Adam's MBA Journey
We sat down with Adam Bevan to discuss his MBA journey - he made his start with the company in 2015 and has since progressed to Head of Client Solutions.
His journey was quite unusual, but wonderful for the company nonetheless, as he continues to be a key component of the everyday running of MBA.
Here is Adam's journey, in his own words:
What were you doing prior to your start at MBA?
Before joining MBA I’d spent 6 years with Hays both in an RPO capacity managing a high volume of temp workers within facilities management and in Internal Recruitment. Following that, I did 2 years working for a major Oil & Gas recruitment business searching for recruiters and strategic managers across the globe.
Why did you decide to join MBA?
Well, there was the Oil & Gas crash so I was on the market. MBA appealed to me as throughout my career I’d worked in client-centric environments (whether RPO or Internal), I’d never heard of an SME centric RPO business before and having only worked for multi-million corporate recruitment businesses in the past, curiosity got the better of me.
I decided to join MBA because everything was about the client, is the client happy, what more can we do for the client, have we filled all the jobs. The passion MBA had for getting it right or ‘doing whatever it takes’ resonated with me.
What was your training process like?
I joined MBA to run one of our new accounts, and although MBA had the background of filling roles across multiple sites, and filling roles in one place at different levels, this client was a mixture of both with a massive number of roles in an industry we frankly didn’t know. I had jumped straight in and get my hands dirty immediately – however, I probably wouldn’t have it any other way. I immediately had the whole of MBA as a support network who guided me through the MBA way.
Can you describe your MBA journey?
My journey has been a little bizarre, when working for a growth business opportunities present themselves frequently. I started off managing one account and organically became the team manager for the Manchester operation. When I started in 2015 we had about 7 people in the Macclesfield office and at one point nearly 20 when we moved into central Manchester. After taking on a lot of the day-to-day running of the business outside of delivery I knew that I wanted to create and implement solutions, and eventually made the decision that I couldn’t do that effectively whilst being fair to a team. MBA fully supported the change in role and allowed me to focus on the strengths that benefitted the business most.
I then set up our outsourced recruitment team in India, as part of the strategy to have our UK team engaging with candidates, not spending all day sourcing – that kind of led to my current role.
What does your typical day as a Head of Client Solutions look like?
It can be anything and/or everything! Generally, during a week there will be some negotiations with a supplier or two, perhaps a renewal for insurance, I’ll speak to our team in India as frequently as possible. From there I can be meeting with existing or new clients to build their recruitment process or implement an ATS and work closely with the delivery team to figure out the best solution.
Next, I could be looking for a new office, checking someone’s spelling errors or investigating market insights to support a client in their hiring. I leave the delivery and finance to the experts and anything else can land on my desk!
What is the best part of your job?
Frankly, the best part is watching people develop (or previously developing them) – my passion at one point was training ‘rookie’ recruiters to become the best they can be. Some of those are still with us, and others have moved to pastures new – but I would hope that I’d had a positive impact on their career.
I also really enjoy working with our offshore team where we now have 15 highly skilled recruiters working (tirelessly) for us, they have become invaluable to our UK team who can now dedicate more time to our clients and the candidate journey.
What is the worst part of your job?
Audits & Proof Reading – I generally don’t like anything monotonous (which is why I’m so lucky to have a varied role). Reading documents and checking wording is mind-numbing to me.
What are the company and team culture like?
I think transparency is important, and that’s something we do have across MBA. Though that doesn’t mean the culture is always perfect, in recruitment your day can go from awful to elating during a 2-minute phone call, and easily the opposite. We have an excellent team who are ridiculously passionate about what they do, I personally think there is more we can do to enhance the culture and some of that comes with the more people we bring into the company with their own skills, passion and ideas.
We'd like to end this with a massive thank you to Adam for giving us the opportunity to learn more about his MBA journey.
