I’m Dan Addy, CEO and Chief Headhunter at DTT Search.
I invite you to learn little more about me and our small, yet world class recruitment business. I say that with some credibility too, or at least that what my clients and I believe....
I’ve personally spent 16 years in the recruitment business within the TME sector. Having graduated with a Degree in Economics, I joined one of the worlds largest banks on a Graduate IT Programme in 2001 - Yes, I remember precisely where I was on that awful day in September of that year! It took me 6 months to realise that my passion for technology was something different to a deeply technical one… So I left the bank and embarked upon a journey in an industry that I love and detest in almost equal measure!
I was told that “recruitment is a sales job and you’ll be great at it”. So for the first 6 years of my career I did amazingly well on just that - being a great salesman. Frankly, that’s one of the biggest problems in our industry today.. This idea that the greatness of a recruiter on the supply side is determined by his or her annual fee income (Sales). I wonder how many of my current clients give a dammed what my fee income is? I suspect they are more interested in the quality and value of the individuals I can enable them to hire and retain.
My recruitment career began specialising in recruiting Software Engineers for SME’s in the North of England, working for Elan IT - still one of the worlds largest IT Recruitment companies. I had an amazing time working for Elan and to this day, I have never worked for a better boss.
After 6 or 7 years I became a little disenfranchised with the recruitment business and the way I was been treated by both my employer (not Elan) at the time and my clients. Looking back, it was clear to me that there was a major disconnect with the way I was being asked to run my team and business unit, versus what I knew should be happening. My team and I were being held up as some sort of demigods within our business as we were filling one vacancy for every two we took on, but to me it didn’t seem right - To me, that meant that we were failing 50% of the time and I had a real tough time (1) Looking myself in the mirror and (2) telling my clients that I couldn’t help them all the time.
So after a while, I decided that it was time for a drastic change. I went to work for one of my large tech clients as an Internal Recruitment Manager for a 12 month contract.
In our industry Internal Recruitment is seen as the graveyard of all great agency recruiters - I could hear the cackling voices of my old colleagues… “His arse has fallen out”, “He’s spent”, “whatever happened to him?”. This concept is a complete fallacy by the way, I found this out myself having spent several years working for brands like Vodafone and Microsoft on global search projects. I actually began to realise that there was now a way that I could begin to work with people in a way that made sense for all parties! Some guys are happy generating a great fee income and basing their KPI’s around failure - I’m not and I refuse to compromise on this.
I’m resolute in my focus on helping people to really understand how they can develop their business and in turn their own career, by surrounding themselves with the right people. Every successful senior manager understands this acutely, I believe it is my job to support them in realising that endeavour.
In December 2015, with 13 years experience in Technology, Media and Entertainment Recruitment I decided to go it completely on my own and incorporate what was then DanTech Talent Ltd (Now Trading as DTT Search) - I felt that it was the only way that I could build the business and life my young family deserve and genuinely the only way that I could rekindle my passion for the industry
Almost 3 years later, here I am penning this story and finding some
level of therapy in doing so.
The overriding message I’d like to convey is that almost everyone that been in the recruitment business more than a few years is in some way pretty good at what they do. What sets me and my amazing team apart is that our level of BS is just a little lower and we deliver almost 100% of the time, I’m working on improving the latter everyday.
I urge you to test us, my aim is to grow my business by helping you grow your business - it sounds simple, thats because it is.
I'm immensely proud of the small international team we have built and I hope to see them tested by your discerning expectations.
Hit the link below and lets talk about how we can help each other grow together.
