The candidate of today is the client of tomorrow

The Howett Thorpe philosophy is simple: we take the time to understand exactly what our clients and candidates are looking for in the workplace. We visit our clients to talk through their needs and gain first-hand experience of their working environment and company culture. This helps us to identify and place the best possible candidate into a role where they tend to stay for the long term, and eventually become clients themselves.

I became personally interested in recruitment when I was a student and my friends asked me for advice about job interviews. I enjoyed being able to help them find the roles they wanted and realised that knowing my friends as individuals enabled me to tailor my advice specifically to them. That discovery has influenced all my professional relationships with both clients and candidates.

A career in recruitment was a logical step for me. I started with Accountancy personnel in 1985, loved the work and was quickly promoted to manager, first at Basingstoke, then at Guildford, before opening a new office in Woking. After about three years the company was taken over by a well-known national consultancy and suddenly my job was all about numbers rather than providing a quality recruitment service that truly understood the clients’ needs. This way of working seemed so wrong to me that I knew I had to set up my own consultancy to provide individually tailored recruitment. The first Howett Thorpe office opened in June 1988.

One of my great satisfactions is that many of the candidates I have placed, whether they are part qualified or qualified, are still developing their careers within the same companies. A large proportion of them are now also clients.

I work as hard at recruiting my own consultants as I do at filling vacancies for clients. It’s essential that they always put maximum effort into filling jobs, be it a part time bookkeeper role or a Financial Director. Team members have previously worked for highly respected national and specialist competitors or in the finance and accountancy sectors. I am proud to say that many of them have worked with me for five or more years; in a recruitment environment this is a great achievement and is very important in providing continuity for clients.

What is unique about Howett Thorpe is that consultants have the autonomy to make decisions so they don’t waste time waiting for agreements to be signed off at a higher level. I have always told my consultants; treat your desk as if it’s your own business.

We are all proud of the exceptional service levels Howett Thorpe has maintained since 1988 and the growth and development the business has enjoyed because of this. I am always available to speak directly to candidates or clients and always welcome any feedback.

Greg Thorpe, Managing Director