Albany Beck Consulting
EJ Church - Church's mission
International Language Communications - Calling all consultants
Elizabeth Rodgers - Integrity and innovation
The Ocean Partnership - Riding The Waves
Judd Farris - The Tag Team
Office-Cruit - Getting Personal
Keystone's Key Strokes
GR Law - Road To Success

Albany Beck Consulting

For Louise Constable and Anupma Majhu, personality is the key to successful recruitment. They tell Sally Morgan how they’ve joined forces with Albany Beck Consulting, to create Albany Beck Support, a brand new division supplying support staff across all sectors.

It’s been just six months since Louise and Anupma formed the new support division of established Albany Beck. But they each bring with them ten years experience in the industry and share the same opinion that it takes a flexible business model and a passion for people to succeed within the fast-paced market place of recruitment. Their combination of experience and approach is one that is proving extremely successful.

“We met at our former agency,” explains Louise. “When the opportunity came up to join forces with Albany Beck, Anupma and I realised we shared the same ideas about the ideal business model and decided that we really wanted to be able to do things our own way, using everything we’d learned throughout our careers.”

Flexibility is a word that often crops up between Louise and Anupma. “Flexibility is so important,” says Louise, “This market is changing all the time and we have the flexibility to adapt to whatever our clients need us to do. Anupma adds, “If we need to change our marketing strategy or we need to be able to attract specific candidates or our clients need something in particular, we’ve got the flexibility to do accommodate all of that.”

Anupma and Louise share a background in multi-lingual support. They now specialise in placing support staff to industry sectors including legal, media, luxury goods banking and finance. “We supply staff at all levels to all sectors,” Anupma tells me. “From PAs and secretarial, marketing, media and PR to customer services, analysts and project managers; we provide staff for every kind of nontechnical support role.”

Anupma adds, “Many times, we’ve supplied a very specialised, multi-lingual member of staff and then when the same client needs to fill a more straightforward role such as receptionist, even though their first experience of us was as a specialist recruitment consultancy, they will still come back to us because they know we’ll find them the perfect person for any role, regardless of rank and skills required.”

In the highly-competitive world of recruitment, many agencies will claim to provide a tailored service, carefully handpicking candidates for each position, but for many the reality is more to do with the volume of candidates they can place, with suitability playing a lesser role. This factor is one that particularly goes against the ethos that Louise and Anupma are developing.

“For many agencies now, driven by the market competition, recruitment is all about numbers,” comments Louise. “They rush candidates through the system – it’s like a race to place any candidate that comes through the door.” But this valuing of speed of placement over thorough matching processes is what, in Louise’s opinion, gives the recruitment industry a bad reputation. This attitude undermines the credibility of the whole industry, effectively selling products that don’t work. At Albany Beck, Louise and Anupma refuse to adopt this strategy of volume over quality. “We’re not about the volume,” Louise reveals, “we’re about giving a truly personal service. It’s not a numbers game for us at Albany Beck Support.”

But surely Albany Beck is a business, and like any other business, it needs to make money. “We make our money from repeat business and a loyal client base,” says Anupma. “Our long-standing clients all followed us when we set up Albany Beck Support because they know that we’ll always whittle down the candidates to one or two really good ones and only send for interview those we know stand a good chance of getting on with the client.”

During their careers, Anupma and Louise have both seen CV altering taking place and it’s a practice they don’t recommend. “We’ve worked with people in the past who’ve said to a candidate, ‘you want this job, let’s adapt your CV accordingly,’” explains Louise. “But for us the CV shows the candidate’s personal history as well as their professional strengths. From the CV we ascertain the goals for which the candidate really wants to strive. What’s the point in placing somebody somewhere inappropriate to their wants and needs?”

Anupma feels equally passionately about the careful selection and placing of candidates. She adds, “We make sure we place candidates in a position they really value and in an environment that suits them. Then they want to stay and the clients really trust us to go that extra mile in finding them new staff members who totally fit their organisation in outlook, experience, qualifications and personality.”

At Albany Beck Support, recruitment is exciting but simple and Louise and Anupma are determined to keep it that way. “You are simply finding the right person for the right job,” explains Louise, “this basic principle can easily be over complicated with unnecessary process and structure.” Anupma concludes, “Our focus is simple. We listen to people and work really hard to find the right position for them.”

Louise Constable can be contacted on 020 7426 5318 or Anupma Majhu on 020 7426 5319. www.albanybeck.com

Church's mission

EJ Church has gone from strength to strength since it first opened its doors. Here Liz Church and Pip Knight talk to Sadaf Qureshi

"Enjoy your job and you never have to do a day's work in your life," isn't a phrase you hear every day, and not one that is uttered by your manager. Liz Church, founder of EJ Church Ltd works by this motto. But more probably it's the reason why she embarked upon setting up her own recruitment company.

In 2004, with more than twelve years experience in recruitment, Liz decided she wanted to be her own boss. But with the onus on building a company around the idea of getting it right for both candidates and clients. She said: "A lot of people had said to me over the years that I really should open my own business, because I was so committed to everything and very emotionally involved.

I actually like the long hours. One day I just woke up and thought I would do it." EJ Church concentrates on secretarial, support staff and PAs, as this is Liz's recruiting background.

At the time Liz was setting up the company and choosing the Piccadilly offices, Pip Knight was considering what to do after graduating from university with a Masters degree. After moving to London, Pip met many recruiters as she searched for a job and soon realised this was the career path she wanted to pursue. She opted to work for EJ Church because of their values and enthusiasm: "It was a real leap of faith, because the company didn't even exist when I was interviewed," said Pip.

When Pip joined she had no recruitment background, but Liz helped to develop her talents.

Liz said: "This was a person who didn't really like using the phone when she first started." But nearly three years on, Pip must have made an impression as she is now a Associate Director. Liz added: "She has done incredibly well and we're just in the process of making Pip a shareholder in the company." Since then the close-knit team has now grown to four consultants. Pip said: "We have fun along the way, if someone's having a rough day, we all help each other out."

It took time for EJ Church to be established, as Liz didn't have a client base when she set up. But with the help of friends, family and through the hell of her young daughter, Liz found clients. She said: "You had to overcome your English pride and ask for the business. We would network at weddings, some clients I even met through my daughter's friends' parents."

However, their approach to finding clients wasn't with the typical cold-calling technique, but rather a more meticulous approach. Liz said: "In the initial stages we didn't use cold-calling, but had a much gentler approach - by looking at the market research, and the areas we wanted to concentrate on.

"First was the level of service we could provide our clients. As we're quite small, we're not driven by volume, we don't do database searches, or take 25 CV's in the hope that some will stick to the wall. It's about listening and understanding what the organisation is looking for in terms of skills and personality attributes. Then we'll do a true competency-based interview. We want to see if the skills our candidates have are transferable.

These interviews are very thorough, with some candidates being shocked at how long they take. Liz said: "When people come in they have to remember that they will need to make a good impression on us as we will be representing them. The most difficult candidates are the ones who come in and only expect to be here for 15 minutes, when they are actually going to be here for an hour to an hour and a half. And they ask 'Why do you need this information?'

"We do need to know otherwise we can't judge what jobs they're going to be interested in. And if I don't ask for enough information, I can't talk to my clients. "People have to come in and be prepared to be honest with me."

The competency interview, devised by Liz, looks at six core competencies: planning and organising, teamwork, communication, initiative, problem solving and work ethic.

Within each area, a candidate is marked from having 'virtually no or very little experience' to level four where the candidate has had 'managerial or leadership responsibilities'.

But for candidates to get to this stage they must have a strong CV, as Liz pointed out: "So many people could be good candidates, but as their CVs are so awful, they won't even get a telephone interview. Pip said: "Make sure your CV is formatted correctly and be consistent in the tense."

Liz added her tips: "Get five people you know to check your CV for spelling and grammar. Use bullet points, because if your CV is number 163 that day, it needs to stand out. There are a lot of great candidates out there with poor CVs." "The number of support staff that can't spell 'stationery', as in pens and paper, is diabolical.

"For those roles, attention to detail is important. The worst instance is when candidates will say they have 'Excellent attention to detail, I hereby attach my CV' but there's no attachment." "We are honest with a candidate and say, 'You're great in these areas, but this is where you need to improve. People appreciate honesty, especially when it comes to matching a client and a candidate." As the business has grown, Liz is not likely to be asking her daughter's friends' parents for clients. She said: "I haven't set it up to sell this in five years time. I will grow it at a steady rate. The way we expand is important so that we can retain the level of service that we have now."

As the team built the company together, there's a real sense that Liz and her team thoroughly enjoy their jobs and are driven by matching their candidates to roles that will give them the same level of job satisfaction. For more information visit www.ejchurch.co.uk

Calling all Consultants

International Language Communication's director, Brooke Greville talks to Sadaf Qureshi about why it's so hard to find good consultants

Recruitment is reputed to be one of the largest employment sectors in the UK. But most recruiters you talk to say that they are finding it increasingly hard to find good consultants.

Brooke Greville, director of International Language Communication (ILC), is one such recruiter. Having seen phenomenal growth in his company from its inception as a university project in 2001 - he is now looking for consultants who can be self-motivated and sales-driven to join his ever expanding company to match language speakers throughout all industry sectors including customer service, sales and marketing, IT, banking and finance and secretarial sectors.

As Brooke says: "It is very hard to find the right characteristics for a recruiter, one that will gel with our team."

And Brooke's management style is not one of the stereotypical boss yelling at staff 'MONEY, TARGET, SALES!' but more laid back: "I don't want to spend my life shouting at people. I prefer to work with consultants that can push themselves."

He added: "Why would they go to our competitors where they'd be interrogated on their targets, when they can come and work in an environment where they drive themselves. This is far more conducive to making sales and money at the end of the day."

When Brooke was at university and working in part-time sales jobs for "beer money", as he likes to put it, he worked under different management styles, which had an effect on the way he deals with his staff: "I worked for very strong managers, who really drove people.

"But then I worked for managers who were chilled out and you were motivated for them - they make you work 90 per cent of the time, but you will work there twice as long." The way in which he set up ILC six years ago is quite inspirational. Whilst at the University of Hertfordshire, Brooke and his then partner began a project - which turned into ILC - for their International Economics degree, with only £1,500 start-up cash.

They started cold-calling from their front room. Then started by placing language speakers for call centres, which they soon realised was quite a lucrative way of making "beer money".

He said: "There was a huge demand at the time for French speakers in call centres. And we were being paid £2,000 per placement, which was pretty good money for a student.

"We developed guerrilla tactics when it came to marketing and finding candidates. Anything that was free, we were using. But this has changed as the business has grown.

"After the third month it looked like we wouldn't go back to university. It was all a risk, if it hadn't paid off I would have just gone back to uni."

But the risks that Brooke has taken have been calculated. For instance, he chose to base ILC in Enfield to keep overheads down. But as the business expanded and a need to keep up with competitors grew they moved to offices near Goodge Street station.

The reason for this, says Brooke was: "In recruitment a lot of it is about where you work. We've moved here to make ourselves accessible. "Graduates or experienced consultants didn't want to trek out to Enfield for work, so we decided to expand into London.

"We want to offer our consult-ants the best to attract them. We offer flexible working hours and probably 20-25 per cent more in base salary than our competitors." And flexibility of whether the consultants choose to work from home or the office is down to the Customer Relations Management (CRM) system, which they began using at a time when other recruiters were still using paper and pen to record details, meaning their candidates could register and log-on to their site 24 hours a day. He said: "CRM allows us to log everything - from the names, address of clients and the candidates we've sent to them."

The CRM system has been ILC's single biggest expense that their company has taken on. But it allows the 11 consultants at ILC to access the system remotely, which is especially lucky if they decide to have a duvet day, which Brooke explains: "We have a gold star promotion system, so if you hit targets you can get half a duvet day, a full duvet day, a long holiday or a team bonus.

"So if you're feeling rough on a Monday morning you can call up and say you're having a duvet day and do your work from home." The language recruitment market is very client driven, according to Brooke. And this is why the service they offer is tailor made. He said: "It's a quality service, while trying not to be all things to all people, we're pretty confident that the service we offer is bespoke enough to offer different services to our different clients.

"We're completely client driven, because of the relative ease of accessing candidates. We have the existing clients, but want to bring on new consultants to help expand and bring in new clients for us.

"We want someone who is driven at reaching their own billing figure and won't take their foot off the gas in such a relaxed environment."

For further information about ILC contact Brooke Greville on 020 8366 3798 or go to their website at www.ilc-ltd.com

Integrity and innovation

Elizabeth Rodgers is passionate about resourcing for candidates and clients. Here she talks to Sadaf Qureshi about her principles

Nestled away in Finsbury Circus is a resourcing consultancy whose passion and enthusiasm allows them to speak from the heart when dealing with candidates and clients.

Elizabeth Rodgers Associates (ERA), based within the Square Mile, is in a prime location to service the needs of the financial sector. They source roles across various sectors, including, executive assistants, human resources, sales and marketing, research, graduate and executive appointments, analysts and other financial professionals. Elizabeth Rodgers points out: "Clients come to us because we are intelligent, have high levels of integrity, are enthusiastic and passionate about what we do - we have an ability to spot talent and we always speak from the heart. They know our business ethics attract the most professional and talented candidates."

Elizabeth has worked in this sector for more than 20 years, during which time her views have crystallised regarding the meaning and practise of professional resourcing. She said: "We treat candidates and clients as equals. The initial premise is the identical ways in which we listen attentively and act quickly, to both candidate and client. Our clients know that our ability to source talent is derived from our resourcing methodology, for example cultural fit, technical skills (academic attainment, languages etc), salary and benefits coupled with the enthusiasm and willingness a candidate demonstrates to come forward for a role. These are the real indicators of talent, rather than the rigid compliance with every aspect of the brief.

"Candidates and clients move into one another's groupings with consummate ease. "We take a holistic approach to resourcing in the sense that our portfolio of roles at any given moment will satisfy the various stages in a person's life."

She has two principles which determine who the company will happily source for. Firstly, there must be an equal relationship: "I would not subordinate our company's needs. I do not want to be superior to anyone, and by the same logic we will not subordinate ourselves either," she said.

The second principle is the way companies treat their staff. She added: "The companies that we resource for have to treat their staff as an invaluable resource, in terms of training, prospects and the feeling of worth an employee feels. We are not comfortable sourcing for companies that hire and fire aggressively."

These principles are not borne out of pomposity, but as Elizabeth said: "Your clients and candidates are a reflection of you".

Her principles have not deterred clients; on the contrary, a number of top 20 FTSE companies have turned to ERA for help with various roles. She said: "They recognize our ability to source talent at the very highest levels. Clients know us to be intelligent and focussed."

When trying to match a candidate and a client, ERA insists they are not 'passive recipients of information'. They will not send a CV simply because it is consistent with the 'wish-list', but only after recourse to the appraisal contained within their resourcing methodology.

Elizabeth added: "We would never submit reams of CVs for a role. In so doing you are effectively saying I don't have a clue what you are looking for, but let's send these anyway. It is analogous to throwing a can of paint against a wall, some is going to stick, but that which does is based on luck rather than skill.

"The same idea applies when discussing a specific role with a candidate. A consultant's skill at least in part is their ability to paint a picture of the role with words. Again our resourcing methodology is applied to determine their suitability for the role.

"We are here to expand our candidate's horizons and enhance their career opportunities. Why would a candidate want to move if they can do everything the job offers? There has to be an opportunity to learn new skills."

ERA does not simply take someone's CV at face value, they believe in looking beyond that: "We are really good talent spotters, we have the courage to look beyond a CV. What we attempt is similar to a professional gardener - place a plant where it does not have the right conditions and it will implode and wither. Place a candidate where the conditions are correct and that person will grow in confidence, blossom and become of greater value to their employers.

"We treat people as special and unique. All of us have talents and gifts and it is the role of the consultant to see beyond what is on paper in order to recognize the individual's uniqueness. If you make a person feel positive about their career aspirations, they will increase in stature."

Her operating imperatives relate to the psychology of resourcing. "Candidates sometimes remark after interview 'I do not think the role is right for me'. Often this means precisely the opposite. What they are actually assuming is that it is going to be a negative, and would rather say 'no' than being declined by the interviewer. An understanding of human psychology acquaints us with the complexity of our behaviour and the subtlety of our communication."

These factors have contributed to ERA enjoying buoyant business levels. However Elizabeth is quick to point out that she would never say they are the best. "I would never use superlatives such as 'we are the best'. People whose pomposity inclines them to this proposition are on a slippery slope. It may be paradoxical but the more we know, the more we are aware of how little we know. The road to success at least in part is to understand the need for continuous learning, the pursuit of excellence, innovation and high levels of creativity."

For more information on Elizabeth Rodgers Associates call 020 7374 8874 or visit www.elizabethrodgers.co.uk

Riding the waves

The Ocean Partnership's Matthew Ruane talks to Sadaf Qureshi about how the important part of recruitment is reputation and relationship

Working in sales is difficult enough - the constant phone calls, the rejection and the stress - but it must be even harder when you're trying to recruit for people who are recruiters themselves. Firstly, they know all the sales banter and the tricks of the trade. Secondly, they will not give you the time of day if they're busy and not interested - so how do you grab the interest of a person who knows all the tricks?

Manager of The Ocean Partnership, Matthew Ruane feels that his consultants are able to provide just that - a no-nonsense approach to recruiting for recruiters.

Matthew said: "Sales patter has to be that much better when it comes to recruiting for recruiters. They've seen the tricks and the games, but it makes it more fun."

The Ocean Partnership, a leading headhunting company focusing on recruitment, sales personnel and graduate careers, was set up by Daniel Whomes and Jack Barton in 2001. They concentrated on providing candidates for the recruitment industry or rec to rec as it's often referred to in the business.

Matthew, who joined in 2004, said: "I was very impressed by Ocean, they offered me something different from the other companies. There was faster career progression here, and I was told I could be running part of the company in three years."

And that is precisely what Matthew is now doing by running the Financial Services desk, and in particular the day-to-day operations of Ocean. Meanwhile, Daniel and Jack run The Oyster Partnership which concentrates on gover-nment maintained recruitment At Ocean, Matthew spent the first six months as a researcher, which involved mapping and profiling the candidate population. But in no time he jumped to running the Financial Services division.

Ocean consultants focus on specific vertical niche markets, in order to become experts within that area. Matthew said: "We've learnt the financial services market from the top to bottom.

So, in principle we know everyone in London who recruits in the financial sector, from those searching for managing director and board level roles to the agencies recruiting junior accountants."

Ocean also has to know every-thing there is to know about their clients: "We have to know them back to front, which is why there is a limited number. Most want different types of candidates depending on the style of business, different attributes and whether the personalities will fit," Matthew added.

This is partly due to the clients being recruiters, which means that they have a set way of working, Matthew points out: "The clients work in this area as well, they've seen it all before and they want to know how we'd deal with their time effectively."

Ocean not only makes sure they know everything about their clients, but they make sure they know everything about their client's competitors, with the onus always being on information gathering and cutting through the sales patter.

Matthew added: "It's all about the information we gather, knowing if a manager has left and if the staff will become unhappy, which could give us the opportunity to headhunt. We have to listen to the gossip mill."

Matthew adds with caution:

"We sometimes have to take what a candidate or potential client says with a pinch of salt, because they're in sales, they will say that they're the best in the business. But whether that's true or not we'd have to speak to their clients, competitors and confirm all the information."

And Matthew feels breaking through the conjecture is important so that they can offer their clients and candidates the best service possible: "We have to work out what's different - the culture, the commission, the management style and the career progression for the candidate are what we want to know. "But for all of this you have to dig, refer, dig some more and get genuine opinions of the company."

All this information gathering comes in handy when they are trying to find candidates for a client - whether it is through headhunting or through the trainee side.

When recruiters look to headhunt a candidate it is normally for a better position, a step-up the career ladder as opposed to moving into a similar position in another company. Matthew said: "We research our market and approach the right candidate that would fit with our client. If we've been following their career since the beginning then we can see the next logical step that they would take career-wise."

The number of interviews that Ocean have with the candidate gives them a good understanding of the candidate's personality, particularly if they will fit in with their client. As Matthew points out: "We try to make the right introduction to the right company."

But if the candidate is as great as Ocean believe, then all the clients that have seen them are scrambling over each other to take this person on board.

Matthew said: "When four clients like a candidate that's when you get a problem. And we end up stuck in the middle of a number of clients, all wanting to hire this person, but not wanting to end up in a bidding war.

"But our position with our clients is that we will not close the candidate for one of them over another as that would jeopardise our relationship. And because they're recruiters they understand the situation.

"If we start playing favourites we will have problems with our clients - we have to take into account our reputation and relationship with them."

As Ocean aims to truly match the candidate and the client there is little chance of the candidate making the 'wrong' decision.

The candidates are taken through a thorough process with sales ability being discussed. They will also look at their personality to determine how the client and candidate would fit.

Ocean pride themselves on building their reputation through the relationships that they have forged in the increasingly competitive world of rec to rec. With a database of 20,000 recruiters they ensure they keep in touch with them at least every three months. He said: "Those calls have to be of high quality. There's no point wasting their time as they're busy sales people."

With this outlook Ocean's reputation and relationship in the rec-to-rec world is sure to keep growing.

For more information on The Ocean Partnership call 020 7087 2959 or visit www.theoceanpartnership.com

The Tag Team

Melanie Bramwell and Hannah Day of Judd Farris talk about being managing consultants in the world of property recruitment. Report by Sadaf Qureshi

Judd Farris' managing consultants, Melanie Bramwell and Hannah Day, are a top team with more than 12 years of recruitment experience between them and they are business partners as well as friends which is what they owe to their success in the property recruitment area.

The company directors, Dominic Judd and Mark Farris, set up the recruitment company in 1998 solely specialising in placing property and construction professionals in the industry.

Judd Farris work with renowned companies as CB Richard Ellis, GVA Grimley, Davis Langdon, ATIS Real, Donaldsons and Savills.

However, Melanie, 27, and Hannah, 26, spotted a niché in the market and after a considerable amount of research decided to approach Judd Farris to set up a support division for them. Melanie said: "It was an area they had considered and when Hannah and I came along it was the right people, place and time.

"We'd identified a gap in the market for a specialist secretarial sector within the property industry." As a result they joined the company in July 2005.

Hannah added: "Being good business partners as well as friends helps too. There is a synergy between us, we're known as the tag team!"

As Managing Consultants in Support Services, Hannah and Melanie work with both temporary and permanent candidates in the West End office, focusing on those who work in a support role, such as secretaries, administrators or personal assistants.

Judd Farris place the support staff in a specific area of the market which includes surveying, construction, project management, property development, property investment, estate agencies and architecture.

The growth of the company has seen them expand rapidly, with Sarah Baker joining as a consultant in London, with Hannah and Melanie setting up the Support Services division across the UK. Consultants Katja Lenihan and Rachel Moon based in Manchester and Gemma Spooncer based in Bristol. Judd Farris also have offices in Birmingham and international offices in Hong Kong, Melbourne and Sydney.

The company was voted as the 5th Best Small Company to work for in this years Sunday Times Top 100 Companies list. And this is made apparent when Melanie and Hannah discuss the company's ethos and work ethic, especially when matching clients and candidates.

"We've worked in that environment before where you are targeted to send out a certain number of CVs. I really disagree with that. If you haven't got six perfect candidates then you don't send six CVs," said Melanie.

"It's about establishing long term relationships with clients and candidates. We are honest and consultative in our approach and only send candidates to clients that we are confident that are the right match. We do build up quite personal relationships with them" added Hannah.

Melanie told of one such situation where their relationship with their clients has given them a good name. "We had a senior PA candidate who didn't match any of our current vacancies and were honest with her. She ended up having a temp booking with another agency. The company she'd started working for then phoned to offer us another temp booking because we'd been recommended by her.

We said: 'We didn't place her with you.' They said 'we know, but she has recommended you to us for your approach'."

When asked what exactly the Judd Farris tag team offer potential clients and candidates, Hannah said: "In addition to relevant skills and experience it has to be a personality match on both sides."

Melanie explained how much matching personalities made a difference to the experience of one such candidate and client.

"A girl came to register with us and she'd had a bad experience with previous agencies. We put her in a temp booking with a very particular client who was looking for a permanent senior PA. She temped for two weeks and the client fell in love with her. She was only looking for a £22,000 job and the client offered her £28,000 instead. She was absolutely thrilled.

"We'd had several PA's who'd had an interview there who were really experienced, but they just didn't click with the client," added Melanie.

Another candidate interviewed with an estate agents for a secretary role, but the client liked her so much that they offered her a job as a sales negotiator and she managed to sell seven properties in her first two months.

This success of Hannah and Melanie is not just down to their relationships with the clients and candidates that they offer at Judd Farris but the way the team work and the company structure.

Hannah said of the relationship: "It's seen as very much a flat culture where everybody is treated with equal respect from our receptionists to our directors".

"Dominic and Mark have been incredibly supportive to us, they have given us as much support as and when we needed it.

"Starting here on our first day was like starting a new business. Although there was an existing client base, to introduce our new service was quite a challenge," pointed out Melanie.

As Melanie says it's the unique relationship they have which makes them work so well and productively. "We've always said that one would not have done it without the other. I think that's quite unique in this industry."

Hannah added: "When we got our first placement we were so excited that anyone would've thought we'd won the lottery! When it's tough it's even more rewarding. "In terms of our plans we are continuing to expand in our current locations and are going to set up in the Birmingham office very soon. In the long term we hope to branch out, maybe not just focus on the property side, but also move into specialising in support recruitment in other industries.

Getting Personal

Office-Cruit pride themselves on honesty and flexibility, offering a personal service to clients. Yet in the competitive world of recruitment is this enough to succeed? asks Bill Bloom

They may be small in terms of size but Office-Cruit is among the key players in recruitment when it comes to clients.

Since the company was set up just three-and-a-half years ago the firm, based in Holborn, now deals with some of the biggest corporate companies and consultancies in London.

Although Office-Cruit has only been going for a relatively short time the brains behind the business, co-directors Spencer Bernstein, 31, and Marc Di Girolamo, 32, have more than 20 years of experience in the corporate recruitment industry.

And having started out as a two-man band Office-Cruit now has a staff team of six which between them supplies a broad range of professional, experienced, highly-skilled and seasoned personnel within large corporate Blue Chip organisations.

This range of support staff includes:

Senior PA secretaries
Team/Department Secretaries
Junior Secretaries
WP Operators
Office Managers and Administrators at all levels.

Keystone's Key Strokes

From humble origins to one of London’s leading recruitment agencies and multiple branches accross the city. We unlock the key to Keystone’s success...

ROBIN NORRIS is a man on a mission and in a hurry. At 32, he’s the managing director of Keystone Recruitment, which has been a presence on London’s high streets for more than 50 years.

But Robin (pictured top right) is more focussed on the future than the past. He has big plans for Keystone, which started out supplying office and administrative staff and has now broadened out into a variety of other sectors, including catering, social housing, and social care from its London offices at King’s Cross, Muswell Hill, Oxford Circus, and Bishopsgate.Keystone’s strategy is to grow eight times its current size and to do it in just five years. “That will take some doing,” Robin acknowledges, “but we are confident we can.”

Keystone began as a family firm, and still retains its traditions. Robin says: “People who are employed by Keystone share the same company values. We are passionate about our industry and believe that building partnerships with both our candidates and clients is a fundamental rule.”

But Robin knows only too well that resting on your laurels is not an option in the highly competitive recruitment industry. For a business to be successful, it has to be different. That is why Keystone has launched what it believes is a unique service, called Clearwater.

Clearwater springs from a simple question: What do clients want from their recruitment agency? So Keystone asked their clients a number of questions:

• Are you receiving value for money?
• Can your agency add value by offering market data and advice?
• How can you meet people in similar companies to share ideas and partnerships?
• Can you receive compensation if your agency fails to deliver?
Keystone believes clients should be able to judge for themselves by benchmarking the recruitment service they receive. Keystone undertakes a survey of companies in specific markets and asks them - on a regular basis - to complete questionnaires. All the information from the questionnaires is treated with complete confidentiality.
The survey reveals how many companies are paying recruitment agencies. It will also pinpoint the market rate for certain grades of staff, including those with particular in-demand skills. Clients are invited to attend seminars, giving them a chance to network and exchange experiences, not just with competitors but also with anyone facing similar recruitment challenges.
Robin Norris says: “We are committed to reacting positively to the data we gather about the market to deliver a full, measured and transparent service that our customers want and can trust.
“By full, I mean addressing the main areas of concern our survey has unearthed. By measured I mean pledging to hold ourselves accountable by means of an audit. And by transparent, I mean providing clients with the results of our survey so Keystone and all the other recruitment suppliers can be benchmarked.” All of this will be underpinned by a compensation package, which Keystone calls its Ten Clear Visions (see panel opposite).
Robin says: “There is a difference between talking a good game and being the best in town. We believe Clearwater is fresh and different. We know what our clients want, that is precisely the package that Keystone intend to deliver.”

Keystone’s history goes back to an old stationers and typewriter repair shop in Rosebery Avenue, Finsbury, which was run by Albert Norris. The company entered the recruitment industry by accident.

Albert slipped and broke his leg. With him out of action somebody had to run the shop, and his son Peter (Robin’s father) stepped in. He had been selling carpets for Great Universal Stores door-to-door and he was earning £25-a-week, a handsome wage in the 1950s.
One day Peter was selling an Imperial typewriter to a client when the man asked him to find a typist. The client gave Peter 5% of the typist’s fee for acting as his agent - and thus Keystone Recruitment was born.

Peter had no training but says that wasn’t a drawback. “Recruitment is common sense,” he says. “It’s about listening to a person and asking three things. First, what do you want to do? Second, what can you do? And third , how are we going to get you there? It’s not just about selling. It’s helping people by offering a service and earning money at the same time.”

Gradually the shop in Rosebery Avenue mushroomed into four shops, and then came the Keystone branches, scattered all around London. Business was good. Keystone was placing 2,500 temps a week, and finding 6,000 people full-time jobs in one year alone.
Peter Norris, known universally throughout the recruitment industry as Mr Peters, started recruiting chefs from France, and business grew sufficiently to justify a Keystone office in Paris.

The company also linked up with a partner firm to bring in top secretaries from America. However, when the new rules on work permits came in, the business dried up.
In the 1970s, all private employment agencies faced a major crisis when the trade unions urged the Labour government to close them down. Mr Peters joined a group of other industry leaders, led by the Federation of Employment Agencies (FRES), to fight for their survival. Finally, the government backed down, and the creation of the state Jobcentres as a rival for the private sector was seen as the right solution to the problem. So Keystone lived on, and FRES sought to give the recruitment industry more status, not least through introducing industry qualifications.

The employment sector of that time needed to clean up its act, especially with relation to ethnic minorities. Many agencies would not register candidates from Commonwealth countries, but Keystone is proud to say that it did. Mr Peters held special surgeries on weekday evenings especially for candidates from ethnic minorities, and was subsequently awarded a contract to supply staff to Nigeria House, followed by Sierra Leone and Uganda.

Overall, these years were a period of consolidation for Keystone. The branch network was slimmed down, and Mr Peters diversified into leisure and property businesses.

Mr Peters is now in his seventies and he still goes into work at Keystone’s Head Office at
Pentonville Road in King’s Cross. Three years ago, he took a step back to become chairman with his son Robin taking over day-to-day charge as managing director.
Keystone is now firmly back on a growth path. The company’s temporary divisions have just been awarded a contract as one of the recruitment companies providing temporary staff for three of London’s leading universities: London Metropolitan, London Queen Mary, and King’s College.

Building on its well-established high street reputation, Keystone has just opened a new office in the West End. Keystone Consultancy offers a premium service, with candidates seen by appointment and given free consultancy on skills they want to develop such as strategic career planning and enhancing interview skills.

Keystone Consultancy clients include investment banks, media and marketing organisations and top fashion houses, all of which are seeking candidates ranging from highly skilled administrators and executive secretaries to high net worth business leaders.

Jane Horridge, Keystone’s commercial director, says: “What we are doing is taking a much more consultative approach towards our candidates. We have developed a unique career-mapping technique to identify a candidate’s strengths at a glance. Our role is to enhance the whole picture as far as a candidate’s skills and job opportunities are concerned.”

Keystone is also expanding its hospitality service. As well as supplying temporary staff for hotels and restaurants, Keystone will also be concentrating on filling permanent positions, in high-profile management jobs, such as assistant managers, supervisors and executive sous chefs .

It’s all part of the Clearwater vision: that as a smaller, individual company Keystone has the advantage of being able to offer a bespoke service for our clients.
Robin Norris sums it up: “Our continued success has always been about listening and understanding what is required from us as a recruitment consultancy. We’ve had our ups and downs over the years and weathered any number of recessions. But Keystone has always remained financially sound and now we are ready to move on.

“What makes us different is that we can genuinely locate the best candidates out there by using our unique recruitment techniques and then match them to our client’s needs. If they didn’t work, we would not have been able to nearly triple our turnover in just two years!”

Keystone’s vision for the future

‘Building client partnerships is our fundamental rule’ - Robin Norris, MD

Keystone’s Clearwater programme is underpinned by 10 clear visions. This package may vary between certain sectors, for instance office staff and social housing, but the principles remain. Here is an example:

Two year unconditional financial guarantee on all permanent placements, including 100 per cent refund for the first 100 days.

If a permanent candidate leaves within 100 days Keystone will refund 100 per cent of the introductory fee. If a permenant candidate leaves after 100 days Keystone will offer a 10% refund voucher to be redeemed against future appointments.

Flexible payment scheme for permanent introductory fees. Permanent introductory fees can be paid over a period of pre-agreed time not exceeding 13 weeks, for example 13 equal instalments can be paid over a 13 week period.

A £250 training voucher with every permanent placement made.
Keystone will issue a £250 voucher, once the candidate starts. This is to be used within 90 days of them starting. Clients will be required to send an invoice/proof of purchased training and will be refunded up to £250 towards this.

For every third temporary candidate booked, there will be a £250 training voucher.
This voucher can be redeemed against training for any member of staff. The two previous candidates must jointly accrue 280 timesheet hours before the voucher is made available.

No quible one-day refund or replacement if a temporary member of staff proves unsatisfactory. If a temporary candidate proves to be unsatisfactory on their first day Keystone will refund the money or replace that candidate free of charge .

There will be no permanent introductory fee charged if a temporary member of staff has worked for 1500 hours or more.

A commentary form will be supplied with all candidates’ CV’s on introduction .
This saves you having to locate the important points on individually formatted CVs.

Keystone offers trans-parent accounting and a breakdown of fees will be supplied on introduction of any temporary candidates.

As part of Keystone’s Clearwater programme clients will be invited to regular seminars and will have access to shared information and relevant market data.

Free use of Keystone’s on-line resourcing system, Keynet.

GR Law - Road To Success

Gavin Crocker, Director of GR Law, talks candidly to Bill Bloom about how his agency has quickly become a major player in the industry

Ten years ago the legal recruitment agency GR Law was a two-man band. Today it is a major player that can proudly boast of having most of the top 80 UK and US law firms as clients.

It now has 20 staff, a smart HQ in a pleasant part of the City of London and an office in Sydney, Australia.

One of the key visionaries behind the company's startling success is director Gavin Crocker.

Before establishing GR Law he set up Garfield Robbins International in 1989 with Nick Robbins.

"We were dealing with the major City firms recruiting lawyers and realised we could spread our services by offering secretarial staff," said Gavin.

GR Law now specialises in recruiting temporary and permanent secretarial and legal support staff to a vast number of the major City firms in the UK and Australia.

In such a competitive market GR Law stands out against many other recruitment agencies with its unique approach to how it chooses candidates for its clients. To prove the point you only have to look at their statistics.

"We deal with a vast number of people but we reject something like 70 per cent of those who apply to us," said Gavin. "We're simply being very selective. "There's absolutely no point in us wasting our time, a client's time or the candidate's time. If you get it right from the outset it makes it a lot easier. We're also not falsely building up the hopes of the candidate."

GR Law's target is four CVs per job. "We would expect to get three interviews back from that," said Gavin. "Out of those three we would usually expect to get two through to second interviews. We've got around a 50 per cent hit rate on second interviews to job acceptances.I'm happy to say we have a really high placement rate for our candidates."

Gavin's vision goes against the grain of many other agencies. One of the main criticisms of some recruitment firms is their "shotgun approach".

As one senior executive at a global media company put it: "Other recruitment companies send out a higher ratio of CVs but are generally sending the wrong type. "We recently needed to recruit some media sales people but we were sent piles of CVs from people who hadn't had any media experience whatsoever! We'd clearly asked that media, internet and magazine experience was required and we got anything but! We didn't want them!" added the exec.

"I then rang the account manager and said you've not listened to me." This is another key area where GR Law scores points over many of its competitors. "We take the trouble to really find out about them and listen to what they want," said Gavin.

"I would hate to run down any of the high street agencies but we don't have loads of inexperienced kids working in recruitment - quite a lot of our people are more mature. Having said that we have just taken on Alice, who's in her early 20s, but she has the right attitude and approach to clients. She was a legal secretary, worked for us in Australia, and is now a consultant.

Again, it's carefully choosing the right people for the right job. "We also recently took on a junior consultant who said she was really nervous about the sales process. But I said it's not really about sales, it's much more about understanding what people want and also taking the time to find out what our client wants - put these together and the sale makes itself. "But if you're constantly talking to a candidate saying 'look, I've got this, I've got this, I've got this' and they keep saying no, you're obviously not listening to what they really want. That makes a big difference and they'll obviously go somewhere else."

There is also something else that makes GR Law stand out from the crowd. "It's the care and the passion of my team," said Gavin. "It's their attitude. It's not just that they want to do recruitment for a couple of years as a stepping stone. but that they really want to do it. They believe in it, they believe in the company and they believe we're moving forward." This is clear from the fact the company has a very low turnover of staff.

Even during the recession GR Law managed to keep all of its key staff and has been going from strength-to-strength ever since. "We have never wanted to over expand and over expose ourselves," added Gavin. "We actually had quite a good recession because it improved our market share enormously whereas quite a lot of other firms fell out of the market. We simply want to have a long-term business rather than make a quick buck now."

Gavin and his staff's passion extends to their attitude towards their candidates. This is obvious from the amazing fact that around 40 per cent of them come via referral - far higher than most other recruitment agencies.

GR Law also has the air of being the business equivalent of a family in the genuine way it cares for its candidates. To prove the point the "father" of the family, Gavin, tells the story of one girl who had just arrived from Australia.

"It was her first day in the office and suddenly she was in floods of tears. She was probably thinking here she was, in a big city and didn't know anyone. "We rang one of the Australian girls we'd placed and asked if she would pop round, say hello and take her out to lunch." Their office in Sydney also tries hard to ensure candidates are prepared.

Opened in 2000, it is run by Nicola Sparkes and Amanda Timms, both directors. Nicky has headed up the London office and Amanda is also ex-London. "They know what living and working in London is like and can help candidates adjust to the move," added Gavin.

It helps that some of the staff at GR Law's London office are also Australian or have worked out there. They and the company's comprehensive Candidate Pack also offer advice on everything from finding a home to helping set up a bank account. "Opening a bank account is always a real pain. Quite often they're not able to open one straight away so we give them cheques they can cash," added Gavin.

"If you've made the big move yourself you can empathise with people. If you can help get people settled, make friends, they can then focus on work. It's simply trying to make sure they're happy in their work and the environment they're working in."

Gavin and his staff also make a point of keeping in touch with candidates they've placed and even meet up "for a few beers" every now again.

GR Law's Australian operation has a very similar client base to the UK. Out of the top 40 law firms in Australia the team deals with 32 of them. "The missing eight, if you like, tend to be at the bottom of the top 40. We've got the best areas," Gavin is pleased to say.

He stresses that the whole point of being in Sydney is because it is a candidate-driven market here in the UK. "We're able to pick up people before our competitors even know they exist." In some cases GR Law actually has job offers for candidates before they've even left Australia. "And certainly we've got interviews lined up for them," said Gavin.

"That puts us really ahead with our clients because those clients are getting these candidates exclusively and they're not competing against all of the other agencies in the City for them." GR Law's other great strength, which has lead to its road to success, is the willingness of senior staff to share their experience and great wealth of talent with a new or junior member of staff. And it obviously works.

But Gavin and his team are not resting on their laurels. Looking forward they have just taken on two more consultants with another couple to follow shortly. They are also expanding their services by setting up a recruitment division for solicitors and one for human resources.

Their business plan also looks good on a spreadsheet. Its London office projects a 57 per cent growth in 12 months from January to December - and they're on target. GR Law is also looking towards a similar figure in Australia. "The real challenge is not thinking about today, but how we can change it and move forward," added Gavin. "This business would not suit anyone who is content to sit back. Our business will be totally different in 12 months' time, hopefully with all the same people. "My view on recruitment is do it because you enjoy it, do it because you want to and as soon as you stop wanting to do it for God's sake bugger off and do something you actually want to do!"

So, why approach GR Law as a client or a candidate? "The bottom line is we simply get things done. All of this would be hot air unless we were actually placing people."

And as he says: "The big, bad world of recruitment can be quite nice really!"