Soon after launching Lightning we were contacted by an industry contact from our previous life directly as they'd seen our LinkedIn posts and were interested in our new take on recruitment. The client was was looking to grow their team but hadn't used a recruiter before, so they wanted to know how things worked and discuss a couple of potential roles they were looking to recruit for. 

The client was a luxury specialist operator and based near the cotswolds, so recruiting people in the area that had experience as specialists was proving tough. Being a small owner run business of 6 people also meant that recruitment was taking up time they simply didn't have, and the quality of candidates they were interviewing were not matching with their requirements. After talking over the phone we reviewed and re-wrote job specs for two roles, one as a sales manager and the other as an SEO specialist. For the purpose of this blog post we're going to focus on the SEO role....

We arranged to meet the client in Mayfair in a nice environment to get to know the client personally and find out their likes and dislikes. We then delved further into their processes and current setup of the team. After this meeting it's safe to say we became friends, and spoiler alert: we now Whatsapp all the time and are in regular contact months later.

So back to the SEO.....this role was one in which the client wasn't sure what was out there in the market and wasn't sure exactly who they needed, but knew what the role requirements were. We worked together to research if hiring an SEO specialist to set the system up and manage, to then have a junior candidate come in to work internally or indeed if hiring a senior member of in house staff to manage the project would be better.

With this in mind we then headhunted some excellent candidates for the client based locally, and set up interviews. The clients feedback was that the candidates were the most well prepared for the interview they'd ever had and they were then able to make a call on which person would be the right fit for the company and indeed which path they would choose with regards to their SEO expenditure and management.

On this occasion the client decided to go with the senior SEO specialist and selected the candidate who they knew could not only do the task at hand, but someone who would be able to grow in the role in the business for years to come. The candidate is now flourishing in the role and the client saved money even by using Lightning by not having to pay an external company to do the SEO. Months later we are pleased to report that both the candidate and client are immensely happy. 

We adore working as a partnership with clients like this who are looking for someone to really be an extension of their business and take the time to advise and help on things outside of just finding a bum for a seat - we want to make sure when clients come to us that what they think they want is actually what they need, so they save money in the long run and that candidates are well placed to further their careers.