10 Years of Tarrant Howl: From a Dining Room Table to Today
This photograph was taken in the week I started Tarrant Howl in March 2016. In one way it feels like yesterday. In another, a lifetime ago. The week prior, I was still working my notice from my old job. Over the weekend, I bought a monitor and set myself up at the end of the dining room table. I had already chosen the name Tarrant Howl and purchased the domain name, but that was it. On Sunday evening I set up an email account and sent myself Tarrant Howl’s very first email. I still have that email today.
Tarrant Howl’s first email
On the Monday, I set to work starting a business. Having never done this before, it was both daunting and exciting in equal measure. I applied to incorporate the business, made an appointment with a bank to open an account, booked a meeting with an accountant, and then set to work building a website. Was it pretty? No. Did it do what it needed to do? Yes. As a start-up with limited funds, Microsoft Excel was going to have to be my database for now. The final piece of the puzzle was to get some access to job advertising and a CV database. And that was it. I had the bare bones of a company. It was now Thursday lunchtime, and I had everything I needed apart from jobs to fill.
Tarrant Howl’s first website
I remember that Thursday vividly. I spent the entire afternoon on the phone, calling old contacts. After a couple of years in a management role, I needed to let people know I was back at the coalface. I made call after call but got nowhere. Good conversations, but no work. By the end of the day, I felt completely deflated and started to question whether I’d made a huge mistake. My wife came home from work, we stood in the kitchen, and I had to tell her what a disaster my day had been. Then, at 6:30pm, I heard a noise from the dining room. I’d missed a call. I rang back. It was an old client, a Director at a top AJ100 practice. He needed staff and asked me to help. That was it. I was in business.
I didn’t stay in the dining room for long. For a start, it was very uncomfortable to sit in a dining room chair for nine to ten hours a day, and it’s very hard to switch off, looking at your “office” over dinner. Once my first invoice was paid, I bought a desk and a comfortable office chair and moved into a spare room. My very first invoice was paid by cheque. I still have a copy of both the invoice and the cheque framed in my office. I look at this often and smile to myself.
Ten years on, I look back on the journey I’ve been on. Firstly, I’d like to say a massive thank you to all of my clients, some of whom have been with me from the beginning. Without your trust, faith and belief, none of this would have been possible. Thank you to my suppliers too. You provide the tools and support that keep the business running day to day, allowing me to source high-quality, relevant candidates in a timely manner and deliver the service my clients expect.
It hasn’t been a smooth ride. Recruitment is heavily influenced by events and factors both domestically and across the wider world. The last decade has delivered plenty: Brexit, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, Liz Truss’ mini-budget, rising interest rates, planning bottlenecks like Gateway 2, and ongoing global instability.
Having clients across a range of sectors has helped, and more recently I’ve begun expanding into a new market, one that’s already proving very successful. Watch this space!
During more challenging times, it reduces the number of vacancies, but what many don’t realise is that it also dries up the talent pool. In many ways, that’s the bigger challenge for a recruiter.
Where Tarrant Howl excels, however, is filling hard-to-fill roles in a candidate-short market. This is the result of a proactive and forensic search approach, leaving no stone unturned and not giving up when others would.
This tenacious approach has seen Tarrant Howl fill some very difficult roles during these more challenging times, which have been critical to clients’ operations and growth. These include very senior-level roles, and a number of my clients have engaged with me on an exclusive retained search basis, not only to ensure they have access to the entire talent pool, but also to gain real market insight during the hiring process.
It’s also worth mentioning that Tarrant Howl is well positioned to source and supply temporary and contract staff, with a compliant and efficient weekly payroll service. Uncertainty has led many companies to use contractors or engaging with new staff on a temp to perm basis.
This ten-year milestone is something I’m incredibly proud of. From long-standing client relationships to placing candidates in roles where they go on to thrive, it’s been a hugely rewarding journey. Tarrant Howl has come a long way since those early days at my dining room table in 2016. I still look at this photograph and it reminds me how it all started, and I’m excited to see what the next decade brings.
If you are looking to hire or interested in exploring the job market, please feel free to get in touch.
Stewart Howl
