Global specialist recruiter Hays has launched a new qualification that aims to arm its senior consultants with the same professional standing as a chartered or certified management consultant.

Accredited by the Institute of Consulting (IC), the new Certified Recruitment Consultant qualification is intended to improve the perception of recruitment as a profession and to encourage newcomers to the world of work to see recruiting as a career worth pursuing, James Cullens, Hays’s human resources director, told Recruiter in an exclusive interview.

“There’s a lot of good training around how to make you a technically ‘good’ recruiter, but that actual consultant piece around being a ‘trusted adviser’ is quite difficult,” Cullens said. “There’s not a lot around in the outside world. So we partnered with the IC, quite deliberately, to attack that piece of it.”

Earning the qualification, which means consultants can put the letters CRC after their name, involves a formal interview and a business presentation to demonstrate “deep knowledge and competence but also client handling and assignment management skills”, Cullens said.  

To embark on obtaining the qualification, Hays recruiters must have a minimum of three years in recruiting. New joiners to Hays with three years’ experience must work at the company for a year before they can obtain it. “This is about the application of your technical skills,” Cullens said.  

“After three years, you’ll be ready to do it because you’ll have a bank of experience that you can demonstrate. It’s not just about knowledge; I can prove that I’ve applied the knowledge as well. It’s not about taking an exam, it’s ‘here’s what I’ve done for clients’’.”

Cullens added: “We’ve also pitched it at a stage where people will often think, do I stay in the industry or not? To me, it hooks you into the industry.”

Some Hays consultants have already earned their CRC, as Hays quietly launched the programme a year ago and are only now discussing it publicly. Hays has six months left of exclusivity under their agreement with IC. At the end of that period, other recruitment companies can begin to offer the qualification. “It’s something that will be there for the profession,” Cullens said. “We just wanted to be able to do it for ourselves first of all.”

Cullens went on to say: “We felt that this knocks on the head that issue of ‘Well, I’d rather go and be an accountant because I’ll get a proper qualification’. If you want to go to PwC or Ernst & Young, you’re going to go there ahead of going to us. But to my mind, it gets us onto the pitch.”

The initiation of the qualification is a key aspect of a Hays drive to encourage careers in recruitment and to increase professionalism within both the industry and the company itself.