Welcome to Bespoke Retainment Group!

First off, thank you for visiting our shiny new site. We hope you like the look and feel of it, we certainly do and over the next few days, weeks and months we will be adding lots of relevant content to keep you entertained and coming back for more.

 But let’s start from the beginning:

Bespoke Retainment Group is a rebrand from Bespoke rec2rec which Dave Hardy (me) set up in 2008. Bespoke rec2rec was set up to specialise in the Senior level Recruitment to Recruitment market in the North West, when I say North West, people who know me will laugh as I used to get a nosebleed leaving the city centre.

We built up a good brand and reputation in this market place. It worked well around me becoming a Dad twice but it was always just me, Dave Hardy, no website, no other staff, just quality, consultative work in the rec2rec market.

But I wanted more, something I could build and grow, giving people the opportunity to really make something of their careers. I was also a bit disillusioned with the standard contingency agency recruitment model from both sides. Not to give recruitment agencies a kicking in any way, we get that enough, but I do feel there are a lot of challenges for both the recruitment agency and for you as a client. So about 18 months ago I started working with a few close clients in a different way, in a way that kind of just evolved and guess what… it works!

We have put some serious tea drinking into this and have now formally launched the Retainment Model, we have even done a video with one of our clients Cube3, so check it out for my video debut.

 So what is the Retainment Model?

Think of it as a mini RPO. Not sure what RPO is? Think of it as us being your Internal Recruitment team, your Head of Talent,  your Talent Acquisition Specialist, whatever you want to call it and there are some pretty impressive titles out there. We understand that to recruit successfully, consistently and strategically you need focus, you need someone who really understands your culture, someone who knows your strategic growth plans and someone who is as much part of your business as you are. This is very difficult for an agency recruiter to do, for various reasons including time and cost. Businesses often don’t have the time to meet and brief every recruiter who calls with “the perfect candidate.” Plus, even though it’s a “no win no fee” “commission only” type agreement, when that “win” comes it’s a big invoice to pay in 30 days, 30 days or you do not get your 3 month safety net of a rebate. Time is always ticking.

So it’s easy. The answer is you hire an Internal Recruiter. A specialist experienced recruiter, with all the skills, and  even a network ready to go for some quick wins. Easy. Or is it? Recruiters are not cheap and certainly know their worth if they are bringing recruitment inhouse when you spent 50k, 100k, 200k on external agencies last year, so be prepared. They also need tools, as much as it looks “money for old rope,” we do actually need things such as LinkedIn, job board candidate search, job board posting of jobs, a database to track and keep a record of the candidates….the list goes on. So yes, it’s a great option but not cheap and quite a commitment.

So we came up with the Retainment Model. We sit within your business as one of you. We take care and responsibility for ALL your recruitment needs from the day we partner up. We spend an agreed amount of time per week, per month actually on site, in your office. This has to happen for us to understand your culture, for you to have control, for us to have control and for recruitment to work for you. We come with all the tools ready, so we just need an internet connection, a desk, a brew and away we go.

We will have already had discussions over your immediate needs and will have an understanding of your short term plans also. We will use our extensive network, channels and skills to then take your recruitment needs to market in order to find the very best candidates, not just on the market but in the market. We would then manage the whole process by taking 1^st stage interviews, normally onsite so that we can move quickly, good people are off the market quickly nowadays. We can then manage the rest of the process through offer stage and start date plus be around as a familiar face for the 1^st few week, which is key to the success of a new hire, trust me.

And as we can work with a number of clients we can work with you on the costs also. Not only making it much cheaper but we also agree a retained, fixed cost per month (normally on a 2 or 3 month contract) so that it then spreads out the big fat invoices you get for wanting to recruit and grow your business

We are very passionate about recruiting and we’ve  come up with the Retainment Model in order to work with SME’s in the region who are in periods of growth. We are truly passionate about attracting the very best people to the very best businesses in the region so if you like what you read, then get in touch.

Dave