So this is our ‘Hello World’ moment! Our first blog post, just to give you an introduction to who we are and why we are here.
We are Distil – a new IT recruitment and careers agency based in the heart of Belfast. Our offices are in Pearl Assurance House which is the very grand brownstone building beside City Hall. We have just opened the doors and hope to provide the IT community with a valuable, honest and trustworthy service.
My name is Paul Wright and some of you may already know me as I have been working in tech recruitment in Belfast for over 10 years. In that time I have seen a lot of changes in the local market. I remember when we had three or four big names and that was pretty much it in terms of large scale IT employers. Just look at us now!
`
I wanted to set up my own recruitment agency for a number of reasons. Number one is probably ego – (I am only human after all!) and after a long time working for other people I had the opportunity to take the leap and do things on my own terms. The recruitment industry is not for the faint-hearted. It is fast-paced, hard work and can be a rollercoaster of a profession. Despite this, I love it and can’t imagine doing anything else.
Secondly, I unfortunately often hear negative feedback concerning the recruitment industry, particularly from candidates. The most common complaint is a lack of communication – whether in terms of follow up calls, interview feedback or job information. For an industry that is so dependent on people, it seems that we recruiters may be lacking in the old ‘communication skills’ department at times.
My aim is to put the candidate experience at the heart of our process.
Distil is an agency that is focused on the candidate rather than solely on the client. We recognise that the old recruitment model has changed. Many of the people we deal with are no longer ‘active job seekers’ but rather they are busy IT professionals who, while mostly happy in their role, do like to be kept informed of new companies, new roles, new opportunities and to always have some options at hand.
We can act on behalf of our client companies to relay these opportunities to you as our candidate network.
If you want to find out more about a role or a company then talk to us. If you want to apply for a role then we can manage that for you too. If you need help preparing for the interview, we can give you all the help you need. Our service is determined by your needs not just the needs of the recruiter.
What we are doing is working closely with a list of trusted local clients, understanding their technology requirements and the opportunities they can offer new hires. We can then take this info to the IT community – and with any luck we will find some of you a new position.
We’re not claiming to be reinventing the wheel – we’re just bringing it all back to the most important part of the whole process – you. And by the sounds of things, this isn’t the service that people are getting from tech recruitment companies.
So let’s change that.
