The fine art of finding just the right employees

Mar 2 2010 by Karen Dent, The Journal

FINDING the right staff is can be a thorny issue for small firms to deal with. We asked three successful North East entrepreneurs for their tips.

Russell Borthwick, managing director of Sunderland-based marketing and PR firm, Press Ahead:

“Finding the right people on my journey at Press Ahead has definitely been my biggest test. I apply a fairly exacting person specification and we never employ simply to fill a specific role, so in many ways, it has dictated the rate of our growth.

“We've never employed via an advertisement. Instead, our team has been carefully handpicked from people that have caught our eye with their attention to detail, flair, work ethic and ability to delight and make a positive difference to our and our customers' businesses.

“Finding the right people is crucial and you need to trust them implicitly to help build the business. I found that large plc companies are obsessed with margin and shareholder values at the expense of people, customers and brands, so it's great to have the freedom to pick the very best team without constraints and red tape that so frustrated me in the past.”

Neil Clark, founder of Newcastle creative digital consultancy, Eyelevel:

“The support of friends and family has been vital to my business. We moved from London back to the North East to be near family, and we quickly fitted in to a network of new friends who've been a big help along the way.

“Finding good people to work for you is always a challenge. Not just people with the right skills but with the right attitude and a real enthusiasm for creating accurate and arresting images. I'm not interested in employing people without a passion for what they do, and that goes for admin staff as well as artists.

“What makes this whole thing worthwhile is being able to work with really amazing people, and being able to choose those people and make that judgement myself. It makes coming to work every day really stimulating and means I always go home with something new to think about.”

Louise Allcroft, chief executive of biotech business Complement Genomics, based in Sunderland:

“In terms of staff, it hasn't always been that easy. Getting the right people with a passion for what they do can be tricky. You can have the best CV in the world but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as it were. We've had a lot of graduates emailing us with their CVs, but they're often institutionalised while at university and work becomes a culture shock.

“I've found delegation pretty tricky. When you first start, the business is your baby and it's very hard to let go and let other staff do the job. But I've learnt over the years that that's what you've got to do because there are some really talented people out there. Also, if you keep doing everything yourself, you're your own worst enemy. You've got other people who are dying for some responsibility and you're depriving them of that.

“Now I've learnt to delegate, I've got some absolutely cracking staff who take so much pressure off me. They're not scared of picking me up on things and that's great because it means they're professional and they care about what we're doing.”

This column is run in association with the Entrepreneurs Forum.

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