Lucy Walker RecruitmentCase Study

How we support IP Group with theirrecruitment

YOUR GROWTH. OUR PASSION.

IP Group is an early-stage investor who specialises in partnering with universities to evolve greatideas, into world-changing businesses. The group achieve this by systematically helping to create, buildand support outstanding intellectual property-based companies.

• Employ over 100 members of staff across the UK and USA

• Operates out of a head office in London, with regional offices in the UK, and have now established abase in the USA which supports a new select group of American university partners

• Have established 80 companies over the last 17 years

• 17 of the above companies are listed on the London Stock Exchanges AIM market

IP Group: Client Background

The IP Group support their portfolio of companies with:

• Financial capital from their balance sheet and also from funds that they manage on behalf of others

• Strategic and commercial expertise

• Executive search and development

• Corporate finance and capital raising

• A range of administrative services

The Administrative support is provided by the team at IP Assist, headed by Ani Earney to UK basedcompanies.

At times this support can include recruitment. However, the main recruiting needs are for IP Group IPAssist team. The team currently look after 52 companies and this is split into two smaller teams, onefinance and one business support.

YOUR GROWTH. OUR PASSION.

Ani has experience of working with a variety of recruitment agencies across the UK when recruitingfor companies that IP Assist support. When recruiting for her own team which is based in Leeds,there are a number of factors that influence her decision to work with an external recruitmentcompany. 1. The time-consuming “nightmare of advertising and ending up with a million CVs to go through”.

2. The struggle at times to get a recruitment company to understand;

• What IP Group and especially IP Assist do

• How the IP Assist team works and what sort of people are a cultural fit for the team? Because the team is small this is particularly important to Ani

3. As the work is varied and across a wide number of companies, it has also proved a challenge tohave recruiters understand the need to recruit on attitude and someone’s desire to learn

The roles are not classic finance support or classic business support and administration. As a result, ifa traditional PA person succeeds, it will be down to their attitude rather than their skill set.

Due to the above circumstances, Ani was looking for a new recruitment company to assist her. Havingbeen introduced to Lucy Walker Recruitment Ani began to have a different experience.

The Challenges of Recruitment

What happened next?

When Ani engaged the services of Lucy Walker Recruitment (LWR) over 10 years ago, she worked with a number of Recruitment Specialists at LWR but in recent years she has worked directly withLucy.

Lucy and her team invested time in understanding the detail of what specifically the IP Group and IPAssist do. In addition, they explored in depth the roles that she would be recruiting for. Due to thelevel of questioning around the areas listed below (LWR) were able to provide relevant CVs.

• The business and what IP Assist do

• The Business support manager role understanding in depth the scope of the role

• The two sides to Ani’s team and how they work together, including the type of person that would fitwith the team

• The importance of attitude and a desire to learn as the key recruiting criteria

Ani would read through and rate the candidates before deciding who she would want to bring in foran interview.

Ani would then have a conversation with Lucy to discuss each candidate and what her overallimpression was on the suitability of each individual.

YOUR GROWTH. OUR PASSION.

Feedback is given from Ani about her relationship with Lucy Walker.

The key areas highlighted are as follows;

• Lucy goes above and beyond with her level of service

• Her in-depth knowledge of our business and my team mean that the candidates she provides arewell screened and highly relevant

• Able to have open, honest and frank conversations that I don’t think I could have with otheraccount managers

• Lucy opens up your mind to people; I think that's really good, because you can be very focused onwhat you want

• Even though my team's core roles don’t evolve significantly, Lucy always takes the time to refreshherself before she starts a new recruiting project with us

Would you recommend Lucy Walker Recruitment and why?

“I have very open and honest conversations with Lucy about people and candidates and how myteam are, which helps her to understand what candidates I want.”

“If I can get a good candidate, it certainly makes my life an awful lot easier if they can get up tospeed pretty quickly. By being able to have that level of relationship with Lucy, I feel like I get therea lot quicker.”

"I've worked with Lucy Walker for over 10 years, and haven't felt the need to look for anyone else todo the recruitment. I know that if I give Lucy a call for recruitment, I'll get sorted and that I'll get agood service. I always go back.

They seem to understand the role that I am trying to fill, and always come up with good candidates.I think that they have a good reputation with people who are looking for work too.

If I speak to friends who are looking for work, Lucy Walker will be one of the first RecruitmentAgencies they’ll think of. If LWR has a good reputation for finding work for individuals, and a goodreputation placing people in the right jobs, then that's great, isn't it?”

Ani Earney Head of IP Assist (Part of the IP Group)

During these conversations, Lucy will often question Ani’s thinking by saying something such as;

"But the person that you're dismissing I think will be good because of these reasons."

As an example. A new team member is joining who had less experience in an admin role than Aniwould usually consider. However, having interviewed the individual in question Lucy was confidentthat the candidate did have exactly the kind of attitude that Ani was looking for and would be a goodfit with the team.

What Ani Earney (Head of IP Assist) thinks of herexperience of Lucy Walker Recruitment

YOUR GROWTH. OUR PASSION.

Interested to find out how we can help you?Get in touch with Lucy

lucyw@lucywalkerrecruitment.com