Coming Back: My Return to Recruitment After Three Years Away
By Zlatka Jones · Associate Director, Mayson James
Three years ago, I stepped away from a career I loved. After a successful run in recruitment with Morgan McKinley Singapore, I made the decision to focus on something even bigger: my family.
Two boys, back-to-back, meant that the next few years weren't going to be about placements, pipelines, or performance targets. They were going to be about sleepless nights, first steps, and figuring out how to be present for two small humans who needed me more than any client or candidate ever could.
It was the right call, and I don't regret a single day of it.
But recently, I made another decision: it was time to come back.
Three years is a long time
If you've ever taken an extended break from a fast-moving industry, you'll know the feeling — you left one world and returned to what looks like a completely different one.
Recruitment hasn't stood still while I was away. The market has shifted, teams have changed, and the day-to-day rhythm of the job has evolved in ways I didn't fully appreciate until I was back in the middle of it.
The corporate world doesn't pause for anyone, and walking back in after three years meant accepting, right from day one, that I had some catching up to do.
Reconnecting with my network
One of the most unexpectedly rewarding parts of this transition has been reconnecting with my network.
Picking up conversations with former colleagues, clients, and candidates — some of whom I hadn't spoken to in years — reminded me why I loved this industry in the first place.
Recruitment has always been a people business, and it turns out that genuine relationships don't expire. A few calls in, and it felt like no time had passed at all. Others took more effort to rebuild, and that's okay too — it's all part of the process.
Same role, new tools
On paper, the role I've returned to is the same one I left. But in practice, it doesn't feel that way, and that's largely down to technology.
The tools available to recruiters today are more powerful than what I was using three years ago, and they've genuinely made parts of the job easier: sourcing is faster, data is richer, and there's more visibility into the market than ever before.
At the same time, learning new platforms and weaving them into my everyday process has meant relearning parts of a job I thought I already knew. It's been humbling but also energising.
“The tools are only as good as the relationships behind them.”
What hasn't changed
Despite all the shifts in tools and technology, the fundamentals of great recruitment remain exactly the same.
It's still about building real relationships. It's still about listening closely to what a candidate wants from their next move, and what a client actually needs from their next hire. It's still about delivering the best possible experience for both sides of the table, every single time.
A changing landscape in tech and transformation
My focus has always been technology and transformation recruitment, and that hasn't changed.
What has changed is the shape of demand. The skills clients are chasing today look different from three years ago, and budget allocations are adapting accordingly — shifting towards new technologies, new capabilities, and new ways of working.
Watching that shift happen in real time, and helping clients and candidates navigate it, has made the return to this space feel not just familiar, but genuinely exciting.
— Zlatka Jones, Associate Director | Mayson James
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