Recruitment Adviser
Addenbrookes Hospital

Sam L

00:00:01 My name’s Sam L. I’m a recruitment adviser. I receive applications from people applying to the hospital, have to process the applications, and make sure they all have the relevant checks before they actually start in post. The highs of the job are obviously getting people appointed that have sort of been struggling to find work for some time or really want – a lot of people really want to come to Addenbrookes. Some lady very recently actually somebody came with a card and some flowers and sort of said thank you. She has been desperate to get to Addenbrookes for some time, so she was very very happy with that end and came in to thank me which was really nice. I was chuffed that someone obviously appreciated what I’m doing, it was nice.

00:00:41 (LAUGHS) At school I was very intellectual, but also cheeky and adventurous, didn’t do so well in my GCSEs as I could have done, I didn’t turn up for some of them, got side-tracked with my social life so to speak. That held me back at some point because obviously I couldn’t go and do what I ideally wanted to do for example going on to University, I couldn’t do that because I didn’t have the qualifications. I didn’t really know what I was going to do when I left school. I went to College and started to study a GNVQ in Business Studies, which should have gone on for two years, but I only completed one year of that. Friends more important, going out, was more important.

00:01:24 A few deaths within the family all hit me all at once, and it just made me realise that obviously life is far too short to be wasting my time running around blaming the world, having a huge chip on my shoulder for the things that only I could change. And the only way to do that was to pick myself up, get myself stuck in and do what I wanted to do to get where I wanted to be. Because it wasn’t going to happen for me just sitting there, I was just sort of looking for some part time hours and I started staff bank within the hospital. I ended up in this small team, a rapid recruitment team, that was within the recruitment department, and in the last six months I’ve sort of come to run that team. I am definitely – I am proud of myself, for me I think anybody can do it, it’s just a case of wanting to do it and realising that you are making mistakes and that you’re maybe not going to end up where you want to be, and it’s very easy to sit there and say I want this, and I want that out of life, and I want success and I want money, without actually doing anything about it, without actually picking yourself up and going out there and doing something about it.

00:02:28 I’d say my main motivation is completing and getting closure on anything that I’ve started, it needs to be finished, and that’s my motivation, to complete whatever I’ve started. I’m very precise, I have attention to detail, I like to be in control. I’ve always wanted to manage my own business, but I never knew what sort of business I wanted to manage. And I’m still – I think in all honesty it is something I’d still like to do in the future, but at the moment I’m still working out what exactly I would like to manage or control or run or whatever it is.

00:03:01 ENDS