Employing recruiters with frontline experience is “hugely important” when helping potentials applicants come to an informed decision about whether the RAF is for them, says the head of recruitment at the Royal Air Force.

“The vast majority” of the 350 RAF staff involved in recruitment are serving personnel, drawn from every profession in the RAF, and not just from HR. Most will have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to Group Captain Ian Tolfts.

Tolfts tells Recruiter: “I need people joining having made an informed decision. They need to have made a very conscious decision.

“Otherwise they probably won’t stick the training because it is hard.”

Tolfts says it is “hugely important”, therefore, that his recruiters, most of whom are corporals, can talk from experience about life in the RAF – warts and all.

They can tell potential recruits, he adds, “this is what life is like, these are the good bits and these are the bad bits… and you will be put in harms way because that is the nature of your job.

“They can talk to people who have genuinely done it. You wouldn’t get that if you were using a recruitment agency. It is not like it is on TV.”

Tolfts says the RAF uses agencies for jobs such as office staff. 

All new RAF recruiters do a month-long training course, and most then go on to do the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s Certificate in Recruitment Practice. Most stay in recruitment for three years. 

For more on recruitment in the RAF, see the September issue of Recruiter out last Friday, with the article available online here.