Recruitment Administrator

A Recruitment Administrator keeps the hiring process running behind the scenes: posting job adverts, scheduling interviews, chasing paperwork and keeping candidate records accurate. They support recruiters, hiring managers and HR teams — either inside a company's own HR department ("in-house") or at a recruitment agency that places candidates with client businesses. Most of the work is coordination and record-keeping rather than deciding who gets hired.

Starting salary: £22k–£28k
Live graduate jobs: 2 open now
Main way in: Direct application to an advertised administrator or…
They usually ask for: Degree subject almost never matters

Approximate graduate salary

Typically somewhere around £22,000–£28,000 to start, with London and specialist sectors at the upper end or above it, and smaller employers or regional roles lower. Agency roles may add a small bonus or commission element. This is a broad approximation and varies a lot by employer, sector and location.

What you'd actually do

Posting and refreshing job adverts on job boards, the company careers site and LinkedIn, and sometimes tweaking the wording supplied by a hiring manager so it reads clearly
Booking interviews — juggling diaries of several interviewers and candidates, sending invitations, arranging rooms or video links, and rebooking when someone cancels at short notice
Keeping the applicant tracking system (ATS — the database that stores every application and tracks where each candidate has got to) up to date, moving candidates between stages and closing down roles that have been filled
Sitting on the phone and inbox: answering candidate questions, chasing hiring managers for interview feedback, and sending offer or rejection communications drafted or approved by a recruiter

Show 3 more

Running pre-employment checks and onboarding paperwork — right-to-work document checks, references, DBS checks where the sector requires them, and issuing contracts or offer letters for signature
Producing simple reports and trackers in Excel — how many applications a role has had, how long vacancies have been open, where candidates came from — for recruiters or HR managers
In agencies specifically, formatting candidate CVs to a house template, uploading them to client portals, and sometimes doing first-pass CV screening against a checklist of requirements

How graduates get in

Direct application to an advertised administrator or coordinator vacancy — by far the most common route. These are usually advertised year-round rather than on a fixed graduate-scheme cycle, and often filled quickly.
Temping through a recruitment agency. A lot of recruitment admin work is covered by temporary contracts during busy hiring periods, and temps are frequently kept on permanently. This is a genuinely common way in and a reasonable first step if you have no office experience.
Internal move within an organisation — starting in general office admin, reception, customer service or HR admin and shifting across to the recruitment side when a vacancy comes up.
Starting at a recruitment agency as a resourcer or recruitment assistant, which overlaps heavily with administrator work but leans more towards candidate sourcing. Agencies hire graduates frequently and with fairly low barriers.

Show 2 more

HR graduate schemes at larger employers sometimes include a rotation through recruitment (often called resourcing or talent acquisition). This is a less common route into this specific job title, because scheme members usually rotate out again rather than staying put.
Apprenticeship routes exist (HR Support Level 3, Recruiter Level 3) but these are generally aimed at school leavers or career changers rather than graduates, though some graduates do take them.

What employers ask for

Degree subject almost never matters. Any discipline is fine, and many employers advertise these roles without requiring a degree at all — so graduates are competing with experienced administrators rather than only with other graduates.
Some administrative or customer-facing experience is usually the thing that actually gets you shortlisted. Retail, hospitality, call centre work, a placement year or a university society admin role all count — the point is evidence you can handle volume, deadlines and people.
Solid Microsoft Office skills, particularly Outlook calendar management and Excel. Employers often test this informally or mention it explicitly in adverts.
No professional qualification is needed to start. Some employers will later support study towards CIPD qualifications (the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the professional body for HR) — CIPD Level 3 or 5 is the usual route if you want to move into wider HR.

Show 2 more

Grade requirements are rarely strict. A 2:2 or above is typically acceptable where a degree is asked for at all, and GCSE English and Maths at grade 4/C or above is sometimes specified.
For roles in schools, healthcare, finance or defence-adjacent sectors you may need to pass background screening yourself, since you'll be handling other people's sensitive personal data.

Skills that matter

Diary and scheduling coordination

Arranging a panel interview around four busy people's calendars, and rearranging it when one pulls out that morning, is the single most repeated task of the job.

Accuracy with data entry

A wrong email address, a candidate left at the wrong ATS stage or a missed reference request creates real problems — including legal ones where right-to-work checks are concerned.

Chasing people politely but persistently

Hiring managers forget to give interview feedback and candidates forget to return documents; the process only moves if you follow up without annoying anyone.

Prioritising under competing demands

You will often support several recruiters or many live vacancies at once, all of whom think their role is the urgent one.

Discretion with confidential information

You see salary details, rejection reasons and personal data covered by UK GDPR, and you may know about a vacancy before the person being replaced does.

Clear, quick written communication

Most candidate contact happens by email and templates only get you so far — a poorly worded rejection or a confusing interview invitation reflects on the employer's brand.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Recruitment Administrator into Recruitment Coordinator or Resourcing Assistant — more ownership of specific vacancies, some candidate screening, less pure paperwork. This often happens within a year or two, but it depends heavily on turnover and team size rather than any fixed timetable.
Then typically a fork. One path is Recruiter / Talent Acquisition Advisor (in-house) or Consultant (agency), where you run vacancies end to end, interview candidates and advise hiring managers. Agency consultant roles usually add commission on top of basic salary.
The other path is sideways into general HR — HR Administrator, then HR Advisor — usually alongside CIPD study. Recruitment admin is a very common on-ramp into HR as a whole.
From Recruiter, onward to Senior Recruiter, Talent Acquisition Manager or, in agencies, managing a desk and then a team. Timeframes vary enormously: agency progression can be fast if you bill well, in-house progression is often slower and depends on vacancies appearing.
Later-career options include recruitment operations or HR systems roles (owning the ATS and hiring data), employer branding, in-house talent leadership, or going independent as a freelance recruiter — though these are several years out and not guaranteed.

What people get wrong

“You'll be deciding who gets hired.”

Administrators almost never make hiring decisions. Shortlisting and offers sit with recruiters and hiring managers; your influence is real but indirect — a well-run, fast process means fewer good candidates drop out.

“It's the same job whether you're in-house or at an agency.”

These are quite different environments. In-house you serve one employer and the measure of success is filling roles well; at an agency you support fee-earning consultants in a sales-driven, target-focused culture where speed and candidate volume dominate.

“It's a quiet back-office data-entry job.”

It's heavily interruption-driven and people-facing — phone calls, last-minute cancellations, anxious candidates and impatient hiring managers. People who want uninterrupted focused work often find it draining.

“A degree makes you an obvious hire for it.”

Many of these roles don't require a degree, so your competition includes experienced administrators. Demonstrable admin experience and Excel competence usually carry more weight on an application than your degree classification.

Where this varies

The biggest split is in-house versus agency. In-house (inside a company's own HR or talent team) tends to mean steadier hours, a focus on process quality and compliance, and a clearer route into general HR. Agency work is faster, noisier, target-driven and more sales-adjacent, with quicker progression for those who take to it. Sector matters too: public sector, NHS and education recruitment is highly process-bound with structured scoring, fixed advert wording and strict vetting, so the admin role is more procedural; tech and professional services hiring is less formal and more candidate-marketing focused. High-volume recruitment (warehousing, retail, hospitality, care) involves processing large numbers of applicants quickly and running assessment days, which feels very different from supporting a handful of senior professional hires. Job titles are used loosely — Recruitment Coordinator, Resourcing Administrator, Talent Acquisition Assistant and Recruitment Assistant often describe near-identical work, so read the advert rather than the title.

See all 2 live Recruitment Administrator jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.