Specialist recruitment firm launches

Fresh produce businesses are being welcomed into the garden of Eden with the opening of a new specialist recruitment firm.

Focused on the food, retail and logistics industries, Eden aims to develop partnerships with businesses looking for a long-term relationship with a recruiter that “understands the culture and values of the company” and gets away from the “CV matching and email” culture.

MD David Macaulay, formerly a director at Redfox for seven “thoroughly enjoyable” years, is launching the new business this month in Cambridge.

Macaulay hopes the venture will shed the shackles of “recruitment stereotypes” and remove the sales-focussed, CV emailing element of the process.

Macaulay told FPJ: “Our aim is to challenge the stereotypes of the recruitment industry. People view recruitment as a sales process but at Eden we believe finding a candidate the right step in their career or discovering the perfect person for a client’s business is more important than selling clients the latest CV in the hope of making a quick ‘deal’.”

He believes the current process within recruitment often features “quick fix” solutions matching CVs with job specifications rather than taking time to ensure the candidate will be a long-term solution for a business.

As a result, Eden meets each client at their site before they start working on a project. Macaulay added: “We run sessions with our clients to understand their markets, culture and strategy for the future. We then spend time defining what skills, behaviours and values as well as experience the candidate will need to have to be successful in the role.

Eden will be using specific headhunting techniques as well as advertising to find the best candidates. “As we are spending time to understand exactly what our clients are looking for why would we not use the best methods to target that perfect candidate? People believe headhunting is only used at a senior level but it allows you find the best candidate for the position rather than the most active.

“Our research says companies are looking for a different approach. They want to work intimately with a company that will increase the success of each person they recruit and that’s what Eden is all about - we believe our candidates will create more value for the client and stay longer.

The company aims to offer a number of services for candidate including launching the Eden App later this year.