Origins

Yolk was born specifically as a specialist in the sales recruitment sector. During early 2009, a need existed for businesses to increase sales, the recession had landed with a bang and businesses were making redundancies. A lean stage pursued where companies were sacrificing support staff and investing in sales operations at a time when revenue was more difficult to come by. South Wales lacked a specialist recruitment consultancy operating in the sales sector and this niche offered Yolk an opportunity to prosper and to build a solid foundation prior to expanding into new markets after 18 months. The recession proved challenging for businesses of all shapes and sizes and Yolk was no different - as a new business without a trading history and a brand, the recession should probably have eaten them alive. However, it proved to be an opportunity and the company’s growth has been consistent and impressive despite the challenging economic conditions it faced.

Success Factor

Born deep in the recession of 2009, Yolk has had to navigate through the toughest of times to build a business with long lasting sustainability. The business has been able to grow with continued momentum and an upward curve of growth in challenging times by being a process-driven company. Having processes that embed consistency across its key performance indicators has been pivotal to ensuring the protection of the brand and consistent delivery of service expectations. In the early years building a strong team can be the most challenging part of growing, focussing heavily on talent attraction Yolk aimed to bring in a team of specialists that would buy into the company’s vision. Over time, these individuals have become the backbone of success and having a strong management spine has been instrumental to growth. There are too many people to mention and everyone in the business is appreciated and rewarded accordingly, the culture it has built is key to enjoyment in the workplace and performance delivery. Finally, one of the most influential steps to growing the business has been Yolk’s vision to boldly build a team structure around where the business wants to be as opposed to where it currently is. Whereas businesses often view additional non-fee earning hires as costs, Yolk takes a view on their value in improving business processes and with this, as a relatively new and small team, Yolk invested heavily in business support, marketing, operations, HR and finance staff. More recently, it also took the decision to bring its own recruitment and training in-house hiring a team of two to manage the function and target them on headcount growth.

The Future

Yolk Recruitment’s ambition knows no bounds. The management team are as motivated as ever to continue with a forward trajectory to build a large, profitable market leading recruitment business UK wide. Immediate plans are to open full-scale offices in a further three target locations, to increase headcount to 150 and turnover to £10million.