{"id":5597,"date":"2026-03-26T15:00:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T14:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/?p=5597"},"modified":"2026-03-26T15:00:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T14:00:51","slug":"meet-the-team-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/meet-the-team-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Vol.22 – From JET programme to Recruitment: A Career Shaped by Continuous Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week, we sat down with Caspian Challis, Lead Recruitment Consultant at Centre People Appointments. With 4.5 years at the company, he shares his journey into recruitment, his passions outside of work, and what motivates him while leading our\u00a0Trading and Logistics\u00a0team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How did you get started in recruitment?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cI lived in Japan from 2017 to 2021, teaching English, but when I came back to the UK, I wasn\u2019t sure what I wanted to do next. I was lucky that one of our directors reached out to me on LinkedIn, saying they were looking for a new team member. I interviewed, found recruitment consultancy interesting, and joined the team. I think the main lesson from that is to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, because recruiters can then reach out and talk to you about opportunities. So yeah, it\u2019s been a good journey so far!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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What do you enjoy doing in your free time?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m an avid video gamer\u2014mostly PC games\u2014and I love connecting with friends and family online. My family are gamers too, so we enjoy playing together online. I\u2019m married and we have a house, so I spend a lot of my time doing DIY around the house. I spend most of my weekends just doing DIY nowadays. For the last two years that we\u2019ve been doing a full cosmetic reconstruction! It\u2019s amazing what you can learn online nowadays.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What\u2019s something your clients or candidates might be surprised to learn about you?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course, many people are surprised that I lived in Japan for four years and was teaching there. But that\u2019s actually quite essential for our role \u2014 having an understanding of Japanese culture and how things work on the corporate side. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m a very surprising individual though!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Which skills from teaching have been useful in recruitment?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cThere\u2019s a lot in teaching a class in an EFL setting. It\u2019s basically public speaking \u2014 standing up in front of a classroom of 30 or 40 students and giving a presentation about language and words. It\u2019s very helpful in building confidence when speaking in front of people. And of course, improvisation is a very key skill. You never know what students are going to say or what questions they\u2019re going to ask. It\u2019s exactly the same in a registration interview or a client meeting \u2014 you don\u2019t always know what\u2019s going to come up. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Being able to improvise, adapt, and quickly give a prompt and professional response is a key thing. I think that builds confidence in you as a teacher, and it also builds confidence in you as a recruiter. So definitely those public speaking skills are important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Was there anything that surprised you when you first started in recruitment?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think, because I basically knew nothing about recruitment when I came in, I really kept an open mind. So, in that way, I wasn\u2019t surprised \u2014 I didn\u2019t know anything, so what could really surprise me? As far as surprises go, though, it was really nice at Centre People. The biggest surprise was how collaborative we are and how closely we work together. I\u2019d heard about sales \u2014 and recruitment in particular \u2014 being a very cutthroat industry, with high turnover and a \u2018sink or swim\u2019 environment in a lot of agencies. Ours is very much the opposite. We work closely as a team and share a lot of the rewards, which really encourages a supportive environment. That\u2019s something I relate to a lot \u2014 I like supporting others, but I also like being supported, and I definitely needed that in my first year. It was really nice to have that from management, and because there\u2019s low turnover at our company, we build a strong base of knowledge that gets passed on to new consultants as we continue to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What are your goals for the new unit over the next year?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrading and logistics \u2014 these are the kinds of companies I\u2019ve worked with since day one. My very first role was as an import clerk for a freight forwarding company, so it\u2019s really been my bread and butter for the past four and a half years. To now be put in charge of a team, I feel very honoured and privileged to be trusted with such an important responsibility. The biggest challenge, of course, is that I\u2019ve never managed a group of people before. Setting KPIs, defining targets, building a strategy \u2014 all of this is new to me. That said, I do have a lot of guidance from our management and our directors, who are really supporting me through it, so I feel very fortunate. We cover a very broad industry, and it makes up a big part of the roles we handle, so it does feel like a big responsibility. I hope I can continue to improve on what we\u2019ve already been doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What has been your most memorable placement?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, I mean, funnily enough, even though I\u2019d been a generalist for four and a half years, it was actually a trading role \u2014 a fuel oil trader position for a Japanese oil company. It was a huge learning curve for me. Even though I\u2019d worked with the company for two or three years and had some exposure to oil, I\u2019d never dealt with fuel oil specifically, and it\u2019s a very niche product. It was very memorable because the company was extremely understanding. They really took the time to guide me \u2014 giving detailed feedback on the candidates I sent, explaining why they were or weren\u2019t suitable, and walking me through exactly what they were looking for. In the end, I was able to make a successful placement, and it turned into a really valuable learning experience. Even the candidates were great \u2014 one of them even recommended a book to me on the industry. So yes, it was really nice to properly dive into something so specific and interesting \u2014 an industry we work with, but don\u2019t always get the chance to explore in that much depth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you could go back to your first year in recruitment, what advice would you give yourself?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was really fortunate because I had great mentorship in my first year. Basically, all the advice I needed came from those mentors and from the directors. So, it\u2019s hard to say exactly what I would tell myself. I suppose it would be to listen to the mentors and really work on my perspective. At first, I was very hesitant to do \u201ccold calling\u201d because I saw it as, well, bothering people. I would find people who were looking for work but then hesitate to call them and introduce the role. It took me a while to change my perspective and realise it\u2019s not really cold calling \u2014 it\u2019s what we call \u201cwarm calling\u201d. These are people actively looking for jobs, and I\u2019m providing opportunities. So, it\u2019s not about calling out of the blue and bothering someone \u2014 they actually want to receive these calls.
That shift in mindset took time. I\u2019m naturally someone who doesn\u2019t like to bother others, so it took a while to build the confidence to pick up the phone and make those calls. But I\u2019m really glad I did.
And of course, it was management who helped me see that \u2014 explaining it clearly and supporting me over time as I changed that mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What keeps you passionate about recruitment after 4.5 years?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI love that our agency is generalist. Even though I\u2019ve developed a specialism in trading, we still work across a wide range of roles, companies, and even countries. Every client and every position is different, so there\u2019s always something new to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That variety is what keeps things exciting \u2014 no two days are the same. I think if I were only working on the same two or three types of roles all the time, I\u2019d probably get bored quite quickly. But because we work with different industries, different people, and different countries, there\u2019s always something new and interesting to discover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each country has its own way of doing things, and that constant learning is what keeps me engaged and passionate about the job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We\u2019re lucky to have Caspian on our team; his knowledge, dedication, and positive approach make him a truly valuable part of the Centre People family!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This week, we sat down with Caspian Chal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3043,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2252],"tags":[2271,3014,2272,3015,2455,2459,2958,2962,3012,280,3013],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/202411-meet-the-team-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5597"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5652,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5597\/revisions\/5652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}