Welcome to our latest blog series – get to know the team. We wanted to give you a chance to get to know the people behind the emails and phonecalls, and to get an inside look at who we are and what we do.

So, without further ado, here’s Alan, our Co-Founder and CEO.

What’s your role at ISL?

I’m Co-Founder and CEO. Internally, my role is helping to lead the business and make sure we've got the right strategy for success. Externally, the focus is engaging with founders and the startup ecosystem to help educate on good hiring and promote ISL as a talent partner as well as helping improve the positioning of recruitment.

How did you get into recruitment?

For me, it was a natural progression from sales. I started when I did a placement year in London for Reuters working in a sales support role and really enjoyed seeing people that performed and the reward they got. I knew that was something I wanted as part my career to get reward based on efforts and achievements. I then did a year after university working in a sales role selling sponsorship of a conference in South America; it was very transactional so I wanted something that had more of a relationship element to me but still retained the sales aspect, which is where I then came into recruitment and spent six years working for one of the UK's largest recruiters is which is where I met Henry. The rest is history!

How does ISL differentiate itself from other recruiters in the industry?

I've read that there over 40,000 recruiters in the industry, so it's difficult to say we’re unique but we’re definitely different in a couple of ways. Firstly, the focus on funded startups and working with founders who are juggling many things and need a trusted talent partner to be able to hire and grow their team and maximise the impact. Secondly, I think a differentiator is that if you talk to our best clients, they would say that we help them in many more ways than simply sending CVs. Whether it be helping with salary surveys, planning their organisational chart, working through job design and job specifications and once the candidate has been placed, rather than sending an invoice and moving on to the next one. It's about continuing the relationship and providing support around onboarding, retention and helping them with future team development. That’s what helps us to stand out among the competition.

What roles or type of clients most excite you?

I really enjoy working with startups because I get to spend time with founders who are building something new. No matter the industry, I love learning from what they're doing and seeing the journey they go on as a business. We don't focus on any particular industries and a lot of the clients we work with are often fundraising, frequently from venture capital firms. We’re doing a lot more within areas like climate tech and health tech now than we had done previously which is really positive, and from a personal point of view, seeing clients that have a really strong mission and purpose makes it even more interesting when we're delivering good people to them.

What’s your favourite part of the job?

This is my business, so I guess one of the benefits is that I get to design a job which really links into what I enjoy. For me, the enjoyment is being out and about talking to founders and other people that support startups as part of the ecosystem and learning from them, supporting them and seeing their journeys over time. The external engagement is the favourite part for me.

What are some misconceptions people have about recruitment consultants?

Where to begin... I think every time I go out and mention that I'm a recruiter I've always been nervous about the response I’ll get. A lot of the time it is justified because there’s a lot of people in recruitment that are probably deserving of a bad name. The bad reputation mainly comes from transactional recruiters who’d sell their grandmother if it meant an extra fee. That being said, the reputation doesn’t recognise the overall value that recruitment can give. Ultimately, when building any business, building a team is going to be an essential part of that. We’ve seen some change in the last few years with more recruiters being transparent about how they work, moving away from their micromanaged KPI- focused environments and letting people flourish building strong relationships with their clients and candidates.

What would be your best piece of advice for a founder looking to grow their startup?

I'm going to cheat and give two. The first is that no matter how good you get, hiring it is never going to be perfectly predictable, so you're always going to make mistakes along the way and there's always going to be people you think are going to be brilliant hires for you that turn out not to be. The second is that you shouldn't do it alone, being a founder can be a lonely job, and when it comes to recruitment, it very much needs to be a team effort, so if you’re an early-stage startup looking to grow, my advice would be to use your network to help figure out how to hire the best people and where to prioritise a particular gap. Talk to your founding team, your investors, advisors or a talent partner; you’ll really see the benefit of spending time engaging with others.

What would be your best piece of advice for a candidate looking to join a startup?

I think you've got to be clear on why you want to do it. Some people will go to startups because they think it's cool and sexy without thinking about the purpose behind it. For some, that might be their learning opportunity whereas others it might be the impact, it could be their potential equity or maybe it’s all those things. It’s important to be clear on where the appeal of startups is to help you think about what to focus on when you’re talking to founders.

To learn more about ISL or to talk all things startup or scaleup, connect with Alan on LinkedIn here.