
Recruiting is expensive. Headhunters can demand a third of the first year’s salary as a fee. So ambitious start-ups often find it painfully hard to find senior staff. Modwenna Rees-Mogg noticed this problem. As editor of Angel News, the trade magazine for angel investors and early-stage entrepreneurs, she’s spent the last eight years talking to entrepreneurs who struggle with the recruitment problem. And she’s come up with a solution. It’s an adaptation of the angel pitching model. Instead of asking for investment, entrepreneurs stand onstage and make a pitch for a sales manager or finance director. The audience is composed of job-seekers. Some are high fliers looking for a new role. Others are newly redundant execs hoping to find a new company. Her recruitment events, called Pitching for Management, have been running for two years now. And now she’s taking the concept is going nationwide. “When we started I thought we’d attract pre-funding companies,” explains Rees-Mogg. “They would recruit top people before they went raising cash. Over time it has changed, and we now have firms with more than 50 employees using Pitching to Management to fill various roles.” Firms in all sectors are turning up to pitch. “We’ve had firms fill all their positions in one night. One guy, an inventor, turned up and simply said ‘I’ve created a new carburettor. Ford have placed an order. I have patents, but no idea what to do’. He was mobbed in a stampede. He found sales guys who were able to help him create a company.” An Oxford firm, Historic Futures, was struggling with a supply chain management product. They used Pitching for Management to find a new chairman, Richard Allen. He showed the firm how to take their product to market and win big contracts.
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