Greg Thorpe's Statement
Howett Thorpe is different; we focus on placing the right person in the right company and developing their careers, unlike other consultancies that are more concerned with how many people they can place each month.
My philosophy is simple: “once you know and understand your candidates and your clients, recruitment is easy”. We interview all our candidates in person (unless there are exceptional circumstances) and we visit our clients to discuss their needs and gain first hand experience of their working environment and culture if we possibly can.
I became interested in recruitment when I was a student and my friends asked me for advice about job interviews. I enjoyed being able to help them to find the roles they wanted and realised that knowing my friends as individuals enabled me to tailor my advice specifically to them. That discovery has influenced all my professional relationships with both clients and candidates.
A career in recruitment was a logical step for me. I started with Accountancy Personnel in 1985, loved the work and was quickly promoted to manager, first at Basingstoke, then at Guildford, before opening a new office in Woking.
After about three years the company was taken over by a well-known national consultancy and suddenly my job was all about numbers rather than providing a quality recruitment service that truly understood the clients’ needs. I quickly became disillusioned because, even if salary, location and job content are perfect, trying to place a candidate in the wrong environment, or where their face does not fit, always leads to frustration and disappointment for everyone. I am constantly amazed how many recruitment agencies put forward candidates they have never actually met as an ideal match for a client’s needs.
This way of working seemed so wrong to me that I knew I had to set up my own consultancy to provide individually-tailored recruitment. The first Howett Thorpe office opened in June 1988.
One of my great satisfactions is that many of the candidates I have placed, whether they are part qualified or qualified, are still developing their careers with the same companies. A large proportion of them are now also clients.
I work as hard at recruiting my own consultants as I do at filling vacancies for clients. It’s essential that they always put maximum effort into filling jobs, be it a part time bookkeeper role or a Financial Director. Team members have previously worked for highly respected national and specialist competitors or in the finance and accountancy sectors. I am proud to say that many of them have worked with me for 5 or more years; in a recruitment environment this is a great achievement and is very important in providing continuity for clients.
What is unique about Howett Thorpe is that consultants have the autonomy to make decisions so they don’t waste time waiting for agreements to be signed off at a higher level. I have always told my consultants “treat your desk as if it’s your own business”.
We now have three divisions:
Commercial Permanent Division which includes
Managed by an ex-accountant, the team consists of experienced consultants with over 21 years in finance recruitment between them.
Senior Recruitment covering all qualified accountants including ACCA, CIMA, ACA, CIPFA.
Part Qualified & Accountancy Support Recruitment – all Non-qualified roles from Accounts Clerks to Bookkeepers, Part Qualified Accountants, QBEs, Accounts Assistants, Accounts Payable, Credit Control and Payroll
Contract, Interim & Temporary Division; an experienced team with extensive knowledge across all variants of Contract recruitment and legislation that might impact contractors, headed up by our company’s Operations Director.
Developing rapidly as more and more companies look for support through contract staff at all levels, and from short -term 1-5 day cover through to maternity cover and project roles lasting many months.
Covering all levels of finance staff within Senior, Part Qualified and Accountancy Support teams.
Public Practice Division; a team totally dedicated to working with firms of accountants under a Manager with a solid track record of specialising in public practice with one of the largest recruitment companies.
They support all service lines from Accounts and Audit to Taxation, Restructuring and Corporate Finance, Outsourcing, Payroll and Bookkeeping. Their candidates include qualified and studying individuals from a wide range of qualification including AAT, CAT, ACCA, ACA , CA, JIEB, ATT, and CTA .
