Introduction

We’d wanted to work with the team at Brew for a while! Big tea drinkers ourselves and with them being local to us in Manchester, we thought we’re halfway there to being perfectly positioned in supporting them to grow. 

2018 was the year Phil & Aideen first heard of Signature and we began working with them in 2020 having our first meeting that summer and the rest… well we can tell you over a Brew.

The challenge

It was the year of Covid and everything had changed. Brew Tea had previously used large multi-national recruitment companies to support them in their hiring but now felt they needed a more personal and quality-driven approach. They’d suffered from a poor standard of applications and lack of communication amongst other frustrations, and it seemed like now was the right time to try a different approach.

Whilst the D2C side of their business had grown significantly, their OOH business had stalled, as had everyone else’s, and they used the beginning of 2020 as a time to reflect. They took the decision to be more prescriptive about who they worked with on the OOH front and then build again from the ground up. They took a bold leap and decided to get the ball rolling in hiring an OOH Sales Manager but didn’t have the network or resources to recruit directly and wanted a different approach to the one that the rest of the recruitment market offered.

Solution

Signature met Brew Tea in the summer of 2020 and gave them a plan. 2020 was an incredibly tough year to recruit in, with high volumes of applications as a result of widespread redundancies, but a very passive talent pool of top-tier talent who had been retained but we’re reluctant to move during turbulent times. This made it very challenging as Phil & Aideen were looking for a very specific type of individual. They needed a partner they could trust and Signature were best positioned to deliver. We discussed our approach and how, given our ultra-specialism in FMCG commercial appointments, we had the network to introduce the right people to begin to build the high performing team they were looking to create. We also discussed that we’d be able to iron out any prior frustrations they may have had with other recruiters, given our key difference… our team is rewarded based entirely on customer satisfaction and feedback, and this drives every action and decision we make. We’re about people, not numbers.

We carved out a two week plan which incorporated us pulling a team of our people together to leverage an extensive network and then identify the talent suitable for the position before making approaches. We followed this up by arranging interviews to qualify the short list by not just assessing skills and experience, but just as importantly appraising the behaviours and attitudinal characteristics of candidates to ensure they added to the existing culture at Brew Tea. The Brew Tea team had a detailed assignment update part way through the process and a shortlist was delivered of six candidates.

Results

Brew Tea went on to hire their OOH Sales Manager who is now heading up the channel and we’ve recently gone on to recruit someone else to support her as she builds out the team. Within eight weeks of originally discussing the role with Signature, Phil & Aideen had appointed an OOH Sales Manager who has gone on to make a huge impact to the business and brand. 

Conclusion

Investing in people attraction works. You need to lift a CV off a page and what was most important to Brew Tea was finding a person with the right attitudinal characteristics for them, which simply can’t be assessed from reading a CV. The detailed approach and interviews Signature undertook ahead of shortlisting proved invaluable and the in depth candidate profiles that were presented alongside the shortlist provided the perfect steer for their interview and assessment stages.  Brew Tea had previously felt like their time was wasted, no one cared, and were frustrated by the lack of quality and communication of recruitment partners. Signature were able to turn this around completely and have since supported Brew Tea with five additional hires into their commercial team which sees them well on their way to enhancing the commercial performance of their brand, and ultimately to elevate tea drinker’s experience!