2021, where do we start?
In a year that promised so much positivity for many, we seemed to be going round in circles. It turns out that the last year was even more unpredictable than the one before it, with many twists and turns to keep us on our toes.
However, as the time of year comes to reflect on the year we’ve left behind, we can’t help but feel proud of all we’ve achieved. While the last 12 months have thrown us a lot of curveballs, there have been an awful lot of highlights. In 2020, our business pivoted our primary focus to tech recruitment for scaleups and startups, helping these exciting companies find the talent they need to scale. We even started the year with a brand new look and a more streamlined approach to our tech recruitment services. In 2021, we cemented our status as tech recruitment experts and refined our expertise so that we could deliver more innovative and strategic talent acquisition solutions.
Here are just some of the things we’re most proud of in 2021:
Welcoming New Clients and Strengthening Partnerships
Of course, as a recruitment process outsourcing business, we’d be nothing without our clients, old and new. This year, we’ve been lucky enough to partner with some exciting scaling tech businesses and some huge household names like TripAdvisor, FinancialForce, cinch, and many more. Whether we’ve partnered to support in-house recruitment teams to hire tech talent or we’re working on an employer brand project, we’ve had the chance to work with some brilliant new clients and hope to continue our relationships into 2022 and beyond.
However, it’s not all about new clients. We have some great relationships with many of our partners and have continued to help them surround themselves with talent this year. In addition, we’ve launched exciting new talent acquisition initiatives with CityFibre, Moderna, IPS Grow, and more, establishing our relationship as a strategic talent partner.
Plus, our flexible RPO model means that our existing clients can change the nature of their relationship with us. For example, it could be that they’ve built an in-house talent function that they didn’t have when they first approached us and can now recruit talent themselves. Now we may need to shift the focus to build their employer brand reputation and awareness to support applications. For many of our clients, this is what we’ve done.
Awards, Awards, Awards
Over the last year, we’ve also been nominated for awards to celebrate our hard work and projects we’ve been working on. We’re incredibly proud that our CEO Neil was nominated for Pivot Entrepreneur of the Year at The Great British Entrepreneur Awards.
We’ve also been shortlisted at the Recruiter Awards for our work with CityFibre and at the Global Recruiter Awards for Best Recruitment Outsourcing Business. To end the year, we won a Silver for Employer Brand and Bronze for Onsite RPO In-House Recruitment Team at the In-House Recruitment Awards for our partnership with City Fibre. Of course, we’re not in it for the awards, but it’s great to see our work and collaborations being recognised by others in the recruitment industry.
We also made the Top 100 Best Small Companies to Work For list from Best Companies, which is a huge achievement, and we’re incredibly proud. It celebrates employee engagement and shows that every member of staff and leader goes the extra mile to make Talent Works a great place to work. We’re exceptionally proud and thrilled that our team are so happy to work with us.
New Team Members
This year we were lucky enough to grow our team across all business areas. Due to our new client wins and exciting projects, we had to find even more talented people to help us deliver tech recruitment solutions and strategies. They say the hardest role to recruit right now is a recruiter, but it’s safe to say we found some great ones. From expanding our Insight team to hiring digital marketers, we’ve expanded and welcomed new faces across all aspects of our business, and it’s been an incredibly exciting time for us. We’ve hired talented tech recruiters, copywriters, client success professionals, and so much more. And best of all, all of these people bring something unique to Talent Works and will help us to source incredible talent for our clients.
We’ll be hiring even more new faces in 2022, and we can’t wait. So if you’re interested in joining our team and would like to view our current vacancies, you can view them here.
Reunited (and then separated again)
One of the best things about 2021 was finally being able to reunite our teams. After a year of working from home, we opened up our offices for our employees to access whenever they needed as part of a new hybrid working model but, we were also able to bring our people together again for team days. It was great to catch up in person and see faces that weren’t on a screen once again. With team days in Manchester and Northampton, we were able to strategise and plan so that we could continue to be an innovative RPO provider. We’ve since been able to collaborate more often, with many teams opting to come in for specific days every week so that they can share ideas and work together. Sadly, these plans have been put on hold again, at least for a little while. But, hopefully, 2022 will see us coming together to work again soon. For now, it’s back to working remotely, Microsoft Teams catch ups and staying safe.
Strengthening Our Services
At Talent Works, we always strive to be the best we can be, which means constantly refining our services and offerings. At the end of 2020, we introduced our new approach to RPO, streaming our offering into employer branding, digital talent attraction and tech recruitment. Throughout 2021, we’ve been assessing these services and how they work for different projects. In bringing in new team members, we’ve expanded our capabilities, for example, adopting a data-driven research methodology to support our existing industry-leading insight team. We’re also constantly looking at new digital marketing tools which could be transferred to recruitment marketing and used to reach passive candidates. If we look back at our services when we introduced them compared to a year later, it’s clear we’re already adapting and innovating to suit changes in the recruitment landscape and tech recruitment trends. Now, where will we be this time next year?
The Season of Goodwill
One thing we were really looking forward to this year was reuniting our team in Northampton for a Christmas party and ending 2021 in style. We’d done all of the preparation, invited team members down from Manchester and were all excited to get on our best Christmas jumpers and crack open the fizz. But, sadly, COVID had other plans. Our Christmas party couldn’t go ahead, as we had to focus on keeping our team safe.
However, to support local businesses Blahblah Catering (who has undoubtedly faced a challenging 18 months) and embrace the Christmas spirit, we decided not to cancel the catering. Instead, we delivered food parcels to homeless charities in Northampton and Manchester. In addition, we donated 30 individual Christmas Buffet Boxes to Northampton Hope Centre, and Neil also doubled the budget so that we could also support FareShare Greater Manchester. While it was disappointing not to see each other in person for a second Christmas, it was great to know our boxes could make someone in need’s Christmas a little bit brighter as well as support a local business.
Looking Forward to 2022
So, what’s next for Talent Works? Well, of course, we want to help as many startups and scaleups to solve tech talent acquisition challenges as possible. We already have some exciting tech recruitment projects in the pipeline for 2022 with some forward thinking and inspiring businesses in the UK and US. We hope to help our existing clients surround themselves with the talent they need to scale and hope to watch many of these growing companies expand globally.
Tech recruitment isn’t slowing down, and as a tech RPO provider, neither are we. The Talent Works team is still growing, and we’re looking forward to meeting the passionate, courageous people who will continue to drive our business forward in 2022 and beyond. With our new hybrid working model, we’re looking forward to a great balance of working from our sofas to coming together to collaborate and share ideas. However, most of all, we’re hoping for a brighter 2022, a year with a bit more certainty and structure for everyone.
We’d like to wish you all a very Happy New Year.
Contact us if you’d like to discuss working with an RPO provider in the new year or working with our team to solve other tech recruitment challenges.
