Senitor Associates Celebrates Twenty Years of Success

Nestled amongst the trendy bars and boutiques of the Cheshire town of Wilmslow, is a highly successful recruitment company that has been transforming the landscape of the IT industry for over twenty years. Senitor Associates started off life as just a two-person operation with Directors Tom Parker and Anna Leach taking the leap to form the organisation in October 1999, and that decision has lead to incredible success both through the growth of Senitor Associates as well as the launch of seven other recruitment brands that have been set up under the support of the Senitor team. We caught up with Founders and Directors Anna Leach & Tom Parker as well as Director Ross Bond to learn more about Senitor Associates, their journey as a tech recruitment company over two decades and how they have stayed successful throughout this time.

For those of us that haven’t heard of Senitor Associates before can you give us a bit of background about the organisation and how you started?

“We started the company 20 years ago, myself at one desk and Tom Parker at another, and we both concentrated initially on the tech support market because that was our background. Very quickly within the first 12-18 months, we had grown to over 40 strong, covering a great deal of the IT spectrum with our newly created team. When we started the brand it was very much a culture of “hunting”; that’s what it’s all about when you are a new business – getting your name out in to the market and making sure you’re relevant, capable and memorable.  

At the time we were lucky because we started up with two prominent features going on in the tech world: there was Y2K and the fear that the world would stop turning on its axis, together with the glorious e-Commerce revolution and the high demand for businesses to build their on-line transactional proposition. Placing Y2K engineers and java developers in the early days allowed us to very quickly build a strong head of steam. Staying ahead of current trends and technologies has been a big part of our twenty-year journey so this is something that has been a big factor in our growth as a brand.”
Anna Leach

I imagine the recruitment landscape looks very different today than it did twenty years ago – how much has changed for you?

“Back when we started Senitor a lot of our success was down to building our own personal networks through telephone directories and the yellow pages. Even travelling between the North and South of the country became a business exercise in its own right, noting down every company name we could see on vans, lorries and buildings up and down the country. Travel actually became a very important way of helping us to build our database, particularly on the M6! Nowadays, data is far more transparent and accessible. With the advent of social media and on-line platforms, we can instantly locate the relevant tech communities and businesses; the art is about successfully engaging with them via the right medium or the method of contact they most prefer. That said, our strongest relationships are still to this day the ones that have been developed the traditional way - in person or on the phone. In my opinion, it’s the only way to do proper business.”
Anna Leach

It must have been quite a journey over two decades in recruitment – how would you describe this?

“Twenty years in business has been a rollercoaster; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the highs and learned how to manage the lows. I love the people I work with together with their enthusiasm and energy and the fact that they always seek to challenge and better what they do on a daily basis. I’ve been very lucky to have met the people that are now running the businesses within the group. This is a rare handful of exceptional talent and they are worth their weight in gold in every respect. My senior business partners and management team have not only put up with me for a very long time but have also educated me along the way. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 20 years it is that no matter how far up the chain you are, there’s always something left to learn.”
Tom Parker

Over this time you have helped facilitate the launch of seven other recruitment brands by providing a platform for talented Senitor employees to embark on their own business ventures – can you tell us a little bit about that?

“I suppose the best word for us is the “incubator”! When talent comes through our doors we will readily provide them with a number of progression opportunities within the business to allow them to take their career as far as they wish. We provide the platform, tools and training which combined with their appetite, ambition and energy, has proved to be a pretty successful formula for growing the group so far. We are fortunate to have seven examples of exactly that – people who started life as trainees at Senitor who are now our business partners and MD’s in their own right. They are all doing brilliantly as well! There is no given time frame of how that happens, but the opportunity is there for the taking from the get-go.”
Anna Leach

You celebrated 20 years of success at Manchester’s 20 Stories recently, I imagine this was quite a proud moment for you all?

“It’s funny because you are so entrenched in business that you very rarely lift your head to take stock of the journey so far. With occasions like our recent birthday celebrations (which involved a speech or two!) it makes you reflect. I don’t think patting ourselves on the back has ever really been our style, but it was a ‘proud parent’ moment when you stop in your tracks and admire all the talented people you’re raising a glass to. It’s been an unbelievable adventure and hopefully one that is far from over. Senitor never sits still; it’s not in our DNA! We are continually building and thinking about the future. We are constantly looking at new markets, with aspirations to attack Europe and further afield in 2020."

Anna Leach 

It’s clear that the people at Senitor are a huge part of your future plans, will the team be expanding in 2020?

"From being in business this long we have learnt that it is all about the people; you can’t have a plan without the right people in place. The incubator is looking for its next rising stars!”
Anna Leach

"We are always on the lookout for tomorrow’s superstars and offer industry leading training program, a blend of on the job, internal and external training as well as a highly incentivised commission structure, unparalleled progression with a transparent career structure including our Fast Track to 30k giving you a platform to get to a 30k basic in 12 months of joining.  If you are interested in learning more about getting into recruitment get in touch."
Ross Bond

If you are interested in learning more about current opportunities with Senitor please click here.