Here at Pure we're looking ahead to Professions Week and highlighting a profession very close to our hearts: recruitment!

Professions Week takes place from 9 ^th November, and is designed to increase awareness among young people about different professional careers and the routes into them. As a professional recruitment company we're well placed to advise candidates about starting out within a profession and about developing a long term career path, particularly within our key specialisms of Accountancy, Office Financial Services, HR, IT and Marketing.

But we also want to promote the fantastic professional career opportunities available within the world of recruitment, too. It is a profession which has a far wider impact than just finding people jobs - although that element is always rewarding. Finding, supporting and encouraging future talent is essential for local organisations to grow and succeed, and this has a huge impact on the regional economy.

The role of a recruitment consultant involves developing and managing lasting relationships with clients, and supporting them with their recruitment needs by sourcing the most suitable candidates. It is a career which is ideal for people who are energetic, tenacious, naturally outgoing, empathetic and who enjoy working as a team.

Day-to-day life includes identifying and evaluating employer recruitment needs, screening and interviewing candidates, meeting prospective employers and candidates at networking events, and advertising job vacancies using a range of media. Other services a recruitment consultant might provide include personality profiling, psychometric testing, interview and induction support and industry workshops and seminars. 

There are fantastic progression opportunities within the industry with consultants able to develop their career into senior management roles such as managing consultants and associate directors. Take a look at our team pages to see the many different roles and read about people's progression stories.

Many recruitment consultants are university graduates, and at the start of this year we launched our first-ever graduate training programme. Since the beginning of the programme we have had four graduate trainees working for us who have received comprehensive training and took on a variety of challenging tasks. They have all come from a variety of degree backgrounds, bringing a selection of transferable skills. Ellie Steinfeldt has a Psychology degree, Gemma Pritchard-Jones has a degree in Criminology and Security Studies, Jemma Hussein has a degree in modern Languages and Jade O'Brien has a degree in Business Management.

Not only is Pure a fantastic place to start a career in recruitment, but we are committed to supporting our trainees to achieve their goals and to building long-term careers with us. We hope to repeat our graduate trainee programme again soon. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates on when applications are open again.