The Secret Behind Becoming a Retention Magnet

CEO and founder of Cooper Fitch, Trefor Murphy was part of the leadership team for a leading international recruitment firm for 14 years before he seized the opportunity to buy their business and trading licence for the MENA region. The company continued providing first-class recruitment services, before rebranding as Cooper Fitch. After two years as Cooper Fitch, the company has nearly doubled in revenue, head count and attained almost 75,000 followers on LinkedIn. Cooper Fitch is also one of the top two most socially engaged specialist boutiques in EMEA.

With rebranding the business to Cooper Fitch, some of the biggest challenges involved ensuring their brand and look was accepted in the market while attracting and retaining top-tier consultants.

Attracting Top Employees and Clients Simultaneously

One of Cooper Fitch’s key objectives is to bring high-quality individuals into their organisation and retain them. “We aim to attract and retain good talent and we’re very successful at doing so – in the past two years we’ve retained 92% of our employees,” says Trefor Murphy, CEO, Cooper Fitch. “This is almost unheard of in recruitment,” he exclaims.

Cooper Fitch successfully achieves this through a series of initiatives, providing flexible working hours, regular team building activities, celebrations and gifting intrinsic rewards such as extra holidays. “We understand our staff may need time to get things done and the importance of work-life-balance. Everyone at Cooper Fitch knows we are their support family”, says Trefor.

A hands-on approach also allows Cooper Fitch to provide a great learning environment with constant assessment and training for employees. Graduates are supported at Cooper Fitch with training ranging from basic skills to managing relationships. Their graduate training programmes have been so successful that they have taken interns, consultants and managers who are now part of their leadership group.

By retaining employees, Cooper Fitch also retains clients. “In the GCC, it’s standard for a client to move with a consultant to another business. We invest a lot of time understanding our clients’ exact needs to tailor our solutions and build strength and consistency in our relationships. Keeping people is fundamental to our success – the fact we’ve lost so few people and gained so many clients is definitely related.”

Building a Strong Brand that Engages Quality Candidates

Even with a well-established database and over a million candidates, as a new firm starting up in a highly competitive market, Cooper Fitch found LinkedIn to be crucial for sourcing and recruiting top talent.

Apart from using LinkedIn to source candidates, Cooper Fitch uses it to build up brand recognition in the market – “so that everyone, whether a client or a candidate, know who we are.” It’s a testament to their success that in just under two years, they’ve acquired nearly 75,000 followers.

A dedicated content management strategy has played a large role in this achievement. Each month, five employees leave their desks for the breakout area to write about what they’re doing in the market. Their posts are profiled for a week on the company's website, on LinkedIn and their other social media platforms. At the end of the month, the person with the most engagement is rewarded.

“This ensures our content is always fresh, well-written and helps build our brand both locally and internationally. We release around 60 blogs a year in total; this exposure is complemented by our salary surveys (released twice a year), press releases and various commentaries on the market which we promote through Dubai Eye, The Breakfast Show, CNBC and in the local press. We aim to keep this momentum going as we build our brand internationally,” says Trefor.

Cooper Fitch aims to provide personnel for their clients that impact performance, and Trefor attests that several entities have doubled their growth and improved their profit lines due to the people they’ve provided.

Taking Client Management a Step Further

“Our advice to clients is very detailed and very comprehensive. Our HR Advisory services includes understanding an organisation's culture to what culture shift might be needed, what kind of talent they want and where that talent might be, to what they need to do internally with the people they have. We’ve even interviewed entire management teams to see if they are the right people who can drive the business forward.”

By looking at hard and soft skills, key competencies and developing advanced questionnaires and interview processes, Cooper Fitch probes the client’s specific requirements to find solutions that fit their needs. Advanced assessment, testing and advisory facilities ensure highly-targeted placements – over 140 localised tests including language, comprehension, leadership traits, emotional intelligence and more.

 “My advice to other recruitment consultancies is to start small, build up organically and get your sourcing strategy right. We’ve leveraged a brand presence of 18 years in the region and contracts with over 50,000 organisations, but over the last year and a half, LinkedIn has been a critical part of our growth. We wouldn’t be able to achieve our goal of growing 50% in the next year without LinkedIn”, concludes Trefor.