In today's people behind the brand, the series where you get to know the Orbis team, we sat down with Ben Moulton, Senior Consultant.
We chatted all about the rollercoaster that is recruitment, the rewards of putting in maximum effort in your job and the lifestyle of a professional golfer.
Let’s get to know Ben.
Tell us about your journey to Recruitment?
People often say they ‘fell into recruitment’, but for me, I think it was always a fairly certain path.
My first introduction to the world of recruitment was an internship during my second year of University in the Summer of 2018 at a real estate recruitment agency, and I knew from just that short stint that recruitment was something I wanted to pursue once I’d graduated. During my third year at University, I applied to a handful of graduate commercial surveying roles but I was soon approached by a tech recruitment firm where I landed my first role.
Fast-forward 5 years, and I’m 10 months into my role here at Orbis where I head up Product recruitment across the UK and Europe.
What's the best part of the job?
Knowing that the more effort you put in as a recruiter equals more output and ultimately financial success is the best part of the job! Recruitment is unique in this way, and I love to hear stories about how your average Joe can fall into recruitment and suddenly be earning more money than they could ever hope.
I would love to say that the best part is helping people achieve their dream jobs and don’t get me wrong, that really is great but knowing that my own efforts day to day directly correlate to my financial reward is what inspires me to push through the hard days, stay resilient, and give up those extra hours in the week doing the things I love.
What's the biggest challenge?
When it rains, it pours in recruitment and getting through the rejection is really tough!
Mainly I’m referring to candidates rejecting offers, pulling out of roles, ghosting after interview requests, missing interviews and so on - I dread this happening on a weekly basis and it often comes in patches. There’s a lot of rejection with client acquisition too so staying resilient and not taking things personally is essential!
What is something that you wish you'd known at the start of your career?
It’s a tough question to answer, really - I genuinely thought I had really good training and was supported really well by my first manager.
Thinking about the recruitment process on a human level and with a high level of emotional intelligence is probably the advice I’d give. I think recruitment can be made more complex than it needs to be, and ultimately it’s about people and their motivations, both of which can be easily influenced and incentivised.
So, putting yourself in other people’s shoes is the advice I’d give to anyone starting out in recruitment - it’s about relationship building, creating trust, and engaging with people on a human level.
You graduated with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Geography and Economics from the University of Reading. Tell us a bit more about that. Do these skills transfer into your approach to work?
I loved my time at Reading and certainly burnt the candle at both ends (one perhaps more so than the other). My years at University certainly helped me develop a lot as it does for a lot of people - getting outside the bubble of home and school was great, and I met loads of great people along the way.
I think I learnt a lot of things in my degree which gave me invaluable skills: balancing two subjects for one was tough because I had two separate knowledge domains to build up. Economics was Mathematically heavy which has helped with general data analysis and information ingestion, and Geography was human-focused which has given me skills around how to read people’s behaviour, cultural attitudes, motivations and so on.
During my time at University, I also worked for a student events company where I ran the biggest events in Reading for 3000+ students - it was a sales-heavy role which definitely helped develop the recruiter skill set!
You are a great example of how the passions you find at work can expand beyond office hours. We’ve seen this in the roundtables you have been running for the last few months, tell us a bit more about them and your inspiration for starting them?
Before Orbis, my recruitment background was built heavily on networking events and meetups so I’ve been doing all through my career.
The idea for the Product Leaders Roundtables is that it creates a community and forum for these people to exchange challenges they are facing and use each other as sounding boards. Product people tend to be quite siloed off and don’t get a lot of face time with each other as engineers do on a day-to-day basis or at hackathons for example.
I love building relationships with these people and creating a community of Product Leaders - they often describe the events as therapy sessions!
You are tangibly passionate about so many aspects of your career; what is the most fulfilling part of being a recruiter?
Probably just knowing that what I’ve achieved and will achieve is purely based on my own efforts and what I’ve made of my career.
There are loads of other professions out there where you can start at the bottom and work your way up by default but to be a top recruiter, you’ve got to do it yourself. Whether it’s landing an amazing client, placing a candidate in their dream job, creating a product community, having the money to do amazing things and so on, I know it’s ultimately down to my own input.
In another life, what do you think you'd be doing?
Playing golf on the PGA tour would be pretty cool - the lifestyle, playing in The Masters, and travelling the world would be amazing!
