Employer Advice
Recruitment agencies don’t exactly have the best reputation. If there were a popularity contest, they’d usually sit somewhere between traffic wardens and politicians.
For years, the standard agency model has been all about hitting rigid corporate sales targets. The strategy was simple: throw as many CVs at a hiring manager as possible, fill the job, send the invoice, and run away before anyone realises the new hire doesn’t actually know how to use Excel.
When Lissa founded Arden Personnel in 2012, she knew she wanted to do the exact opposite. Fast forward 14 years, and Lissa and Nicki are incredibly proud to run a completely independent, Director-led agency. They aren’t interested in quick wins that fall apart three months later. Arden Personnel wants to be your long-term recruitment partner, and that means taking the time to actually care about the future of your business.
The real cost of “gut-feel” hiring
If you’ve ever hired someone who looked brilliant on paper but completely clashed with your office culture on day two (or worse, started microwaving fish in the communal kitchen), you know how stressful a bad fit is. But it’s also incredibly expensive.
Did you know? According to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), a bad hire can cost a UK business up to three times the employee’s annual salary when you factor in wasted training, lost time, and the painful cost of having to replace them.
It was also found that a staggering 89% of hiring failures are down to a poor attitude or a lack of cultural fit. Only 11% failed because they lacked technical skills.
Software systems can be taught. Personality, working style, and basic office etiquette? Not so much.
Finding the right fit (and the science behind it)
Because cultural fit is the absolute difference between a dream hire and a daily headache, Arden Personnel doesn’t rely on the old “gut feeling” method—which, let’s be honest, usually just means the candidate supports the same football team as the hiring manager!
Lissa and Nicki look right past the CV. In fact, Lissa recently became a Qualified McQuaig Practitioner, so the agency could offer genuine, scientifically backed behavioural profiling to clients.
Before you even sit down with a candidate, this profiling tells them exactly how an individual naturally prefers to work, how they communicate, and how they handle pressure. It takes the guesswork out of hiring.
They don’t enter witness protection on invoice day
One of the biggest frustrations heard from local businesses is that traditional agencies completely disappear the second a candidate starts with them. One minute they’re calling you every day, and the next they’ve vanished.
That’s exactly why Arden Personnel created their 6-Month Protection Plan.
Lissa and Nicki don’t just place a candidate, cross their fingers, and walk away. They check in regularly with both you and your new hire for a full six months after their start date. If there are any minor teething problems, they help iron them out early. They keep communication open so that the candidate settles in perfectly and your team keeps running smoothly.
Putting the “human” back into HR
Recruitment is, at the end of the day, about people. And people are complicated (especially before their morning coffee).
Because they genuinely care about the people they work with, Lissa and Nicki are both currently undergoing further training in Coaching and Mental Health First Aid. They want to be fully equipped to support candidates through the stress of a career move and support clients in building healthy, resilient, happy teams.