Elephant Insight Vol 2: Halloween at Brellis!

Welcome back to The Elephant Insight 🐘

Welcome to Joe’s newsletter – Aiming to bring you into our little world. Taking you through notable events, lessons learned and market insights. Hopefully you will enjoy learning a little more about our business and the world of recruiting!

Here's what Joe will be covering this time:

🧑‍💼 London Consultants Day — Joe’s main takeaways from a great day out at Indeed’s London HQ

🧑‍💻 The Rise Of GEO — How we’re reacting to an ever-changing AI landscape

🖼️ Changing the picture — It’s photo day for the website!

🎃🎃 A Halloween exclusive — We’ve been busy creating some new merch

If you've missed any of our previous editions you can catch up here: 👉 https://newsletter.brellisrecruitment.co.uk/

As always, thanks for reading.

Halloween Goodies

We’re rolling out a special edition, spooky set of our much-loved “goodie bags” for Halloween! They’ve gone down a storm so far with everyone that’s received one!

If you’d like to get your hands on one of our special edition bags, complete with new notebooks inside, just click the link below and we’ll get one over to you. We may even turn up to drop them off in fancy dress! (Subject to Matt’s approval, which seems unlikely.)

CLICK THIS LINK

Indeed Consultants Day

I got the opportunity this month to head down to Indeed’s offices in central London for their Consultants Day. It was a chance to see the new tools Indeed are bringing in for recruiters, and to pick the brains of other recruiters from all over the country and across a wide range of industries.

There were new candidate search options, a new market analysis tool and a new AI-integrated system. All of them are designed to help recruiters work faster, they all seemed to work well, and most of the room was excited by them.

I was, however, more interested in talking to other recruiters about the industry and the market at the moment. Everyone said something along the lines of “there’s definitely work out there, but we’re feeling the pinch”. That got me thinking about Indeed’s new tools. If agencies are feeling the pinch, anything that saves time should be a lifeline, yet plenty of people seemed hesitant to use them.

Over a cracking lunch (and a drink or two), I began to realise how much of an outlier we are at Brellis. Barely a week goes by without Matt or me (usually Matt) rolling into the office with an idea for taking more of the admin off our plates.

We hear a lot about AI’s shortcomings and why you can’t always trust it, and many agencies have held back because of that. I understand why, but I think the real question isn’t whether to use AI, it’s where. For us, the answer is: everywhere it gives us time back, and nowhere it would replace our judgement.

So Matt and I use it for the behind-the-scenes jobs: admin, meeting notes, daily updates and keeping my diary in order. What it doesn’t do is decide who we put forward. Every CV is read by one of us, and every decision about who goes on a shortlist is ours. Anything involving candidate or client information is handled with care.

That’s deliberate, because that’s the part of the job where AI genuinely falls short. Claude can’t work out why a previous hire didn’t fit a client’s culture, or spot the wildcard CV that turns out to be a great fit, but it can manage my diary! And every hour it saves us on admin is an hour we spend talking to candidates and clients instead.

I came away from the day with a surreal sense of vindication: the rest of the industry is starting to head in a direction Brellis already took, using technology to clear the admin so we can spend more time on the people side of the job. It also left me feeling more optimistic in other ways, which leads me to my next point…

Has GEO Taken Over From SEO?

So when I told Matt, he didn’t need much convincing. Our website and search work is looked after by Faizan and Ian, specialists we trust with it, and they set us up with a tool that tracks how often ChatGPT, Gemini and others recommend Brellis when someone asks about recruiters in our area. We’ve also added dedicated pages to our website for the towns and sectors we cover. Matt wrote an article for the site answering the questions clients ask us most often, which is exactly the kind of clear answer AI tools look for when someone asks them a question.

It’s worth saying that you can’t judge this by searching for yourself. Google and AI tools tailor their results to you, and both know exactly who we are! So the screenshots below were taken in fresh, logged-out sessions, and as you can see, we’re doing a pretty good job so far.

So, has GEO taken over from SEO? Not yet. Most people who use AI still use Google every day too, so we’re keeping both going. GEO is just another string to our bow, and it means that wherever your next hire starts looking, there’s a good chance they’ll find us, and your vacancy.

Why not try it yourself? Ask ChatGPT or Gemini about your own business and see what comes back. You might be surprised what it says about you, and whether it mentions you at all.

New Look For The Website

Speaking of our website, we’ve made some changes to it recently. We’re constantly updating the site to make it more user-friendly, by listening to feedback from candidates and clients and by monitoring how it performs.

Unfortunately for me, this meant a new picture day was in order. There aren’t many things I find more awkward than posing for serious photographs. I did take some comfort in the fact that Zoe and Matt seemed to share my discomfort, though!

I’m pleased to say the photos came out great. That joy may be short-lived, however, as I’m told Matt liked them so much he wants to do a few more out and about in the area.

Keep an eye on the website for those new shots, and please do keep the feedback coming on how we could improve it. Just drop one of us an email or use the contact page on our website.

Check the new site out here: https://brellisrecruitment.co.uk/

That’s a Wrap!

Thanks for reading! If you’re thinking of hiring for a new position, replacing a leaver or have any questions about the market, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Remember to click the link for one of our limited edition bags and notebooks (supplies are limited!!).

Until next time…