Date posted:
Fri 14 May 2021
Adele Carr Recruitment are celebrating a record ever first quarter in 2021/22 with revenue double that of last year and 22% up on 2019/20.
Like many businesses, 12 months ago, the Warrington headquartered business with offices in Chester, Liverpool, Lancashire, Altrincham and Manchester, was in despair as demand for professional recruitment fell off a cliff. There were grave concerns about the future with the country locked down in the grip of the pandemic.
Said Founder Adele Carr, “We placed just 3 candidates in April 2020. It was a very scary time. Everyone had to work from home or not at all as we experienced the lowest demand in our history. Thank goodness, we had the furlough scheme which took away the pressure of making redundancies.”
Gradually through careful management, the business improved with staff returning to work part time and then pretty much fully operational by the end of the summer but still with reduced demand.
“We brought our people back to work as early as we could. It was having a negative effect on some people’s mental health and we wanted to ensure we were ahead of the recovery.”
Celebration of the business’s 18th birthday in July had to be done over Zoom rather than the usual extravagant party that was planned.
There were some success stories during the downturn, noticeably the professional practice division remained busy and there was an increase in payroll vacancies as practices were clearly busy operating furlough.
The bold bounce back strategy included moving head office to Riverside Court on Chester Road in January 2021, effectively tripling the working space available, investing in a new state of the art CRM system and starting a new payroll division headed up by Tom Thomson.
“I could not be more happy with the way our team and our clients and suppliers have responded to the challenges we have faced. We have actually found that a more flexible way of working is good for everyone and brings better results.”
In April 2021, the business placed 55 candidates.
There have been some happy individual stories too…
Just before the pandemic, Adele Carr had backed Sarah Davies to start up Adele Carr Business Support. In hindsight, it was possibly the worst time to start it up but despite the lock downs it hit its ambitious numbers thanks to Sarah’s focus and drive and as a result she was promoted to Associate Director in April.
Thirteen years ago, Alicia Little joined the company as a nineteen year old office junior. Over the years she has grown with the company taking time out to study accountancy, human resources, payroll and administration and in April 2021 was promoted to Operations Director.
Said Adele, “Both these promotions show what can be achieved at Adele Carr Recruitment. We are prepared to invest and support great people like Sarah who have a passionate desire to achieve a business plan and Alicia has literally been promoted from the bottom to the top of the organisation. I could not be more proud.”
Adele Carr Recruitment is hiring!! If you are looking for a career opportunity with a well established and progressive business that retains everything that is good about an owner managed business and has the ambition to remain the leading independent professional services recruiter in the North West…look no further.