My favourite ever placement was in 2006.

It was a Production Engineer for a niche manufacturing business near Cambridge.

They often had idiosyncratic roles that needed a bit of digging to get to the truth of.

And the people we placed often had unusual CVs hiding excellent candidacy.

I had an application from a big company Ops Director. His CV was filled to the brim with amazing achievements, and, really, there was only one question to ask.

Why on earth would he apply for a Production Engineer role?

Turns out that, at 62, he wasn't quite ready for retirement and what he really wanted was a couple of years back at the coal face of his career.

A couple of years working on products that were cool in their apparent unremarkedness, for which he was on paper a total wildcard.

And while there were other candidates on the shortlist that were good and traditional production engineers, he was the one I was rooting for.

That he was given the chance to interview, by the employer, says a lot about how they actually value diversity.

That they trusted my judgement in presenting him is why I valued that relationship so much.

That they later said he was one of their best ever hires was the icing on the cake.

www.bwrecruitment.co.uk

www.linkedin.com/in/gregwyatt/