Carole Robb is a talent specialist at Vohs & Co specialising in Fashion Retail Design. Carole has held Design Director with Monsoon, SR Gent, Boden and Kew; and consultancy roles with Mothercare, East and Cath Kidson.
Your recruiter needs to understand your brand if they are to find you the right person for the job, not simply a person for the job. In this respect, your brand is as critical in the hunt for talent as the job description and the salary.
Some brands will create a queue of candidates ready to drop a resignation letter on their bosses’ desks before they’ve even heard the details of the role. Less prestigious brands will need the recruiter to articulate what makes the company interesting if they are to attract the best candidates, while brands with negative perceptions will need the recruiter to change the candidate's perception.
Brand and the type of talent you want to attract...
(Very) broadly speaking there are three types of brand in the fashion industry:
- The elite minority – the high end fashion houses such as Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham etc. These catwalk brands rarely recruit and are inundated with speculative applications for junior roles.
- High street chains – these brands make the latest fashions and trends accessible to the general public. Their brand identity is not focused on a "signature” look or feel to the products. From a customer perspective the brand tends to be embodied by the company logo and the shopping experience.
- Boutique brands – these companies have a signature that makes their products easily identifiable. While the brand identity evolves with general trends, customers return to these brands time after time because they identify with the core values of the brand.
Few designers have the technical abilities and personality to be successful in all three types of company. For example, High Street chains typically need designers who are flexible and able to quickly translate inspiration from the catwalk into a wide range of product lines that can be rapidly brought to market at affordable prices. On the other hand when recruiting for boutique brands the recruiter will be looking for designers who understand the essence of what attracts customers to that brand but with the ability to help the brand evolve.
Matching the candidates with the culture behind the brand.
Although the challenge of developing a list of interested candidates will be different in each case, identifying a talent pool with the skills to do the job is usually the easy part. Any hire is likely to be unsuccessful if they will not fit with both your team's and the organisation’s cultures. That means your recruiter will need to really get under the skin of your brand and to delve into the personalities of prospective candidates, not simply have looked at your latest products on your website.
