Where did the last five years go?

It’s fair to say that my volume of blogs has dropped off this year, just like my gym attendance, commitment to drink less and my vow to cut down on the coffee.

Life’s been busy at 3Search, and I thought now was a good time to reminisce on what we’ve achieved over the past five years since we started the business.

It all began over a beer and a “what if we built our own recruitment firm?" which soon snowballed into conversations about how and when.

We must have spent about a month debating what to call the business and came up with some questionable names along the way (‘Bull and Futures’ or ‘People Soup’ to share a couple!?)

Nostalgia makes me feel like the early days were all fun and games, just three guys working from a flat, cooking each other lunch and listening to MTV dance. However, when I spend a bit more time contemplating what is was like I started to remember how much hard work it really was!

We only had a matter of months to start placing people before our cash ran out and our contractual restrictions meant we couldn’t work with any of our existing client base.

I can’t speak for the others but I learnt an awful lot during that period about the necessity of hard work and determination, as well as about how to build new relationships from a standing start, even without a website at one point!

Before we knew it, we had our first office, which was all of about 150 square foot. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure how we managed to persuade recruiters to come and join our new project, but thankfully we did!

The likes of David Wall and Olly Amos, have been with us since the early days and theirs, and others, hard work and loyalty has been one of the main reasons we’ve been able to grow and continue to help business hire marketing and digital talent.

Why else have we been successful? We’ve been fortunate enough to have some great clients and ambassadors. I also think it comes across that we genuinely enjoy what we do and we care about our business and customer which is, in my opinion, one of the main things that stands us apart from the competition and allows us to continually outperform them.

So 3Search in numbers over the past five years. We’re now up to 32 consultants, have worked out of five different offices, 1,731 candidates successfully placed, there have been 11 promotions, four babies, nine houses bought and 31,845 pints of beer drunk (estimated...)

Up to the present day. We’re embarking on an exciting period of change and growth at 3Search and the 11Investments group.

We’ve turbocharged our support function over the past few months with Mike, Amelia and Louise coming across Marketing, Employee Engagement and Finance, which will free up Joe, Andy and my time to focus more on working with our clients and growing the business.

We're also about to launch a brand new website, implement new company values and behaviours and put into place some exciting domestic and international growth plans. There's much planned for 2020!

So, thank you again for all your support over the past five years and we look forward to continuing to work with you for the next five.

Charlie