The Green Economy continues to divide opinion but in a time when UK unemployment levels continue to exceed 7.5% should we in fact laud the job opportunities it has and can continue to provide? One company in particular has better reasons than most to point to the positive impact of the Green agenda.
Two young London based entrepreneurs continue to beat the recession with a remarkably successful green business. 31 year-old Matt Churchward and 30 year-old Patrick Wall established ‘The Green Recruitment Company’ in 2010 from their shared flat with no external investments and little more than two laptops.
Within 2 years the company is well on target to exceed turnover of £1m for the forthcoming year following on from 400% growth in its second year. Headcount now lies at 17 and they have had 3 office moves in little over a year to accommodate this growth.
Despite the suffering UK economy, the long term friends have now opened offices in Central London and most recently Edinburgh, boasting placements in a large number of FTSE companies and Blue Chip brands including the ‘Big Six’ British energy firms. Not only has the company significantly expanded in the last two years, it has also gained industry recognition from through its nomination in the prestigious Green Business Leaders Awards for the Small Business of the Year category this year.
Director Patrick Wall states “We started this business primarily for two reasons. Firstly, we are incredibly passionate about the wider Green industry, and genuinely believe we are helping to contribute to essential growth in a critical and global market. Secondly, we were aware from the beginning of strong commercial opportunities in this emerging market. Areas such as Renewable Energy are essential to our future energy security and we aim to become the most established recruitment provider in the market”.
With an average age of twenty four, the recruitment team has rapidly expanded from two to seventeen and has created promising job opportunities for recent struggling graduates and young people in a highly competitive era for employment.
Not only has the company survived against the backdrop of an extremely unstable global financial climate, it has actually thrived and bucked wider recruitment industry trends. The company has further ambitions for international growth in addition to niche offshoots, Churchward recently launched ‘The Green Search Company’, offering specialist search services for C-Level and executive hires.
In spite of the success, both Churchward and Wall still manage to incorporate their original environmental values into the business by implementing a number of original ideas such as offsetting 1 Tonne of C02 for every placement The Green Recruitment Company makes. In addition to that there is a real cultural buy in to these values through the core of the business, employees are encouraged and rewarded for making lifestyle and behavioural changes such as cycling to work and buying locally grown produce.
Churchward explains that “After working with Patrick at a successful fast growing recruitment company for several years, we were eager to apply what we had learnt in a sector that we were genuinely passionate about but also offered us commercial scalability. Our initial success has served only to increase this passion and has inspired us to drive the business harder to achieve our collective goals and increase our positive impact on what is an essential global market”
The Green Recruitment Company is an international recruitment consultancy that specialises in mid to senior level jobs in the very niche industries of Renewable Energy, Waste & Environmental and Energy Management. For more information please visit www.greenrecruitmentcompany.com
