We are “reyt” excited to have been selected as a finalist in the Global Recruiter Awards this year! We still can’t quite believe it! And what better category than for “Best Employer Brand”, because we think we’ve built a pretty decent brand! Our vision for our business is becoming reality!
From the beginning
When we decided to set up as “Exella” back in 2016, at the ages of 21 and 25 years old, we knew what we wanted to achieve, but we didn’t really know how to get there. We followed suit with the industry and tried to fit in, thinking this would bring us success. We went with the typical corporate look; colour schemes, fonts, images, but our approach to recruitment didn’t match what other agencies were doing. We never cold call. We don’t believe in pushy sales pitches or fishing for candidates. Realising that we were at risk of being seen as “another recruitment agency”, we decided to change our image to match our approach…
Making a change
We wanted to be seen as fun, personable and modern. Not wanting it to be obvious at a first glance that we are a recruitment agency, we want to catch people’s eye for the right reasons and then hope they’ll remember us when they need us. There was a lot of thought and input put in from our team, our web developers, even our family and friends. We did some research into the psychology of colours when picking the colour scheme for our website. Looking at what colours evoke certain emotions. We chose colours that represent us: ambitious, compassionate, friendly, fun, relaxed. We believe that if we can attract strong candidates through excellent branding, we can approach clients with an impressive candidate pool.
What’s in a name
When it came to our name, we had a list of several names and decided to do our own research. We put the names to friends, family and other people in offices at Sum Studios. Placing Faces was neither of the Director’s first choice, but it seemed to be the most popular! Now, we couldn’t love it more if we tried. As this 18 months has passed, we feel it fits us more now than it did back in 2021. Where “Faces” could just refer to people – clients and/or candidates – now it refers to YOU. By this, we mean that we really get to know YOU. We have a lot of returning clients, some returning candidates (but not many! They seem to love their new jobs!). The “Faces” are now you on the end of the phone, getting carried away having a chat about the weekend… and about Kevin.
The Face
We wanted our logo to be fun, unique, appealing and not obviously “recruitment”. The “face” in the location pin is to appeal to people’s curiosity. We made it genderless to appeal to everyone. Our data showed that the gender split of our website traffic was 54% male and 46% female. Also, it won’t age (not like the rest of us!) but our logo needed to look young and modern to attract our key market. The majority of candidates that we place are aged between 25-34 years and this age group makes up 33.5% of our website traffic.
The Faces in our team also have their own caricature faces. This isn’t something we’ve seen in the industry before and we’ve had some really great compliments about it!
Round of applause
We have been applauded by both candidates and clients on our branding. Our approach to social media gets good engagement and interaction because we’re not seen as “another recruiter” trying to convince them to sign up to jobs and news. We get interaction because we are fun and personable; we often post about what our team members are doing and we’re not afraid to show our faces! If you haven’t seen us on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Linked In) already, then check it out. Join in with our polls, take a look at our team, and give Kevin some love!
We have bright pink t-shirts with our logo on, we send out branded Christmas cards and wine boxes as “thank you’s” and “congratulations”. (If that’s not a reason to help us find you a job, or a candidate, then we don’t know what is!).
Where to now?
We’ll continue to be great on social media and carry on blogging. We’ll sponsor some golf holes (Alex) and animal charity events (Ella). With the changing ways of working, more hybrid and remote roles available, we have adapted the tag line “Made in Sheffield, Placing Faces everywhere”. We are now not tied to matching clients and candidates in Sheffield. We have taken our talents elsewhere and built a database of clients and candidates all over the UK. You can see this for yourself on our jobs page, where we’ve got roles in various UK locations, as well as Dubai! Our ultimate goal is to place as many faces as we can successfully… being the key word! We’re not just about numbers; we like to know that the effort we’ve put in getting to know you, has paid off, and you’ve found a job or an employee that is perfect.
We are memorable, and this is how we retain custom from clients, and attract attention from new candidates. Usually when they’ve seen our logo across social media! We’re always proud of what we’ve achieved, and proud of our team, but now we can be equally as proud of the brand we have built! It really represents us as individuals, as well as a business; fun, laid back but committed to what we do!