​The newly appointed Director of recruitment consultancy Better Placed has outlined its “ambitious growth plans”, plans to expand its tech division and recent run of new hires.

The Better Placed Group, which was founded in 2002, has appointed Alison Livesey as Director.

She joins from recruitment agency The Candidate, where she was an Associate Director.

The business specialises in digital, marketing, sales, executive search and tech recruitment with a broad list of clients including Costa Coffee, Co-op, AO, Iceland and CreativeRace.

With offices in Manchester, Leeds and London, the organisation has outlined a “clear growth plan”.

“We want to keep hiring talented recruiters across all our locations with a plan to double in size over the next few years,” Alison Livesey told Prolific North.

Alison will be based out of the Manchester office but working across the North building on her existing relationships, whilst continuing to network at a senior or C-suite level.

She has just over 10 years of experience in the recruitment world and has worked both agency-side as well as in-house specialising in digital, ecommerce and marketing.

With multichannel recruitment experience across various sectors, she plans to utilise her experience to grow the Better Placed network of candidates and clients and aims to bring new ways of working to the table.

She rejoins the recruitment agency after working as a Consultant and Senior Consultant at Better Placed five years ago.

On why she opted to return to the company, she attributes this to its “unwavering dedication to quality”.

“I’ve always known, and it’s known in the industry, that Better Placed hires good recruiters that are knowledgeable,” she said, “they are uncompromising in the standard of work they deliver”.

In the last month, the company has continued with its growth plans by recruiting five new hires and anticipates recruiting additional new hires prior to the Christmas period.

She revealed that the business has also hired an experienced Marketing Manager who is set to start within the month.

“Our new Marketing Manager will play a key role in how we are represented in the market and bring a new dynamic to our candidate and client communications,” she said.

Alongside the new hires she said the business is also making “major operational changes”, which includes a complete overhaul of its CRM system.

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Expansion of its tech division and demand for tech roles

After “successfully” building its tech division, which is approaching its first year, she said it has been a “hugely important part of the business for Better Placed”.

“Traditionally as a business we’ve focused on ecomm, marketing and digital, so it was really important for us to have something that complemented that with tech,” she said.

The tech division is led by Director Jonathan Moran and forms part of the organisation's ambitious growth plans.

“Jonathan has built the team out really quickly. It has an outstanding reputation already in a really challenging market.

“He plans to double in size again in 2022. It is a huge growth area for us,” she explained.

The demand for candidates in tech roles has accelerated throughout the Covid-19 pandemic with a plethora of roles ranging from self-taught and graduate developers right through to technical leads and CTOs.

According to a report by Tech Nation in collaboration with Adzuna, 13% of all UK job vacancies are tech-related due to a boom in UK tech investment resulting in employer demand for tech jobs.

“Our dedication to quality and being experts in what we do, will enable us to continue building our networks and ensuring clients and candidates keep wanting to work with us.

“The more that happens the better, and enables us to keep growing not only in terms of headcount, but also the disciplines we work within,” she added.

Trends and future plans

“It’s positive to see the market growing so quickly after the 2 years we’ve had,” she explained.

Many businesses may have found the past two years challenging - she explained the “market in digital and tech is now more buoyant than ever for candidates seeking new opportunities”.

On the challenges facing the industry amid the pandemic, she said there is a candidate shortage across the board.

“Our clients need more digital, marketing and tech talent than ever,” she said.

She explained the demand for candidates in these sectors has “doubled or trebled” from this time last year, which has built a bubble effect around candidates with an abundance of vacancies to choose from.

As a recruiter, she said maintaining honest and transparent relationships with clients and candidates is key to providing solutions to issues facing the industry.

“Businesses that trust their recruiters and remain open-minded to the advice we can give will find hiring talent in this market easier.

“We know how other businesses are operating and can suggest alternative ways of structuring and hiring in the current climate,” she said.

In April, Better Placed completed the move to employee ownership which she explained is “currently in an exciting stage and gives us a real forum for innovation and change, and a platform to build on for the future”.

“It’s exciting seeing the ideas that we’ve got come to life,” she said.

Looking towards the future, she explained the business will continue with its plans “to keep hiring talent, that’s what Better Placed does really well”.