Joy Rogiers tells us about his career change from retail sales to recruitment
I have deliberately chosen to take the less travelled road to get where I am now in my career.
I’ve grown up in a very competitive environment. My entire youth I played sports in higher leagues, always pushing myself to the next level.
I didn’t go on to higher education, but started working right after high school. This made me realise that, in order to get some experience and training, I would need to educate myself. So I started with finding a job I actually enjoyed doing. That’s how I ended up in sales and my education began…
First off, I started in retail. This was a great way to learn to read people. Both through active listening as well as through understanding body language and facial expressions.
From here I moved to customer service in a call centre and not long after that to telemarketing. What I enjoyed here was the opportunity to develop my negotiation skills and the connection l learned to build with my customers.
Afterwards I moved on to being a commercial representative both in B2C & B2B. This actually played out pretty well for me, as I stayed in this business for about five years.
I ended up working as an independent sales consultant and, together with two partners, was able to build up an office and a team of highly motivated professionals of our own.
Why change from sales to recruitment?
The reason I made the career change is very simple. I believe that to do your job the best way you can, you need to have passion and commitment for it. This was something I had lost along the way. This became clearer to me when both my results and motivation to achieve those results started to fade.
When I look back at this right now I can say that, without a single doubt in my mind, this has been the best decision I’ve made in my career so far.
Advice to a salesman who would like to embrace a career in recruitment?
Don’t worry about the skills and knowledge you haven’t acquired yet. A lot of your sales experience will serve you here as well. Being target driven, motivated to achieve every day and putting the efforts into the basics. Sounds familiar, right?
What are the necessary skills to be successful in this job?
Being able to actively listen, recognize buying signals and anticipate your questions on this.
But most of all being there, every day, with the drive to achieve.
What do you like about working in recruitment?
For me it’s multiple things. To start with the fact that not only the customer, but the candidate as well who needs to be persuaded to close the deal. This is something you can’t find anywhere else.
Second, it’s a people business. On a daily basis you’ll be meeting and speaking to new individuals, with whom you can possibly build a long term relationship. An extra advantage to this is that you will get better at reading and understanding other people and increase your self-awareness as well.
What do sales and recruitment have in common?
I would like to say communication, motivation, patience and being able to read people are key in both. But the sales person in me immediately has something else in mind: The excitement and actual opportunity to close a deal.