WOW 10 Years! Where has that gone?

My alarm went off this morning at 06:30am, and I had quite a few more notifications from LinkedIn…than usual, so I thought something must have happened overnight, perhaps in the US? When I logged on, I realised it was 100’s of my followers wishing me happy work anniversary and that’s when I said out loud - WOW!

This year marks 10 years since I took the plunge and started Raw Talent Academy, and I simply cannot believe where the time has gone! I wanted to write something that would capture some of the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur and subsequently proud business owner over the last 10 years…

After the amazing moment of being crowned winner of ‘The Apprentice’ in 2008 and starting the Amscreen business with Lord Sugar and Simon Sugar, I felt the time was right to go out alone. I remember the moment I came up with the concept of Raw Talent Academy vividly… my wife and I, were training for a hike, we were raising money for Cancer Research UK by scaling the heights of Scafell Pike in Lake district and so we went on a training walk for around 4 hours. The time was filled by mapping out the entire business from start to finish… I knew then exactly what I was going to do, how I was going to do it and what I needed to start…. Raw Talent Academy was born.

We believe hiring people based on a CV is wrong, instead we focus on ‘playing to win’ and structure our recruitment process around abilities, behaviours and competencies.

We are passionate about breaking the norm and challenging how organisations recruit their future champions.

I managed to secure a meeting with RSG, a recruitment business in Bristol, it was with the key stakeholders Nick Walrond, Sarah Sainsbury and Jon Ball. I was very nervous, it’s strange as I had been on some huge meetings, within my career, not to mention the board room with Lord Sugar (which is enough to send anyone over the edge) but this is different, this is your business, your baby, the concept you have created so it had to go right… It did and in May 2011, 5 months after launch, we signed a project with them (thank you Nick, Sarah and Jon for having faith) and just 6 weeks later we successfully delivered 7 new hires through our unique academy process, we were up and running!

We had some amazing clients off the back of our first contract with RSG, all of which were looking for something new, something different to challenge the normal run of the mill graduate recruitment process, by taking a concept that was close to me (The Apprentice) and fusing it together with my recruitment experience. We created a process that showcased peoples key values, key competencies and behaviours, the real essence of why people are successful in any role. We ripped up the CV or the Resume and said, ‘Let’s hire based on key attributes and not wants on a piece of paper!’ It was a fresh new concept that delivered us fantastic results, double turn over year after year for the first 4 years of trading.

Our concept was, at first, taken with a whole lot of scepticism, most businesses (even now 10 years on) still recruit based on a CV or Resume which is crazy, we had to win over lots of hearts and minds, but once we did the concept worked with 96% of offers accepted and of that 82% retention in year one from anyone who had come through the Raw Talent process even in the toughest sectors. In the early days we focused on the Recruitment sector and then grew the business to focus on the Media, Financials services and Technology sectors.

After 4 years of good results, we decided to go for it and expand the business… at the end of 2014, we had 9 permanent members of staff and by Sept 2015 we had over 30! We won 4 industry awards, including small business of the year and was shortlisted for a further 3, things were going well, but it was towards the middle of 2016 that I experienced the first real challenge in Raw Talent, staff wanting different things, the essence of our business being diluted, the expansion had been too fast, we grew our top line but shrunk our bottom line and we had to adapt, slow down and change our plan, I was most defiantly experiencing the second stage wobble phase! But through consolidation and hard work we managed to modify the business by adding new technology and expanding into different markets.

We landed some outstanding clients… From the global market leader for medical devices in Olympus Keymed, a partnership the lasted nearly 4 years, through to the largest interdealer broker on the planet in TPICAP and Redgate Software a relationship that have spanned over 7 years. As a result of c.175,000 candidates running through our process, we now have trends and insights on the best types of individuals for the type of sector.

Pic - TP/ICAP Hires in New York

In November 2016 we secured a contract in New York giving us international experience and with confidence that our solution work’s abroad we then won contracts in Miami, Austin, Los Angeles, Germany, Holland and Singapore, who would have thought a business concept which started on a training hike, would travel so far across the globe!

2020 has been the most challenging year for sure, with Covid-19 being responsible for ripping so many businesses apart Raw Talent is not immune, we lost 90% of our revenue in March 2020 and spent most of the year trying to consolidate, but I am a firm believer in things happen for a reason and if it was not for the troubles we encountered in 2016, we would not have been equipped to continue our climb to the summit through the global pandemic.

10 years of amazing memories, amazing clients, and amazing people. I would like to thank everyone who has been part of the Raw Talent journey, far too many to mention, but you know who you are, I couldn’t have done it without you, and I look forward to seeing what the next chapter brings.

Happy 10th Birthday Raw Talent Academy!