From Retail to Recruitment: Why Retail Experience Can Make You a Great Recruiter
From Retail to Recruitment: Frazer Ansell
Frazer Ansell spent 15 years working in retail before recruitment was ever on his radar.
He started as a Sales Assistant at Next and worked his way through store management roles across the UK. By the time he left retail, he was a Senior Store Manager with responsibility for 15 outlet stores across the North of England.
In 2021, he joined ZD.
No recruitment experience. Fifteen years of retail.
Today, he’s a Business Manager, recruiting into the same industry he spent years working in.
And as Frazer puts it:
I didn’t need to relearn retail. It was like having a bit of a cheat code.
Recruitment definitely wasn’t the plan
Frazer actually knew ZD long before he worked here.
He moved from Next to Gap through ZD and later found himself helping people in his own team with CVs, interviews and finding their next move when Gap announced the closure of its UK stores.
Most of them had found another job before he had.
Looking back, it was probably the first sign that recruitment might suit him.
But at the time, becoming a recruiter definitely wasn’t part of the plan.
When the opportunity eventually came along to join ZD, Frazer decided to give it a go.
Five years later, he’s still here.
What skills from retail transfer into recruitment?
A lot more than Frazer realised.
If you’ve managed a store or led a retail team, you’ve probably spent years learning how to read people, adapt to different personalities, have difficult conversations, solve problems and keep going when the day doesn’t quite go to plan.
You’ve recruited people. Coached them. Managed performance. Worked to targets. Taken responsibility for results. And probably dealt with more unexpected problems before lunchtime than you’d care to remember.
Those skills don’t disappear when you change careers.
Frazer found that the people side of recruitment felt particularly familiar.
You can’t manage everyone the same way and expect to get the best out of them. Understanding what motivates someone lets you adapt how you manage and develop them.
The same applies when you’re working with candidates and clients.
Frazer had to learn recruitment.
He didn’t have to learn people, and he definitely didn’t have to learn retail.
What surprised Frazer about moving into recruitment?
For Frazer, it was how different the reality of recruitment was from the idea he’d had of it.
I expected recruitment to be a lot more sales-focused than it actually is. What surprised me is how much the role is actually about relationships.
Building relationships with candidates. Getting to know clients. Understanding what motivates people. Staying in touch even when there isn’t an immediate job or placement at the end of it.
That part came naturally.
The biggest learning curve was business development.
In retail, Frazer had always represented a brand and a wider team. In recruitment, suddenly the question was: why should a client choose to work with me?
That took some getting used to.
But he quickly realised business development didn’t have to mean becoming the pushy salesperson he’d always associated with recruitment.
For Frazer, it was much more about knowing his market, building relationships, staying close to people and being there when they needed him.
Do you need recruitment experience to join ZD?
Not always.
Some of our team have spent their whole careers in recruitment. Others, like Frazer, joined us after building careers in the industries we recruit into.
We really value that mix.
If you’ve worked in retail, you already understand things that can be difficult to learn from the outside.
You know what Christmas in stores actually feels like. You know what it means when someone calls in sick before a busy Saturday. You understand targets, customers, teams, deliveries, refits and the hundred things that can change in a day.
Frazer brought 15 years of that experience with him when he joined ZD.
The recruitment bit could be taught.
What makes someone from retail good at recruitment?
There’s no single route into recruitment, but there are plenty of things you learn in retail that give you a strong starting point.
Being good with people matters. So does resilience, commercial awareness and being comfortable taking ownership of your own results.
Curiosity helps too. Recruitment is about asking good questions, understanding people and wanting to know what makes one business, role or person different from another.
And you need to want to learn.
Frazer is very open about the fact that joining with retail experience didn’t mean he knew how to be a recruiter from day one.
If you’re not all in, it’s going to be tough.
There were new systems, processes and ways of working to learn, as well as the commercial side of building his own desk.
But he wasn’t starting again.
He was taking 15 years of experience and learning how to use it differently.
He changed careers. He didn’t leave retail behind.
Five years on, Frazer is a Business Manager at ZD and still uses his retail experience every day.
The difference is that instead of running stores and leading retail teams himself, he now helps other people build their careers in them and helps retail businesses find the people they need.
And he’s not the only one.
Across ZD, we have people who came into recruitment after working in the industries they now recruit for.
That experience matters to us.
Because knowing your industry, understanding people and having years of experience behind you doesn’t suddenly become irrelevant because you decide to do something different.
Sometimes it turns out to be exactly what makes you good at the next thing.
Could your retail experience take you somewhere different?
If you’ve built a career in retail but you’re starting to wonder what else you could do with that experience, recruitment might be worth a conversation.
We’re interested in people who know their industry, care about people, are commercially minded and want to learn something new.
Frazer joined ZD with no recruitment experience and 15 years of retail behind him.
Five years later, he’s a Business Manager.
FAQ
Can you move from retail into recruitment without recruitment experience?
Yes. Frazer joined ZD after 15 years in retail with no previous recruitment experience.
Retail can give you many of the skills that transfer well into recruitment, including relationship building, people management, resilience, commercial awareness and working towards targets. The recruitment-specific skills can be learned.
What retail skills are useful in recruitment?
People skills, commercial awareness, resilience, problem-solving and communication all transfer well from retail into recruitment.
Retail managers may also have experience recruiting and developing people, managing performance, working towards commercial targets and adapting their approach to different personalities.
Is recruitment a sales job?
Recruitment is a commercial role, and business development is part of it, but relationships are a huge part of the job too.
For Frazer, one of the biggest surprises when he moved from retail was discovering how much of recruitment is about getting to know candidates and clients, understanding what they need and building relationships over time.
What is it like moving from retail management into recruitment?
There’s plenty to learn, from recruitment processes and systems to business development and running your own desk.
But you’re not necessarily starting from zero.
If you’ve managed people, worked to targets, solved problems, built relationships and taken commercial responsibility in retail, you already have experience that can give you a strong foundation for recruitment.
Do you need recruitment experience to work at Zachary Daniels?
Not for every role.
We have people at ZD who have built their careers in recruitment and others who joined us after working in the industries we recruit into.
For the right person, industry knowledge, commercial experience, strong people skills and a willingness to learn can be a great starting point for a career in recruitment.
Could your retail experience take you somewhere different?
Frazer spent 15 years building a career in retail before something completely different came along.
Five years later, he’s a Business Manager at ZD and still uses the experience he built in stores every day.
If recruitment is something you’ve never considered but you’d like to understand what it actually involves, we’d be happy to have a chat. No polished recruitment CV required.
< Back to list