Welcome back to our regular blog series, where we have a chat with our team members to get the inside info on their role and time at Scantec.
This time round, we sat down with Divisional Manager for Defence Consultant Gareth Knight, who has worked at Scantec for an impressive 17 years, to find out what he likes best about his job.
He also talked about how he’s channelled his interest in tech to advance his career, all while being instrumental in improving the business’s overarching technological developments.
Hello Gareth! First off, please tell us about your career background
I graduated with an Electronics degree and then got three years’ worth of years of national recruitment experience in the Industrial and Commercial markets across Accounting under my belt before joining Scantec in 2005. I did this with a view to focusing my career in the more specialist fields of Technical and Engineering. Since then, I have spent several years learning the ropes on different desks, before delivering recruitment services to our clients within the Nuclear industry. Now I head up Scantec’s largest account, which I’ve now handled for the past 11 years. This involves leading a recruitment team to ensure high standards of service are met for all of the client’s niche requirements.
What types of roles do you recruit into?
I work on one account so we recruit into all of their Technical and Engineering roles, but with this comes that opportunity to source talent across the entire business. To that end, there’s scope for hiring mechanical and electrical engineers, right through to project managers and project controls. The client is within the defence sector so candidates need to be vetted and given security clearance. We’ve proved our worth time after time and have a strong track record in providing them with the people they need. This has provided us with a key opportunity to branch into the IT, communications, business analysis and finance arms of the organisation.
What’s the best thing about working at Scantec?
The option to work from home is certainly attractive, what with having a young family. It means that I can be there for them at the beginning and end of the day. This offers me more flexibility and autonomy and can use my time more wisely and productively. I’m left to get on with my job as long as I deliver great results.
What’s the culture like at Scantec?
I’m the chairman of Scantec’s Culture Committee so this is an area I’m fully invested in. We set the committee up to explore what the culture is and what it means to us. It’s actually quite a hard thing to define because a lot of it is based around how you behave collectively as a business. We’re value led and everyone is on board with this and conducts themselves accordingly.
Essentially, the vibe at Scantec is transparent and honest. Everyone is approachable, professional and friendly and our MD is visible and always there when you need him.
What sort of training and development opportunities does Scantec provide?
Development opportunities and training and development has come on in leaps and bounds. We used to find our own pathway to advance our careers but now there’s lots more support in place, including a structured training program when you start here. It’s less of a baptism of fire and means that we get exposed to trying different things to see what we’re passionate about and also what suits us best. A lot of opportunities come about because you do lots of aspects of a role that you probably wouldn't do in a larger organisation. Self development
Self development is key and, for my part, I was a Senior Consultant and was asked to step up into a Client Relationship role and eventually went on to manage more people in a bigger team, which has proven invaluable for my experience. This all points to the fact that Scantec is a thriving place to work and carve out a career.
What’s on the horizon for Scantec as a business?
The industry is really busy at the moment so there's massive potential for us to grow. The most difficult aspect is finding the right people to recruit for ourselves. It’s always a challenge and you can only get bigger when you bring more people on board, expand into new markets and build on what you have already. The directors always have solid plans to help facilitate our strategic growth.
What benefits do you appreciate the most?
Benefits include flexible working, a good work/life balance, generous holiday entitlement and the chance to acquire extra days throughout the year. There’s a company pension plan which has existed long before it was a statutory requirement. We have monthly and annual incentive prizes up for grabs and the option to work from home.
Which specific projects have you been involved with that have directly benefitted Scantec?
We always keep on top of the technology that’s available to us. To that end, I’ve been involved when we needed to upgrade our CRM software to the latest version with that provider and the resulting migration and configuration. I aim to ensure the business is getting the most out of its tech stack.
The pandemic brought about a lot of tech changes, many through sheer necessity because of changes to our working model. Some of the changes have stayed, such as that we don’t have phones anymore and instead use a VoIP system.
Over the years we’ve been migrating all of our software to the cloud, such as our accounting packages. There are a lot of automations around that now, so at the end of every month a manager can look at the sales and financial figures at a glance, rather than spending time manually inputting what you’ve delivered into a spreadsheet. We’ve also moved over to Microsoft Office 365 so we no longer have to log into a VPN just to access email and we can log in on a phone or tablet. Our tech makes our processes as automated as possible so that we can be more productive, streamlined and able to focus on our day-to-day tasks.
From a recruitment perspective, we have a lot of online capabilities to thoroughly search job boards and LinkedIn. This is because we have a provider there who aggregates all searches and job postings ,which helps us to work more efficiently. We post a job once and get it seeded out to multiple boards, which makes life easier for everyone.
I’m involved in all of this because I’m interested in tech, management information and reporting. I’m also well-versed in using systems to extrapolate optimum insights and can clearly communicate this to other team members. I like to analyse the data we have on our system to pull out meaningful insights/ reports which can help drive the business forwards which is obviously beneficial.
What would you say to someone who is considering a career at Scantec?
Come and join! Our door is always open and it’s a great place to get a grounding in recruitment because of the exposure to lots of different aspects of the business. You certainly won’t be pigeon holed. There are opportunities to develop at your own pace and you’ll be given ample time and support to find your way and be successful at what you do. That’s why there's lots of good reasons to come to Scantec.
Find out how to achieve your dream career at Scantec
Here at Scantec, we are passionate about finding and developing the best talent for our business. If you’re new to recruitment or an experienced recruiter and want to learn about building a career with us, we want to hear from you. Find out more or contact Andrea Davison at andread@scantec.co.uk.
