by Sarah Stewart - Founder & Recruiter
I feel fortunate to have started my career where I did. I began specialising in Architecture, which as a rookie was tricky, but as such a nuanced sector it became clear why an industry dedicated recruiter would gain optimal results for practices,
It struck me then how much the specialist approach was similar in principle to the card game ‘Pelmanism’ my gran used to play with us as kids, making pairs from remembering where the match card was,
I progressed in my 4 years there to manage volume recruitment campaigns for international construction businesses, recruited for independent practices and at one time managed all of the managed temporary, fixed term and permanent contract services within the architecture specialism in NI.
After a gruelling recession in 2008 where all of the specialist areas of design construction fell to one person (such was the very limited demand) it was time for a change.
Sales & Marketing, 100’s of niches
Moving to specialise in Sales & Marketing. I naively thought things would be much easier. Who doesn’t know what a salesperson does, and marketing looks like such fun!
It became apparent that I was now dealing with hundreds of niches across two very vague titles. I started ‘lifting my cards’ by contacting every relevant candidate on the database so I could gain good knowledge of the market.
Compared to Architecture, it felt there were somewhere in the region of 100 times more decks. While trying to connect with all candidates that had registered with the business before my position was vacated, before the days of LinkedIn I remember my managers curiosity of when I was planning to speak with businesses, He may have concluded that my strategy was just to chat the day away with people about their career dreams and aspirations, but i needed to gain an understanding of who existed in the market.
Sales and Marketing as a specialist area continued to be an education for me over the next 12 years and still is today. Understanding how each business communicated with their customers, which marketing tactics they preferred, how revenue models were sliced and diced, and market disruption strategies is still one of my favourite aspects of the role today.
Access to information about Marketing functions is much more accessible now than it ever was, but can still be a minefield of complexity given the vastly configurable skills marketers can choose to adopt (even for those who are actually in the profession).
It takes time to understand the range and nuances of marketing functions. business owners would need (an annually repeated) course to figure out what skills are best to hire for, never mind how to measure performance, attract the right people or the expected salaries associated.
The well known Marketers pie chart of “70% explaining what i'm going to do versus 30% actually doing it” isn’t just a funny meme in the profession.
In 2020 I completed a survey of local marketing professionals alongside Dr Andrea Reid from the University of Ulster Business School. The survey was vast and really insightful in gauging the demand from the marketing talent pool locally. The most interesting finding was that 100% of the talent pool surveyed wanted to progress with their professional development and become more qualified.
This was the start of the formation of an idea for a specialist recruitment business, solely focusing on determining what marketing talent is needed and how these needs translate into valuable experiences for marketers wishing to progress their careers.
We've now invested considerable time in building the foundations of the business, to offer something unique that comprehensively covers the talent pool for each search request we accept.
When businesses or marketing professionals need an efficient and tailored service we're ready to act quickly and accurately, providing guidance and support through all of the stages of the recruitment process to induction and beyond.
If you do receive a call or a message from us, please don’t be concerned you’re in for a hard sell. We’re just turning the cards to be able to help match you with the right company or marketing professional when the time is right.