Synergy Recruitment: FAQs…

For our first foray into the world of recruitment blogging, we thought it would be a good idea to answer some of the questions we’ve received since we announced we were setting up on our own. (If you want the bitesized version of this, check out the video we posted yesterday..)

For those of you that don’t know, when I say ‘we’ I’m talking about myself, Yasmin Bentley and my business partner, Marie Williams-Spalding. Or ‘Maz and Yaz’ as our friends have taken to calling us. Or even Ant and Dec as we’ve also had…

We recently took the plunge and set up Synergy Recruitment after a combined 18 (I know, we’re mad) years in the industry. We’re based in Macclesfield and will be recruiting permanent and contract office-based staff into businesses across Cheshire.

I don’t want this to be 1000 pages long so that’s enough of an intro! Here are the Qs and their As.

Why have you decided to go it alone?

This one isn’t easy to answer in one blog. Nevertheless, I’ll try to keep it short and sweet. I personally have always wanted to set up a business and, ever since I got into recruitment, I’ve dreamt of heading up my own agency. I like the idea of being able to work with my clients and candidates in the way I want to, no ‘powers that be’ making me choose a fee over what I think is right.

Marie’s husband owns his own recruitment agency in Nottingham (Approach Personnel). He’s always trying to encourage her to go it alone! She’s a mama to two gorgeous boys, so it hasn’t been the right time…until now. Although they are still only 3 and 6, so you could definitely say she’s mad! Marie really wants to take the many things she’s learnt in her recruitment career and put them into running an agency the way she wants to.

How did you meet and why did you go into partnership with each other?

We actually met just under 2 years ago when we worked together at a previous employer. You could say it was love at first sight, but that would be gross, so we won’t do that! I don’t know how else to describe it other than, we just clicked. Our values and vision for how we want to run a recruitment consultancy are so well matched, its actually bizarre. Virtually everything we’ve decided on so far has been an instant and unanimous decision by us. This has repeatedly reinforced the fact that we’ve made the right decision doing this together.

How and why did you choose the name Synergy Recruitment?

The way we went about finding a name was to think of the message we wanted to get across. We then searched for synonyms of the key words on google. It took a lot of back and forth, a few glasses of wine and a number of ridiculous names before we settled on the word Synergy. When we saw it meant, “the interaction or cooperation of two or more organisations to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects” we knew it said exactly what we wanted it to say. Without sounding cheesy (whilst sounding incredibly cheesy) we want to work in complete SYNERGY with our clients and candidates. We want to see the world through their eyes and make the decisions they would make.

In fact, that’s what our logo is supposed to represent too. The 3 interlinked S’ stand for candidates, clients and us.

Why have you plastered your faces everywhere on your website and social media?

Other than the fact we’re obsessed with our own faces?! We really wanted to get across the message that we’re humans and not a faceless corporation. We think it’s really important to show you who we are, both professionally and when we hang up our recruitment hats at the end of the day. Hopefully you’ll see that you can relate to us and we can build a relationship between two humans rather than two robots.

(Picture for reference of our human-ness)

What are your hopes for the future of Synergy Recruitment?

We’ve got a lot to learn about the world of running a business. I think we’re just hopeful we make it past the first 6 months at this point!

Joking aside, I definitely think we’re hoping to build some great long-term relationships with clients and candidates. Another hope is that we’ll eventually grow and start to take on staff of our own.

We’re planning to start providing temps as well as permanent members of staff, so that’s probably the next big step on the horizon.

But of course, our long-term plan is to take over the Cheshire recruitment scene one phone call at a time (insert evil laugh here).

The point is, WATCH THIS SPACE!

That just about does it for the main questions I can remember us being asked. If you have any more feel free to email or call us. We’re more than happy to answer anything. Also, we’re still at the stage of being excited every time we receive a phone call or an email!!

Thanks for reading.