Nick Mortimer: We help growing business scale in a way that doesn’t break the bank but also allows them to control their brand narrative and external perception
Nick Mortimer, our Regional Director (Europe) was recently interviewed by Best startup.eu…
Troi’s mission is to make hiring better and help the tech ecosystem move away from the problems that traditional recruitment models have, by becoming dedicated talent partners through a modern take on the traditional recruitment RPO model.
Troi are an embedded recruitment partner providing the complete end-to-end recruitment service, operating on a monthly subscription basis across Netherlands, UK (and Europe) and the US.
The proven recruitment model stems from a strategic approach to embedded hiring working across tech and GTM disciplines with benefits including saving organisations time, money and resources.
Tell us about yourself?
As with many people, I ‘fell’ into recruitment. After graduating from University in the midst of a recession (deja vu here…), I went into agency recruitment. I worked in that space for six and a half years before joining Troi at the start of our journey in October 2017 to help grow their embedded recruitment partner offering.
I was pretty frustrated with agency recruitment, so wanted to explore different ways of doing it. At the time, embedded recruitment was very fresh and new, without much uptake. It felt like a natural place for me to go.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Good question, I think I’d say “just do it”. I’m quite an introspective person and often like to think things through and analyse before doing them. I’d say that’s a strength, but it’s also a weakness. So, just do it!
What problem does your business solve?
We help growing business scale in a way that doesn’t break the bank but also allows them to control their brand narrative and external perception.
We also help to fix the experience candidates have when dealing with third party recruiters by making the relationship between us and an organisation closer.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
The underlying inspiration was more of a frustration with traditional recruitment models. There just HAD to be a better way to do things. The traditional recruitment model being based on commission for the recruiter drove the wrong behaviours.
Candidates became commodities, businesses would not buy in to their recruiter because they only paid upon success and candidates were left in this kind of purgatory and received a terrible experience.
It’s a generalisation, and there are good examples of the recruitment agency model working really well, but it became so frequent it was the norm.
Our model means everyone involved in the ‘recruiting triangle’ has an experience that is better, and that’s mostly because our recruiters work inside the businesses they represent.
We live and breathe by the ’embedded recruitment partner’ model – by embedding ourselves within the clients ecosystem.
What is your magic sauce?
Good question! It’s pretty difficult to put my finger on. Embedded recruitment is becoming an increasingly crowded space, but we were very much at the start of this ‘revolution’.
We’ve been doing this for over 5 years, which is a long time in this space. We’ve made a ton of mistakes, but done lots of things very well too. I think that combined experience gives us an awesome insight into how to grow all kinds of businesses and deal with their problems.
Our team is absolutely brilliant as well – super experienced and highly capable recruiters. That’s often commented on by potential, current and past clients.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We want to supporting businesses all across the Netherlands and Europe and be the ‘go-to’ embedded talent provider for growing businesses.
We also want to continue the good fight and help make as many people aware as possible that there is a better way to find a job and hire the best people you can.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
There’s probably 3!
1) The early days – that was tough. We had many obstacles to overcome to get businesses bought in to the model and how it worked. Getting traction felt like we were educating the organisations we spoke to.
2) Covid – for two reasons, one the initial shock which meant a massive proportion of companies starting hiring. Secondly the growth period we experienced with our headcount growing 1000% and the challenges of building an organisation fit for purpose.
3) Now! The tech industry, our natural home, has been impacted significantly but the macroeconomic conditions – there’s layoffs and hiring slowdowns which has been very challenging.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
If you’re a growing business throughout Europe reading this wondering how you’re going to make your tech/GTM hires over the next 3, 6, 9, 12+ months, it might be worth us having a chat!
