My Career in Recruitment

Angela O'Donnell

Recruitment is most certainly not for everyone.The challenge lies in the fact that you are working with people and people are the most unpredictable product you could sell!

Prior to working with Brightwater I founded and ran my own business and had a successful bespoke service producing men’s and women’s wear. I was nominated for multiple design awards and won the Business Woman of the Year award for New Business through Network Dublin.

I completed my BA in Fashion Design for Industry with the prestigious Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. I believe in continuous education and am currently undertaking a Postgrad in Business with Project Management through the Fitzwilliam Institute in Dublin, alongside doing a Diploma in Digital Marketing through Shaw Academy.

After closing my business in May 2016, I started working with Brightwater Recruitment as a Consultant on the IT Contracts Team and developed a successful consistent contracts book.

Recruitment is not for the faint hearted, you need a thick skin, but I love it because it is like running your own business within a business. While you have Managers/Directors you report into, you also have a lot of autonomy and for me coming from running my own business this suited me perfectly.

Your success in the area you specialise in is based on return from the work that you put it and every day is as important as the next, to ensure you hit your targets. The challenge lies in the fact that you are working with people and people are the most unpredictable product you could sell! 

In October 2017, the opportunity was presented to me to move to the Marketing division and this has proven to be an excellent step forward in my career in recruitment.

Marketing professionals are highly engaging and are natural sales people. They love to tell you about everything that they have achieved, amongst a few things - how they drove sales through creative marketing strategies that they developed, grew traffic on social media websites which lead to sales, brand and website development. They are creative people that think in a very innovative way, are very proud of their skills and what they can offer a company particularly because what they do has a direct impact on a business’s growth. From my background in design I understand the creative process and from running my own business relate to the fact that after you develop a strategy you then need to make it commercial and leave the concept behind.

Winning the award Best in Practice Sales & Marketing is a deserved achievement for Brightwater. My Marketing colleagues Mark Byrne, Lyn White and Orla Brennan are experts in this field and worked incredibly hard this year. It is a real pleasure to join this team and I hope that I will make a significant contribution to it in 2018.