Recruiter GRS Group listed in real business 50 to watch

GRS Group, the search consultancy, specialising in Senior Manager and Director levels within Risk, Legal, Tax and Capital Markets has been listed in Real Business magazineís 50 to Watch feature which gives a rundown of the nationís hottest young firms. ìOver the years, weíve unearthed lastminute.com, Innocent Drinks and Friends Reunitedî says Charles Orton Jones, Real Businessís Features editor. ìThe 50 to Watch is based on hundreds of interviews conducted with university spinouts, VCs, private equity houses, corporate financiers, lawyers, accountancy firms, banks, trade magazine editors and PR companies. A panel of experts then sifts through the long list of names and ideas to pick our 50 favourites.î

ìWeíre delighted to have been listedî says Richard Paisley, who, together with business partner Dan Chester founded GRS in 2002 with Dan’s credit card and the sale of Richard’s car! ìAfter a period of disillusionment in our previous roles, we sat down in a pub, formulated a business plan on a piece of rough paper ( which is now framed in our office) and were up and running within a week. In 2002 we had 4 employees and a turnover of 200k, in 2005 we had 52 employees and a turnover of 5.4m.

Headquartered in Brighton, GRS opened a London office last year, will open in Munich in May and has plans for Hong Kong and Australia during the next two years. ìOur success has been down to our people ñ and how we train and develop them. We believe our approach is genuinely different as we have created an environment to work in thatís for grown ups. We feel that many recruitment organisations are very process driven which gets in the way of creating really effective bespoke solutions for clients. So, while we give training and know that success comes from the formal development of our people, we also empower individual consultants to make choices. As a result weíve found that our staff turnover has remained very low and the average billings per consultant are very high.