Helen Barham

This means we have somebody who’s completely committed to the ME postcode area.  It’s been myself for the last five years, doing the whole process so it now enables me to have someone who can run alongside me, going out to the market and identifying the talent for our clients. This gives us a great opportunity to work several different roles at the same time, bringing in better talent, simply because we have more people working on it.

We’ve spent the last eight months working on how we work best together, we’re quite different in the way we work which has been effective – he’s brought some superb candidates to some of my key clients. This has enabled us to build on the ME Recruits resources even further, especially with the smart approach to resourcing and has fine-tuned the way we can best serve our candidates and best serve our clients. Tim does the first part of the process and I lead it from the point of identifying them, joining them to the consultancy and then I lead and decide whether they’re right for each role.

We’re coming up to our sixth-year anniversary, it’s been quite a journey and I would say a lot of my development has come from bouncing things off our MD Neil, the great thing about having Neil in the same office is I can tap in with him maybe once or twice a week. Over the years my development has come from checking in with Neil as to whether my approach to getting my result has been right, because there’s nothing simple about recruitment, you can have a smooth process, but there are many variables that can turn that process into a longer and more complex one.

Coming up to six years is very exciting, ME Recruits was brand new, never been touched before and I think one of its biggest strengths are the Google reviews, we have around 125 five-star reviews, and that speaks for itself.

The main objective for the next few years is to keep sustaining what we’re doing, repeat business is the key to any successful company, you can’t rely on people using you once and not coming back. It’s keeping the standards there for customer centric focus, continuing to be an expert for both the candidate and the client and to be supportive and caring, going on the ethical journey with each person.

I believe we offer a very good bespoke approach, and we want to continue working with more and more companies, if I’m working with a particular client, I want them to feel that they are the only client I’m working with, even though I’ll have another six or seven roles going on. I want them to know they have my personal, bespoke, you’re important and have my full attention approach.”

Helen Barham, August 2023

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“When people come to us, whether it be a candidate or a client, it’s important that we are invested in going on the journey with them, it’s not just about taking someone’s CV looking at their skills, thinking you’ve found a match and that’s it.

We understand what clients are looking for, we then match them with that right candidate; and the right candidate will have the right skill set, disposition and cultural fit. Knowledge can be trained in the kind of roles that I recruit for, so that doesn’t tend to be a necessary thing that I look for, however they do need to have the ability to learn.

The process can be as quick as 24 hours, I could see a CV in the morning and get them an interview in the afternoon, or the next day and they’ve been offered the position by the lunchtime. Because I naturally move quite fast and have an impatientness to my character, I ensure my clients get the best in the marketplace – I speed them up to see their candidates. When we’re working with candidates, for over two or three days, we make sure that we’re backing them and supporting them, so they walk into the interview understanding the role that they’re going for.

When they do get invited to join the business, they can be quite overwhelmed by the support and the communication they’ve been given during the process, so it’s really nice when I ask them for a review, 95% of the time, the people that I place will go and give us a google review. They talk about how we moved quickly for them, how we listened, how we prepared them, the support given, and they write good dialogue – it’s very nice to read back to yourself to see that you’ve actually treated someone effectively in business.

I get a lot of repeat custom, I’ve placed over 55 people for one of my clients over the last four years, so those roles come back round, and you get a feel from those placements from what you’ve done before for what they’re looking for. It means you can move quick because they become quite familiar. It’s our job to educate the client, and with the marketplace being candidate led it’s important that we do move quickly, if we don’t, and they are a strong candidate, someone else is going to take them.

If you’re in the market to recruit, then you’re in the market to recruit, there is no reason to hang around, it’s fast paced!”

Helen Barham, ME Recruits
July 2022

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“The journey of recruitment can arguably be quite stressful, you’re in a position where you’re either unhappy in a job or you don’t have a job, so therefore you really need people on your side that are going to care about you individually and care about you as a person.

The ME Recruits experience starts when you come on board and we represent you, we represent you as an individual, we’re invested in you and your needs matter, so, the first thing we do is establish your skill sets and your disposition and what you’re looking for. When we’ve done that we know our clients really well, we then go and look for that match and it can happen very quickly. I’ve placed people within 24 hours which doesn’t take away any of the quality, it’s just our expertise of matching the talent.

Sometimes I have a talent pool I can pull on, but the candidate market has been really tough, so we haven’t had that, therefore I’ve had to do a lot of seeking out and identifying what’s needed in the marketplace and matching. But the great thing is that the people are really supportive, they do come back and write positive reviews, they do want to say thank you and that’s so nice to actually have some kind of acknowledgement that you’ve put yourself out there and your heart out there and not just your professionalism, and you’ve actually gone on that journey with that person.

People have always been at the heart for me, in my past career and in my career now, it’s always been about people’s lives, and what’s important to them, matter to me. It becomes personal and you formulate some great friendships, and the reviews are quite overwhelming with some of the wording that people have been using.

I think it’s appreciation, people will only do that if you’ve really done quite a good job, they don’t tend to do that if you’re average and if you’ve given a poor service, they’ll be straight on to it with something to say. So, to have the 68 five-star reviews tells me that I’m treating everyone as an individual and each person uses very similar terminology when they write their review. Words like caring, warm, helpful, supportive, and easy plays into my own kind of standards and expectations of myself.

I’m quite a quick thinker and recruitment is quick, so what I get from it on a personal level is that I’m moving quickly for people and I’m getting answers quickly – as a whole, my job satisfaction comes from making a difference, my whole life purpose has always been making an imprint in what I do. I like to have purpose in everything I do, I don’t ever really want to be average, so, if someone comes to me and they’re looking for a role and I feel I can support them, I will give everything into finding that person rather than just matching them. It’s the passion that I’m investing in somebody else’s life and what’s important to them.

For me it is about having an impact and making a difference.”

Helen Barham, ME Recruits July 2021

Some of the reviews:

“What can we say about Helen and ME Recruits – they were so good we are using them again!
Not our traditional method of recruitment as our business has an “in house recruiter” but during the current climate we decided to speak to Helen as she was recommended to us.
I am not joking, within 48hours we had “Zoomed” Helen, had 2 interviews lined up, found our new candidate and created a new role for the second! We are now back with Helen looking for a new team member.
Helen just gets us – she listens, understands and takes actions FAST and I mean FAST, she doesn’t hang around, hold onto your seat you’re in for an adventure.
Every little details is taken care of, you are in the loop every step of the way and Helen takes the stress out of the task.
Use Helen and ME Recruits and go with the flow, but don’t hang around because Helen doesn’t!
Thank you Helen x”

“Absolutely amazing recruitment. Helen helped me with the job process from start to finish and I couldn’t have asked for a better person to do the job. She was professional, warm and most of all a brilliant communicator between me and the company. Helen went the extra mile to even help me prepare for the interview and make sure I felt comfortable throughout all the application process. 10/10 recommend.”

“Helen has been nothing but amazing during my whole experience with ME Recruits! She immediately saw that my CV was not clearly illustrating my strengths and helped me turn this around. Within a few days I had an interview and a day later I got the job!
I really felt like I had a mentor and someone on my side for once. She helped me prepare for the interview but also educated me to promote myself and realise my potential.
I am thoroughly looking forward to starting my new adventure and I absolutely have Helen to thank!”

“Helen has been an absolute star whilst we’ve been in contact. She took the time to get to know me so she could put me in contact with the right sorts of companies, and you can tell how much work and thought goes into what she does. Although my interactions with Helen didn’t result in a job for external reasons, I’m very thankful for her time and effort and know exactly who’d I turn to if I found myself in need of work again.”

Read all of them https://tinyurl.com/4u4zbpyt

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“I went to University at 21 and realised that I had a bit of a business mind, so after graduating, I fell into an advertising field role at the Courier newspaper. Eight months in, I was doing quite well and realised I had found my niche in a sense of going out and meeting people and influencing. So from that point, I left the Courier and went to a publishing company in London, I knew I was good at the job, but within three months I realised it wasn’t for me, I wanted to go back to regional/local press.

When I went back to The Courier, I became Team Leader and then quite quickly after, went into management with roles in leisure and special publications, which made me realise I had a natural passion for leadership, coaching and helping people reach their own potential. I then had my first child but went back in a part-time role, they created a Sales Trainer position for me, which I did for two years, but I was missing the day to day involvement in business and management. My career developed in a number of different roles, working up to regional manager covering Folkestone, Gillingham and Tunbridge Wells and eventually to Head of Advertising. It was a total of 15 years, I got to as far as I could go and decided to concentrate on my family and second child.

I spent three years at home and didn’t really know what to do. I was actually really lost. Then, one evening, Neil’s business – TN Recruits popped up on my phone and I thought I’d give it a go. I had no idea what was involved, but Neil and I had always had a very good working relationship and to go from me recruiting him and managing him and then 13 years later, it being the other way round, takes a special kind of relationship, with mutual respect. We gave it a go and after a month, started discussing ME Recruits.

It was important for me to have my own project and to be in control, as that is the way I’ve always worked. I relished the challenge and spent the first seven months working out if I really liked recruitment and now, eighteen months in, ME Recruits has gone from a start up to being an established and profitable organisation. I am starting to build the reputation of the ME Recruits brand and with my past coaching roles, I ensure all candidates and clients receive a bespoke approach that supports their personal potential and business needs respectively. Meeting and working together all those years ago, hooking back up and now fronting ME Recruits gives me great autonomy in a thriving industry sector.”