Evolving to survive and thrive

Laurie Boyall

Recessions test the mettle of most businesses; it’s hard to establish a sure-fire way to survive them. Laurie Boyall explains how his organisation has diversified in order to survive

The last few years will have been toughest that the vast majority of recruiters can remember although, having run McGregor Boyall for the last twenty five years, I have to confess that it isn’t the first – or even the second – recession I have experienced.

One of the biggest differences with the last downturn however was its speed. As a consequence, organisations had to be agile enough to be able to evolve and develop their strategies in order to not only survive, but thrive.

While many City recruiters, particularly in the period immediately after the Lehman Brothers crisis in 2007, were wringing their hands , the more savvy operators had seen the writing on the wall and were already looking at new business areas, and new geographies. We were one of them.

While historically we have always been seen as a financial services technology business, we have been doing some good business with a major media group over a number of years and through this account we have had opportunity to diversify in to new areas such as HR, procurement, marketing, finance and change. 

This has been the starting point for both the investment in a Commerce & Industry division, which has grown from four just over a year ago to a team of 13, and also the growth of new teams specifically focusing on marketing, procurement, finance, HR and change.

We also knew that we had to look at geographical diversification in order to lessen our reliance on the City and our strong balance sheet enabled us to invest in three new offices during 2011/2012 in Singapore, Dubai and Edinburgh.

If you are going to survive you need to look at the bigger picture. In order to evolve into a business that was fit for a new economic landscape we knew we had to hire some new talent to help us do it. Unlike many of our competitors we increased hiring significantly during 2011/2012 and our global headcount now stands at 115. 

Having already attracted some senior hires from names such as Randstad, Robert Half, Hudson and Aston Carter we have now also increased our talent management team by two people to help with our internal recruitment efforts and we’re forecasting another 15-20 hires this year.

Hiring exceptional talent can’t be done on the cheap but when you set about evolving your business there will always be a financial hit – you can’t evolve without investment. But as long as you have been prudent in the past so that your balance sheet is strong then the business will stay in good shape.

You may also find you get a bit of negative press, particularly if you make an operating loss due to high levels of investment.  However, what is more important is the ability to reduce the reliance on a single sector – and on a single vertical within that sector – and in a single location.  That way the results for the future will be much more positive. 

While there may be a lot of ‘noise’ around league tables of recruitment consultancies who have increased turnover and headcount – it’s the strength of the balance sheet that counts.  Despite the countless column inches now devoted  to words such as “economic upturn” and “recovery”, I suspect there are still a fair few CEOs of recruitment companies being kept awake at night because of the level of debt being carried on their balance sheets. 

Laurie Boyall is managing director of McGregor Boyall