming a well-known brand, that is why our competitors are talking about us and that is why our sales team broke the company record twice in one year!
We have the best people doing their jobs best because they are afraid of letting their team mates down.
As we head into 2015 I can only imagine what next year is going to throw at us, but I am certainly not scared because I have the BEST people working with me.
Simon Carter, Recruitment Consultant, Pro Appointments
