Untapped Potential Recruitment Services

Lots of business leaders tell us they struggle to attract the right candidates from their adverts. Many of the CVs they receive don’t have the right skills and experience required for the job. In the fast-paced world of recruitment, one often-overlooked secret to success is crafting a job ad that truly stands out. 🚀🎇📣

At Untapped Potential we provide a full end to end service for recruitment, but we are aware, in this climate for some roles it’s not the best or most time efficient route to market, especially when you need someone fast. As such, we are offering the job board advertising element of our process as a standalone service. It's the part of the process which you MUST get right and can make or break any recruitment campaign if your advert doesn't bring in the kind of people you're looking for.

Writing a compelling job advert is the first step in ensuring recruiting success. Don't underestimate its power in the world of recruitment. Your next star employee might be one well-crafted ad away! We have been writing job ads for some time and have seen some exceptional results from the adverts we have placed in the last couple of months. If you’re struggling to attract the right people, but have a limited budget for recruitment, we can help find a package that works for you.

Talk to me today about finding the right solution for your needs.

We were delighted to be asked to present a Masterclass last week to the senior leadership team on “Recruitment & Retention” for Lake District Estates Co.Ltd

Big thank you to all attendees who are always willing to learn and develop their skills

At Untapped Potential we are proud to be changing the face of recruitment. Our fair and simple approach brings a much higher success rate than the traditional recruitment model and will save you time and, more importantly, money. We call this our C.L.E.A.R method.

Please get in touch if you’re looking to grow your team and are ready to do something different

Off we go!

So excited to be surrounded by so many fantastic businesses here at

Come down and see us on stand B1334 if you are here too 👋

We all know that employees are any organisation’s most valuable asset, and in today’s climate, recruitment and selection should be a key factor in building a strong and effective team. So how do you create a recruitment process that sets you apart from other businesses?

Candidates are increasingly emphasising culture and values fit when considering their options for a new role and good candidates are able to pick and choose between job offers so providing a positive recruitment process experience is likely to have a substantial impact on their perception of your organisation as an employer.

At Untapped Potential Recruitment we have developed a two-way process that is open, honest, tried & tested giving candidates a chance to work in the business and allowing both parties to assess working styles and behaviours. This makes the whole process fairer with both the recruiter and the candidate getting much more information than a traditional interview. The candidate gets an honest look at you, and you get to understand what skills and attributes a person has instead of them answering a series of questions they’ve been asked dozens of times before.

An effective recruitment process will keep your business running at maximum capacity. Please get in touch if you’d like to know more.

Another great day today working with our new client Stanmore Insurance Brokers Ltd to find two new Trainee Account Handlers. Jackie Hyde and her team are fairly new to the Untapped way of recruiting and have been “blown away” (their words) with the whole process.

There’s no greater result for us than when we exceed a client’s expectations and it is a great pleasure to work with such a brilliant team of people who understand and engage with the benefits of a different approach to recruitment.

Our mission is to make recruitment a fun, fair two-way process - both for employer and potential employee - and when we get to work with such amazing clients like this it really brings our vision to life

When you need to recruit people does it fill you with excitement or dread?

If it’s the latter it’s likely because you’ve had bad experiences recruiting people in the past, whether that’s because it’s been unsuccessful, you’ve wasted time & money or because the whole process is just too time consuming and exhaustive.

There are many reasons why recruitment can go wrong, and as experts we know that if there’s a stumbling block during any part of the process it can have an impact on the outcome.

Start with this simple checklist:

✔Make sure your advert is compelling and attractive to the RIGHT people

✔If you’re not attracting the right people, take a critical look at the advert or ask an expert to help

✔If you have high numbers of CV’s be clear about what experience you’re looking for

✔Do more than conventional interviews – check working styles and behaviours as well as just asking a list of questions – give them a task to complete which involves them working with others.

✔Make sure the onboarding & induction process is planned well in advance – this can make or break the process and you may lose people if you make a bad first impression.

If your recruitment process isn’t producing the results you expected, and you are looking to bring in a new recruitment partner, send us a DM today.

Time to Stop Hiring and Firing.

A lot of business leaders we speak to tell us that they are constantly hiring people for what they know and then firing them for who they are. This is a common theme and most hiring managers will rely on a 45 minute interview as the method by which to find top talent. They rely on the CV being authentic and the candidate answering a series of questions in the right way and, if you're really lucky, that's all it takes. But for most businesses, that just doesn't work and in reality you've got a 50/50 chance of success.

Candidates nowadays are well versed in interview techniques and some will even arrive already coached in answering the interview questions in the "right" way. It's not surprising it goes wrong really. During a 1:1 interview, there's little (if any) interaction with others, so you have no idea what their communication style is like which means you have also have no idea whether they will "fit" with your existing team or within your business in general. And that's usually the reason it goes wrong. Not because they couldn't do the job but because of a mis-match in their attitude, their behaviour or their fit.

So what can you do to have a better chance of success? Making changes to how you assess people is a good starting point - if you want different results you have to do something different to begin with. A way of testing interaction is the key so if you don’t want to get left behind in an ever changing world and you’d like to know more about how we are changing the face of recruitment for the better, talk to us today.

Tired of spending time and money on recruitment with nothing to show for it?

We feel your pain. We encounter businesses every day who are in the same situation who come to us for help so you are definitely not alone.

It can be a demoralizing filling vacancy after vacancy and feeling like there is no progress so why not start with getting help with one key role?

Working with professional recruiters is often perceived as a costly process but quite frankly it can be a good investment compared with passing recruitment responsibility to line managers who are not skilled in this area.

There is a reason why people use professionals and it is because they are just that – expert recruiters who do this efficiently every day.

Every hour that a line manager spends on recruitment is another hour spent away from their core work and not looking after their team. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this leads to stress, things being missed and dissatisfaction.

We are always happy to talk about recruitment, message us today for an informal chat about how to make it work for you.

Missing Pieces of the Recruitment Puzzle 🧩

Recruitment is like one big jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces look the same but when you put them together, they are not quite the right fit. It feels like there is only one winning combination of candidate versus vacancy and finding that is like a needle in a haystack.

Sound familiar?

Get some help to find the missing piece I your recruitment puzzle by working with a recruitment partner. We are frequently the missing piece that helps everything to flow, removes bottlenecks and brings all of the critical stakeholders in a business together. We don’t do things the same way as other recruiters and that’s why we achieve different results.

Recruitment doesn’t have to be rocket science but if your current system is not working for you, it’s time to make a change. If you want to work with us, we have limited availability for December 2021 and are now scheduling campaigns for January 2022. Contact us today to see if we are a good fit for each other.

Email: [email protected]

Since 1962, our client has been providing personal and professional insurance to North-West businesses offering protection, peace of mind and a superior quality of service in the face of ever- changing market conditions. As an independent, owner-managed company, they take a holistic approach to get to know each client and their business better – getting to the heart of their business to get a real understanding of what they do and what they need. Due to continued growth our client now has opportunities for two Account Handlers to join their team.

As an Account Handler, you will provide a professional and efficient service to all customers through advice and recommendation of products in accordance with needs and demands whilst ensuring all activity fully complies with FCA Regulations. Working across all areas of commercial insurance you will develop and maintain excellent customer relationships and be involved in the full sphere of insurance account management including renewals, adjustments, amendments and day to day queries for a mixture of clients, with the common goal of providing exceptional service at all times and meeting sales goals in order to retain and generate new business.

If you are an experienced Commercial Account Handler looking to work for a leading UK broker, this opportunity could be for you and with two roles on offer, our client would like to hear from those with previous experience as well as those who are looking to build a career as an Account Handler, so if you’re a graduate or have 1-2 years’ experience, please do apply. You will be an excellent communicator both verbal and written and be an ambitious individual with the ability to work independently as well as part of a team. To be successful in the role you’ll need to be highly organised, pro-active, able to self-motivate, self-manage, be good under pressure with the ability to prioritise and multitask efficiently. This is a fantastic opportunity to make a big difference to a team who are experts in their field. By

All on you?

Your people are your business so if the responsibility for recruiting them falls on you it can feel like a lonely road. Especially when things are going wrong.

One problem with having people as your area of responsibility is that unlike stock or other areas of responsibility they are an unpredictable commodity! They are human have their own sense of agency leading them to be unpredictable (and potentially unreasonable) at times.

The double whammy on this is that if you are responsible for recruitment across multiple departments people are often leaving for reasons that are based on things that have happened at departmental level that are beyond your control but ultimately end up becoming your problem.
With an ever-increasing vacancy list, it’s natural to feel that it’s all on you. And multiple key stakeholders campaigning for their vacancy to be top of the pile is stressful.

What can you do about it?

Put simply, outsource to a well-matched recruitment partner. Find someone that is going to use a process that is bespoke to your organization. There are loads of recruiters out there who can deliver a generic campaign – there isn’t much skill to that, it’s just a numbers game.

At Untapped Potential we run bespoke campaigns based on your individual business needs, company culture and priorities. We develop a process to test ‘fit’ as well as skills so that you find the people most likely to add something new to your existing teams and not just complete a list of tasks. Finding the right people from the start leads to increases in retention, employee engagement, productivity and results.

For a no obligation chat about how we help people do better with their people DM us today.

Tired of saying goodbye to the best people?

It’s a terrible feeling. That dreaded knock on the door or message drop into your inbox delivering the killer blow that one of the superstars in a critical role is going elsewhere.

It’s particularly difficult, if they are either longstanding or newer and you have just invested time and money training them. Whatever the situation, replacing key people can feel like a mountain to climb and it’s frustrating when it happens time and time again.

So what do you do about it?

Whilst you will always get ‘natural wastage’ if this is happening repeatedly, there may be something bigger at play.

Here are our top 4 areas to consider:

1️⃣ Recruitment Process
2️⃣ Onboarding Activities
3️⃣ Training of Line Managers
4️⃣ Opportunities for ongoing support

Sometimes it’s hard to see the wood for the trees with the issues that cause turnover. It pays to have an external view on this and often inhouse recruiters and business leaders are too close to the problem.

We are frequently called in to help businesses that are sick of spending money on recruitment and losing their best people. If this is you, don’t be afraid to get a fresh perspective from recruitment professionals like us.

Struggling to make an impact?

There any many reasons businesses appointment a dedicated Recruitment or HR Manager within an organisation but whatever the reason, there is usually an expectation that they will have the skills, knowledge and capability of having some sort of impact on the success of each new hire brought into the business. But how forward thinking is your recruitment function and how much autonomy do you give them if they want to change things up?
Recruitment right now is tricky.

Things have changed more so in the last 18 months than ever before which has meant everyone responsible for recruitment has had to adapt and flex what they do. If you are lucky enough to have a dedicated team or individual who looks after recruitment what have they changed recently that’s making a big difference and, more importantly, what are you ALLOWING them to change?

We cannot continue to rely on CVs and 1:1 interviews as a way of successfully hiring people and if you’re stuck in this continuous cycle (either as a business leader or a recruitment manager) maybe it’s time for a change?

Drowning in recruitment tasks?

One of the biggest traps businesses fall into is delegating recruitment to a senior manager, director or a department head.

These people are not recruiters and asking them to spend time on a task which is not their skillset doesn’t always have the best outcome, especially in the current climate when getting recruitment right isn’t as easy as it used to be.

There’s a lot to getting recruitment right. From writing the job spec, to placing an eye catching ad to spending time interviewing and assessing candidates and that’s just for starters.

If you’re delegating all these tasks to someone who isn’t an expert, then bear in mind you’re also taking precious time away from them doing the job you’re paying them to do.

Unless you have a dedicated recruitment department in your business, it’s best to seek the help of an expert when it comes to your next hire. The time and money saved in the long run will be worth it.

Struggling to find the right people?
If the answer is yes, you’re not alone.

The impact on business throughout the pandemic has been huge and one of the biggest areas that is suffering right now is recruitment. Most industries have seen a massive fall in candidate applications causing businesses to struggle to find the right people.

If you’re having recruitment issues, try these tips as a starting point, it could make a big difference:

• Check your advert – If you aren’t receiving quality applications, this is the place to start. You may need to increase how many adverts you place, and/or spend some time looking through CV databases to find candidates who are looking for a career move but who are inactive on the online job boards you are using.

• What else are you offering besides the basics? – The majority of candidates want a flexible approach to their working week, and some candidates also want the ability to work remotely – is there enough flexibility in your offering that appeals to a wider audience?

• How quickly are you responding to people? Right now it’s a candidate driven market and good candidates will be snapped up fast. Act quickly with those you’re interested in or you run the risk of losing a potential star.

How Much Does It Cost When Recruitment Goes Wrong?

The answer is it’s hard to quantify. Although there are no exact figures out there it can be anywhere between 2 to 3 times the salary of the recruited candidate and that's expensive if the person you've just recruited was part of your senior management team.

Not only have you wasted money on recruitment but also on the training you've given them, any potential loss in sales, not to mention of course the effect on staff morale. The cost of ending up in a perpetual cycle of recruitment and instability can be catastrophic to a business and can soon lead to lack of solid team foundation to build upon.

Businesses must modernise their approach to recruitment if they want to start getting better results. Using an old-fashioned CV reading and interviewing method will only ever bring limited results and statistics show most organisations get it right around half the time using this process.
These are not great odds when you need to hire fast and hire successfully.

When was the last time your recruitment strategy was given an overhaul? If your recruitment process is not working anymore, perhaps it’s time for a change. Talk to us today to find out more.

Benefits of a Bespoke Recruitment Process

Unsuccessful recruitment can be catastrophic for your business, particularly when you are employing key senior people into your team.

Aside from the salary you’ve paid the individual, there are also the hidden costs, how much training it took to bring them up to speed, possibly a loss in sales, disruption to the team the list goes on……

Bringing in an expert and tailoring a bespoke process which fits with the culture of your business is key to success.

Culture fit is the No. 1 reason why recruitment goes wrong, (75% of the time people resign because of a mismatch in fit) therefore a process to test whether a candidate fits with your organisation is vital to ensuring your next hire is a success.

Your process should include:

· A tailored advert which attracts the right talent to your business

· An expert to handle the application process and to read the CV’s

· A bespoke assessment process which tests for fit as well as skillset and which gives you a clearer picture of working styles, behaviours and their skills to do the job.

Whilst outsourcing recruitment can appear to be costly, it will far outweigh the cost of consistently getting it wrong long term.

Whilst remote / flexible working has had a positive impact on UK workforce allowing people to spend more time with family and improving work life balance, new research from Microsoft UK has found that some employees are also adopting unhealthy ways of working that are having a profound impact on their personal lives.

With views from more than 2,000 British workers, the study found that 30% of Brits regularly sacrifice their personal lives for work, 56% have answered work-related calls out of office and 8 in 10 (80%) have struggled to focus at home due to pressure from work.

The research also revealed that 86% say they have felt anxious due to work pressure in the last year –whilst 87% have trouble switching off and sleeping, and 79% with feelings of failure. Meanwhile a third (33%) don’t have enough time to spend with their family and 41% struggle to make time for health appointments – all due to workload. Thus creating an “always on” working culture for many employees.

It’s clear therefore that business leaders must ensure that they don’t just introduce a flexible working policy and hope for the best. Organisational leaders must be role models for their employees, equip them with the tools to make flexible working REALLY work and, most importantly of all, communicate the guidelines which are / are not appropriate.

Do you struggle to find the right people for your team?

Watch this reel by untappedupdates on Instagram untappedupdates • Original Audio

Find out how to reduce risk in your recruitment process

There are so many risk factors involved when it comes to recruitment. From ensuring your advert attracts the right people to making certain you’re appointing the right candidate, there’s so much which can go wrong at every step of the way, it’s no wonder business leaders are filled with dread when they need to find talented people.

No process is perfect, and you can never guarantee success 100% of the time but, there is an answer to minimise risk when you embark on your next recruitment campaign.

One of the most common traps people fall into is how to assess people. Even if you have been lucky enough to attract fantastic people, how you assess them can make or break the whole process.

Interviewing people has been around for centuries, and whilst talking to people is vital, not everyone is an expert interviewer or interviewee so it’s vital you do more than just ask people questions - especially as culture fit is now just as important as skillset in a modern world.

At Untapped Potential we do more than just interviews, we give candidates and clients the opportunity to work together, making it much fairer and, more importantly, reducing risk - meaning a much more successful outcome for all parties.

Did you know that as well as being the MD of Untapped Potential Recruitment, Claire is also a Chair of a business leaders Group in the North-West?

Claire became a Vistage Chair two years ago after completing her NLP Diploma in Coaching and with her drive and determination has doubled the membership size in that time.

Vistage is a learning & development organisation, and the Members meet each month to learn from expert speakers and to discuss and resolve business challenges, opportunities or dilemmas.

All the Members come from non-competing businesses and she is always on the lookout for new members who are looking to grow themselves as leaders and, in turn, grow the businesses they work in.
If you would like to know more about Vistage please contact Claire by email [email protected].

At Untapped Potential Recruitment we pride ourselves on living up to our name and there’s no better example of this than one of our customers, Ben Woodhouse.

I first met Ben 4 years ago when he attended a selection day for an Ops Manager role. Ben was successfully appointed, and I am delighted that ever since, he maintains a close relationship with our business having now become a customer and avid fan of the process. Soon after Ben’s appointment he used Untapped to recruit his own team members and 4 years later he still tells me he wouldn’t recruit any other way.

Ben is now General Manager with E&P Hydraulics UK and last year also took the decision to become a member of my Vistage UK Key Group. With a keen interest in coaching, Ben also saw potential for his own growth as a leader by completing his NLP Diploma and I was honoured to be asked to be his mentor through the process. As a trained coach Ben was the obvious choice when I recently made the decision to appoint a Deputy.

Here’s what Ben had to say about his experience of working with Untapped Potential and how he has benefited from working alongside us over the past 4 years:-

"Since meeting Claire Farley and the team at untapped my career and progression both changed immeasurably. The way I thought about firstly recruitment and secondly my performance as a leader has never been the same again.

The Untapped Potential way of recruitment spins everything I had been taught previously on its head and highlighted the huge flaws in the historic way of recruiting. The old interview technique and how it is approached can be easily rehearsed and shows nothing of the real character of a candidate.

Further to my work on the recruitment side it is the support on a personal level which has really made a difference. Through Claire’s support I have been able to learn and grow as a leader going on to things I would never have dreamed I could’ve achieved, even through to now being a Vistage deputy chair".

Ben is a true success story for Untapped Potential, and we couldn’t ask for a better champion of what we do. To know you’ve made a difference in someone’s career and self development makes it all worthwhile and it’s a pleasure to have such a great ambassador of our brand.

Claire Farley, Managing Director

What sort of experience are you creating for candidates who join your recruitment process?

If you are recruiting and ask people to come along to meet with you or join a video call, this naturally involves a time commitment from them.

Whilst everyone understands that this is necessary and candidates generally want to meet their prospective employers, they also need to feel like the time spent has been worthwhile (particularly if they are unsuccessful).

Whilst you can only usually appoint one candidate, it's important that everyone goes away feeling that they have been heard, valued and most importantly that they have been given the opportunity to show who they are and what they can bring to the role.

Some ideas to help people feel valued in the recruitment process

➡ Promote situational group assessments giving opportunities to demonstrate both knowledge and approach
➡ Provide feedback to everyone who attends and make sure it adds value
➡ Allow candidates to talk directly to senior managers or directors in an open forum
➡ Communicate as much as you can about the process to manage expectations
➡ Keep to any deadlines you have stated
➡ Deal with any issue/queries fairly and promptly (even if the situation seems less than reasonable)

Remember that for some people this will be their only interaction with your business.

Make sure they go away with a positive view as you never know when or where you might come across them in the future.

There's never been a better opportunity to rethink what we do to impact the culture that we create in our businesses. But, the challenge to accommodate different ways of working has never been greater.

With stats from UK showing that 83% of sampled businesses expect to embrace both the physical and the digital workplace in the next 12 months, we need to make informed conscious decisions about who we hire and how they fit into our existing yet evolving structure.

Perhaps it's time to look at your recruitment process and shake it up to consciously hire people who will smooth the path towards the company culture you wish to create for the future.

If you are looking for a different view of recruitment, get in touch.

✉ [email protected]


https://blog.vistage.co.uk/hybrid-working-considerations

Hybrid working requires significant cultural considerations in addition to legal matters Law Firm Irwin Mitchell explains how to make hybrid working work.