I run operations, which in practice means I am the person both sides keep talking to. Consultants come to me when a contract, a payment or something in the working week needs sorting out. Recruiters come to me for professional advice and for conversations that have nothing to do with work at all. Clients come to me when they want to know where something actually stands. I always know what has to happen and when, and I build the day around that.
I came into recruitment in 2019 as a sourcer, out of curiosity and with a degree in quality control that had nothing to do with any of it. I recruited for a while and found that I was better at coordinating the process than at running it, so I moved across into operations. The useful part stayed with me: I know what a tech profile really looks like, and I know how the process feels from the candidate's side. So when something stalls I do not hand it back. If a document is wrong I correct it myself, and if a payment is moving too slowly I chase it until it moves, even though neither is strictly part of my job.
Developing the people around me is one of the main parts of the job. New joiners get shown where to look instead of being handed the answer, because a team that only follows instructions stops the moment something falls outside them, and I would rather teach people to think than have them work like robots. Once the fundamentals are in place the work becomes more interesting, and managing people who already have the basics is the part I enjoy most.
The curiosity that got me into this in the first place is still where my own time goes. I work in English, I am learning Italian, and I read across everything from psychology to astrology. None of this is visible from the outside: I have been told that my face in meetings suggests something has gone badly wrong, and it actually looks like this regardless of the news. The person behind it is much kinder, so ignore it and tell me anyway.