The History of Placing Faces

We launched the recruitment agency in January 2016 as Exella Recruitment Specialists. The aim of the company was to steer away from the monotonous methods that are so commonly seen in the high street today. Typically, these high street recruitment agencies expect staff to cold call constantly, and require candidates to take time out of their day to be screened face to face. These are methods that are proven to have worked for years, but we believe that you can find quality candidates and clients more efficiently with our resilient but considerate approach.

The first thing we had to do was set a niche.

Very few agencies specialise in mortgage and property recruitment; it is a market that may see ups and downs. However, property is constantly increasing all across the UK. Whether it is commercial or residential, this means companies are always expanding.

If Exella Recruitment could learn the market and build a strong network, then they could really run away with the market.

These first six months were spent getting our name out there, learning about the mortgage market and asking a number of significant questions. Some of these included: Who are the leading companies? What are the relevant qualifications? What do lenders, brokers and estate agencies all look for when searching for candidates? These were integral questions to ask in beginning our process of building the foundations of the company.

By mid-2016, Exella had a great pipeline of business, gaining job roles from building societies, leading estate agencies and large mortgage companies. In 2017, Exella Recruitment Specialists started to recruit into the IFA market, boasting clients such as DeVere UK, a global company with thousands of employees. Alongside this, we still heavily recruited into the mortgage market- approximately 70% of our business was, and still is, mortgage related. The following few years were spent constantly growing, constantly learning – we can safely say that we are now a true mortgage, financial advice and property recruitment specialist.

In 2021 we decided to launch our rebrand, to Placing Faces – we suit the branding, the name, the logo, it says a lot more about us as a growing company in comparison to the branding of Exella.

Please feel free to have a read of our post about the re-brand journey if you are curious about why we did it.