[S]outh Lakeland unemployment figures are currently some of the lowest in the country meaning recruitment in Cumbria is often cited as a bone for contention for business owners.
However Kendal based Financial Management Bureau (FMB) appear to be bucking the trend and have appointed five new staff members in recent weeks as their strategic growth plans begin to come to fruition. The family-run business welcomes; Richard Davies as Relationship Manager, Olivia Malpass in Client Services team, Jon Palser as Financial Planner and Alex Dickinson and Jeanette Hawley in Customer Services. The firm which employs over 30 people has been going for over twenty-five years, Director Ruth Power explains the necessity for the new appointments and how the firm attracted the new talent.
“Over the last few years we have seen an increase in the need for more technical skills, and although we have Silver Status Investors In People and spend a lot of energy on training it takes time to get people up to speed. It is difficult to recruit good people who are ready to hit the ground running so we use specialist recruitment agencies in-conjunction with targeted social media campaigns.
“All the candidates also said they had looked at our social media pages to get a feel for the place and were impressed by the level of staff engagement and fun stuff we do! The local talent pool is great but small and recruitment into the area can be difficult, but our new people are from Manchester, South Africa, London and Lytham and I’m confident that our social media helped make the difference between them choosing to work for us or someone else.
“There’s a lesson for all Cumbrian businesses finding it hard to recruit or who think social media is a waste of time. Our new recruits were all looking to use their technical expertise and were surprised to find such a big financial planning firm in the area. We were really impressed with their skill levels and the range of ages and genders in these five recruits.”
