About Taylor Smith

Introduction:

My name is Taylor, I am a proud Scottish girl living in Dubai since 2020. I have been a recruiter for 4 and a half fabulous years with almost 7 years of UK banking experience. Music, working hard, my family and my friends are my biggest passions in life. Another passion I have is for travel, I have lived in Ibiza for two summers starting when I was 18, travelled South and Central America for a year at 23, been all over North America and visit Europe annually and of course now living my best life here in Dubai.

Professional Expertise:

I have spent the last 4 years exploring the middle eastern employment market to build on my skills as a recruiter and the past year in my career specifically learning and focusing on the Human Resources market. I love to meet people and explore their journeys and experiences in HR.

Career Summary:

My experience in the HR market is that here in the middle east, Human Resources is growing its presence in the market more and more every day. Its amazing to see not only general people and culture aspects of HR being incorporated into the business world but areas of specialisation being brought in too, one of my favourites being a strong focus on talent development and enhancing the skills of employees within businesses to their best potential.

Why recruitment?

Although I spend almost 7 amazing years in banking, I had a drive to help people improve their lives by reaching their next career goal and connect with people on a more personal level, recruitment is social, rewarding and extremely personal to individuals and its something I felt passionately about.

Industry Insights:

As mentioned, the learning and development piece is a growing part of HR that I absolutely love to see and is becoming a core part of HR in todays market, another area I see constantly on the rise is from a culture perspective where businesses are changing the way they operate and incorporating more amazing things into their daily practise to improve the culture side and make the business a happier place to work with optimum motivation for employees. Im seeing a lot of compensation & benefits hires in recent times which is still missing from a lot of business but a key part to make sure that people are being paid and rewarded fairly which plays a big part in long term employee retention.

What is your approach to recruitment / executive search?

Listening is something that in my opinion is really under rated – you can understand so much about the needs of individuals both candidates and clients by listening but also get a completely accurate perception of what is going on in the general market by listening to as many people as you can who are active in the market giving you feedback, their personal experiences, opinions and ideas. Listening is absolutely key.

Success Stories:

I am currently supporting a CHRO from a large group in Dubai to replace his own position and helping him to find a new role to allow him to relocate back to Abu Dhabi where his family are. The placements I have made in the past I have always nurtured my relationships with both clients and candidates in helping the candidates reach the progression they are looking for both in seniority, happiness and financially.

I recently have been able to re-open a door with a large Abu Dhabi client we worked with in the past for them to regain trust with us and work with us moving forward.

Fun Facts:

I love to ask people around me obscure questions so that I can get to know their personality types better. Even questions that are not so obscure in hearing about peoples personal preferences whether it be food, music, colours, hypothetical situations as it helps me to relate to them on a much deeper level and I find it always creates comfortability and humour (laughing is my all time favourite thing to do). I also love cats, mashed potato and music of most genres in the world.

Why Aventus:

Aventus has some of the most down to earth, relatable and motivated people ive ever had the pleasure to work with, the drive and encouragement from the directors not only for work but balance and good culture in the office is incredible.