Trust Works Both Ways: Choosing Who You Do Business With

As with every business owner, I often find myself thinking about not just my own business, but the broader concepts around business too. Lately, I've been specifically thinking quite a lot about trust in business and, having run Temporis Legal Recruitment for 13 years, I think one of the biggest things I've learnt is that who you choose to work with really matters.

In recruitment, we naturally talk a lot about the trust our candidates and clients place in us. Candidates trust us with their careers, their personal information and sometimes situations that are quite difficult or sensitive. Clients trust us to understand their business, represent them properly, find the right people and, crucially, to be honest with them. I've always taken that responsibility very seriously because it truly does matter and some of our most trusted relationships are based on our commitment to honesty. When we say we're going to do something, we do it. If something goes wrong, I want us to be honest about it, pick up the phone and sort it out. That’s the ethos I founded Temporis on 13 years ago, and I am proud to say myself and my team still stick to it.

But I think when you're the supplier in a business relationship, it's very easy to spend so much time thinking about what your client expects from you that you forget something quite important - we need to be able to trust the people we work with too!

We're very lucky that many of our clients are longstanding clients, some of whom we've worked with for many years. Whilst preparing for a team wide meeting, I began to think about why those relationships have lasted, and I came to the conclusion that it’s actually quite simple! It’s because both sides completely trust one another. They're clients I could pick up the phone to tomorrow and have an honest conversation with. If there's an issue, we talk about it. If we've got a problem, we’ll say so. If they disagree with something, they'll tell us. Nobody expects everything to be perfect all the time because no matter how hard you try, perfection is all so often just out of reach, and everybody knows it.

What matters is how people behave when something isn't perfect. Those are the client relationships I value the most, and they're also usually the easiest ones to do a really good job for. When you know a client's business properly and there's a genuine relationship there, recruitment becomes much more than sending CVs when somebody has a vacancy. You understand the people, the culture and you strive harder to not just fill a gap, but to complement an existing team you’re already familiar with in some way.

Not Every Piece of Business Is Good Business

This is probably something I wouldn't have been confident enough to say when I first started Temporis. When you're building a business, getting a new client feels like a win. Someone wants to work with you, brilliant! In those early years, you don’t necessarily think about whether or not this is the type of client you want to work with. You bury those concerns, that little itch at the back of your mind that says “these aren’t my kind of people” and you crack on. Those relationships may result in some initial repeat bookings, but inevitably that lack of trust brings things to an end. I definitely approach things differently now. Being established for 13 years means we're fortunate enough to be able to choose who we work with, and if a relationship doesn't feel right, we're able to walk away from it.

I don't mean that arrogantly because If anything, it's taken me too long to get comfortable with it, and I think any recruiter would be lying if they said they didn’t get that all too familiar feeling of “just get on with it” when speaking with a difficult client. That being said, I am confident that maturing in business is remembering that sometimes a piece of business simply isn't worth having.

If the trust isn't there, if there's no respect between the two businesses or if you constantly feel as though you have to protect yourself rather than work together, it's probably not going to become a good long-term relationship, and that is okay!

What We Want From Our Client Relationships

We don't expect our clients to agree with us about everything, and we certainly don't expect there never to be difficult conversations because we know things aren’t always perfect. What we do want from our client relationships is that honesty, open communication, fairness and mutual respect.

That's what we always strive to give our candidates and clients, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the same in return. Many of the relationships we've built over the last 13 years are ones I'm genuinely very proud of. We've worked with firms through periods of growth, staff changes, maternity leave, unexpected absences and those Friday afternoon calls when somebody suddenly realises they desperately need a locum for Monday morning. We've got clients who come back to us year after year and, for me, that's what a successful recruitment business should be built on. Not just filling as many vacancies as possible or having as many clients as possible, but working with good people, building relationships that last and knowing that there's trust on both sides.

Ultimately, it's not just about whether a client wants to work with Temporis. That in of itself is flattering, but flattery soon wears thin if you can’t trust the other party to be honest with you, or to treat you or your team with respect when things aren’t running as smoothly as we like. The really telling thing about a client, the thing that makes you and your team want to work their backsides off for them, is trust, and the pride you feel in having earned that trust.

As Temporis approaches 14 years, I am proud of the trust I have built up with my clients, and I relish the opportunity to prove to new clients that I am worthy of their trust too – provided, of course, they are open and honest with me.