We have been working in Europe and supplying European labour for some 5 years now. We currently operate in 16 countries (Bulgaria, Czech, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain)
Since the start we have had “boots on the ground” and had offices in Europe, today we have 5 Regional Offices in Rome, Bratislava, Madrid, W
arsaw & Sofia, with 5 Regional Managers and 5 Consultants. These staff advertise on around 200 Job boards in their assigned countries and also in the UK to attract candidates. Over the years this channel has been very successful and has brought Bespoke the majority of its candidates. Even before Brexit we had seen some reduction in applications and had been considering alternative channels, however since Brexit, the significant reduction in candidates applying through Job Boards meant that we needed to look at other strategies to create the confidence in the UK as a work destination, as well as ensuring credibility that the opportunities being offered were real and not a scam. In October 2016, we embarked on a major project, involving significant investment, to launch a “Recruiter Network” within Europe. We now engage “professional” European Recruiters to source candidates, conduct face-to–face meetings with them and put suitable one’s forward for our vacancies. The project involved identifying all major cities in each of our 16 countries, ensuring effective geographical coverage. We then set up group meetings in these cities to present our model and recruiter proposition. Since the launch in October 2016, we have already appointed close to 300 recruiters across 10 of our operating countries, and our target is to have 1000 active recruiters by March 2018. We believe this is the only recruitment structure of its kind anywhere in Europe, and we are confident this is the way forward to ensure the availability of resource in UK sectors that currently have massive shortages. In addition to our initiatives in Europe, we have recently expanded our business model to allow for the inclusion of UK based resource in support of our European sourcing activities. We have also engaged a new Operations Director who has 27 years’ experience within the UK recruitment sector with substantial knowledge of on-site logistics and warehousing. We realised we need to have a balanced mix of labour both from home and abroad to compliment the supply into our clients.
