Redefining the recruitment model: A chat with Future Talent

Future Talent is a newly formed organisation committed to embedding community at the heart of its recruitment services. 

Reforming a traditional sector such as recruitment is no mean feat. But founders Josh Simpkins and Scott Sarginson have spotted an opportunity for innovation. Their mission is to build a structure that rewards employees with autonomy whilst providing clients with highly valuable dedicated services, and ensuring they give back to the communities that they’re a part of. They describe themselves as a bespoke recruitment approach anchored by impact, agility, insight, and transparency.

Josh explains the motivation behind this: “We’ve been thinking about the way recruitment companies grow. In this process, we’ve been able to pinpoint recurring challenges with maintaining quality.

“We wanted to create a business model that was different to what exists in most recruitment companies at the moment, by focusing on quality and delivering a clear commitment to community activity. We thought that now was the right time for that.”

But how is Future Talent planning on achieving this? 

Josh underscores that the standard recruitment business model is just not a sustainable career for most people, and it’s presenting a huge industry issue. Being a recruiter is an intense role with an expectation to commit to longer hours. This means turnaround is quick and quality gets lost as individuals burnout. 

“Longer term, hopefully, this business model will provide a sustainable job in recruitment”

“We believe that our partnership business model solves this issue by focussing on building a smaller team of more experienced people. All of those employees will have a share in the company. They’ll also get a fairer share of the profit on the work they deliver, which allows a bit more of a focus on working fewer roles but instead focussing on particular customers in delivery,” Josh tells us. 

“Longer term, hopefully, this business model will provide a sustainable job in recruitment. It allows you to work more flexibly, if you decide to start a family, for example. The job doesn’t have to stay as it is when you first start.” 

Scott highlights that this consistency also adds immense value for the client: “Having the same person from Future Talent Group working with you from the initial onboarding of the client to qualifying your roles, to screening the candidates, and to setting up interviews, is really beneficial. It means the messaging of your brand doesn’t get lost throughout the entire hiring process.”

In the first year of business, Future Talent is looking forward to growing its offering and establishing a team of experts. The team is hoping to attract senior recruiters who may want to start their own business one day, “having a share in a company beforehand can be a really brilliant way of starting this journey. We want to offer a lot of flexibility with a lot of return on your time,” explains Josh. 

Beyond this, Future Talent is super passionate about the tech community here in the South West. As regular techSPARK readers will know, we share their belief that our ecosystem is something special, and we were excited to hear about Future Talent’s plan to support positive impact organisations. 

In a tangible action, Future Talent will be committing £500 to a community fund for every permanent placement they make. To help with this, they have brought on Annie Legge as Community Advisor who will be steering that finance towards worthy initiatives. Future Talent’s focus will be on tech for good.

“We have a clear, transparent commitment, which we believe is completely scalable, to the communities in which we work. We’ve already partnered with Tech for Good South West, techSPARK, and some other charities. We’re going to be looking to increase that fund in size as we grow,” Josh says.

“Lucy runs the majority of conversations and she’s passionate about taking on some of the more challenging topics to debate. So we really like that”

Particularly excitingly for techSPARK, Future Talent will be our official Third Thursday sponsor. In case you’re not familiar, Third Thursdays is a monthly gathering for the tech and digital community in Bath to connect, think, drink, and build a better city. Join us for the next meetup in September!

“We have been following the events techSPARK runs for a while. One of the things we liked about Third Thursday was the fact it was open with subject matter, covering a range of topics,” Josh tells us. “Lucy [Paine, Bath Community Manager at techSPARK] runs the majority of conversations and she’s passionate about taking on some of the more challenging topics to debate. So we really like that.

“It being a local meetup it was a no-brainer really to sponsor it. In a world where people live life from one calendar invite to another, it provides a really good platform for people to network build, and discuss relevant topics that push forward ideas. This is especially true for younger people who might have experienced primarily remote-based work.”

Scott echos this sentiment about the value of local meetups: “It allows people to get out, mix with like-minded individuals, with recruiters, senior tech experts. It allows them to grow their knowledge and not to potentially feel locked away in their own bubble.”