Business West Case Study

Posted by Niche Recruitment
15th November 2023

Introduction:

Business West, an accredited B-Corp since 2021, is one of the largest business support organisations in the UK. It exists to create long-term success for businesses in the region, helping companies to start, grow, innovate and export.

As well as lobbying, influencing and delivering tangible results that make the South West the best place to live, learn, work and prosper, Business West connects people, public bodies and private companies, fostering a richer trading environment for all.

By focusing on stimulating the local and regional economy, giving leadership, driving growth, delivering a range of services and building professional communities, Business West has delivered services to most businesses in the region. Some of the services are funded by others, delivered by Business West and come with their own brand.

The Challenge:

Having recently signed off a five-year investment plan, focused on Membership within the local and regional Chamber of Commerce brands, Business West needed to recruit the right people quickly to support its delivery. The organisation attempted to recruit employees via its website, job boards and LinkedIn, but although inundated with applications, it struggled to find the right calibre of candidates.

“There’s a lot of time and energy and effort needed to sift through that volume of CVs” said Emma Carter, Director of Membership at Business West.

“We had mostly sales and account management roles and then there was digital marketing specialist roles as well, but we weren’t attracting the right people. There are plenty of people to fill the roles out there but there’s a lot of competition for those people. We’re not a ‘big brand’, plus, we don’t have the time or the resource to go out and head hunt or find people that maybe are thinking about looking but have yet to start their search.”

Having worked with Niche Recruitment in the past, Business West asked the team to find them the five candidates, with the right behaviours, attitude and experience to fulfil the objectives of the five-year plan.

The Solution:

Business West and Niche Recruitment undertook a discovery session to understand the exact needs of both the organisation and the membership department, along with the skills, mindset and culture-fit it was looking for.

It was vital to Business West that Niche, whilst representing the organisation, fully understood and could communicate the culture and ethos central to its work, and how to ‘sell’ it to potential candidates.

From there, the Niche Recruitment team tapped into its extensive pool of quality candidates whilst simultaneously searching for those stand-out opportunities that would prove to be a perfect fit for Business West. The process was streamlined through the use of Niche Recruitment’s in-house video interview process.

Emma explained, “The fact finding at the start was really important to make sure that Niche understood the skill sets we needed, the type of persona we wanted and the culture that we have at Business West, and how they all fit together.”

“One of the reasons I liked working with Niche, and that I found particularly helpful, was that I didn’t just end up with a bunch of CVs – you also get to review first-stage video interviews. We could get a real feel for their behaviours and how they present themselves. It also meant we could develop our next stage questions around those asked by Niche, which gave us more specific insights than we would ever have got.”

“It streamlined our recruitment process significantly because Niche undertook that first stage on our behalf, and that was a major positive.”

Business West were kept fully informed of progress throughout the search, and through Niche Recruitment’s robust selection and efficient first stage interviewing process, a shortlist for interview was quickly drawn up by Emma and her team.

Candidates for all five roles were subsequently appointed.

The Outcome:

With five new recruits successfully appointed across a nine-month period, Business West now has its team in place to work towards its strategic objectives for the future.

Through a comprehensive understanding of the client’s aims, culture and needs, Niche Recruitment was able to source exemplary candidates across sales and digital marketing positions.

Emma added, “Five people joined us as a result of our work with Niche, and all of them are really good hires. You can see that they fit culturally, you can see that they fit with their skill set and they are all genuinely interested in what we do.”

“They’re engaged in Business West from a work perspective but also from an employee point of view in terms of the activities that we do. They’re involved in projects and initiatives that we’ve run internally, so each of them has fitted into their slot very nicely. More than just doing their job, you know they’re the right candidates because they’ve been able to integrate in in many other ways.”

“There is a cost to using a quality recruitment agency, but its a cost well spent. We simply did not have the capacity to undertake such a robust process in-house, and it would have taken me away from my day-to-day workload.”

“We got the right people, we got them much more quickly than we anticipated and with way less time and energy spent on the actual process, and all of them have stayed.”

When appointing a recruitment agent, the candidate experience is also a crucial part of the puzzle for any organisation. How the brand is represented by a supplier can be the difference between attracting the right candidates or putting people off.

Emma continued, “Our new recruits talk about their experience with Niche positively, which isn’t always the case. Its been great for our branding around the perception of what its like to go through the Business West recruitment process.”

Working with Niche:

“I absolutely would recommend Niche Recruitment and have done multiple times. What’s particularly special about Niche, what makes them different, is definitely the video interview stage. It saves so much time and energy for me and my team and helps us understand who we are going to potentially be interviewing rather than just what’s written on that paper.”

“I chose Niche because it was about the partnership. Rather than being a number or a company that’s part of a big wide churning machine, I felt that there was a genuine personal level of care and attention about what we were looking for and why we were looking for it. It wasn’t just they needed to fill the position to get their invoice out! It was about who was the right person that’s going to last and fit with Business West.”

“I would go back to Niche Recruitment for all my future recruitment without question.”

Emma Carter, Membership Director, Business West