Samantha Crocker is the Managing Director at Devonshire and joined the team in 2018. She sat down to talk about her day-to-day life and what’s been happening a year on at the company…
Meet Samantha Crocker
Tell us a bit about yourself, what do you do at Devonshire?
As the MD, I am responsible for the business performance at Devonshire, this includes: profit and loss, implementing our budget, supporting the team, strategy, development and growth, recruiting new team members, overseeing marketing, sales and business development, winning new clients, working with existing clients to ensure they are benefitting from the full scope of services at Devonshire. My role spans across all departments including tech, operations, finance and HR. The role is varied and I learn something new every day!
What’s a typical day-in-the-life like for you at Devonshire?
Very busy and varied! For me, I’m an early riser so I’m usually up at 4am and have a 2 ½ hour commute into the office. I arrive at Devonshire before everyone else in the morning and I like using half an hour or so of this time to sort out my to-do list and prioritise what needs to be done in the day. My plans are usually dependent on the day but it usually involves a lot of meetings including finance, client presentations, catching up with the team, networking events or conference calls that span our geographical footprint – Europe, APAC, US.
Where did your recruitment journey begin?
I remember having an interview with a recruitment agency in Covent Garden when I was 20 years old and thought to myself “I could do this!”… Little did I know it would actually happen! I’m a keen traveller and moved to Hong Kong then Romania where I had the opportunity to build a recruitment business in a country that had limited services in this sector at the time. The recruitment market was extremely young so it was a great time to develop a company. I was still pretty young at this point and had a huge entrepreneurial spirit and no fear so took the risks and just went for it! It was a small company, but I loved building strong relationships with both candidates and clients so there was always a quality element to my business. By the time I sold the business, it was one of the largest HR and recruitment companies in the country, competing with all the usual global players. It was a fun period.
Any advice for people getting into recruitment?
The fantastic thing about recruitment is that you learn a lot about different sectors. You really get to dig deep into the anatomy of a businesses and understand lots of roles and subjects. Ultimately, recruiters can specialise in niche sectors or remain more generalist and work on a variety of roles. Recruitment is great for someone who loves variety, challenges, pressure and the feeling of success. It is immensely rewarding placing someone in a job, because you know it’s worth more than that – a new job can influence a new lifestyle, can feed ambition and ultimately, change the course of that person’s career. Also, the harder you work the more you gain for yourself financially so that’s a great motivation to bring in new business. I think a very important thing about working in recruitment is to be as transparent with your clients and candidates as possible – reputation is everything. If you love a buzz, a fast-paced environment, are organised, have excellent communication skills and a people-person then this is definitely the sector for you!
What’s your favourite thing about your job?
It is definitely giving people a chance! When I look back and see people who I placed 15 years ago now working in senior roles; it is really good to see how far they’ve come and to know that I played a tiny part! I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years and that feeling never gets old!
A quote you live/work by…
People always ask me how I manage to juggle my work-life and home-life and I always say: “You have 24 hours in a day – use them!”
Finally, describe yourself in 3 words…
Energetic, optimistic and passionate.
Click here to find out more about the Devonshire team.
