Why good business is all about partnership.
Elsby & Co were one of my first clients, and I’ve worked with them time and time again this year. Their founder Carl and I work together on their recruitment strategy, to ensure that they have the best talent at their fingertips.
Recently, Carl took to LinkedIn to share how our partnership has worked and his account was simply too good not to share.
Working with businesses like Elsby & Co has made setting up Exceda so worthwhile. I can’t wait to see what we achieve together in 2022!
Managing a major recruitment drive in the middle of a pandemic was always going to be a challenge, but thanks to a new partnership between Elsby & Co and Exceda, what might otherwise have been a process fraught with difficulty has actually reaped real rewards.
Elsby & Co is one of the leading accountancy firms in Northamptonshire with two offices, four partners and a staff of 40 professionals in accountancy, payroll and book-keeping.
While the pandemic brought about a number of challenges for the practice, the firm was focused on growing the team to continue to provide the professional and personal service it has become known for.
With Elsby & Co’s ambitions to be the practice of choice in the region, the firm’s founding partner, Carl Elsby knew that recruitment of the best team had to be part of the plan going forward.
In January, he combined forces with recruitment specialist Nikki Sargent of Exceda through a joint venture and tasked her with enlisting an enhanced workforce to complement the current teams at their Rushden and Sywell offices.
Carl explains: “In 28 years of business, I have come to realise that recruitment is the key driver of success. When we don’t or can’t recruit, it holds us back, and everyone slowly becomes more pressurised with their workload. When we get ahead with recruiting, the opposite happens. We are not time pressured, and we can then spend time doing the important things to help our clients and drive the business forward.
“As an accountant I see that recruitment, and managing people generally, are always under-invested. Businesses are happy to spend money on equipment, marketing and IT but not necessarily their people.
“The old adage that people are your biggest asset is true though, so we bit the bullet and invested in Exceda. In only eleven months, that decision has transformed not only our recruitment, but given us a new impetus in terms of the resources and capability to really advance the business.”
For Nikki at Exceda, working with Elsby & Co has been different to the client relationships she experienced in her previous life in agencies. She is involved at a strategic level, with an all encompassing brief, which enables her to feel part of the business, and part of the project, Having seen the incredible success of this approach, she is now keen to partner with other businesses in the East Midlands to help them get ahead of their recruitment needs.
She said: “My 15 years’ experience in the field has enabled me to transform Elsby & Co’s recruitment procedures by overhauling everything from the interview and induction process to reviewing the pay, study and benefits packages.
“They have given me full autonomy and responsibility over everything related to recruitment and that’s meant I have really been able to make a difference and to be frank, that’s both an intelligent and strategic approach.”
She added: “Recruitment should be viewed as an on-going consultative service, not as a transactional one. It isn’t just about advertising a job and filling it as quickly as possible and getting your bill out. It’s about doing things properly to give businesses an edge, so they get good recruits in a very difficult market.”
Carl added: “Recruitment is often seen as a feeding frenzy, with desperate employers keen to fill a role to meet an immediate need. Employers are often reluctant to pay huge fees to the recruitment agencies for average or even poor candidates. Partnering with Exceda has completely changed my view on the whole process – it’s now an ongoing conversation and we wont be left hungry at the table again.”
For info on current vacancies at Elsby & Co Current Vacancies Northants : Elsby & Co (elsbyandco.co.uk)
To see how Exceda could help you get ahead in recruitment https://www.exceda.co.uk/
You can follow Carl, and read the original article here.
