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Job Title: Director Of Field Support
Type of Company: I work for a franchise organization in the talent acquisition business. We sell franchises for individuals looking to own their firm, helping other individuals find employment; our organization also supports these franchise owners with training, materials, programs, etc.
Education: BA, Business Administration
Previous Experience: I was a director of two other field support programs for a major competitor in the talent acquisition business. Prior to that I was a recruiter for thirteen years.
Job Tasks: I train and assist talent recruiters (or "headhunters") who have recently purchased one of our talent acquisition franchises. I coach and counsel these franchise owners in the daily operation of the business, helping them learn to write contracts, sell their services or close a deal with a prospective client. I also develop and deliver training classes and supplemental documentation to teach our owners all aspects of the business.
Best and Worst Parts of the Job: The worst part of the job is that our business is essentially a 100% commission business; the franchise owners do not make money unless a client hires a candidate they have presented. An owner can spend hours working on an assignment, making hundreds of phone calls with no results. He can find a candidate who's interested and interviews for a position and then turns the job down -- once again, no commission. As a consequence it can take anywhere from a month to four months for someone with a franchise to make any money. I work for the corporate office, where we generate income from the royalty payments that the franchise owners have agreed to pay us, and if they aren't making money, they're unable to pay us.
On the other hand, when a candidate does accept a position, the recruiter will typically make 25 - 30% of that individual's base salary, so the average fee per placement is in the $12 - 20,000 range (and in some lines of work, the average fees can go much higher, up to $40,000-$50,000). If an owner makes a placement a month, his business can be lucrative. So much of what I do is developing relationships with clients and candidates in a particular niche or industry segment. It is exciting to know you are 'master' of a particular space and clients/candidates reach out to you because of your knowledge.
Another challenging aspect of the job is that we deal with rejection a lot of the time. We make 100 calls a day and only get through to 15 or 20 people; we get voice mail more often than not. We need to entice a client to let us take an assignment as well as get a candidate interested enough in our opportunity to interview for a new position. So we have two functions which also keeps it exciting and interesting on a daily basis.
Job Tips: Anyone interested in recruiting needs to feel comfortable working on commission and developing his own business. This means having the drive to excel. Your motivation can be purely monetary or more altruistic, but whatever it is, internal motivation has to be there. It also requires a lot of common sense and the ability to engage people in conversation. A knowledge of a particular industry is not necessarily required but having the ability to learn an industry and become an expert is critical.
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