Softcat signs Apprentice star for recruitment push

Former Apprentice winner Lee McQueen's company to help with push to bag more 'second jobbers'

Softcat has signed a company headed by a former winner of The Apprentice to help recruit dozens more staff as it eyes continued growth.

The Raw Talent Academy (RTA) was set up by the 2008 series winner Lee McQueen (pictured) and specialises in recruiting sales staff for companies across a range of sectors.

The firm has been brought on board by Softcat to help it snap up a number of new recruits as it eyes further expansion. At the moment, about 785 staff work at Softcat and by the end of its fiscal year in July, the firm hopes the number will be closer to 830, with the help of RTA.

RTA runs "audition days" for applicants during which they carry out a number of scenario-based tasks, similar to those featured on The Apprentice.

On the Softcat page of the RTA website, the recruitment firm says applicants' attitude is key.

"Candidates will be assessed not on how well your CV reads or how many grades you have got, but on how you perform in teams, under pressure and in real-life business and sales tasks," the website says. "Think The Apprentice squeezed into a day's process."

Softcat's managing director Colin Brown said RTA would continue to work alongside its own "fantastic" recruitment team.

"We really want to start ramping up our recruitment," he said. "It is the law of large numbers - the bigger we are and the more people we've got, if we still want to increase that by 15 to 20 per cent next year, then that is a lot more people. Rather than just working harder and doing more of the same, we thought in addition to that, we will look at working with outside agencies.

"[RTA] was the best fit in terms of getting people of our industry of the right age demographic and, more importantly, the right cultural demographic as well. We thought [RTA] might have better access to the 'second jobbers'."

Brown said he would not be actively involved in the recruitment day himself and said he would not be playing the role of The Apprentice's Alan Sugar.

"There will be nothing like that going on!" he said.

"I think [RTA] take a bit of the Margaret [Mountford] and Nick Hewer thing into it more than we would, but we get [candidates] to do roleplaying and things like that, but these guys take it a couple of stages further and we like the look of it. If we thought it was silly we wouldn't want them to do it. That's what this organisation does day in, day out."

Brown added that the recruitment push comes as plans to move into the Scottish market become firmer. He said Glasgow would be a likely location for the firm's next office, which is likely to take between six and nine months to get going.