Starting at the Beginning

I thought I would start my blogging career by explaining a little about why We Want 2 Work was born. If you are an SME or a Job Seeker I think many of you may be able to relate to some of what I have to say about the recruitment process and how agonising it can be from both sides

I have been running a garden design and maintenance business for over 12 years, at one point I had 3 trucks on the road and employed 9 guys, it was an absolute bloody nightmare! Don’t get me wrong I had some great people working for me but it was a total headache, covering planned holidays was bad enough, let alone sick days!


It sometimes seemed as if not a week went past where I had some manpower crisis or other. 

I tried Job Centre Plus, who although lovely people, were practically useless. I’m sure they do their best but surely it’s a no brainer that you don’t send a guy just out of hospital after a stomach operation for a gardening job? It wasted his time and resources coming to the interview and wasted my time when I could have been interviewing a more suitable candidate.


I went on to try Recruitment Agencies. Now before I bring the whole industry down on me like a ton of bricks I want to make it clear that I am going to speak of my personal experiences and am in no way casting aspersions on Recruitment Agencies as a whole. However my experience was not great at all. First thing was the cost, on the few occasions I had no choice but to use agency staff it wiped out any profit I hoped to make on the job. Secondly once again I felt I was badly let down by the quality of staff they sent me.

I was left with the overall feeling that as I was unlikely to earn them thousands of pounds in commission each year, that they had little to no interest in my business. I stopped using them when they sent me a lad who stood and quoted me the Health and Safety guide book when he scratched his finger on a Rose thorn. He demanded antibacterial wash, antiseptic cream and a plaster, so I sent him home with the offending digit wrapped in a Kleenex!

It seemed that both main recruitment methods were lacking, probably by no fault of their own. The problem is no one understands what your business needs as well as you do. All businesses are as unique in what they need from their staff as fingerprints. Putting a middleman in between me and the staff I required just didn’t work for me.

I looked for a website where I could search Job Seekers and contact them directly, without any fuss or ridiculous charges


I never found one that came close to what I needed. I spoke to other SME’s at various networking events and found many were in the same boat. They needed to find new employee's quickly with the minimum of fuss and at a reasonable cost.

I chatted with Job Seekers who told me some horror stories from their point of view, the constantly having to chase them up, again their lack of understanding what a job entails or qualifications held, and finally the worst offence of posting ‘Ghost’ jobs to entice new candidates, all left them feeling pretty deflated.

It was obvious that the situation needed to change or at least be challenged with an alternative, after a year of nipping and tucking and squeezing and prodding; We Want 2 Work was born.


Take a look and tell me if I've got it right www.wewant2work.co.uk