About Affecto

 

Recruitment has changed a lot. People haven’t changed quite as much.

We’re a proud Yorkshire-rooted technology recruitment business specialising in business-critical technology, data and technology-enabled transformation hires.

The kind of appointments where the decision has a significant influence on how a business performs, how resilient it is and how successfully it delivers.

We work particularly well with operational businesses; organisations across manufacturing, engineering, logistics, distribution, food production, infrastructure and similarly complex environments where technology has a real impact on how the place runs, even though technology isn’t necessarily what the company sells.

Our approach is built around a fairly simple belief:

relationships still matter, and better information makes those relationships more useful.

Technology has changed recruitment.

We can research much larger markets. Analyse more information. Understand patterns and comparisons more quickly. Retain useful insight between searches. Automate repetitive work that adds very little value when done manually.

We think all of that is brilliant.

We just don’t think any of it changes the fact that recruitment still involves people making important decisions about other people.

That part deserves more attention, not less.

 

Better information should lead to better recruitment decisions.

By combining real-time market intelligence and analysis with large-scale market data, AI, automation and modern research techniques, we can build and execute recruitment strategies around what the market is actually telling us.

That matters because a surprising amount of recruitment still begins with assumptions.

About salary.

About where the right people work.

About what experience is essential.

About which companies should be targeted.

About what candidates will find attractive.

Sometimes those assumptions are right.

Sometimes the market tells us something completely different.

Our job is to find that out early.

The aim is to replace assumption and estimation with evidence, give clients greater control over the process and improve how effectively the right people are identified and engaged.

Technology helps us look further, analyse more information and access insight that would otherwise disappear.

But the technology itself isn’t the point.

The useful bit is what we can understand - and what better decisions can be made because of it.

 

We’re quite happy to question the question.

Recruitment normally starts once somebody has decided what they want to recruit.

Sometimes that is exactly where it should start.

Sometimes the decisions made before the recruiter arrived are the reason the hiring is difficult in the first place.

So we’re comfortable asking awkward but useful questions.

Does the role really need to look like that?

Does the salary support the expectation?

Are all the people making the decision actually hiring for the same thing?

Does the experience being requested exist where everybody assumes it does?

Could someone from a less obvious background be stronger?

Is sector familiarity genuinely essential, or is comparable operational experience more valuable?

And occasionally: does the business actually need to hire at all?

That isn’t about making recruitment more complicated.

It's the opposite.

We’d rather challenge an assumption before a search begins than spend three months recruiting against it.

 

The market is more valuable when you listen to it.

Every search creates information.

Good candidates repeatedly rejecting the same salary tells us something.

A particular title attracting the wrong level of person tells us something.

An unexpected background producing stronger candidates tells us something.

People becoming interested in the role until they understand one particular part of it definitely tells us something.

That information shouldn’t disappear into recruitment activity.

It should influence the work.

If the market keeps challenging an assumption, we feed that back.

If the evidence suggests the search should move in a different direction, we say so.

If we learn something that changes how the role should be positioned, targeted or assessed, that should become part of the decision.

Sticking rigidly to the original plan isn’t discipline if the evidence keeps telling you the plan is wrong.

 

No recruitment theatre.

We like good methodology.

We like data.

We like technology.

We like being thorough.

What we don’t particularly like is dressing fairly ordinary recruitment activity up as something mystical.

There is no magic database containing exactly the person you need.

A huge candidate network is not automatically a useful one.

AI has not removed the need to understand people.

More sourcing activity does not automatically mean better market coverage.

And sending more CVs is not evidence that a search is working.

We prefer simpler questions.

Do we understand what the business is actually trying to solve?

Have we tested the important assumptions?

Are we looking in the right places?

Are the right people engaging?

What is the market telling us?

Can we clearly explain why somebody is being recommended?

Does the client understand the risks, compromises and alternatives?

Are they in a better position to make the decision than when we started?

If the answer to those questions is yes, the work is probably doing what it should.

 

Different hiring problems deserve different answers.

We don’t believe every hire should be forced through the same model.

Affecto works in three main ways.

Business-Critical Hires

For high-consequence senior technology, data and technology-enabled transformation appointments where the risk, uncertainty or complexity warrants more care around the requirement, the market and the final decision.

The aim isn’t simply to find candidates.

It is to help the business become clearer about what it really needs, understand what the market can realistically offer and the confidence to make the eventual decision with better evidence behind it.

Always-On Talent Pools

For businesses that repeatedly hire from the same or overlapping markets.

Instead of rebuilding the same research, relationships and market knowledge every time another vacancy appears, we build you the systems to grow engaged talent pools so every hiring cycle leaves the business better informed for the next one.

Fractional Talent Partner

For periods where recruitment pressure has become difficult to carry inside the existing structure.

We take agreed, hands-on responsibility for helping get hiring moving, improve visibility and reduce the amount of recruitment work sitting with leaders, hiring managers or overstretched internal teams.

Three different problems.

Three different levels of support.

And if a simpler recruitment route makes more sense, we’re perfectly comfortable saying that too.

 

Forged in Sheffield. Still fairly Yorkshire about things.

We’re proud of where Affecto comes from.

Not because every conversation needs a Yorkshire slogan attached to it.

More because some of the values travel rather well.

Be straightforward.

Don’t make things more complicated than they need to be.

Do what you said you were going to do.

Tell somebody when you think there is a problem.

And don’t mistake an expensive presentation for a good answer.

That tends to work quite well in recruitment.

If the salary is wrong, we’ll tell you.

If the brief is confusing the market, you should know.

If we think somebody is strong, we’ll explain why.

If we have doubts, we’ll explain those too.

And if we don’t think Affecto is the right answer, we’d rather tell you than manufacture a reason to become involved.

 

Candidates aren’t inventory.

This really shouldn’t be a distinctive point of view, but recruitment occasionally makes it one.

The people we approach have careers, families, ambitions, frustrations and plenty of other things going on beyond whichever vacancy happens to be live that week.

They might be right for something today.

They might become relevant in two years.

They might never work with one of our clients at all.

The relationship still matters.

That means being clear about why we’re contacting somebody, understanding what they actually want and taking the time to understand not just whether they can do a job, but why they might move and what sort of impact they could realistically make inside the organisation.

Technology can help us identify and understand more people.

It should never become an excuse to communicate with them like they aren’t people at all.

 

We’re here when hiring deserves a bit more thought.

Sometimes recruitment is straightforward.

Good.

It should be.

We tend to become most useful when the hiring is important, something remains unclear, the same requirement keeps coming back or recruitment is consuming more time and attention than it reasonably should.

You don’t need to know which Affecto service applies.

Start with the problem.

We’ll tell you how we think we can help; or even if we don’t think we should.

Let's talk it through.

 

Our Values