And as if to prove that great minds think alike, we’ve learned that recently James Caan CBE, recruitment guru and BBC business Dragon, says that ‘Recruitment is all about people’. Caan goes on to explain that, ‘the secret to placing the best candidate is finding somebody who fits the company culture. In other words, matching people with people.’ It echoes what Kevin Brettle told us about his Recruit Mint experience: ‘I was willing to look more at what any potential company was like, the people and how I might fit in, rather than the job itself’, he revealed. This was largely due to the fact that he trusted Mark Burton, Recruit Mint CEO, to think of him as a person with values and preferences, rather than as an economic unit.

It may sound simple, but it’s a person you’re dealing with when you sit down to write your job brief; someone who will be spending at least 37-and-a-half hours a week at work, and who deserves to be as happy and fulfilled as you are. Caan refers to the creation of the brief as: ‘the foundations’, and carries on to say that, ‘if you don’t spend your time getting it right I can guarantee you’ll live to regret your decision’. It’s just not good enough to simply fill the gap with a warm body as your candidate will surely fail – and if he or she fails then so will you, and ultimately so will the reputation of your business.

Mark Burton comments: ‘It’s great to hear, and at the same time not surprising, that James Caan endorses methods and principles that have been at the heart of Recruit Mint’s way of working since the beginning. Like James, we recognise that recruitment has got to be so much more than ticking boxes and moving CVs from the ‘available’ file to the ‘hired’ file as fast as possible’.

Caan finishes by saying: ‘people move jobs for opportunity, not just for a pay rise’. Those opportunities are not only professional advancement, but the chance to meet new people, develop skills and, hopefully, to do something they consider worthwhile. Asking yourself: ‘will my client be happy?’ might not provide the finished picture – but it’s a great place to start.

Read James Caan’s full piece for Recruiting Times here