FAQs for Clients

Not always. A good recruitment partner should never recommend agency support simply because there is a vacancy to fill.

At Fashion Personnel, we start by understanding what you are trying to achieve, why the role is proving difficult to recruit, and what you have already tried. Sometimes the best advice is to adjust the brief, salary, advertising strategy or recruitment process rather than appoint an agency.

Where we can genuinely add value, our role is to complement your internal HR or Talent team, not replace it.

Our consultants have spent years immersed in the fashion, retail, beauty, lifestyle and related industries. We understand the talent pools, the roles, the market and the people within it, allowing us to identify opportunities and candidates that may not be reached through traditional recruitment alone.

There are many situations where specialist recruitment expertise can make a real difference.

You may be recruiting for a particularly niche or senior position, struggling to attract the right calibre of candidate, entering a new market, working to a tight deadline or simply finding that your internal team does not have the capacity to dedicate the necessary time to a search.

Equally, you may want access to passive candidates who are not actively applying for jobs but would consider the right opportunity.

The key is not whether an agency can send you CVs. It is whether they can give you access to the right people, insight and expertise that you cannot easily access yourself.

Because we don’t believe recruitment is simply about filling vacancies. Fashion Personnel has specialised in recruitment for the fashion and associated industries for decades. Our team has an exceptional depth of industry knowledge, with most of our staff each having more than 10 years’ service in our business.

That longevity matters.

It means our consultants have built extensive relationships with candidates and clients over many years. We know the industry, understand its nuances, and have developed networks that go far beyond a database of CVs.

Many of our clients have worked with us repeatedly for years, returning to us whenever they have a key appointment to make or a challenging role to fill. That repeat business is one of the strongest measures of the relationships we build.

They may well be able to, and we work very successfully alongside internal recruitment and HR teams.

Our role is to extend your reach and capability, rather than duplicate what you already do.

We can provide additional market knowledge, access to established candidate networks, specialist sourcing expertise and the dedicated time required for a thorough search.

We are also able to approach candidates discreetly and confidentially, including people who may not be actively looking but could be interested in the right move.

For many clients, the most effective approach is therefore not internal team versus agency, but internal team + specialist recruitment partner.

Understanding the job title isn’t enough.

Fashion, retail, beauty and lifestyle businesses have their own structures, terminology, commercial pressures and talent markets. The right candidate needs more than the right skills on paper, they need to understand the environment they are joining.

Because we work exclusively within our specialist markets, we understand the difference between candidates who look suitable on a CV and those who are genuinely right for the role, the business and the culture.

Our consultants speak the language of the industry because they know the industry.

We don’t believe in taking a job description, sending it into a database and waiting for CVs to arrive.

We take the time to understand the requirement properly.

That means discussing the role itself, but also the wider context: your business, team structure, culture, leadership style, challenges, ambitions and what success looks like in the position.

We want to understand why someone would want to join you, as well as why you would want to hire them.

That deeper understanding allows us to represent the opportunity accurately to candidates and assess whether someone is genuinely appropriate before putting them forward.

No, and deliberately so.

We don’t believe there is a single recruitment model that works for every business.

Some clients need a targeted executive search. Others need access to a specialist talent pool. Some need a rapid response to a time-sensitive vacancy, while others want a more considered, consultative process.

We tailor our approach to your requirements, agreeing the most appropriate search strategy, communication process and timescales with you at the outset.

Our aim is to fit into your recruitment process rather than force you into ours.

No. In fact, we’d argue that sending large numbers of CVs is not a particularly good measure of recruitment success.

Our priority is quality and relevance.

We take the time to understand the brief, identify appropriate candidates, assess their suitability and explain why we believe they could be a good fit.

You should not have to spend hours reviewing irrelevant CVs. Our job is to do the groundwork and present you with candidates worth meeting.

Often, yes.

Our long-standing presence in the industry means we have developed relationships with candidates throughout their careers—not just when they are actively job hunting.

Those relationships, combined with our specialist knowledge and networks, enable us to engage with passive and hard-to-reach talent.

Importantly, our relationships are built over time. Candidates know our consultants and trust us to understand what they are looking for, just as our clients trust us to understand their businesses.

Speed is important, but the right hire is more important than the fastest hire.

Because we know our markets and have established candidate networks, we can often move quickly when the right person is available.

However, we won’t compromise the quality of a search simply to hit an arbitrary timescale.

At the outset, we’ll discuss your priorities, the availability of talent within the market and realistic expectations around the search.

The better question is: what is the cost of not making the right hire?

Agency fees are, of course, an important consideration. But so are the costs associated with an unfilled position, a poor hire, lost productivity, management time and restarting a recruitment process.

We are transparent about our fees and can discuss the recruitment model that best suits your requirement.

Our focus is on delivering value, not simply supplying candidates.

Recruitment is not a commodity, and we don’t believe that choosing a recruitment partner should come down to who offers the lowest percentage.

The right agency should provide a return on your investment through quality, expertise, access, efficiency and ultimately the quality of the hire.

We are always happy to discuss your requirements and agree a commercial structure that reflects the nature and complexity of the assignment.

We stand behind the work we do.

Our terms include an appropriate rebate structure, which we’ll explain clearly at the beginning of the assignment.

More importantly, our involvement doesn’t stop when a candidate accepts an offer. We maintain communication throughout the process and value feedback from both client and candidate.

Our long-term relationships depend on successful placements, not simply successful introductions.

Yes, and we believe this is a crucial part of our role.

When we introduce someone to your business, we are representing you to the candidate.

That means we need to understand what makes your company attractive, what your culture is really like, what the opportunity offers and what challenges a candidate should be aware of.

We take the time to understand these things so that we can have meaningful conversations with candidates rather than simply forwarding a job description.

Candidate experience matters because it directly reflects on your employer brand.

We aim to be honest, informative and communicative throughout the process. We set expectations, provide appropriate feedback and maintain communication between interviews and offers.

Our long-standing candidate relationships are built on trust. We don’t want to place someone into a role that isn’t right for them any more than we want to introduce the wrong candidate to a client.

Absolutely.

Some of our strongest client relationships are partnerships between their internal team and our specialist consultants.

We understand that your internal team knows your business better than anyone. Our role is to bring something additional: specialist market knowledge, candidate relationships, sourcing capability, perspective and recruitment expertise.

We work collaboratively, agree responsibilities upfront and keep communication clear throughout the process.

We believe success is about considerably more than filling a vacancy.

It’s about finding someone who is right for the role, right for the business and right for the future.

We look at the quality of candidates, the recruitment experience, the speed and efficiency of the process, hiring-manager feedback and, ultimately, the longevity and success of the appointment.

Our greatest measure of success is what happens afterwards: clients coming back to us again and again.

Many of our relationships have developed over years, with clients returning to Fashion Personnel whenever they need recruitment support. We are proud that so much of our business comes from those long-standing relationships and recommendations.

We are specialists, not generalists.

We know the markets we recruit into. We know the roles. We know the people. And, importantly, we take the time to understand the businesses we work with.

Our experienced team, many of whom have been with Fashion Personnel for more than 10 years, brings a depth of knowledge and network that takes years to build.

We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all recruitment process. We listen, advise, tailor our approach and work in partnership with your team.

Because ultimately, successful recruitment isn’t about an agency winning a vacancy.

It’s about your business making the right hire.