Recruitment is About Trust & Understanding – TTW Recruitment Celebrate Ten Wonderful Years!

In an industry where everyone is suffering with a shortage of available personnel trying to fill jobs both back and front of house is virtually impossible.

The trick, according to Charlotte Wade of recruitment specialist TTW, is to build a partnership with clients and see them through the good and the bad times – and to build trust.

Charlotte Wade

“Trust comes first,” Charlotte told The Chefs’ Forum. “Our business has been going for 11 years since Sally and I decided to go it alone and leave our recruitment agency roles in Bristol.

“Like any other business we have grown and specialised and in 2016 we started working with Craig Taylor from what was Taylors Recruitment. Eventually we created TTW to specialise in both back and front of house.

“So far, so normal, but what marked us out and what has enabled us to keep going now is that we started to build strong relationships with our clients says Sally, what we didn’t want was to just fill jobs. We needed their success to help us with ours – and I believe that this mentality is at the root of our current position.

One of our first clients back in 2012 was Fosters Event Catering, we’ve worked with CEO Neil supporting his recruitment strategy since then and know our success is down to the relationship and understanding of their business, it’s also been great to work with Fosters at venues such as The Box, Westonbirt, Gloucestershire County Cricket Club and Compton Verney.

Sally Wigg

In 2013 Sally relocated to her home in South Devon, ‘a great location for us in terms of the kind of clients we want to be working with, lots of great foodie hotels, pubs & restaurants on my doorstep’ Sally explains. ‘It’s also really beneficial to have a good geographic spread across the region with Charlotte in Somerset and Craig in North Somerset.

Dartington Estate

We are currently working with the beautiful Dartington Estate in recruiting some key roles to enable them to reposition their hospitality offer. This is typical of a bespoke client that we support through exciting periods of change where attracting the right talent is key as well as ensuring they are competitive within the market.

Over the years TTW have adopted a consultative approach and are proud of how they are able to support clients in this way, Charlotte says, ‘we love working with Sarah at Berwick Lodge, a beautiful hotel and Sarah’s passion and enthusiasm is contagious.

Sarah Arikan – Berwick Lodge

“Sarah will call us up and ask for advice on salaries, the market and all manner of other smaller things. We are happy to help because we believe in her business and the longer we work together the stronger the bond becomes.

TTW sponsored The Chefs’ Forum in 2018 and this gave the team the platform to network with south west chefs and hospitality professionals on a regular basis. The events were also a great opportunity to invite clients as their guests. TTW are looking forward to a year of further events throughout 2022 and cannot wait to catch-up with clients and candidates old and new.

Catherine Farinha, Founder of The Chefs’ Forum has also used TTW to enrich and expand The Chefs’ Forum team.

She said

“Six months ago, we sought to expand our team due to an ever-increasing events schedule and expanding estate of Chefs’ Forum Academies on a national level. We knew that TTW was the right recruitment agency for us. Fully-aware of how well the team work to ensure the perfect fit for long term placements. Working at The Chefs’ Forum requires extensive industry knowledge, marketing expertise, as well as excellent levels of customer service, communicating with chefs, hospitality professionals and brands at all levels.

Alice Kamara (left) & Alicia Kember (right)

We were delighted to welcome Alicia Kember and Alice Kamara to the events team and are extremely grateful to Sally, Charlotte and Craig for finding us the perfect ladies to help us fill events with top industry people, running our Academies and keeping our sponsors happy and loyal to The Chefs’ Forum.

Welcome to Team Chefs’ Forum!

“Another relationship we built up was with The Bath Pub Company. We helped them with chefs and a managers across their pubs but more than that we worked closely on recruitment best practices and supported each other through social media. Since then we have grown together and have a mutual respect.”

Sally continued

“At Dartmouth Hotel, Golf & Spa we worked closely with the GM both in this and his previous resort where we recruited and we’re part of building the right team. This has proved to have been a key to both properties.

“Over the past decade we have been able to really understand both the skills and team dynamics to ensure that we really can find the right people to enable future success. This is a relationship built on trust, honesty and integrity and I believe it’s where the industry needs to go. We are now in the trust-building business and recruitment is just one part of that process.”