Third Republic help build technology organisations, by enabling businesses to access next generation technology skills that are needed to drive digital transformation. Recently, we caught up with Mat Roche who revealed to us more about how the firm consistently achieves exceptional results.
Established in 2014, Third Republic was initially set up because the firm recognised that businesses are moving into a new era of talent acquisition. As society becomes digitally native, people are looking for work in new ways, and are managing their careers differently, and the recruitment industry needs to adapt to these changes. However, current agencies are operating in an old-school, out of date manner that is causing both candidates and clients to become disillusioned with the industry. The firm call this transition from old school to new – Recruitment Transformation.
Third Republic is a new breed of agency designed for the digital age of recruitment. Embracing Recruitment Transformation, the firm delivers advanced technology skills that businesses need in order to drive their own digital transformations. Going into further detail, Mat begins by informing us of the steps the firm takes when undertaking a new project, and how the team ensure that the clients receive the best possible outcome.
“The same way that Trip Advisor has professionalised the hospitality and leisure industries, we realise that ratings platforms are the best way to get recruitment companies thinking about their customer experience. As a result, we encourage every client we work with to leave us a TrustPilot review, in a bid to make ourselves, and our brand, publicly accountable for how we act and treat our customers. As the top-rated agency in the UK on the TrustPilot platform, we are incredibly proud of our 9.9 rating.
“Internally we maintain a clear code of conduct – termed ‘ The Code ’ – which is very much centred around our customer service and our value. This focus ensures that every member of Third Republic operates within clear and expected behaviours that ensure the best possible outcome for our clients. In addition to this, we also operate NPS as a way of getting valuable feedback on our performance.”
Following on from this, Mat was keen to explain Third Republic’s overall mission, outlining the steps the team take to ensure that they achieve it. “Changing consumer behaviours are disrupting every industry today, and we believe that the recruitment industry is no different. New societal norms, driven by the move to the digital age and characterised by the increased demand for speed and convenience, are altering the way that people are managing their careers and looking for work. “However, the staffing industry remains oblivious to this evolution; recruitment agencies are not moving with the times and the industry as a whole is stagnating. Recruitment agencies and businesses alike are using increasingly outdated methods to source their talent; relying on platforms like LinkedIn and mass transactional mailing, without realising that candidate behaviour has changed.
“At Third Republic, we have moved away from the Spray and Pray era and towards the Digital Era of recruitment – we call this recruitment transformation. As such, our vision is to transform the way that businesses hire advanced technology skills by building an agency that is moving with the times.”
As for what sets them apart from their competitors, Mat notes how the firm think differently from mainstream recruitment agencies. “Our philosophy, our core beliefs and our understanding that the market is changing, sets us apart from others in our industry because we see the trends that our competitors don’t. Other agencies are the same now as they were ten years ago, but we realise that people are managing their careers differently and so we have to source differently. This awareness is our unique selling point and enables us to adapt in order to identify and engage top-rated talent.”
It is no secret that behind every successful firm is a devoted team of individuals who work together to achieve the same goal. For Third Republic, the company is formed of a talented team who consistently deliver an exceptional service to clients. When discussing the internal culture, Mat highlights how he ensures that all the staff are well-equipped to provide their clients with the best possible service.
“Here at Third Republic, we believe that that working culture in most agencies is not in line with the market. Even if working practices and recruitment methods haven’t evolved in ten years, the demographic of people working for these agencies definitely has. However, agencies aren’t built for Millennials and Generation Y, leading to conflicts in methodologies and beliefs, and a huge level of dissatisfaction in recruitment agencies.
“We are evolving our methods to be in line with modern recruitment, but also evolving our culture to be in line with the people who work for our firm. Additionally, we have built our business around transparency, autonomy, independence, trust and entrepreneurialism, and we are focused on creating a culture Transforming the Recruitment Industrythat breeds intrinsic motivation for our employees.”
Bringing the interview to a close, Mat reflects on the techniques the team at Third Republic have to employ, to ensure that they stay ahead of emerging developments, especially within an ever-changing industry.
“We are obsessed with increasing our awareness of talent acquisition, the evolution it is going through, emerging trends and new innovations. It is our duty to our clients to do this, to keep learning and to continuously improve our ability to source talent for them. This is one of the reasons why we invest considerable time and efforts into our thought leadership blogs such as our #TalentQA series; where we interview thought leaders from the talent acquisition industry on a weekly basis in order to facilitate learning. “Organising meet-ups which focus on learning and development is another technique we employ to stay ahead of the market; and the insights we get by talking to tech and other industry thought leaders is invaluable when it comes to shaping our businesses and ensure a competitive edge.”
Looking ahead to what the future holds for the firm, Mat signs off by revealing the exciting plan in store for the team at Third Republic, especially following their recent success of being selected in Corporate Vision’s Recruitment Elite 2018. “Overall, we are not driven by results, or how big we are going to be. The vision behind the business is to transform the way that companies go about hiring next generation skills to drive digital transformation. We want to build the agency of the future because we understand that the marketplace is changing, and that disruptive businesses need to be able to leverage the technologies that enable them to fill their critical roles.
“To facilitate this, we created a hybrid model between an online hiring platform and contingency capabilities. Our sourcing platform – Sourcechain – enables companies to engage with and hire directly from our private networks of talent. Alongside this, we are launching a new service line, TalentPooling-as-a-Service (TPaaS) which will allow organisations to leverage our sourcing capabilities as an extra resourcing capacity dedicated to increasing the top of their talent funnel for large-scale, project-based hiring needs.
“Moving forward, we are also excited about opening up two new resourcing centres in Bolivia and Morocco whose primary focus is to get mobile phone numbers for our teams in London and New York. Modern sourcing is moving away from emails and towards mobiles, as networking and headhunting makes a return to talent acquisition and investing in these centres will enable our recruiters to focus on these modern methods more effectively.”
Name: Third Republic
Address: 3rd floor, Avalon house, 57-63 Scrutton Street, Shoreditch, EC2A 4PF
Web Address: www.thirdrepublic.com
