Jack Wallace, Finance Director
Over six months, we partnered closely with the Finance Director during a period of growth and change, recruiting five key finance hires from Accounts Assistants to a Senior Management Accountant. The aim was to strengthen the team structure, introduce clear levels of capability and establish a sustainable succession plan, enabling senior leaders to focus on commercial and client-facing priorities. Candidates needed solid month-end experience, confidence engaging directly with clients and a desire to progress, while being within easy reach of the Harrogate office to support team cohesion.
Through a trusted partnership with the Finance Director, we successfully filled the roles within the agreed timeframe. By staying close to the process and adapting the brief as the business evolved, we ensured each hire met the technical requirements while fitting the company’s culture and pace. Our hands-on, consultative approach, including face- to-face meetings with every candidate, enabled us to identify strong long-term hires rather than quick fixes. The result was a more structured, capable and stable finance function, giving the leadership team greater capacity to focus on strategic priorities while creating a scalable team for future growth.
Recruiting new hires, particularly when bringing in people from outside of the business, poses huge risks and, no matter how thorough the interview process, every hire is a leap of faith for both the business and the candidate.
When scaling this process to recruit half a new team due to continued growth, the risks increase exponentially. You are never quite sure how the team culture will change and resettle into something new once a large number of new starters are added in a short space of time.
We worked almost exclusively with Willow Recruit to bring in five new hires at various levels. Willow differentiate themselves by not only interviewing and screening every candidate but producing a clear summary of why a candidate is a good fit.
This saves us time screening candidates ourselves and having to do twice as many interviews, reducing time to reach a decision with a smaller, more focus candidate base. This also improves the end-to-end application process for candidates too. In the VervLife Finance team, roles are wide ranging and have elements of “non-traditional” areas including client liaison, business partnering, and understanding of a complex tech stack. The need for well-rounded Finance professionals who can be just as comfortable working on preparation of accounts as delivering to an investor grade client base is critical.
Willow understood all of this and the personalities that work best in our environment. Those that can handle the pace and changing nature of our business and the Property Management sector tend to thrive and grow as VervLife grows.
I am pleased with the outcome of the five new hires. All are settling in well and starting to deliver real value. We are excited to see how they develop with the business and keen to create opportunities for progression for those that want it.