‘A day in the life’ with Talent Acquisition Advisor, Ashleigh

Each month, we’ll be catching up with someone from our brilliant team, and finding out what they get up to in a day in the life at Abacus.

This time, we chat to the wonderful Ashleigh!

Hello! Who are you? & What’s your favourite emoj? 👀

Ashleigh Williamson 💃🏻 

Tell us a bit about you

I like a challenge, and I like to be stretched. If someone tells me I can't do something, that's only going to make me want to try and do it even harder! 
I also love helping people. I'm very empathetic and I'm very values-driven.  

What is your role at Abacus Care & Support? 

I'm the Talent Acquisition Advisor. I've been in Recruitment for about five years, across different sectors. I’ve worked in Pharmaceutical and Life science, Accounting and Finance, Rail and Infrastructure – and now I'm in the Care industry. 

What does a typical day look like in your role?

There's no typical day! Every day is different. I think because the business is growing so quickly, there are new priorities every single day that I need to reevaluate and refocus on. Throughout my day I could end up screening applications, creating job descriptions, advertising new roles, market research and interviewing candidates.
 

What are the first things you do when you start your workday?

I start with breakfast and a coffee at my desk, and chat to colleagues about their evening. I’ll have a look at my to-do list and prioritise what I need to do for the day. I might have meetings or agency briefings, or I might have screening calls with candidates, so I’ll plan for those. 

What does good teamwork look like in your role?

I think being as driven to get to the final goal as your teammates, and pulling your weight equally. At Abacus, I've noticed that everyone is aligned with work ethic, and I think that helps with achieving the final goal. I also think that you need to be willing to help your colleagues, whether that's signposting to someone that can offer support, or trying to figure things out together. Everyone's happy to muck in here, which is great. 

What motivates you to do your best work each day?

At Abacus, I'm helping people's lives by doing my job and I get a lot of reward and job satisfaction from that. I've always enjoyed working in roles that contribute to a bigger picture. In my last role I worked for a company that specialises in Alzheimer's and Dementia. My contribution towards hiring new people and early talent meant that that was my part to play in making a real impact on improving peoples lives.  

What skills are most important for your role?

Organization. Being adaptable. And having a level of tenacity. I think you need to be able to just keep going. Even if you find you don't have those wins throughout the day, you need to be able to reevaluate, rejig and see what works and then just keep going. You need to be a good communicator and have really good people skills in terms of meeting new people, working with different types of people, getting the best out of people. You also need to be creative as well because you need to think of creative solutions to different problems that might come up. 

If you could describe your job in three words, what would they be?

Rewarding, fast-paced and... I think it's quite often misunderstood. I feel like the complexity of what I do isn’t always known, but I’m doing my best to support the business from many angles. 

And finally, what dreams or projects do you have coming up for your role?

I'm looking at how we expand our recruitment strategy. There’s more we can do to get our name out there, so I’m looking at how we reach out to local authorities, increase the impact for our employer branding, and ultimately diversify our candidate pool. Social care roles are incredibly rewarding, specialist jobs, and I’d love to work with marketing to create exciting projects that capture this and attract brilliant candidates.  

Thanks for sharing with us, Ashleigh!