Employee case study:
Claire Harrison

I joined Sellick Partnership in 2016 as a Manager for the Housing & Property Services team, which was a brand new division that I was brought in to launch. The business was focused solely on legal and finance recruitment at the time, so it was an exciting opportunity.  

Despite launching a brand new specialism, I had the experience and was confident I could make the division a success. I had been in the housing sector for around 10 years and had been managing a team for five years. I’d just had my daughter and decided I wanted a new challenge.  

Initially, I was discussing coming on board to do finance recruitment, but my passion for the housing sector was soon picked up and Sellick Partnership expressed interest in potentially building a team. Over the years, we did just that. There are now two separate teams within the wider Housing & Property Services division: a North team and a South team. This is to ensure we have a presence right across the country.  

I’ve always said this, particularly when discussing opportunities with potential new hires, but it really says a lot about Sellick Partnership as a business that they’re willing to take that risk. This is a business that puts trust and faith in people and doesn’t shy away from new challenges. As a company, we want the right people, and we will back these people and give them the resources to develop and grow.  

With the Housing & Property Services division being completely new, we had to create all collateral to start from scratch. I was having meetings even before I started, working with both the Marketing and the Senior Management Team to see what I needed to get things off the ground.  

There was a launch that we did internally and externally, with so much support and excitement around this!  

I’d gone from working in an established team to starting fresh – it was a new company, new organisation and new challenge whilst becoming a new mum again, I knew it was going to be a huge challenge but one that I was very much ready for. To get the level of support I did, gave us the tools to launch the specialism so successfully. I absolutely had the right backing for it.  

There were a number of challenges, one of the first was introducing Sellick Partnership as a Housing recruitment specialist as we hadn’t operated in that market before and were launching the new division.  

It took a lot of hard work to establish ourselves as a competitor. I’d say the first nine months were difficult and sometimes a little bit demoralising because we weren’t seeing the traction that we were working so hard to get. But we persevered and knew it would come.  

Now we stand proud as a key provider to many clients – because we demonstrated what we said we could do all along; help clients and candidates, who are as passionate about the housing industry as we are, to succeed.  

The Housing & Property Services team has been built from scratch, and those that have been successful have grown into their role and had lots of coaching, training and development from myself but also the wider team, it’s a real partnership.  This is huge for me, I really do enjoy being on that growth journey with the people we hire.  

We’re always expanding and looking forward to what’s next, which means there are opportunities to work hard and progress. Josh Meek is a great example: he came in, did incredibly well and has been promoted to Manager, taking on a team within the division.  

As a business, we put a lot of trust in individuals and their career aspirations. There’s a responsibility to work hard and build your success, but we don’t micromanage. If people see the real opportunity to have that level of autonomy, it’s really exciting.   

I’m personally really proud of what we’ve built over the years, it was challenging to begin with albeit an exciting one.  

However, the most rewarding aspect has to be seeing the development of people, and feeling like you’re having an impact on someone’s long-term career goals. I love training people and then some time down the line hearing and watching those same people train new starters with all the tools we gave them.  

It’s also great to see the team come together so well, and support me to push the division forwards.  

I love our vision ‘Shining a light on the future of our people’ – it really resonates with me in terms of developing people, but equally benefitting from the hard work they’re doing.  

Looking at the Sellick Partnership values, ‘passionate’ is another one, I’m very passionate about social housing, I understand the market inside out, and how our work in finding the right people for the right roles can have a profound impact on people’s lives.  

I lead Sellick Partnership’s social value efforts, helping employers to develop career skills within their communities. A great example would be the work we did with a housing association who want to improve the opportunities, and ultimately the lives of their service users. This led to us setting up employability workshops for them to learn how to become more employable, how to present themselves in an interview setting, or improve their job searching skills.  

We’ve been talking about it for quite a long time and worked with clients to offer that value-add, which has been really well received.  

I’ve recruited into this market for almost 20 years, and, through the social value support, I’ve had more contact with my clients than I ever have. As well as being able to help, I’ve been provided with a new way of seeing the market in which we work – you’re able to represent the roles in the best way because you’ve been there, you’ve worked with the communities the role may serve.  

It gives such an interesting insight and makes you more conscious about the type of role you’re placing. I think this been really successful for us and I’m excited to see where this goes in the future.