A search firm built around the brief.

How we operate

Six habits that run through every search.

• We search as well as advertise

  An advert only reaches people who are looking. We also work out who is already doing the job well, and where, and call them.

• We take the brief the hiring manager hasn't written

  Why is the role open? What must the first ninety days fix? What did the last person find hard? The answers decide who we approach.

• Nobody reaches you without a conversation

  Every candidate is interviewed against your brief before a CV leaves us. If we cannot explain why someone fits, we do not send them.

• We prepare candidates, we never polish them

  Candidates are briefed thoroughly, so interviews are spent on substance. The person you meet at interview is the person who arrives on day one.

• We tell you what the market is telling us

  If the salary is short or a competitor is moving faster, you hear it early and plainly. Searches are lost to silence more often than to the market.

• One point of contact, brief to start date

  The person who takes your brief presents the shortlist, closes the offer and checks in after the start date. Nothing is handed down the line.

The team

The people behind the search.

Managing Director

Steven Jacques

"Most searches are won before the first call is made. They are won in the brief."

Steven has spent more than half a decade in search, sales and business development. He built SWJ Search on what those years showed him: the people manufacturers most want are usually in a job already, and reaching them takes groundwork.

He treats every brief as an investigation, learning the site, the team and the problem the role must solve before anyone is approached. Then he owns the search end to end. One name and one number, from the first call to the first day.

ExperienceOver half a decade in search

DisciplinesSearch, sales, business development

BasedManchester

Head of Resourcing

Sam Carruthers

"If the right person exists, they are on a map somewhere. My job is to draw it."

A researcher's rigour and a feel for the shop floor: three years at university in London trained the first, warehouse floors earned the second. Sam knows what a six o'clock start asks of a team, and what a good supervisor looks like when the trailers are late.

He leads resourcing and the technology beneath every search: the market maps that tell us who to approach, and the systems that track every candidate and keep each process moving. When a candidate hears from SWJ, Sam has usually found them first.

LeadsResourcing and search technology

BackgroundLondon educated, warehouse proven