While all situations need to be treated on their own merits and therefore there is no exact answer, the following considerations should help in making the transition to an internal recruiters role.

Put yourself in the ’shoes of the recruiter’ – consider the business they recruit for. What are they likely to look for in an Internal recruiter?

Don’t approach your search with the mindset of an agency recruitment consultant: your focus needs to be on delivery, managing campaigns, cost control and process improvement, and not sales/revenue targets.

Change your CV. One geared towards getting a job in a recruitment consultancy is unlikely to be of interest for an internal recruiters role. More specifically:

• Don’t focus on sales/revenue targets.

• Emphasise the sectors and/or specialisms your recruitment experience covers, especially if this is in the same industry as the job you wish to apply for.

• Demonstrate the types of recruitment you have carried out – niche, high volume, senior recruitment etc.

• Show the salary levels and types of role you have recruited for.

• Show the type of clients you have recruited for, especially if similar or aligned to the industry of the job you wish to apply for.

• If you have been a sole supplier or managed large recruitment campaigns for single clients, then you really need to bring this to people’s attention. It will demonstrate your ability to manage recruitment campaign (similar to internal campaigns), which will allow your audience to relate to and understand your skills more clearly.

• Demonstrate your experience of candidate attraction methods – online/offline advertising, referral schemes, milk rounds, networking/social media etc

• Highlight any recruitment costs you have saved your clients.

• Show any process improvements you have implemented and what the results/benefits of these were.

When writing your CV, try and get the majority of the above content within a ’skills & experience’ section towards the beginning. Keep the detail within your recruitment consultancy roles more limited.

Other options to an in-house role? If you struggle to make the direct transition from agency to in-house then consider the option of an onsite role for a recruitment consultancy or recruitment process outsourcing company. This will help you to build up experience more closely associated to an in-house recruitment role.

The above points are clearly not exhaustive. I hope they may help you demonstrate why you would be the right person for an in-house role and perhaps challenge those that feel recruitment consultants aren’t right for an in-house role, to reconsider.

I’d welcome any feedback/comments anyone has.

Alex Brock is an in-house resourcing consultant