Since launching Mackie Myers we have had a lot of intrigue around our decision to focus our efforts on the small and mid-sized company market. In the this article find out why…

The Market
The small and mid-sized market can loosely be defined as organisations employing up to 250 staff. This space accounts for around 99% of all companies, 55% of turnover and 60% of all private sector jobs. In the private sector, this includes start-ups, scale ups, established owner managed companies, those going through growth funding rounds with VC or PE investment, and even those potentially looking to IPO in the future. Across the public sector, this includes educational institutions, social enterprise, charities, arts and heritage, healthcare, housing and government bodies. An eclectic mix of organisations, it is a fascinating, dynamic and thriving part of the UK jobs market.

Recruitment Challenges
From a recruitment perspective, this is also part of the market where organisations can often require the most support in attracting, recruiting and retaining talent to thrive. Based on our experience, this this typically due to one of three reasons. Firstly, they may not have the brand presence or recognition to compete for the best people possible against larger employers. Secondly, their internal management teams often have more competing priorities and thus less time to dedicate towards quality hiring activities. Finally, they may not have any internal talent function, and if they do it can often be overstretched and lack specialist knowledge in key areas. To compound these challenges, the majority of the recruitment market typically place a higher value on working with large established employers/brands. As such, less well known ‘SME’s’ tend to experience a poor level of service from recruiters they do work with, lacking the quality and longevity of service from a strategic partner that they deserve.

Career Experience
Our experience also shows that working for an SME is a fundamentally different proposition to working in a large corporate. Typically, candidates will be doing a job which involves simultaneously delivering more junior and more senior activities than their experience dictates. As such, people should be comfortable working top to bottom in an environment where the work someone does can have a much more direct and tangible impact. Many people are drawn to the idea of this, but the day to day reality versus a more structured corporate with a large infrastructure can be difficult. Due to the difference in skills and mindset required to thrive in a smaller business, it is extremely important that a recruitment partner is actively factoring this into the vetting process to ensure the right long term fit for all parties.

Our interest and experience of working with SME’s across multiple sectors places us in a unique position to add value in the market. If you are a candidate interested in working in a smaller business environment, or an organisation looking to improve how you attract, recruit and retain talent in your exciting yet imperfect world, please get in touch: hello@mackiemyers.co.uk