Management & director level placements
1
+
Years recruiting at senior level
1
+
Still in role after 12 months
1
%+
Average tenure of a Brellis senior placement
1
+ yrs
Senior hires are the most important — and most complex — recruitment decisions your business will make. Get them right and the impact is felt for years. Get them wrong and the cost is significant. With over 200 management and director level placements made across 25 years, Brellis brings a level of experience and judgement to this process that most agencies simply cannot match.
At management and director level, job boards alone rarely deliver. Of over 200 senior placements made, only around 50% have come via job boards — compared to 95% for entry level roles. The best candidates at this level are often not actively looking. Finding them requires a different approach entirely.
Senior appointments take weeks, often months. This is not a failure of the process — it is the process working correctly. Rushing a director level hire because a vacancy has been open too long is one of the most common and costly mistakes a business can make.
A senior search can generate thousands of applications. Every CV is reviewed personally — not filtered by an algorithm. The right person is occasionally in an unexpected place, and that is something only a human eye with decades of experience will catch.
Some of the most successful senior placements come not from job boards but from personal networks built over 25 years. The right person for your role may already be known to us — and may not be applying for anything.
My experience of senior recruitment didn’t begin in an agency. It began when I became a manager myself at 21 and had to build teams, make hiring decisions, and live with the consequences of getting it wrong. I’ve been a director responsible for growing a division, for relocating workload, for finding the right people to allow a business to move forward. That experience shapes every senior search I run. I understand what you actually need from a hire at this level — not just the job description, but the real brief behind it.
Across a career spanning more than 25 years, I have made over 200 management and director level placements.
Of those, only one person has left within their first 12 months.
The vast majority are still in those roles five or more years later.
Many of the managers and directors we have placed have gone on to become Brellis clients themselves. Having experienced the quality of the process as a candidate, they trust us to recruit for their own teams when the time comes. That says more about our approach than any testimonial.
Before any search begins we build a picture of the existing team — their working styles, their strengths, the dynamics already in place. A senior hire needs to slot in seamlessly. Where there are known internal pressures or politics, we factor those in from day one.
How a candidate communicates — their language, their energy, how they listen, how they handle questions they’re not expecting — tells us more than a CV ever could. We look for alignment between how the candidate presents themselves and how your business operates.
We recruit without emotion. We are not inside the business dealing with the day-to-day. That distance is an advantage — it means we can assess a candidate clearly and give you an honest view, even when that view is uncomfortable.
If a client passes on a candidate we believe is genuinely right for the role, we will say so. That’s not overstepping — it’s the job. An agency that simply agrees with every decision is not giving you the benefit of their experience.
There are agencies that will run a management or director level search for a lower fee. Some will do a reasonable job. But the margin for error at this level is small and the consequences of a poor hire — the disruption, the re-recruitment cost, the impact on the team, the time lost — will far exceed any saving on the original fee.
" There are no doubt agencies that will do this for a lower fee. But engaging with the wrong agency could end up costing you a great deal more than the £1,000 you saved. "
25 years of experience. A personal network built across hundreds of placements. The judgement to know when a candidate is right and the confidence to say when they are not. Eyes on every single application, not an algorithm. That is what a Brellis senior search looks like.
Operations Manager | Operations Director | General Manager | Managing Director | Plant Manager | Production Manager | Supply Chain Manager | Procurement Director
Finance Manager | Finance Director | Head of Finance | Financial Controller | Commercial Manager | Commercial Director
Engineering Manager | Technical Director | Head of Engineering | Quality Manager | Quality Director | R&D Manager | Head of Product
Office Manager | Business Support Manager | EA to Director level | Chief of Staff
Sales Manager | Sales Director | Marketing Manager | Marketing Director | Head of Sales | National Sales Manager | Business Development Director
HR Manager | HR Director | Head of HR | People Director | Head of Talent
"We've been working with Brellis Recruitment since 2019 and they've become our go-to agency across a range of roles, from Parts Advisors and Customer Service to Accounts and Supply Chain. Over the years Zoe and the team have placed six members of our team, and the consistency of both the service and the candidates she kept us coming back.
Zoe's approach has always been professional, friendly and, most importantly, he takes the time to properly understand what each role actually needs. When you find a recruiter who gets it right time after time, it's an easy decision to keep coming back."
"We found Brellis Recruitment through a Google search when we needed to move quickly on a Customer Service Manager role after a new starter didn't work out. From the first conversation, Matt's approach was professional, friendly and, most importantly, he took the time to properly understand what we needed. We were really pleased with both the process and the candidate Matt found for us.
Since then we've come back to Brellis for a Quality Manager search, which was filled just as effectively. When you find a recruiter who gets it right first time, it's an easy decision to return."
“We work exclusively with Brellis Recruitment because Zoe and Matt have taken time to get to know Strata, understand our business and our goals. Dealing with them is like dealing with your own team, they are engaging and supportive, they understand events and they understand the services we provide our customers. Strata are delighted with every new member of staff Brellis have recruited for us and are really impressed with all of the candidates they put forward.”
“Brellis Recruitment Ltd have been supplying Tool Connection with recruitment solutions since 2018. They have successfully placed candidates into some “tough to fill roles” including Technical and Foreign speaking sales positions. Brellis have been brilliant at understanding our exact requirements for particular roles and interpreting this to source us a great selection of candidates for each role that suit each department’s diverse skill requirements. The team work succinctly and have always adapted to suit us and our recruitment processes. Brellis also provided a very prompt service when we have required temporary support at very short notice. An absolutely superb recruitment company that I would be happy to recommend.”