The Beginning of Vertex IT Solutions
When we sat in a sweltering and stuffy room with a branding expert many, many years ago, he said – “we will not leave this room until we have identified your brand”. He was right, we didn’t leave that room all day, but we did identify our brand. While we were thrashing through all the critical words that meant “us” we kept coming back to two keywords, ‘Trust’ and ‘Relationships’. I am pleased to keep coming back to these words, as it is “us”. Trust is the determining factor as to why businesses engage with us and why our candidates engage with us. While our relationships are what keeps this going, these can only be built from a solid foundation of trust.
“Trust In Our Relationships”
I am pleased to say that out of all things we hold dear, our relationships are No.1. Over the course of the next weeks and months, we will be interviewing longstanding contractors and clients so they can explain why they have or continue to work with us, but for now, I guess you will have to take my word for it.
So, what have we been doing for 20 years? Quite a lot. Here is a quick synopsis.
We have worked with over 1000 clients, which have provided over 10,000 jobs for our candidates. We have managed to fill 6446 of these jobs, meaning we have a commendable conversion rate of over 60%. Some of these clients use only us to fulfil their talent needs. We have billed over £140,000,000 and paid out approximately £110,000,000 (that is the sad part 😊) in contractor fees. We have employed over 120 staff over the years, some amazing, some not so good, but this is life. We are a sales environment and not everyone “makes it”.
Truly Global
We have placed candidates into Contract or Permanent positions in the following countries: UK, France, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, USA, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Australia, Hong Kong and Iraq.
The most popular IT roles we have filled are:
- Agile Scrum Masters
- AWS Developers & Architects
- Business Analysis
- Business Intelligence & Big Data Developers & Architects
- C# Developers
- Cyber Security Architects & Pen Testers
- DevOps
- Integration Developers
- IT Networking & Infrastructure Engineers
- IT Support
- Java & .NET Development
- Middleware Developers & Architects
- Oracle Technology Experts (Database & Apps)
- Project Management & PMO
- Python Developers
- Ruby & Drupal Developers
- Testers & Test Managers (SIT, UAT and Regression)
- UX Designers & Developers
Our very first placement was with Canon UK; this happened so quickly that we could not even invoice the customer. In fact, we had not even finalised our brand logo or had an invoice template, but we were incredibly excited about the future. We achieved this from the front room of one of our houses. We did not even have an office at this point. That placement formed the foundation of a longstanding relationship with Canon, to such a degree we had a Golf Day some years later with the Canon and Vertex team. Here’s the cap that we all wore with pride:
Moving Home
We moved into our first offices in Freelands Road, Bromley soon after and employed our first staff member – Kiernan O’shea. Kiernan is going to join us on this blog soon. Following a successful spell in these offices, we quickly outgrew our domain and needed larger premises. That growth required us to move into Imperial House, Bromley where we met our longstanding accountants – Downs & Co, who now are part of Devonshire Green. We subsequently grew to over 25 recruitment consultants until the banking crisis of 2008 hit, meaning we had to downsize overnight to a small team of 6. The group consisted of myself, Mark Jeffcoat, Keith Jeffcoat, Millie Campbell (10 years’ service), Emma Falsey (11 years’ service) and Vinoth Ratnarajah (who has stayed employed for the past 12 years). During the subsequent growth that followed the financial crisis, we sponsored local sports clubs: Old Dunstonian Rugby Club and Bickley Cricket Club as well as doing several activities for Charities, namely The British Heart Foundation and Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research.
In 2012 we moved into our now owned office building, Vertex House. We re-grew the business back to a similar size, but, recently, Covid-19 has put us back down again to a smaller team.
Into The Future
The key here for us is that even during these extremely challenging times, our relationships have enabled us to maintain the business. We see growth again now, albeit slowly, so while we continue to grow over the coming months, we will keep telling more parts of our story and sharing interviews with longstanding employees, contractors, and clients. So, watch this space…
Tony Cook
Director, Vertex IT Solutions