A bigger team required to realise full potential
As an ISO9001-accredited business with over 30 years’ experience, employing engineer surveyors with a recognised professional status (EngTech, IEng.), HESL’s excellent reputation was bringing in more and more new customer enquiries.
In addition, an exemplary track record of minimal disruption, no corners cut, and full compliance achieved kept customer retention levels high. When mandatory inspection dates rolled around again, existing customers were keen to re-book HESL for the job. HESL faced a significant growth opportunity. Yet, the small structure of the organisation meant they lacked the people power to accommodate all these bookings. It was important not to overburden their current engineer surveyors with a heavy workload because it went against their ethos of quality over quantity.
Defining and leveraging core values for recruitment
Following a recommendation from their design agency, HESL approached Brevity with the objective to attract new engineer surveyors who not only had the right skills but who would fit in to the company culture and share the commitment to quality and compliance. They had been trying to recruit candidates themselves – but with little success.
Competition for top talent was high, with big players in the industry often attempting to ‘woo’ candidates with a range of benefits. Those perks occasionally disguised unrealistic inspection targets, long hours, questionable standards and mountains of paperwork to do behind the scenes. HESL wasn’t like that.
An external perspective was needed to help HESL identify their USPs as an employer – and use those to their advantage in recruitment. Their road to success had been paved with incredibly hard work and – in the midst of that – they had lost sight of what made them special and unique.
Captivating candidate attention
The Brevity team not only knew how to help HESL define their strengths as an employer, we understood how to present those to a carefully profiled audience via the appropriate channels, at the right time.
Here’s how we did it:
Peter Hutcheon, Founder and Director, HESL:
“Before we worked with Brevity, we felt like we were hitting a brick wall. By helping us rediscover what makes our company a brilliant place to work, they’ve not only given our recruitment a boost – they’ve revived our pride and passion for what we do.
“When you don’t have enough hands on deck, you either have to turn away work or compromise quality. The latter simply wasn’t an option for our compliance-focused business, so our growth was stunted. Now that we have the right people on board, we’re enjoying new opportunities and a lot less stress.”
Kaia Vincent, Director of Brevity commented:
“Open-minded clients get the best results from Brevity’s marketing principles. The fact that Pete and Lynne from Hutcheon were so accommodating to our advice set them up for success. Realising that their recruitment needed to be candidate-led rather than company-led proved to be a major turning point. By establishing clear values, developing personas, re-writing some of the website content and changing the layout, we helped them attract the people their business so needed.”
People power: An expanding team and new leads in key regions
With Brevity’s growth marketing consultancy skills and expertise, HESL have been able to realise their goals and evolve their business as follows:
- A happier and healthier team, a more coherent company identity, and a more competitive employer profile that is attracting the right people to join HESL and retaining existing staff
- Two new engineer surveyors have joined the team of EngTech/IEng-qualified and DBS-checked engineer surveyors and passed probation, allowing HESL to book more inspections than ever before
- They’ve engaged with a wider range of businesses in key regions that will potentially require industrial safety inspections, achieving a 25% connection rate on LinkedIn (double the average conversion)