The Financial Times’ recent analysis of recruitment and retention strategies during a recession included Figtree’s client Outsourcery, alongside a photo of co-founder Piers Linney standing proudly in front of a piece of our work. The newspaper then ran a full profile of the company on September 9th.

Earlier this year Piers Linney, joint owner of Outsourcery, a next generation telecoms business, was struggling to hire the IT specialists he needed to create a customer relationship management (CRM) division in his business.

Linney knew just the people he wanted but they were happily running their own CRM business. So, like Kayam, the electric shaver entrepreneur, Linney decided to buy the company.

The entrepreneur declines to disclose how much he paid for the five-person business, based near Outsourcery’s Bury headquarters, but says it was less than he would have paid to hire a recruitment agency.
It also helped the CRM company’s founders achieve their goals, according to Linney. “What these guys realised was that the exit horizon had gone so far that they could no longer see it, so joining a company where there is synergy and an upside makes sense.”

With unemployment on the rise, hiring people might not seem like a problem at the moment. But it remains a challenge for many companies to find the talented individuals best suited for key roles.
These are the people that companies retain, even when they have to shed hundreds of jobs. So they remain a scarce commodity even as unemployment rises to levels last seen almost two decades ago.
David Lawrence, who runs Vine Recruitment, a specialist in hiring people for the technology and pharmaceutical sector, admits that – for the last six months – good people have been reluctant to move jobs because of uncertainties in the job market.

“If you were sitting in your company and someone called about moving to another business, even if you are successful in your job, you would be cautious about moving,” he explains.

This fear of the unknown is likely to be heightened if the business looking to hire is a relatively unknown company, such as Outsourcery, which recently changed its name from Genesis Communications.
The same could be said of Skyscanner, a flight search technology business started in Edinburgh eight years ago, which now employs about 55 people at its offices in the Scottish capital and in Poland.
Its senior managers have tried to overcome the problem of seeking out good people by encouraging existing staff to post messages about the business on social networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Lara Bayley, head of brand, content and communications, estimates that half of Skyscanner’s employees have their own websites or blogs. “These communications channels are second nature, both to people who work here and the sort of people we’re recruiting,” she says.

One of the biggest recruitment problems for Skyscanner is finding people with a good technical knowledge as well as other non-IT skills.

For instance, the company is currently hiring country managers abroad and needs people who can run a team, speak the local language ­fluently, and identify business partners and affiliate websites.
Online networks such as Twitter, where users post their thoughts in short comments of less than 140 characters, are an extension of traditional word-of-mouth networks – although it takes some getting used to, according to Bayley. “You have an interesting challenge to communicate a big role in so few characters.”
Skyscanner itself has about 500 Twitter followers, who get corporate announcements. However, individual staff members are also encouraged to “tweet” about upcoming job vacancies if they have their own Twitter presence.
Although Bayley does not work directly on general recruitment at Skyscanner, she recently used Twitter to hire a network of freelance writers to help create country-specific news sites.

Using just social networking websites and the news section on Skyscanner’s website to advertise the roles, Bayley generated over 400 responses.
“The key to using Twitter and Facebook successfully seems to be to expand the network as far as possible before you need to use it for anything specifically,” she says.

“You don’t know when someone will perhaps be thinking about doing an active job hunt. But if you build up a following of people who are interested in the company for other reasons, then you have a better chance of finding the right person. “If they are already a fan of the company, that is a huge advantage when it comes to building a motivated team.”

Another Twitter recruiter is Vicky Reeves, founder and managing director at Chameleon Net, a web design business based in central London.

The company places all its job adverts on the corporate website, then encourages staff to promote the vacancies on their social networks with a finder’s fee of £1,500 for any new recruit.
Only this month, Chameleon Net recruited someone to a senior marketing position using just such a technique, Reeves claims.

The process is efficient as well as cost effective, she notes. “Many people across social networks are likeminded and likely to work in similar industries or disciplines.”

Professional recruiters also Tweet, according to Lawrence at Vine, although he also stresses that it is unlikely to put companies like his out of business. “Like any technology, you have to have the time to use it,” he says, adding that recruitment is a full time job.

And sometimes it is the personal touch that works best when it comes to attracting the right people.
When Alex Cheatle, founder of Ten UK, a luxury concierge service, wanted to hook a managing director for one of the business divisions, he took personal responsibility for getting his man.

“He was up for it, but not committed as he had other options at more traditional businesses,” Cheatle explains. The candidate’s wife was also suspicious of him making what she saw as a risky move.

Ever the deal maker, Cheatle and his wife drove to the candidate's home and took the candidate and his wife out for dinner. “He joined and is with us two years later,” Cheatle says.

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