It’s well-known that most businesses fail in their first year. But not all…

Be-IT Resourcing’s first full year ended in March 2015.  Turnover was £2.15M and projected to increase to £6M next year. Profits are good for a first year.  We have 10 staff and plan to have 15 by the end of 2015-16.  There are 80 clients, anticipated to grow to 120.  Our original office is now feeling the squeeze (or rather the staff are), and new premises will soon be required.  A second office, in London, is on the cards. If this is a difficult first year, then it doesn’t sound like one…

Yet it has been hard, for reasons that any entrepreneur would recognise. When I set up Be-IT, drawing on my years of experience in IT resourcing, I was well aware of the challenges. Getting the website and branding right was vital; finding the right colleagues was even more important, as was attracting clients and providing them with services that are intuitively in sync with their staffing needs. Not to mention spinning more plates than the average circus performer sees in a lifetime.

The days when a recruitment consultancy simply traded candidates against jobs are fading. The key is having consultants who are genuinely client and candidate-orientated and understand highly complex service offerings.  Nowadays, with so many major skills shortages in IT, we need to be able to manage every aspect of any project, from full-blown transformation strategy to project management of a new inward investment IT team.  Of course, ‘distress purchase’ recruitment occurs regularly, but increasingly IT recruitment is better planned and as a consequence better delivered.

The massive growth of government digitalisation offers challenge and opportunity alike.  The need for Business Analysts, Project Managers, Architects, UX specialists and Developers, has taken recruitment onto a new plane, where recruiters need to be (almost) as conversant with the technology as the candidates and where inside market/people knowledge is the most valuable currency around.

Be-IT has an inner core of integrity that is not always associated with the world of recruitment. This is a reflection of our people.  Great people make great teams and great teams get great results.  Let’s see what year two brings…

Gareth Biggerstaff, MD, Be-IT Resourcing