Meet Matthew Hogg, Managing Director at Wallace Hind

Matt is the Managing Director at Wallace Hind and has over 20 years’ recruitment experience. His areas of expertise are HR, Sales roles including Export and International Sales, Business Development and Account Management.

He has an outstanding reputation as an expert within the recruitment industry, his experience and comprehensive understanding of clients’ needs ensures that Wallace Hind consistently deliver for our clients.

Within this article Matt reflects on his career in recruitment, and how he unexpectedly found himself in this rewarding sector.

Matt had previously not considered recruitment as an option and had never truly understood the complexity of the sector. He worked in warehouse and temporary roles while studying and as a personal trainer, then he took on a role in Telesales, a pure cold calling telesales position, canvassing from the Yellow pages selling advertising space in RAF magazines. At the time he made the single largest sale in the company’s history (£26,000k).

Having sold some advertising space to a commercial recruiter, he got asked “have you ever considered a career in recruitment?” He hadn’t as he was pretty new to sales (18 months experience), but the thought of mixing the two really excited him. Being able to be in control of his own pay check whilst feeling like he made a positive difference really empowered him to be the best version of himself.

Matt has always been a ‘generalist’ and prides himself on understanding people, their skills and needs rather than being fully focused on one industry, although if he was starting again, he would absolutely recommend becoming an industry or functional specialist. Specialisation can offer a deeper understanding of a particular field, allowing recruiters to offer more tailored guidance to both clients and candidates.

Matt was kind enough to share his top tips for a successful career in recruitment:

• Resilience is the key to success, keep going, and don’t take things personally.
• Do one more thing than your competition, and always aim for the best that you can.
• Never forget that ultimately you are impacting people’s careers and that’s a huge decision for that person. Treat everyone, clients new and old, candidates, and your colleagues with the respect they deserve.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us Matt! We hope that you found them useful. If you’d like to get in touch with Matt, you can contact him on 01604 683 318, or MH@wallacehind.com.

To find out more about working in recruitment, you can read our article here.