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This video is our personal thank you for sending through your CV. The recruitment market remains a tricky beast and we’re doing everything we can to help and support PA’s who apply to our jobs.

I need to offer the bad news that you haven’t been successful in this particular process, but I did want to tell you that you had a truly excellent CV that was sadly just pipped to the post.

You will know as well as I do that this crazy market is unfair – and having a great CV is just the start.

To give you an indication of the challenge you and I both face, I wanted to reference a process we’ve recently managed. Now, I will also tell you before we start that I don’t always agree with my client’s requirements, but this is a good example for the purpose of explaining more about what’s happening on the other side of the recruitment fence.

The client had specified a degree, which was set as an essential criteria; but they had also said that an academic degree from a Russell Group university would be a bonus.

In 2019 I think we’d have struggled to find the academic degree from a Russell Group University.

In 2021, we had twelve people that matched that brief and in the final short-list of 5 CVs, one had an MBA and one had a PhD.

Now I am not telling you this to make you feel worse, but to encourage you to perhaps be kinder on yourself as the market continues to recover.

This isn’t an example just about a degree, but more about the level of ‘match’ that is available to clients given the fact that people like you are looking for a job.

I also want to share some positive news, and that is that I think we’re going to see some more shoots over the coming weeks and months as businesses return to offices – you see being an Assistant was always a vital job. Assisting a person to get better, assisting them to find more time, assisting them to become more efficient was what you did – and in 2021 and beyond, I have every reason to believe that the ‘assistance’ of which you are an expert is vital for businesses.

To help you with this preparation for when the market comes back to life, we’re doing a number of important things and there’s one that I’d like to personally invite you to.

As well as running a recruitment business, last year I also founded an event, platform, and community to help all job seekers called The Great British Job Search and we were able to help 1000s of people deal with their job search challenges.

Well, the good news is that we’re recreating this in late March, but this time specifically and exclusively for PAs.

The PA Summit is going to be one week of activity, learning and helping you deal with the challenges that the PA job faces over the coming months.

Based around the theme of The Past, The Present and The Future we’re certain that this is going to be an exciting time for PAs and that there’s going to be huge potential for the role of assisting people in the world we all go back to.

The event is free to join and all you have to do is register at www.ThePASummit.com to get all the updates, announcements and invitation to join!

Thank you again for taking the time to apply to TalentSmiths and whilst we can’t help you find a job today; I hope we’ll be able to be of huge help moving forward.

Stay strong and hopefully see you soon!