Coventry firm TalentTech Recruitment is all set to move into its biggest office yet and launch an ambitious piece of software for jobseekers and companies – just 18 months after being based in its co-founder’s kitchen.
Support and advice from Business Ready has helped co-founders Nick Goodwin and John Ahearne turn their expertise in tech and recruitment into a highly successful business that negotiated the challenges of the pandemic and emerged strongly.
Pictured (from left to right): Dave O’Neill, Ryan Parfrey, John Ahearne, Dirk Schafer, Lyndsey Hulm, Nick Goodwin, and Rich Shortland
The Company
Nick and John founded TalentTech in April 2019 after leaving a much larger recruitment company to go it alone. With a background in engineering, the pair carved out a niche in helping technical and technology companies hire candidates, and finding better work for those already in the industry.
After speaking to the Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub in October 2019, Nick and John were put in touch with Dirk Schafer of the University of Warwick Science Park, and the pair decided to move TalentTech to UWSP’s Business Innovation Centre at Binley.
The connections with the University of Warwick and the many tech companies based at Binley and the other Science Park sites made Binley an attractive site for the business to move to.
The Challenge
While Nick and John had great expertise in recruitment, neither had any real knowledge of how best to run a business.
The pandemic also brought its own challenges to the business – from people needing to find work after being made redundant in the early stages of the crisis, to businesses looking to fill vacancies once many of the restrictions had eased.
Dirk introduced TalentTech to Business Ready, UWSP’s business support programme, which was able to put them on the right path and give them the nous they needed to thrive in an especially testing time.
The Solution
The Business Ready team worked closely with TalentTech after its move to the Business Innovation Centre, and mentored Nick and John to help them master key business procedures such as financial planning, digital marketing, and upscaling through productization. This was particularly important to help the business become more sustainable and resilient.
It also helped them make connections with both the University of Warwick and Coventry University, allowing them to provide advice and the company’s services to students, graduates and university departments in finding work and hiring top candidates.
TalentTech was able to sit on the Coventry and Warwickshire Skills Group thanks to Business Ready’s links with the Growth Hub, which meant it could reach further businesses looking to hire new staff.
Dirk said: “Nick and John had the recruitment expertise, but we were able to help them develop the business acumen needed to turn that expertise into a successful enterprise.
“Our online training and our links to the University really helped them apply their expertise in the right way to help them grow, and it’s great to see how far they have come.”
The Results
Business Ready’s advice and support gave TalentTech the skills and connections it needed to not only navigate the challenges of the pandemic, but grow its team as well.
The business has grown from just Nick and John to a team of nine in just 18 months.
Now, TalentTech is set to move into a bigger office within the Business Innovation Centre, is looking to hire an intern, and is set to launch a new software product ‘MPLOYABILITY™ By TalentTech’ which it had come up with before Covid hit.
The product allows jobseekers and businesses to independently improve their prospects of finding a role and hiring a top candidate respectively.
Nick added: “Business Ready has taught us so much about key business procedures, and has opened plenty of doors for us too.
“We now have strong connections with the two universities here in Coventry, we have sat on the C&W Skills Group, and we are giving careers advice to students too.
“Business Ready’s advice has enabled us to grow and improve very quickly and meet the fluid demands of the recruitment market over the course of the pandemic and beyond.
“We can’t wait to see what 2022 brings, and it’s fantastic that we’ll be doing that from a much bigger office thanks to our success.”
John said: “We came up with MPLOYABILITY™ By TalentTech as a concept before the pandemic, but once Covid hit we had to focus on helping those who had been laid off and later the businesses needing to recruit new staff.
“Now restrictions have eased and we’ve taken on more staff, we should be in a strong position to refine and release it in the new year.
“Business Ready’s advice and support has helped us take it to the next level and has opened the right doors for us. It’s been a long time coming and we’re really looking forward to launching it.”
