Resilience and diplomacy are crucial skills to have in Ian Weatherup’s role as a recruitment leader.
Read how Ian became a Recruitment Leader at Corvus
Give a brief outline of your career to date.
I started in recruitment in 1992 before moving to Scotland in the mid-90s where I was a Systems Consultant with an IT firm for three years. I returned to Northern Ireland in 1998 and co-founded the first IT recruitment company here with Diamond Recruitment and went on to become a Senior Partner in the firm.
In March 2001 myself and Julie Scates set up Corvus Recruitment, a consultancy focused on permanent recruitment solutions with the goal of working with a smaller number of clients and candidates to give them more attention and a better service. I became MD of Corvus in 2016 when Julie became seriously ill and sadly passed away almost two years ago.
When I became MD, I joined Vistage a CEO leadership group and was a member for five years I learnt more about how to successfully lead a business and develop people (and about myself) than I had in the previous 20 years in my career.
I am very proud that Corvus has launched Corvus Assured, a process/methodology to help companies with critical recruitment needs. lt enables us to recruit people who are a better fit for organisations, whilst giving candidates confidence that they are joining the right company.
What was your favourite subject at school?
I enjoyed studying Politics. Something that is still of great interest to me today.
Did you go on to further/ higher education, if so what did you study and where?
I studied at University of Central Lancashire studying Business & IT, followed by a Postgraduate in Management Studies at Staffordshire University.
How did you get into your area of work?
After graduating, I travelled overseas for two years and had a job offer with a large IT recruitment firm in London. To maintain family harmony, I agreed to register with a recruitment company for IT sales work and they phoned me the next day to offer me a job with them as a Recruitment Consultant.
Is this what you always wanted to do?
Recruitment was still a fledgling industry in Northern Ireland in the early 90s so I had not immediately thought of it as a career. As soon as I started, I loved the sense of satisfaction of helping to solve a company’s recruitment problems as well as helping someone to move to a better career opportunity.
Were there any particular essential qualifications or experience needed?
Sector experience is highly advantageous, especially early in your career. As I was recruiting predominantly in the IT industry my academic background was a real benefit. In my view, the key to working in the industry is emotional intelligence, listening, problem solving, challenging, empathy, resilience, to be competitive but fair and never treat people as a number.
Are there alternative routes into the job?
Many national recruitment firms offer trainee programmes and increasingly recruitment firms are taking undergraduates on for their placement year, which can be a stepping stone into the industry.
What are the main personal skills your job requires?
Leadership, vision, diplomacy, strategy, trust and authenticity.
What does a typical day entail?
Up at 06:15, read the Economist Espresso with a cup of tea before checking and responding to emails and updating my ‘to do’ list for the day. Update MS Teams with my three critical tasks and prepare for the Teams call at 09:15.
If l am working on a client project or assignment the morning will be spent sourcing and interviewing prospective candidates along with interview preparation. I check in with a team member every morning and will also spend time working on future strategy and opportunities to grow our service solutions into other business areas.
In the afternoons I work on our Corvus Assured a process/methodology we have introduced to help companies with critical recruitment needs. It enables us to recruit people who are a better fit for organisations whilst giving candidates confidence that they are joining the right company and guarantees placements for up to 12 months (not the industry norm of 12 weeks).
Why is what you do important?
We help build better businesses and enable candidates to realise their full potential. Most of our clients are Northern Ireland based SMEs (though we work in GB, RoI and the USA) and our team thrive on seeing the positive impact they have on local businesses whilst supporting candidates into better career opportunities.
How has Covid-19 impacted your business/role?
Pre-Covid most of the team worked at home one day a week, so the transition to remote working was not a major shock to the system. The biggest challenge we had was adapting to the concerns of the virus – who it would affect, how long would lockdown last, the state of the economy and what the world of work would look like in the future.
There was much media coverage regarding falling economic output and the recession and as we are a service industry to businesses and organisations we were at the mercy of the markets to an extent. We were deeply sympathetic to the many industries and companies who, through no fault of their own have had their income streams slashed.
We realised we could only control what we could control – that started with ourselves and our mindsets. We wrote blogs and articles to support our clients and candidates including a video interview guide which many candidates found incredibly helpful, especially in the early days when Zoom and Teams were not as prevalent as they are today.
Corvus Assured was originally due to be launched in late March 2020 which we delayed, but quickly recognised that our psychometric assessment (which measures whether a client and a candidate are a behavioural fit) was a highly valuable and powerful tool to make recruitment and onboarding smoother and giving greater confidence to both parties.
What adjustments have you had to make?
Every morning we have a video call with the team to keep us connected, as well as it being an opportunity to review the previous day and lay out plans for the day ahead. This ensures focus and accountability, but more importantly this check-in maintains the bond of the team and reminds us we are not alone in our home offices.
We provided the team with laptops to allow them to work in the office or from home in between lockdowns and have also kept our routine around weekly and monthly team meetings.
What advice would you give anyone looking to follow a similar career path?
Do what you say you are going to do, do not be afraid to ask difficult questions and treat people as you would want to be treated.
If you weren’t doing this what would you like to do?
I enjoy so many aspects of what I do that I wouldn’t want to move far away from my current role, but I have an idea for an app which I would love to build and bring to market.
What is the one piece of advice you would give to yourself on your first day?
Two ears, one mouth.
Describe your ideal day off.
Up early and out for a days cycling in Mallorca, followed by relaxing by the pool and then a long dinner with friends and family.
And finally, what’s the key to any successful job search?
Self-reflection and understanding of what you like/dislike, are strong at/would rather avoid. Take control of your career, be tenacious.
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