Vibrant, driven and keen to make an impact, the board at Darwin Recruitment explains why developing the ideal staffing dynamic is a key part of their growing expansion.

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RECRUITMENT INTERNATIONAL
November 2013

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What’s Driving Darwin?
By Recruitment International
Vibrant, driven and keen to make an impact, the board
at Darwin Recruitment explains why developing the
ideal staffing dynamic is a key part of their growing
expansion.
Emerging from what they admit has been a period of low
exposure, Darwin are keen to focus on expansion and
developing awareness of their brand, the components of which,
diversity, excitement and innovation, to name three, underpin
the company’s growth strategy.
The Fast Track business specialises in the European IT and
Telecoms sector and is performing notably well. Over the
last 3 years robust growth has been achieved with 2013 net
fee income growing by over 20%, client growth of 31% and
employees growth at 47% against 2012. Impressive by any
standard!
The company’s success hasn’t gone unrecognised. They were
awarded Top 250 status by Recruitment International , reached
75th position in TheJobCrowd’s 2013/14 graduate survey, ‘The
Top 100 Companies To Work For’ and ranked number ten in the
‘Top 42 Best Trading Partners’ list in the Plimsoll IT Recruitment
Industry Analysis 2012.
Co-founders Paul Kirby and Daniel Mulholland, 36 and 37
respectively, established Darwin in 2001. Chief Executive Officer
Kirby had an impressive history in sales to use as leverage for
the startup, while Chief Development Officer Mulholland
had previous experience in a Fast Track 100 international IT
recruitment business.
Most recruitment companies aspire to go global, but Darwin
stand out in that they already trade in Scandinavia, DACH and
the Benelux regions, and already have businesses set up and
located in the Netherlands and in Switzerland. What sets them
apart is that their head office in the UK, which is the only place
they do not have any business! That’s set to change though,
Kirby says, “We’re looking at a UK business as part of the overall
strategy, which is why in the next six months the team will move
to a new, vibrant and buzzing office, with increased capacity for
150 people.”
Expansion strategy
Kirby is naturally excited as he reveals a new strategy is in the
process of being launched, stating they would like to expand
The Darwin Recruitment board L-R: Chris Southgate, Alf Davis, Paul Kirby, Miles Hunt, Daniel Mulholland, Simon Lawton
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3. cover story
What’s Driving Darwin?
By Recruitment International
recognising its potential and having faith in its growth strategy.
All compelling reasons for joining the board. He says, “Focussing
on the 3 core sectors of cloud, application development and
telco, in very specific geographies, I can only foresee that the
market’s going to be supportive of our growth.”
Simon Lawton, non-executive Finance Director, also joins with
a large amount of expansion experience. He is currently CFO
board advisor to 5 SMEs and holds 4 non-executive director
posts.
Alf Davis, is the new Chief Operating Officer. He spent 13 years
with Modis International, both pre and post its acquisition and
integration into the Adecco Group and has been a director of
European staffing companies since 2004.
An office in Germany is expected to open within the next 6
months and offices in Norway, Sweden and Denmark are also
on the cards. Plans to explore the viability of doing business
in Eastern Europe are also underway, with the knowledge that
the region offers a large supply of skilled and as yet untapped
labour.
Paul Kirby above and Daniel Mulholland below.
threefold in the next three to five years, ideally hoping to
achieve a 50% growth annually, for the next three years. Darwin
aims to be a recognised European specialist in application
development, cloud computing and Telco staffing.
Supported by an established senior management team and six
board members (including Kirby and Mulholland), Darwin is in a
prime position to carry out its expansion strategy. The 110-strong
workforce has recently benefited from the appointment of
a new board to help guide it through its crucial growth plan.
Miles Hunt, vastly experienced in global expansion and the new
non-executive Chairman, has personally invested in Darwin
Mulholland explains, “We want to send out a message that
we’re growing, not just geographically, but in respect of but the
way in which we trade. We’ve historically been a 360 degree
spot business. Now we are evolving a kick out business to serve
customers on a larger scale. We’ve grown 30% year on year,
and we fully believe we can accelerate that now with our added
expertise and investment to 50%.” A further consideration and
a mouth-watering proposition to factor in is that while the
company has so far grown organically it is now considering
acquisitions as an option.
The staffing battle
The biggest challenge, Darwin’s board agrees, is sourcing and
attracting quality staff. Facing a climate of plentiful work in the
booming IT sector, there is a notable shortage of talent to fill
these positions. Kirby says, “The nature of the challenge of
growing internationally working across borders with different
processes and behaviours, requires finding people who have
an international mindset and are capable of growing with the
business. We know there’s a very short supply of people with
that capability and potential. That’s going to be our biggest
challenge – no doubt about it.”
Recruiting, and keeping, skilled workers is a top priority, Darwin
estimate that staff attrition is approximately 20%, which is
around 50% better than the average staffing company. “The

4. staff pool is primarily made up of graduates, which has been a
positive and conscious decision”. Kirby says, “People coming in
can see that this is a lively culture and environment. We’re not
promoting on length of service, we’re promoting on capability
and success within the company and I think that’s very exciting.”
Both Kirby and Mulholland have actively liaised with local
schools and universities to run courses and work programmes
and the company has successfully run internship and work
experience programmes for the past two years both in the UK
and Amsterdam.
A unique brand
Darwin wants to be more focused in its employee branding and
Davis stresses that placing importance on culture and internal
branding is, “Quite rare now in the recruitment sector. More
commonly companies feel an overwhelming need to become
overly corporate. Whilst we strongly focus on professionalism,
this should only add to as opposed to detracting from the
culture of an entrepreneurial company.”
Supporting the entrepreneurial ethos of the company, grassroots
development is welcomed and employees are encouraged
to share ideas as managerial staff aim to be approachable in
order to foster bottom-up development. Mulholland enthuses,
“We encourage grassroots ideas, and that’s recognised across
the business, we want people to feel they can approach
management to discuss ideas.”
The company supports individualism, but equally places much
importance on teamwork. Knowing how to deliver customer
service from the offset is essential, as is being proactive. The
company is known internally for its fun but focussed work
ethic, offering regular benefits as gym membership and an
active social agenda, alongside the opportunity for travel and
a range of incentives such as holidays for top performers. Kirby,
Mulholland and Davis have in fact recently returned from a trip
to Barcelona with a selection of sales staff. Corporate social
responsibility isn’t left by the wayside either and employees
follow a strict environmental policy, while staff regularly take
part in and organise charity fundraising events.
“We want to send out a message
that we’re growing, not just
geographically, but in respect of
but the way in which we trade.”
Alf Davis
Investing in staff
Alongside recruiting dynamic professionals, Darwin strives to
hone the professional development of its staff throughout the
duration of their service. Kirby states, “We spend an awful lot
on employee development. The emphasis we place on training
in the first 5 years of a sales consultant’s career is quite rare. We
endeavour to avoid the regurgitating sales process. We try to
make the training a bit more interesting in the sense that once
they’ve got to the end of two years they go on an advanced
development programme which focuses on commercial
skills. Our aspiration is to make them more rounded in terms
of commercial business people, as opposed to being ‘just
recruiters’. We believe that after two years they will want to
start to go through a programme of personal development.”
Kirby believes the decision to offer long term staff investment
through training is definitely one of the reasons why staff
Chris Southgate

5. cover story
What’s Driving Darwin?
By Recruitment International
publisher Broadband TV News a few weeks ago. This includes
providing information on the ‘movers and shakers’ in the
market and events, as well as helping to increase readership in
exchange for use of a job board. He believes it is the first deal of
its kind for the IT recruitment industry.
When posed with the question, what makes Darwin stand out
from the crowd, Kirby says he believes it is the combination of
the identity, culture and training of the company, adding, “The
three markets that we’re in and where we’re trading make us
fairly unique. There are a lot of generalist IT providers trying to
cover everything across a whole range of different territories.
We’ve adopted the approach that you have to be focussed;
you’ve got to have a clear identity about who you are and what
you’re offering and to who.”
Simon Lawton
retention is higher than the average recruitment company.
“It was definitely an important driver, we were losing a lot of
people in that window of 2-5 years and as a business that was
when they were becoming profitable. We wanted to try and
make sure we held on to as many people as we could. We did
this by trying to eliminate our people feeling like the only thing
they could do to do change their career path was to find some
new wallpaper. Giving them a more advanced development
programme helps.” Mulholland added, “There’s lots of ways
people can experience success.”
“It gives our customers ease of understanding of what we
actually do. It allows us to create very defined markets in
niches that really do add value to our clients. We firmly believe
that with the way that recruitment is now moving, including
the use of Linkedin and social media, if we just serve the
general population, we will struggle to add real measureable
and recognisable value.” You’ve got to be able to give clients
something they can’t get on the open market and that’s
something we are trying to make certain of. We believe the
key word is clarity and to get clarity you need to invest in every
sense. So I think that’s what’s makes us unique. I don’t think
there are very many businesses doing that in our market.
Given their low profile it may well be that the name Darwin
Recruitment has so far slipped under your radar? The new
board are hopeful that once you have seen their impressive
track record and been privy to their tremendously exciting
future plans that talented and ambitious recruiters will be open
to the potential the company offers. “We are all incredibly
motivated and enthusiastic about our journey ahead and we
want to share this not only with our clients and candidates
but with our current employees and new recruits”, concludes
Kirby.
To be a part of the exciting Darwin revolution email
careers@darwinrecruitment.com or call the careers
team on +44 1 277 637970
Miles Hunt
Like any other recruitment company, Darwin has embraced
social media. “You can’t get away from it”, Kirby jokes. In fact
they were among the first companies to test-drive LinkedIn and
currently provide all consultants with business subscriptions.
To boost the choice of quality applicants that Darwin places,
Davis explains that Darwin confirmed a deal with broadband
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