In just five years, two friends from Bassaleg in Newport, who decided to combine their commercial and recruitment knowledge and experience have created Foxwood Recruitment and developed the  boutique recruitment company who now work with international and local clients from their new offices in Newport city centre.

Victoria Morris had worked in the recruitment industry for over a decade before meeting up with Jonathan Davies, a childhood friend who was travelling throughout the UK in his role as UK Business Development Director for a national mailing house. Victoria wanted to take the next step and start her own recruitment business and Jonathan wanted to find a new challenge closer to home where he could utilise his commercial skills and experience and spend more time with his young family.

Rather than competing against the high street recruitment companies, Victoria and Jonathan opted for the quality above quantity approach and focused on the specific industry sectors they had experience in. This enabled them to implement targeted candidate search campaigns and put forward focused shortlists to clients.

It’s a formula that has worked well for Foxwood, as Jonathan Davies explained,

“Our clients and inevitably Foxwood has benefitted as we have built up a strong portfolio of retained clients over the past five years who we work very closely with.”

Prior to lockdown, new software and technologies were being launched for the recruitment industry to streamline the recruitment process. Zoom, Teams and various other virtual meeting software were already being used in general business activities and had been for a couple of years.

“Our timing was perfect,” commented Jonathan. “We made the decision to invest in bespoke virtual recruitment software at the beginning of the year and the timing proved to be ideal. Essentially, when we interview candidates to shortlist them, the client is able to log in to review the video at a time to suit them and, whilst businesses were unable to work from their offices, our virtual recruitment services proved to be very popular.”

The now four strong skulk at Foxwood are in the process of setting up a new department within the company to enter another sector of the recruitment industry as they continue to build and expand on a successful first five years.

“We’re very proud of what we have achieved but neither Victoria or I are ones to rest on our laurels and we are very close to launching the department which will open up new opportunities for the business. It is an exciting time for all involved and ultimately it will result in us having to recruit additional personnel to join our team of recruiters.”