History
Some agencies are born from personal ambition, some are the product of frustration, and some are created to exploit a niche in the market. SMRS was created out of the belief that there was a different and better approach to recruitment advertising – an approach and a business model that hadn’t been tried before.
Founded in 1997, SMRS has grown from a small partnership into one of the top 15 recruitment solutions agencies in the UK, currently turning over more than £13 million and serving major clients from Scotland to the South Coast.
For some years, we inhabited the top floor of The Triangle shopping mall, overlooking Selfridges and Harvey Nicks (good for our image, bad for our bank balances). At the end of 2005, with no inch of floor space unfilled, it was ‘good bye’ to The Triangle and ‘hallo’ to much larger premises in the midst of Manchester’s massive Ancoats redevelopment zone, on the northern frontier of the city centre. And in 2006, we opened in London, around which we already had a number of clients.
There have been many other changes too: the expansion of our services to include in-house creative direction employer branding, print management, research consultancy, studio services and web design – to name a few – has greatly strengthened our offer.
Other things remain the same. All of our support services are outsourced; so, all of our 40-strong team are working directly on client projects. We still operate a highly distinctive business model that enables us to compete with even the largest agencies in our sector. And we’re still owned by three Managing Partners, who still work on live projects, year round.