On 6th November 1st Choice Recruitment opened its doors in Bedford, in a small upstairs premises, in Midland Road. Started on the sum of £2000 by Maeve McGill the business soon gathered some real momentum. A thriving second floor office based in Midland Road was very quickly supplying staff to local businesses all over the Bedford area. Everything was manual in those days of course, there were no facilities to email CVs to clients, or send information to candidates. So, we either stood by the fax feeding in pages and pages – getting frustrated when they all jammed up, or simply jumped in the car and delivered them by hand!
Every Friday our temps would come into the offices to collect their payslips and have a cup of tea…which they often made themselves in our small makeshift kitchen! It was a lovely way to do things, such a buzz with an office filled with our temps at the end of each week, collecting their brown envelopes and more often than not sitting having a cigarette in the office while they told us about their week – we almost can’t imagine that ever happened now! We have such fond memories of those days – but things move on and so must we, and what a journey it has been!
Gill Knight took over the running of the business in ‘97 after a few years’ service. We soon occupied the whole building in those initial offices as well as starting to open more branches, Milton Keynes was next in ‘94, Biggleswade in ‘96, closely followed by Huntingdon and Hitchin.
As you can imagine, times have massively changed the way we do our work in Recruitment. The internet has had a massive impact on some parts of our process for the better, although we still like to retain the personal elements where we can. Meeting our Customers (Clients and potential Candidates) is one of those things we still do today as much as we can. We love the communication element of our business and really see the value in spoken conversation instead of just “sending an email”…our roles revolve so much around sharing information about our Clients’ businesses and opportunities that are much better described in a person to person conversation, similarly when representing our top candidates, we are passionate about our profession and this can so easily be misconstrued or lost somehow over email. How can you make a job offer by email to a candidate that you are been working with – we will be just as excited as they are, and we want to let them know it?!
Our teams are made up of well-trained recruiters and meticulous admin support (the devil is in the detail!) we are a collaborative bunch and we love to solve our customers recruitment challenges, whether it is finding a tricky skills set and person fit for a new team member, or going all out to place a candidate once we understand all their needs. Feedback is key to us; everyone loves great feedback, but we also know that we can always improve! No one is perfect after all….
Having survived at least a couple of recessions throughout the last 30 years we now look forward into 2020 and the next phase for the business, with a team of managers who have been in position a combined total of around 120 years (there are 6 of us) we have a steady platform on which to continue to build our journey. People sometimes ask us how we have managed to be successful for so long, there aren’t many Recruitment companies that can claim such longevity and staff retention too! In short we have created a culture where we have fun – happy people are generally more successful, we work hard – we never want to give up (although we will tell our customers if their requirements aren’t realistic for whatever reason – honesty is huge for us) and our teams work collaboratively to bring all our customers the best solution or talent possible. Whether it be the best job opportunity, the best candidate, or the service we offer, we are proud to deliver on expectations. A win for us is a 1st Choice win, our teams work together with each other not against each other as lots of recruiters do. It makes a big difference. Each member of staff is equally important and critical for the bigger picture.
Why not check out our ratings and reviews on Google, if you have never worked with us maybe it is time to try, 30 years’ experience and local market knowledge should go some way to making us your 1st Choice for Recruitment.
