Case Study

Paul Card Recruitment

Background

Paul Card is the MD and Owner of Paul Card Recruitment.

Having spent his corporate career with Hays specialising in the Finance, Accountancy and Credit Management sector, Paul established the company in 2013.

The company are based in Teesside in the Northeast of England and focus on accountancy and finance recruitment in the key geographical market areas of the North East and the Southern Home Counties.

During the pandemic, Paul has grown from a team of three at the start of the pandemic to six by July 2021.

As a business owner, what was life like before you joined Superfast Circle in terms of marketing and what you were doing in the business?

It was poor! Our marketing, meaning our website, was outdated and required improvement.

Our website was seven years old, and we have never updated or refreshed it. It was a simple six-page brochure site. It did link to our CRM, but the logo had never been refreshed. We had never done any marketing other than outbound business development calls, the occasional spec CV, but without any marketing processes, systems or procedures. We had no associated collateral to enable us to market ourselves more effectively either.

I am still the principal fee earner while managing the business, managing the staff, and wearing multiple different hats. The marketing hat was one that never got put on, unfortunately. I was aware that we needed to do something about it and the pandemic probably highlighted that.

It’s a typical story of a small recruitment business owner.

What specific marketing problem were you looking to solve?

Even in late 2020, we were already experiencing a shortage of candidates. We’d restructured our business away from a 360 model to include 240 and 120. Our fee-earning consultant, if you’d like, would look after client delivery and business development, and then we’d hired a resourcer who would look after candidate research.

We had also then hired an additional consultant who works in public practice, ( chartered accounting) recruitment, which has always been notoriously scarce for candidates.

The balance of our fees in previous years has been between the private sector and commercial industry. I wouldn’t say candidates are plentiful, but they were in reasonable supply, which meant we didn’t usually have to worry about any more marketing other than job board advertising, a bit of LinkedIn posting, and a small amount of ad hoc work here and there.

We hired a colleague, Catherine, to look after the chartered accounting world. She’s also very candidate-driven, and it became apparent that if we were going to generate more inbound candidate inquiries and more inbound client inquiries to continue to grow the business, we needed to market ourselves better.

How did you find Superfast Recruitment?

It was a recommendation. I’m working with other recruitment trainers as well, specifically on the development part of the business. As part of that peer group, I met Steve Merrit, who runs an accountancy and finance recruitment firm in Sydney.

I knew that Steve had worked with yourself and Denise and spoke highly of the marketing collateral and support that he’d received, and yes, it was just natural to explore that one step further.

What made you decide to join Superfast Circle?

It was the whole package that Superfast offers. The reports, the blogs, the pre-written material, the access to the training and the implementation of those strategies as well.

I like the fact that it’s not only giving you the tools but teaching you how to use the tools and the collaborative nature of the circle. There’s the peer-to-peer learning, as well as the weekly coaching calls and Q&A sessions. It’s a premium package to elevate every aspect of your marketing.

On reflection, hindsight’s a wonderful thing. Maybe engaging with Superfast before embarking on a web redevelopment project would have been the right thing to do, but we certainly were able to receive some advice before the website went live from you.

What have you been able to achieve while being a member of Superfast Circle? What are your most significant benefits /results?

You realise that most people face similar challenges, worries and anxieties about growing their business or surviving a pandemic. The ability to ask any question without judgment because we’re all in the same boat is unique. I think that’s one of the things I’ve come to learn over the years.

If, like me, you leave the corporate world of recruitment, you’re led to believe that every other small recruitment business owner is the enemy and the competition.

Then you quickly realise the fact that there are massive opportunities for collaboration, learning and shared experience. When you take the blinkers off, you appreciate how important it is to have that network around you.

How has being a Member of Superfast Circle enabled you to reach some of your goals even in this short time?

We now have a number of strategies in place, such as:

Lead magnets in the form of downloadable reports so that people will share their details with us to enable us to add them to our database and continue to market to them using an email funnel journey. Our CRM had sequential marketing and email funnel capability, but we hadn’t had the time or marketing expertise to develop those.
We have email journeys that we can take people on to build our brand awareness and engagement.
We have blogs, which we accessed through the Circle, and it has enabled us to put relevant added-value content onto our website immediately.
Our social media presence has developed. Using automated scheduling tools, we are now sharing relevant content across all platforms, so we are hopefully more visible and valuable in front of our clients and candidates than we ever were before.
By using the re-ignite email campaign, we have created new job opportunities that have resulted in placements.

What, if anything, has exceeded your expectations while working with SFR?

I think it’s certainly exceeded them. I think we’ve been able to implement faster than I expected. The level of support and access to yourself and Denise is exceptional. Sometimes with other recruitment trainers, the person that sells you the idea isn’t the one that you end up dealing with.

What is it like to work with Denise and Sharon? How is the company aligned with the values that drive your business?

With yourself and Denise, it’s a very personal service, very accessible, quick to respond to any queries, and wrapped up in a package that is easy to access, straightforward to understand, and easy to implement.

What’s the main reason you recommend Superfast Circle to other business owners/marketers?

I think you and most business owners recognise they need to do these things but don’t know how to do it. When you become aware of what Superfast can offer, it provides all the tools that you need to be able to execute a marketing plan.

What would you tell someone who is considering joining Superfast Circle

If somebody’s teetering on the edge of making a decision, I can guarantee you will be pleased with the investment that you make.

Recommendation

“I like the fact that it’s not only giving you the tools, it’s teaching you how to use the tools, and the collaborative nature of the circle, and peer to peer learning, and weekly coaching calls, and Q and A sessions. It’s just a premium package to elevate every aspect of your marketing.”

Paul Card
Paul Card Recruitment

To find out more about Paul Card Recruitment, please visit their website here.

www.paulcardrecruitment.co.uk

To find out more about working with Superfast Recruitment or joining our Superfast Circle Programme please fill out the contact form here.

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