May 26th 2010
Financial recruiter Verridian was up against the clock when tasked with sourcing an entire team for start-up venture Just Retirement Solutions
The Challenge:
When Simon Gray was given the task of setting up a customer-facing side of specialist financial advisory firm Just Retirement - Just Retirement (JR) Solutions - he could tell it was going be a challenge, against the clock if nothing else. “We had already met with one of our partners, Saga, and agreed a start date, 24 November, which was contractually binding,” Gray told Recruiter. “It was now August and we had to get approval and compliance from the FSA [Financial Services Agency], as well as managers and sales advisers signed up to start work before we could get approval to trade. It was a ’chicken and egg’ scenario.”
Taking into account roughly three weeks for documentation to be approved by the FSA, plus two weeks’ training, this wasn’t giving the recruiting process much leeway. “The incredibly short timeframe meant that we needed to find highly qualified financial experts, specifically experienced in equity release,” Gray explained.
“We wouldn’t have time to train up financial service advisers specifically in equity release products and services.”
Head of equity release Gray had had previous dealings with global professional services company Verridian and knew of their reputation as a financial services specialist.
Head of recruitment and employment at Verridian, Sarah Jane Trask, told Recruiter: “The challenge for us was to sell a new start-up venture, which had no existing field sales force, to candidates who were established in their field. We had to sell them a career path into a brand new firm.”
At the start, JR Solutions consisted of Gray and an operations person. The team needed for the November launch was two regional sales managers and seven sales consultants. So as well as the demand for experienced people with a niche financial skills set, Verridian also had to find people in specific UK regions. The talent pool from which to choose was narrowing. And Gray pointed out an additional hurdle: as the firm hadn’t been given its regulatory compliance by the FSA yet, the Verridian team were supposed to persuade people to join without giving away the Just Retirement brand. “On reflection, it was a much tougher challenge than you would normally get,” he admitted. Surely the understatement of the year for Verridian…
The Solution:
The geographical challenge was not as problematic for Verridian as it might have been for other recruiters. “We have a field sales force of around 40 consultants who are based nationally and they all have excellent regional knowledge and know their market intimately,” Trask explained.
Indeed most of the consultants themselves come from a financial background and understand the roles as well as the type of candidate that would be suited to a start-up company.
From day one, Verridian provided Gray with a dedicated account person. “I was impressed,” Gray said. “Verridian gave the task their single-minded attention, along with daily progress reports.” Candidates were headhunted through different channels, including Verridian’s existing contact base. Trask explained: “It was time consuming in the beginning, selling prospective candidates a rolewith a brand new start-up venture.”
The highly-focused campaign eventually began paying dividends. “We still call on advisers that we found from that campaign for new roles. Some couldn’t move [from the jobs the were in] within the timeframe,” Gray said.
And this talent pool sharing was one of the ways the two companies worked together. “We have a tailored approach to recruitment,” Trask said. “We prefer to work in partnership and become embedded within the company.”
This was important when matching candidates to a role, not only for their equity release experience but culturally. “The culture of JR Solutions was fresh and new,” Trask said. The culture would centre around professionalism, teamwork, forward-thinking approaches, listening and communication.
In the end, the search and selection, interviews and offers were made by the end of October. “Without Verridian we wouldn’t have achieved our deadlines,” Gray told Recruiter. “If they hadn’t delivered then we would have had an embarrassing meeting with our partners, but they gave me sufficient comfort that they’d deliver what they promised.” And the relationship has continued. “Since then we have maintained their workforce [replacing those who leave] and we’re well placed to fill more roles in the future,” Trask said confidently.