Celebrating 4 years of YourCode

We spoke to Managing Director of Your Consultancy Group (YCG), Josh Dixon, four years on from first launching YourCode.

What makes YourCode different to other recruitment companies?

When YourCode launched in 2018, we started the company with the aim to do things completely differently from most of our competitors, starting with health and wellbeing. 

We were one of the first recruitment companies in our area to offer significant working flexibility and a KPI-less environment, focusing more on our service quality rather than treating our customers and teams as numbers. 

One of our candidates in the industry, Tim Morrison, told us: “Chase success and the money will follow”; and that was a motto that we followed, worrying less about the financial element and more about what unique and influential services we could deliver to our clients.

Within the first couple of years, we had seen significant growth within our client base. We delivered week in week out, whilst also exploring new markets that we hadn’t previously considered.

All in all, our flexibility, drive for service success and wider culture are the major differences from our competitors.

How did YourCode start?

The initial idea for YourCode came after a brief meeting at the Holiday Inn in Ossett, Wakefield. 

I was ready to take some time out of the recruitment sector, to recharge my batteries and devote more time to my passion, Motivational Speaking. I was working across the UK and further afield with some peers in the sector when I quickly realised that the businesses who were engaging with me for these talks, typically had motivational based problems and potentially needed new team members. This is when I decided that YourCode would become real.

Did you know it would be a success then?

I never once doubted that YourCode would be a success, even during the difficult times in the first few months – our first two clients registered for bankruptcy and didn’t pay their invoices, which was frustrating, but at the same time from that point onwards, we knew it could only get better.

How have things changed since then?

Since we launched in 2018, YourCode has expanded into the YourConsultancy Group and we now have an array of brands working as part of the group, covering Automotive, Construction, Hospitality, Health/Social Care, Industrial and Technology recruitment.

YourCode itself has expanded into new countries, with our team now operating in a distributed fashion across the UK, Latvia, Poland and Romania, with our clients mirroring these developments too.

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge we faced whilst building YourCode was building our culture with such limited time and resources. The majority of recruitment companies operated in a different way to ourselves, which meant hiring new team members from the industry and aligning them to our approach proved quite difficult.

We were lucky enough to have hired some great people along the way, some of whom have left to develop new careers but are still part of the amazing history of YourCode.

Since 2020, we put together our own bespoke training programme and this has enabled us to hire both trainees and experienced professionals, who are potentially looking for a career change. This means we are better able to develop internal team members and hire purely for culture. As a business, we have seen significant benefits since using this approach and we are lucky to have such an amazing team.

What have been the highlights? 

From winning Company of the Year to expanding throughout Europe and numerous internal promotions, we have had some incredible highlights over the last few years that we are so proud of. 

Our biggest achievement since we launched the organisation has to be the incredible team that we have now built now – it’s by far our strongest, most well-rounded team and one that we are very proud of.

What is the secret to your success?

The secret to our success is hard work and consideration. There is no question that recruitment is not an easy job, it takes a lot of mental strength, courage and determination to be successful and it’s not always going to go exactly the way you planned it – having run our own desks in the past, and still being very much involved in the process, we understand the setbacks and have built a supportive environment where our team is encouraged throughout.

Building a company for the long term is crucial, and we look past the minor setbacks in our quest for long term success for our team. 

What does the future hold for recruitment?

The recruitment sector has no doubt taken a hit during the pandemic, with many companies having to rethink their strategies and understanding of their markets. At YourCode, we are confident that we have the right plan and we believe that we are at the forefront of ongoing opportunities to modernise the sector.

What exciting things are on the horizon for YCG?

We will continue to increase our headcount over the next few months, with both trainee recruiters and experienced team members too. As we continue to grow, we’re excited for what the future holds.