Our Story – Written by Stephen Borer, Partner at DMC Recruitment
I have worked in recruitment for over 25 years. I have thought of leaving the industry many times over the course of my career – especially at the times when a candidate turns down an offer, or a client pulls a role that you have been working on for 4 months – but somehow I just must face that I am a career recruiter. I am good at what I do, and, if forced, I will admit I like the damn industry!
However, traditional recruitment agencies are broken and that’s not the landscape that I can or want to work in anymore. KPI-led environments, outdated technology, rigid lack of flexibility and, most importantly, no real opportunity to make serious money..
I started in recruitment in London in 1998, a decade after Michael Page, Robert Walters, James Caan etc were making their money in recruitment in the same city. Recruitment in the ‘80s and 90’s was great. No expenses-spared client entertainment, highflier trips on helicopters, and consultants driving Porsches. Since then, it hasn’t been the same. Not if you work in one of the large recruitment agencies. You might get a highflier’s trip occasionally and even a reasonable amount of client entertainment, but you don’t make any money yourself. Not compared to what they did. Not real money.
In 2013 a friend of mine introduced me to a new model of recruitment. Technology had evolved, social media had removed the reliance on candidate databases, and the balance of power had shifted. Consultants were no longer trapped having to work for the big firms to work in recruitment.
That year, I left Michael Page as Operating Director for Canada and moved to Alberta where I started from scratch on a ‘desk’ where I had literally no clients. That desk was building materials. By the end of 12 months, I had doubled my previous year’s large-agency, Director-level income…. and I skied EVERY day for a whole season while working (admittedly hard!) in the afternoons.
I had been introduced to a new type of agency. It changed my life. 8 years on, one thing led to another and my friend and business partner, wanted to take the business down a different path, leading his business in a direction that differed from my personal approach.
The Start of DMC
Exiting our former business via a management buyout, Shawna Wagner, Alexandra Mather (the now three Partners of DMC Recruitment) and I set up a new business – DMC Recruitment.
Determined to incorporate and build upon the good that we had learned from our previous business, we set up DMC based on the following values which are, and will always remain at the core of our model:
- We believe in sharing the success. We have a best-in-class commission model.
- We believe in the value of a team and have shown that we can create and foster that team across the country. We are not a remote model; we are a distributed team.
- We believe in strategic use of automation and making the role of a consultant easier. Our technology enables that. We have continued to invest in it.
- We believe in marketing and individually supporting our consultants’ efforts with extremely tailored marketing outreach.
- We believe in a strategy that is an inch wide, and a mile deep. We specialize in Construction, Building Materials, and Architecture & Design. We do not want to be a generalist agency.
- We believe in having clear and differentiated product offerings that help consultants get better control of their client partnerships, their processes, and that enable them to charge more for their services.
- We believe in the personal brand and supporting our consultants to become and be recognized as specialists in their vertical.
- We believe in the drive of the people we work with. No KPIs, no micromanagement.
- We believe in personal progression. We invest in training and development for all members of our team and want people who dream big, because we do too.
- We believe in 100% flexible working. No set hours, no set location. A totally remote model that allows our team to manage themselves and we will never tie them to an office or schedule.
- We believe in our people. We don’t just hire anyone to “get bums in seats”. We want people who will fit into our team, who enjoy our team, and who are as motivated as we are to build this business.
- We believe in family. We have young families ourselves and understand the need for flexibility. We support this in a very real way with parental programs unique to our industry.
Launched in December 2020, our growth has exceeded anything we could have planned for (Exciting? yes. Scary? yes. A lot of work? Yes!!!) We are thankful to our clients and candidates for sticking with us, and we are thankful to all the new contacts we have met along the way. Most importantly, we are thankful to our team for being such an important part of this journey.
The most exciting part of our journey is that we have enabled change in some of the lives of the consultants within our team. Not everyone yet. It takes time to build momentum and build pipeline. However, with our model, once you are billing 3,4,5 hundred thousand dollars or more, you get into an earning category that you would have spent a lifetime chasing at the traditional agencies. We literally have people living in ‘the house that DMC built’ and we are extremely proud of that.
At last, the earning opportunities of the 80’s and 90’s have come around again for recruitment consultants. We are proud to run a business that provides the tools, the team, and the platform that enables dreams and ambitions to become a reality.
I love speaking to people about our business so if you are interested to learn more, please reach out. My number is 778 802 3530, of course you can email me at [email protected] or connect on my linkedin.
