Sometimes when company founders launch a business, they are uncertain what the industry reaction will be.
Will potential clients think their service or product is of value and as great as they do? Will their prospects actually turn into paying customers? And will they be able to grow their business in the way they had planned?
Often it is only when ‘the rubber meets the road’ that anyone knows for certain if the business is destined for success or if it will be just another start-up that failed to make an impact and gain any traction.
For the team behind crooton, despite having extensive experience working in the recruitment sector, the situation was largely the same. And then the global Covid pandemic hit just a few short months after the business launched.
Most people looking at the situation from the outside would have said with certainty that unfortunately the business was doomed to fail. After all, instead of recruiting staff, most businesses across the world had been forced to shut up shop or dramatically scale back their operations.
But there was one key factor that they overlooked – crooton wasn’t just another ‘me too’ recruitment company offering the same traditional hiring approach as everybody else. It was a business that had developed an innovative candidate geofencing system that allowed employers to precisely pinpoint the staff they wanted for roles that they found hard to fill.
And this system – that uses the latest targeting and location-based technologies – was exactly what employers who urgently needed more staff because of the pandemic, not less, were looking for. Employers such as the NHS, who desperately needed more nurses and vaccinators, and high-profile logistics and FMCG organisations who found it almost impossible to attract essential operations and support staff.
So whilst the rest of the recruitment sector suffered the worst economic crisis in living memory, with many firms shutting down, crooton thrived and grew.
Our unique technology and approach meant we were able to not only disrupt the industry but also buck the trend. And our clients were able to find the perfect staff where others had failed, and enabled vital providers to deliver the services we all relied upon.
This success led to crooton growing rapidly (and profitably) and attracting more and more major employers who had urgent large volume recruitment demands. These included Ocado, Stagecoach, AM Fresh Group, Mencap, National Grid, and World Fuels.
And every time, the impact and reaction was the same.
Terri Beardon from Mencap said: “The crooton team have been so helpful and the service they provide really adds value to our in-house recruitment team. The team have been amazing at sourcing candidates for roles that are difficult to fill whether it be down to location or just simply due to the number of people we are looking to hire.
“I would highly recommend this service, it is great value for money when compared against other similar services but this doesn’t affect the quality in any way! We will be continuing to partner with crooton!”
And AM Fresh Group said: “Whenever we are struggling with particular roles or struggling for online traffic or applications, crooton always step up to the mark and help us to fill our vacancies. Highly recommend!!”
This is echoed by care group Maria Mallaband who said: “crooton is a great product and it really helped us during a critical time to increase our applications and our reach to certain areas of the UK.”
Meanwhile Matt Rogers of Carlisle Support Services commented: “The team at crooton have supported us with a range of volume and specialist roles across a number of sectors.
“Their dedicated account management, expertise and ability to source suitable candidates from different sources has helped us to fill a number of key roles across the business.”
With more and more businesses becoming clients in recent months – including household names including restaurant chains Five Guys and Wagamama, Hilton Food Global, international law firm Allen & Overy, Centrica (British Gas) and a number of police forces – those reactions look set to continue.
As Elis Collins, Resourcing Manager at PHS, the leading hygiene services provider in the UK, said: “First campaign with crooton was a success; we appointed five people from the one campaign which was great!
“Looking forward to running our next campaign.”
Isn’t it time you saw recruitment differently with crooton?