Finding the right people
Recruitment can be an expensive and frustrating activity for SMEs and larger organisations alike especially when it comes to specialist technical skills. Avantis Performance recruitment expert and Co-Founder Sam Crowder provides an insight into how he was able to scale the digital transformation consultancy VIMA group by a factor of 8 to over 150 people in just 4 years.
Avantis founders Tony and Sam joined the consultancy start-up IMD Group in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Together as part of a small team they turned it into the highly successful Digital Transformation company VIMA Group. With over £4m gross profit in 2021 (35%) and 110 staff VIMA sold to KBR in 2022 for £75m (including earnout opportunities). A huge factor in that success was being able to recruit enough of the right people to sustain rapid growth.
As well as delivering to his defence based clients Sam was responsible for the People function at IMD and then VIMA group. “Initially there was just me running with recruitment” says Sam. Before that IMD had relied on word of mouth, associate recruitment and some agencies to either find potential candidates or associates willing to flip to staff. The result was a disjointed workforce that all had different motivations for working there.
Sam knew something had to change. “The first thing I did was to speak to every potential candidate myself and sell them the VIMA vision. Not the job or the salary but what the company was about and what we were trying to achieve. If they didn’t get it, they didn’t get an interview”.
This approach lead to a focus on the person and their own goals and motivation. “We realised early on that it is the person and how they work that is important as well as if not more than the skills they have. We can teach skills but behaviours and motivation is harder”
Sell the vision not the job. Hook candiates in by getting them excited about what you are going to acheive. Then see how much they want to be a part of it.
However Sam realised that for this to work everyone in the business had to be saying the same thing in terms of the vision for the business.
“I ran a number of sessions with the whole company where we pulled together our values and our mission and vision statements. Everyone had a say from the CEO to the receptionists.” This aligned approach meant that whoever potential candidates spoke to in the business they got the same impression.
This resulted in an initial set of recruits coming into the business who were 100% bought into IMDs vision and dedicated to making things work. This built trust with the executive who were able to delegate responsibility freeing up more of their time to run the business.
IMDs recruitment went up a gear at the end of 2019 with the hiring of a full time inhouse recruiter. Just like everyone else they had to be bought into the vision. Not just bought in but the living embodiment of it. “Fortunately we found an amazing person who got what I was trying to do instantly” says Sam.
Together they built a process where candidates dealt with real people from the business, people they would, if successful be working with. From these people they got the same consistent message – “IMD/VIMA is a great place to work.”
Make sure you message is consistent. Anyone who speaks to the candidate should be saying the same thing.
However Sam realised that for this to work everyone in the business had to be saying the same thing in terms of the vision for the business.
“I ran a number of sessions with the whole company where we pulled together our values and our mission and vision statements. Everyone had a say from the CEO to the receptionists.” This aligned approach meant that whoever potential candidates spoke to in the business they got the same impression.
This resulted in an initial set of recruits coming into the business who were 100% bought into IMDs vision and dedicated to making things work. This built trust with the executive who were able to delegate responsibility freeing up more of their time to run the business.
IMDs recruitment went up a gear at the end of 2019 with the hiring of a full time inhouse recruiter. Just like everyone else they had to be bought into the vision. Not just bought in but the living embodiment of it. “Fortunately we found an amazing person who got what I was trying to do instantly” says Sam.
Together they built a process where candidates dealt with real people from the business, people they would, if successful be working with. From these people they got the same consistent message – “IMD/VIMA is a great place to work.”
With a dedicated resource focusing on finding and managing the candidates Sam was able to refine the CV review, interview and offer processes. First using an integrated Applicant Tracking System and latterly an end to end HR information system. This saved the team and Sam time and was key to being able to rapidly scale the approach.
Although the new systems smoothed out and ultimately helped scale the processes Sam was adamant that it came back to one thing:
“The key to all of this remains the people. Everyone the candidate meets on their journey should be giving them the same warm fuzzy feeling – yes this company really does what it says it does”.
Sam and the team were able to take IMD from 15 people in January 2019 to 111 when they sold in August 2022 as VIMA Group. By the time Sam left VIMA in 2023 they were onboarding up to 8 people a month and had over 160 staff. All this with a small recruitment team that cost a fraction of the equivalent agency fees.
What made this growth possible, affordable and exceptional was that staff turnover remained below 7% throughout that time. According to Sam “People stayed with us because they were bought into what we were doing and we had focused on the type of person rather than skill sets from very early on”.
Recruitment isn’t easy. Whether it’s finding the candidates in the first place or selecting the ones that are going to deliver the performance you need you will never get it right 100% of the time. However by keeping things in house and focusing on the type of person as well as skill sets you can keep costs down and be highly successful in growing your team.
Technology can help you scale your recruitment. Make sure you find systems that fits your process. Not the other way around.
Get in touch to find out more.