Cranberry Panda: 1 year in…

Nov 27, 2015 12:19:12 PM

This month marks the anniversary of my time with cranberry panda. Anniversaries are great – be it professional or personal (New Year, new me). Nobody can doubt that they’re a fantastic time to reflect to see who you were when you started, who you are today and ask yourself that all important question – does my role fulfil me and empower me?

My professional life dramatically changed this time last year, the company I worked for since college (6+ years) went into administration which was a complete shock

I felt my life was at a cross road; which direction do I go? Retail management was all I knew but I could feel a desire to find something different, something innovative and something new & challenging. My job search was all over the place, I wanted to get out and meet as many people as I possibly could; I lost count of how many people I met, but in all honestly, nothing felt right.

One of my closest friends Benjamin Dowse recommended giving recruitment a go and specifically cranberry panda. He had supported Jonathan (founder of cranberry panda) with some rec2rec once upon a time and really spoke highly of him and his agency. He mentioned that I would learn an incredible amount over a short amount of time and that recruitment was a fantastic career to get into.

I’d met a couple of recruitment agency owners prior to meeting Jonathan, so in hindsight I don’t think I went in 100% on board with the recruitment gig - namely because of the ludicrous over promising of year 1, 2 and 3 earnings (one person did it at one time in 2006 so therefore it’s a given) - but I persevered, with the encouragement of Ben reassuring me on my suitability for the brand. Needless to say I was really impressed with Jonathan. He painted the picture of cranberry panda with real authenticity and talked me through each consultant and what made them PAND-tastic at their job. It’s hard to pinpoint why but something just felt right, perhaps it was incredibly refreshing vs what I had been exposed to so far.

I’m now one year in and really happy with how my role is going. I’m learning more and more about my specialism (Performance / Search Marketing) everyday and it’s now starting to become one of those 'the more you know the more you realise you don’t know' situations. I enjoy the recruitment process and find it fulfilling searching for great candidates, building relationships and working on exciting roles for our fantastic clients.

That being said the last year feels like the warm up, I’ve managed to build up an impressive database of amazing performance/ search candidates and got my head around my specialism and I’m really excited to see what 2016 will bring. Digital is changing every single day and the more I talk to great people, the more my thirst for knowledge of the space increases.

Big thank you all of the pandas making my first year incredible, thanks for all your support, leadership and guidance.

Here’s to many more. 

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