How SourceBreaker Grew to 63 Employees in 3½ Years, with Steve Beckitt, Ep #101

The Resilient Recruiter

If you’re an ambitious recruitment company director looking to scale your business, then you’ll definitely want to listen to my interview with entrepreneur Steve Beckitt. In this conversation, Steve revealed how he was able to grow his recruitment technology business to 63 employees in just three and a half years.

At the same time, they have created a high performance culture and were recognized as one of the best places to work. In this episode, Steve did not hold back in sharing the learnings and key factors that contributed to his success.

Steve is the founder of SourceBreaker, an award-winning recruitment technology company. Having spent six years at Sthree Group, Steve took the leap to launch SourceBreaker in 2014. They have absolutely taken the industry by storm, growing from three people at the beginning to 70 people today. In fact, SourceBreaker has been listed by the Financial Times as one of the top 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Europe.

Episode Outline and Highlights

• [1:30] Steve’s background and how SourceBreaker was born.
• [6:47] First invoice out the door - strategies for startup success.
• [13:30] Key milestones in growing to 63 employees in 3 ½ years.
• [16:30] Critical factors when hiring
• [20:41] How to assess work ethic and other qualities when hiring new employees?
• [23:30] How would you define work ethic?
• [27:30] Factors contributing to SourceBreaker winning awards such as the best company to work for.
• [31:55] When starting a recruitment company, how do you attract top people?
• [37:17] SourceBreaker’s approach to training, development and mentoring.
• [43:00] Overcoming the challenges of virtual team / working from home.
• [45:30] What’s next for SourceBreaker?
• [47:00] How to uncover larger talent pools via LinkedIn? Two tips from Steve.

Key Factor to Growth: Strategic Marketing + Hard Work

If you are starting and scaling your business from scratch, what should be your priority? For Steve, getting invoices out the door should be your top priority. As a technology business, how did SourceBreaker strategize their marketing to reach as many clients? “Very much just getting on the phone and calling people up to sell the products to sell the services we offer,” Steve shared. He also emphasized that while others who are also starting might be spending too much time honing their website and messaging, the old-school approach of hard work and making a high volume of calls to sell their product worked for them.

When starting your own recruitment business, how do you feel about potential candidates and clients saying “I’ve never heard of you”? Although this can present itself as a challenge, Steve mentioned that you can also push this to your advantage. Hear how.

Key Factor to Growth: Building Your Team and Successful Hiring

Another factor that contributed to SourceBreaker’s rapid scaling success is how they build their team. There are three primary qualities that they look for when hiring:

• Intelligence
• Work Ethic
• Humility

Among the three, Steve gives priority to humility. This is how he puts it: “The reason why we think humility is our key, is we have an obsession with always wanting to be better, always wanting to learn. I feel that a new graduate or a new hire to SourceBreaker can teach me things and I am open to hearing their feedback and learning from them.”

Key Factor to Growth: Learning and Talent Development

To retain your talents, it is important to remember that the people you hire, as Steve pointed out, “are obsessed with their own personal development.” It makes perfect sense to invest in your team’s development, may it be personal or professional. That is why you might find it fascinating how SourceBreaker implements an approach on mentoring and coaching. Also, hear about their book club and how everyone even from top management gets involved.

Our Sponsors

This podcast is proudly sponsored by i-intro®.

i-intro® is an end-to-end retained recruitment platform. Our technology and methodology allows recruiters to differentiate themselves from the competition, win more retained business, bigger fees and increase their billings. Be sure to mention Mark Whitby or The Resilient Recruiter for a 25% discount. Book your free, no obligation consultation here: www.recruitmentcoach.com/retained

Steve Beckitt Bio and Contact Info

Steve is the Founder and Director of SourceBreaker, a multi-award winning tech platform that helps recruitment companies accelerate their growth. Prior to founding SourceBreaker, Steve worked as Head of Infrastructure Recruitment with Sthree PLC. Steve then took the leap to set up SourceBreaker with the aim of making genuine difference for recruiters.

• Steve on LinkedIn
• Steve on @sourceb_steve
• SourceBreaker website link
• SourceBreaker on LinkedIn
• SourceBreaker on Facebook
• SourceBreaker on Twitter

People and Resources Mentioned

• Black Box Thinking, by Matthew Syed

Connect with Mark Whitby

• Get your FREE 30-minute strategy call
• Mark on LinkedIn
• Mark on Twitter: @MarkWhitby
• Mark on Facebook
• Mark on Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach

Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter