Having worked with Ally for a year now, Daniel Ball, Founder & CEO at The Early Careers Company & Foundation recently chatted with us about his experience of using Ally’s candidate research services and the value Ally has brought to his team and company.
Daniel’s organisation is both a private company and a registered charity. They deliver consulting and talent in the Early Careers space to help businesses build better Early Careers programmes, strategies and assessment processes, and hire stronger, more diverse teams. Meanwhile, The Early Careers Foundation funds and delivers initiatives to address the impacts of growing socioeconomic inequality amongst young people in the UK.
Last year, Daniel was considering setting up an international office to help with candidate research when he was introduced to Ally’s CEO and Founder, Greg Simidian. Like a lot of people, Daniel initially had some reservations about outsourcing candidate research. Anecdotally, there is the idea that career progression and a positive work environment and culture does not apply for people in developing countries. Rightly, Daniel points out that this is ‘absolute nonsense,’ and that ‘people all over the world want to have good jobs and good careers.’
Daniel’s reservations quickly dissipated when he met the Ally team. He could clearly see that Ally takes care of each team member, giving them the support and development they need to progress in their own careers. The values behind Ally’s recruitment process outsourcing model made Ally a viable solution for Daniel and his company. Starting out with just one Ally analyst, Daniel now has nine Ally analysts carrying out candidate research across his delivery, recruitment and commercial-tier sales teams, supporting staff both in London and soon in New York.
Daniel says that one of the key benefits of working with Ally is that Ally’s analysts work for his company exclusively, full-time. This means that he has been able to fully integrate the Ally team in his own work culture and build close working relationships. With the Ally team being such a key part of the Early Careers Company’s culture, Daniel says it feels like they have their own office set up in Mumbai!
Another factor Daniel notes about working with Ally is their commitment to quality. ‘Obviously, the analysts that come through Ally are well trained, well assessed and screened,’ says Daniel, adding that there is a ‘huge amount of effort’ put into quality control.
Since working with Ally, Daniel’s company has grown exponentially from a £60,000 NFI business to £350,000. This is an almost £4 million run rate, with approximately 60–70% of the work they deliver and the projects they execute having an origination with Ally. He points out that this applies even more now that Ally is supporting his commercial team through their recruitment lead generation service, identifying potential leads and opportunities.
A year on from considering setting up their own talent research office, Daniel says that The Early Careers Company’s board members now ‘have absolutely no desire to set up our own office or hire our own people.’ He goes on to say that the partnership with Ally ‘works brilliantly and there’s such value for money.’
Working with Ally has allowed his company to build an international team and freed up several hours in their work day to spend more time on charitable work, meeting with candidates and clients and developing the business.
Daniel rounds up by saying that Ally has improved their quality of life, profit margin and revenue figures—all of which have allowed The Early Careers Company to scale quickly.
Ally is an offshore outsource partner for recruitment firms that takes on the heavy lifting of candidate research. Ally’s core focus is quality of research and genuine care for its customers. Ally management has a background in serving investment banks, lawyers and professional services and applies the rigour of these sectors to the search and recruiter community.
If you would like to see what it’s like to work with Ally, we offer a completely FREE 21-day discovery trial where you gain full access to our service. This means you have the support of a team lead and a dedicated Ally analyst carrying out candidate research and talent analytics for you for an entire 21-day period. No commitment, no cost, no catch.
To book your free trial, get in touch.