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      Searchability

      Engaged employer

      Searchability Reviews

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      4.3

      82% would recommend to a friend

      (36 total reviews)
      avatar

      Martin Blythe

      91% approve of CEO

      81% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.5

      Compensation and benefits

      4.3

      Culture and values

      4.3

      Career opportunities

      4.2

      Senior management

      4.0

      Work/Life balance

      3.9

      Diversity and inclusion

      Searchability has an employee rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 36 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Searchability employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Human resources and staffing industry (3.8 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      36 reviews
      1.0
      11 Jan 2021

      A false image of an example of micromanagement

      Recruitment consultant
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Genuinely brilliant office, some good people at the time, first Friday meant many paid for events, pool and ping pong is perfect for a social competition. Ability to make money once on the board (if you make it that far). If you’re doing well, you can fast tract the system and become a favourite really quick.

      Cons

      I don’t really know where to start here, but one thing I will say is that all of the prior reviews genuinely speak the truth. First and foremost the training received was literal abuse at points, and left me in tears at the end of evenings from time to time (9:00-11:00pm finishes were a norm at the start whilst my mentor left early). The senior managements inability to listen to your opinion causes serious implications. Constant micromanagement, over reaching KPI’s to fund a quick fix as apposed to developing your skills. Entirely fake senior management who pretend to give the smallest amount of care towards you but when you leave, not even the MD says goodbye. Let go of various members of staff right before Christmas despite furlough being active for the foreseeable. Severe tensions on work from home; they say it’s fine but if you ask you get burnt in a board room with the senior staff before you’re allowed. If you speak up on what the majority thinks you feel like you’re already on a slippery slope towards your P45. Commission scheme for trainee’s is absolutely scandalous, seriously. Senior hands on members are treated as saints whilst trainee’s are just trainee’s. I’ve seen far too many people disappear without a goodbye or even being told directly. Chinese whispers isn’t a good way to find out a friend has been fired. No real time to prove yourself, we lose our jobs whilst billing more than others who have stayed on. Your LinkedIn is fully revoked and wiped away upon leaving, but they will happily hire someone and use what their pre-existing account whilst joking about their past employer causing issues with it. Overall, it used to be a far better company but I feel like their new office has changed the mindset of the pilots and the outcome is a micro managed, corporate atmosphere that is no longer about the customer but more about what money you can make.

      avatar
      Searchability Response
      5y
      We are disappointed to read your comments as we believe this gives an unfair and extremely biased view of what working here is like. This review has been flagged to Glassdoor for suspected duplicate posting in violation of their terms, and while I am confident that these attempts to damage our reputation will not succeed, it’s still my duty to protect our position and the people who genuinely love working for our company. Please see my comments below: Any employee who feels concerned, anxious, or emotional about any aspect of their role is always encouraged to reach out in confidence to our HR Director, MD, Team Leaders, Senior Managers etc - however we have never had reports of complaints of training from our people, in fact many of our recruiters credit this as their pathway to becoming a successful recruiter. We do highlight that extra hours while certainly not obligatory, are often key to achieving success while you are learning how to recruit in this industry, simply because most candidates cannot speak during work hours. I’m not sure where the 9pm-11pm comes into, this never happened and never happens. Management take on feedback from every employee, in fact we adopted a focus group approach on numerous occasions to aid business decisions and allow every voice to be heard. I also have to disagree with your reference to management not caring when people leave, believe me when I say it was an extremely difficult decision to terminate your employment but one that we had to make based upon your consistent underperformance here. The KPI’s we have at Searchability are both achievable and designed to help you succeed, along with the extensive training and resources we provided you. The government’s furlough scheme was designed to help retain jobs, and we have treated this respectfully in order to protect as many people’s jobs as we possibly could. To be completely transparent even with this support, every employee who has been furloughed still comes at a significant cost to the business due to the investment we make for every employee (Surface pro, iPhone, LinkedIn licences, tools, equipment etc) so for us to keep individuals on furlough who were unable to demonstrate that they could succeed in this role beyond the furlough scheme, despite numerous efforts on our part to allow you to do so, was not possible. We did not take these decisions lightly, and we flexed to ensure you were paid beyond what was contractually obliged in order to help. Our business is currently working successfully from home due to lockdown, I can only assume your opinion of severe tensions refers to our suggestion that those who aren’t performing required the additional support from Management which is far more effective on-site than in a remote setting, again just our way of trying to help people like yourself. Searchability have a transparent commission scheme that is higher than the average recruitment agency and designed to incentivise you to succeed. The consultant commission cannot be earned until you have completed your training and graduated as a consultant, which is perfectly standard, but we do offer resourcer commissions and incentives to help you along the way with this. As a business we have invested heavily into training and support to allow you to reach your potential, and while you feel you did not have the time to prove yourself, you have to understand that this decision was made from the efforts and performance you demonstrated before the pandemic as well as in your return from furlough. If we didn’t give people time to meet their potential we wouldn’t have the majority of our team here now, but as a business we can not continue to make allowances for a small group of people who aren’t willing to put in the same efforts that we do. If we want this more than you, then recruitment probably isn’t the right career for you. I'm a little confused to your comments regarding LinkedIn. Searchability employees have a full LinkedIn Enterprise Recruiter Licence, which costs the business substantial sums per user per year. The enterprise product remains the property of Searchability for obvious reasons should you leave, employees with existing LinkedIn accounts simply plug our enterprise solution into it and unplug should they leave, their personal LinkedIn accounts of course remain their own property. Of course we listen to advice, it's how our business has evolved, however with a review that has been constructed solely in an attempt to undermine our business and the great team we have here I do have to take a lot of this with a pinch of salt, because on investigation it is clear that the majority of this review is untrue and duplicated. Despite this I still wish you all the best, and would still invite you to reach out to me personally to discuss the content of this review as opposed to posting anonymously on this public platform
      1.0
      24 Dec 2020

      I wasn't going to write this but ...

      Recruitment consultant
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Mostly great colleagues Lovely Office with Pool and Table Tennis Great central Chester location First Fridays & early finish on Fridays Nice work equipment (Surface Pro and iPhone)

      Cons

      Laughable business decisions that make you wonder if they are actually trying to run the business into the ground. Trigger happy when it comes to spending money on pointless tools and platforms and when this inevitably fails it's often the less experienced staff that suffer I fear management don't understand the concept of transparency, key business decisions are always hidden from staff and constant Boris-like U-Turns on how to handle the COVID situation which has left people (including those with children) in situations no business should be leaving their staff in. Senior Management is greatly favoured in every imaginable way. Commission for less experienced staff or furloughed staff was being withheld for up to 10 months but senior staff were getting paid the next month on time. Sheer refusal to top up any pay for staff they put on furlough for 6+ months, again this was done to those with children too. Sacked and let go of less experienced staff even though in many cases some of these people were out performing senior members but of course if you've not worked there for 3+ years then it really doesn't matter how you perform Casual racism and sexism in the office, whether they deny it or not and no there is no clear way of reporting this because unfortunately the HR staff are heavily influenced and monitored by directors. I would like to make it clear I 100% do not put this down to the HR staff, this is coming from the very top. Drug use has been witnessed during working hours within the office (I'm sure this will be denied too) Constant scare mongering and threatening people's jobs when the business is struggling (usually due to poor business decisions from management) Internal training was dreadful so much so that the company felt they had to bring a 3rd party in to train staff who had even been there for over a year. Directors often don't do a full days work but expect others to work 5-10 hours additionally, unpaid. Yes it's part of the job but practice what you preach and stop leaving at 4pm and expecting the people who earn your commission to stay till 7, 8, 9pm. Senior staff will often tell less experienced staff that the company has had a bad month for figures but will then proceed to have a celebratory meal on the company due to having a good month?!?!? Outright dismissal of basic concepts like working from home Thinking outside the box is often encouraged but if you even try to step outside of the box it's instantly shot down. Staff are terrified of speaking out as it will be dismissed instantly and you will suffer for going against the grain especially if it does not align perfectly with what senior management think. There are KPI's and then there are Searchability KPI's which often change month by month you'll have an additional KPIs for an awful and overpriced platform they've spent a fortune on one month then the KPIs will be doubled the next etc. Some sales techniques they encourage feel very UPVC sales from the 80s and 90s Decided that radio silence until 1 month before Christmas was the best time to let people go and sack them Sadly, like a previous review below there are so many more cons but this list is long enough and should give people considering working at Searchability an idea of what it's really like because there are clearly coerced reviews being left.

      avatar
      Searchability Response
      5y
      We understand that when we have to take the decision to let employees go that they may choose to take to this platform to vent their frustrations, however due to some of the utterly false and frankly illegal allegations you have made I have no choice but to report this to Glassdoor, as these comments have clearly been left to attack and attempt to damage our business. I will however respond as much as I can to each point raised within the parameters of this platform although there is a lot of duplication from a previous post that is remarkably similar in content as well as context: Every decision is made to drive the business forward, and unfortunately this means we sometimes have to terminate employment from individuals who are consistently underperforming . We do not take these decisions lightly, and despite our best efforts to encourage you to meet the potential we genuinely saw from you when you started, it would be unfair to continue on this path when you are unable to demonstrate the willingness to do the same. We are extremely considerate about budgets for tools, with the success of each tracked monthly based upon usage and financial return. Many of our people have achieved a higher proportion of placements through the tools we onboarded in the past twelve months, despite yourself clearly not embracing these in the same way. Navigating the pandemic has been challenging for every business, and we honestly did as much as we possibly could to help every individual at Searchability. We have a commitment to inclusivity at Searchability, and treat every individual equally whether they are on their first day or sixth year at the company. Your comment about commission is completely incorrect, Commission was paused for everyone in March whilst we assessed the wider implications for the business. Everyone received the entirety of their commission back in equal portions as a % uniform across the whole company regardless of whether you were a trainee / Team Leader or Manager by the end of October(7 months). We were unfortunately not in a position to top up furlough payments during the lockdown, evidenced by the pause in commission you have previously cited. We did have to make the decision to let go of people in December, and in the majority of cases the decision was down to revenue generation, however, in a couple of instances we have had to make decisions based upon attitude and where people have demonstrated a reluctance to embrace training, tools, advice, support or mentoring we were left with no alternative to protect the wider business from an evolving toxicity, evidence of which can be found in this fabricated review. Now, these are incredibly serious and false allegations you have raised. We have an absolute zero tolerance policy to drug use, racism and sexism in this company as you well know. Not only is this illegal but there is absolutely no place for this behavior in our society. There is zero evidence of this, and this attempt to attack the character of the colleagues you referred to as “mostly great” at the beginning of this review will not be tolerated. I have no choice but to report these claims to Glassdoor for investigation. We bolster internal training with external training and open this up to every level of recruiter so that each employee is constantly developing, surely this is a benefit? I have never heard this mentioned as a complaint before? Believe me when I say that the Directors and Senior Managers here are some of the most dedicated and hard working people I have ever met, the past year has highlighted this with many making personal sacrifices in order to try and protect the positions of new hires and working tirelessly through late nights and weekends throughout the pandemic. Your comments are baseless. Our workforce are currently working from home as we speak, as they did through March – July and sporadically where needed from August-November. We have invested in a whole raft of tools and equipment to enable them to do this. No-one has ever or will ever be coerced in writing reviews of any kind for these types of platforms as you will testify during your time here. I can only assume some of your former colleagues have also taken exception to the bitter and childish way you have chosen to attack them personally through your spurious allegations and one can only guess what your next cause for grievance will be. I just hope that this platform sharpens up it's due diligence to prevent further nonsense being published. I am sorry that this has ended this way, it feels so unnecessary but given the behavior you are demonstrating it reaffirms that our decision was in fact correct, albeit forced upon us due to external pressures of the current pandemic. I wish you every success in your next move. Take good care. Martin
      1.0
      15 Dec 2020

      A fall from grace, the most disappointing end to 2020

      Recruitment consultant
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      The office is nice, ping pong table and pool table for lunch times.

      Cons

      expectation to work over contracted hours despite managers constantly reminding you they don't expect that. Totally opaque managerial style, never kept in the loop on important issues. Ridiculous daily KPI's which. doubled during the slowest recruitment market in living memory. Constant contradictions, talking about being a digital first company and an agile recruitment business but still heavily rely on call times as a stick to beat its staff with (unless you're a top biller) On rule for some and other rules for the rest of us. Making redundancies right before Christmas despite the furlough scheme not ending for another 3 months. Threatening not to pay staff before Christmas unless they return all their WFH equipment regardless of other commitments. Blasé racism and sexism is a common feature amongst certain cliques. Management spending considerable amounts on celebratory meals and afternoons off, to then have a go at their staff a week later that not enough is being done to secure business. An outright refusal to accept WFH as being a legitimate possibility despite posting all over their social media about how they have embraced it and how to prepare yourself for the same. So much for being a digital first company, not sure how they won the awards they did on that front. I could go on but unfortunately the list of cons is now so long that I'm not sure there is enough space here to fully describe. It's such a shame because Searchability was an incredible place to work, and the pandemic has shown just how short sighted the business is when it comes to unexpected changes and future proofing themselves. Wouldn't recommend to anyone anymore.

      avatar
      Searchability Response
      5y
      Thanks for the review. We’re obviously disappointed to hear such feedback, but for the purpose of this platform, I’ve addressed each issue you have raised below. My purpose throughout this period was to do my utmost to ensure that this outcome was avoided but due to continuing performance issues I am sorry that we were unable to choose another course of action for you. Ensuring we create an environment that is both an enjoyable place for our employees to be and a business where our recruiters can thrive is our number one priority. Working outside of the traditional 8.30-5.30 is not mandatory, however we are explicit when anyone joins Searchability as a trainee recruiter that while you are building your experience, and when you are looking to speak to candidates who are mostly unavailable during the day, that the ability to be flexible with this is often essential for success and this will never change, unfortunately it is the nature of recruitment. I’m sorry to hear that you felt you weren’t kept in the loop with important decisions, I have personally tried to make myself available and have reached out to every employee with both written and verbal coms on numerous occasions, to give you all a clear picture of where the business is up to. Regarding the KPI’s for recruiters, we have always held the same achievable standards to help our consultants reach realistic revenue targets. However we did increase KPI’s for some basic / admin related tasks during the pandemic for struggling performers to help compensate for the lack of tangible business. This most definitely isn’t the worst recruitment market in living history, in fact quite the opposite, the unfortunate COVID situation has provided unique opportunities in our industry to grow, expand & prosper despite the adverse circumstances. There are success stories not only within Searchability but right across our industry that are testament to this. This is something I know we tried time and time again to point out whilst you were here but unfortunately it looks as though this continues to not resonate with yourself, I’m sorry we were unable to help you realise this. Searchability made the decision at the start of November to try and pay the entirety of our staff early in December to help assist with an early planning of Christmas. You were given 4 weeks’ notice to return company equipment including Microsoft Surface Pro, screens, iPhone, office furniture etc. to enable us to include you on the early payment of 17th December, as opposed to the last Thursday of the month as contractually obliged (31st December) this year. Apologies if this got in the way of pre-existing plans but you did have 4 weeks and we were genuinely trying to help. We have a zero tolerance policy to any discriminatory behaviour of any kind here, with clear guidance on how to report any such instances. This has never been reported by you to myself, the other Directors, senior management, the HR Manager or in fact anyone within the company to my knowledge. While I am unable to identify the individuals your accusations relate to, I would invite you to share the details of these concerns with me personally so that I can investigate further, and as you will testify, will be dealt with accordingly. There is absolutely no place not only in Searchability but in our society for this kind of behaviour. The majority of our business has been conducted working from home this year, and this has become a key part of our workflow. Unfortunately for recruiters who were underperforming and struggling, and unable to meet the minimum expectations, we were reluctant to offer a permanent WFH set up as these individuals still required significant support and guidance from management. Thank you for your advice regarding our investment into tools such as Odro, we are constantly reviewing the technologies and tools that we provide our consultants access to and they are 100% designed to make your job as a recruiter easier so I am a little confused albeit not surprised you feel so strongly against such support. Perhaps if you had embraced these tools in the same way your colleagues have then the ending of this may have been different as we have seen tangible returns in the tech we have onboarded over the last 12 months to help our consultants through the pandemic. I’m sorry you have felt the need to be so negative on a public platform towards your experience here, I do feel that your comments are aimed at causing disruption to our business as opposed to offering future employees real insight into our business. I had hoped we could have parted ways on better terms. I genuinely wish you all the best in your future and I’m just sorry that we were unable to make it as successful as we both wanted at Searchability. Regards, Martin
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