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Resilience and Adaptability: Our Year So Far

At the midway point of 2023, we decided to look back at a whirlwind 6 months…

The recruitment industry as a whole has seen a significant shift in the first half of 2023 with the post-covid boom well and truly over. It has undeniably been an extremely challenging market, with many recruitment businesses scrambling to adapt in the face of these changing conditions. Whilst it is easy to be carried along by the waves of negativity, we have worked hard to focus on the things we can control and celebrate the small wins along the way. Our Senior Managing Consultant Marion Errington summed up the current recruitment landscape perfectly by describing it as “not a difficult market, just a different one.”

We are immensely proud of how our consultants at Heat have risen to the challenge and shown phenomenal amounts of resilience and adaptability whilst maintaining a positive mindset when it would be easy to disappear into a pit of despair. Seeing our people sharing best practices, supporting and helping one another, and adapting quickly to implement new methodologies and ideas are just a few of the things that make this business special.

To round off a successful 6 months at the end of Q2, we took the opportunity to celebrate numerous company, divisional, and individual achievements.

Breaking Records

Heat is currently tracking for its most successful year of trading ever and already this year we have seen a number of longstanding records being broken:

  • Record ever month in March
  • 5 out of 6 months have been best ever months for the business
  • Contract revenue is up 51% on 2022
  • Legal and Insurance had record Q2s
  • Since opening in April 2022 Manchester has achieved its best ever month in June

We continue to invest heavily away from the sales floor and our marketing team has been working tirelessly to increase our brand awareness. So, we are delighted that in Q2 we saw our best quarter ever for website, social traffic, and applications to our website, as well as hitting a huge milestone with 40,000 followers on LinkedIn.

None of this would be possible without the continued support of our clients and candidates. In spite of the challenging employment market (and the train strikes), we have renewed our commitment to building stronger relationships by meeting clients and candidates right across the UK to better understand their requirements and ensure we provide a service that stands out amongst our peers.

Charity & Wellbeing

July saw 4 of our Heat Charity Champions running the Race for Life in Bath and raising over £2000 for Cancer Research UK in the process. We also ran a charity bake sale in our Bristol office to raise money for Bristol Refugee’s ‘Pride without Borders’ campaign, raising over £145 for the cause.

This year has also marked the return of our Healthy Lunch Club, and members have had the opportunity to show off their cooking skills by making healthy, veg-heavy recipes inspired by various culinary themes from around the world, whilst also spending their lunch hour catching up and sharing a meal with colleagues.

Investing in our People

It would be all too easy to simply consider ourselves lucky to have reached the midway point of this year seeing the levels of success that we have; and it’s true, we are fortunate in this. But the reality is that our continued ability to overcome hurdles, adapt to difficult conditions and thrive in adversity is largely down to our investment into our people.

Part of our long-term strategy for adapting to the challenges in the wider industry has been investing in the things that will enhance and uplift our people and allow them to become the best they can possibly be. What this means in practice is continuing to embrace innovation in terms of both our tech stack and our processes; we continue to offer the most cutting-edge systems for our consultants, and are embracing the rise of AI in order to enhance our offering even further. Equally, heavy investment into our in-house Marketing team has underpinned everything we do to ensure we’re consistently assessing every aspect of our sales journey, and the data we shared earlier is a clear indicator of the success we are seeing by doing this.

We were thrilled to celebrate a total of 10 promotions in the second quarter of this year and, of these, 7 were for individuals who joined us as trainees. It is always a pleasure seeing careers flourish but especially for those who have not only just entered the world of recruitment but also entered under somewhat challenging conditions.

What’s next?

We’re gearing up for another busy 6 months supporting clients and candidates; and with a new office move imminent, we’re excited to continue our successes and establish ourselves within our new home. Additionally, as a result of our move into what will soon become one of Bristol’s most energy-efficient buildings, one of our focuses for the remainder of 2023 will be on building out our ESG strategy with support and input from across the business.

It has been crucial this year to continue to evolve and adapt as a business, but equally important to us has been retaining all of the things that make life at Heat so great. As such, our focus has been on improving rather than reinventing, and evolution as opposed to revolution.

Whilst we are unbelievably pleased with what we have achieved so far this year now is not the time to sit back and relax. All of our divisions are now focused on what we can do to take our service and offering to the next level, capitalising on what we have learned so far this year, trusting in our abilities, and challenging ourselves to become even better at what we do. While we’re not expecting the market to revert back to how it was before, we are now more resilient than ever, and we will continue to adapt to whatever challenges might be around the corner.

 

If you’re an experienced recruiter curious about what life at Heat could offer you, feel free to reach out and connect with Ross on LinkedIn here for an informal and confidential chat.

Join us on our journey

We are excited to be adding strength and experience to our core markets and divisions through the hiring of new talented recruiters joining our business, and are looking for ambitious specialists who are ready for the challenge to come and join us.

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