It’s time to raise expectations of what recruitment can deliver: Deborah Stock

We’ve proved that putting people first isn’t a nice addition to a successful recruitment business – it’s what makes the business successful.

That experience has now led me to launch CCP Industrial, alongside Ian Horan, who brings more than 30 years of experience in the construction industry.

We’ll be working across construction, manufacturing, food production and logistics.

On the surface, that might look to some like a significant departure from healthcare, but I don’t see it that way.

The environments and the technical skills are different, but the fundamental challenge facing employers is the same.

Businesses need good people. They need people who are appropriately skilled and qualified, but also reliable, professional, communicative and prepared to represent the organisation they are joining.

And they need recruitment partners who understand that responsibility.

Too much recruitment remains transactional. A business has a gap in its workforce and the priority becomes finding somebody – anybody – who can start quickly.

Speed matters, of course. Businesses have deadlines to meet, projects to deliver and customers to serve. But speed without quality is a false economy.

A worker who arrives unprepared, doesn’t understand what is expected of them or simply isn’t right for the organisation can quickly cost far more than a vacancy ever would.

That’s why I believe employers should demand more.

They should expect candidates to be properly vetted. They should expect meaningful inductions and appropriate training. They should expect their recruitment partner to have met the people they’re sending into their business and to understand their attitude as well as their qualifications.

Most importantly, they should expect an agency to care about what happens after someone walks through the door on their first day.

These are principles we’ve spent the past five years proving in healthcare.

Care Connection Partners has delivered more than 1.3 million hours of care and grown into one of the country’s leading independent healthcare recruitment businesses.

That hasn’t happened by treating people as numbers on a spreadsheet. It’s happened because we recognise that recruitment has consequences.

Get it right and businesses become stronger, people find opportunities in which they can develop, teams perform better and customers receive a better service. Get it wrong and the impact is felt in productivity, morale, retention and reputation.

Launching CCP Industrial is about taking what we know works and having the confidence to apply it somewhere new.

The industrial sector is a natural place to do that. It depends on having skilled, reliable people available when they’re needed, often in environments where safety, professionalism and the ability to work effectively as part of a team are critical.

Employers can also face real pressure to fill roles quickly. That makes it even more important that speed doesn’t come at the expense of proper vetting, training and understanding whether someone is genuinely right for the business.

I believe there’s a real opportunity to raise expectations of what industrial recruitment can look like.

People deserve to be valued, and businesses deserve people they can trust. Recruitment should deliver both.

Deborah Stock is the Founder and Managing Director of CCP Industrial and Care Connection Partners