This month, unLTD caught five with Carmela Burns, director of Sheffield-based recruitment agency Ardeta Search. We delved into her career in the ever-evolving industry and find out what it’s like blending business with family by working alongside her older brother.
Hi Carmela, can you start by telling us a bit about your journey so far within the world of recruitment?
I started many moons ago, straight out of university, working for a large blue chip recruitment organisation, Michael Page. I worked between the Sheffield and Leeds offices, doing low-level transactional finance recruitment.
After over four years of being based around Sheffield, I decided, when I was 24 or 25, that if I didn’t go to London now, I was never going to. So, I moved and worked for Annapurna. I was there for five years, doing various roles, and really enjoyed it. I was managing delivery teams for large-scale recruitment projects within tech across the UK, which led me to what I’m doing now.
“Sheffield is the world’s biggest village. But that allows people to foster relationships, build lasting partnerships and makes people feel like they can be part of a community.”
When did you join Ardeta Search?
I got involved pretty early on, in May 2023. Chris started the business in 2022 when I was still with Annapurna. I was at a point where I’d been in the industry for 10 years, and I’d like to think I’d gotten quite good at my job. Chris’ success was nice to appreciate from a distance at first. As time went on, a laugh and a joke over dinner about joining forces turned more serious.
I think when we first started in recruitment, we’d always said one day we’d do it together, and it just seemed like the right time.
What is the dynamic like, working with family?
We’re very close outside of work. I think it works well, but I appreciate it might not be for everyone. We’ve both been in the industry a long time, so from a professional perspective, we would use each other as sounding boards. When the time came to work together, we already knew how the other worked.
I think you’ve got to be careful for it not to become all-consuming. Chris’s wife, my partner and our family are under strict instructions not to digress too much – we don’t want to bore everyone else with work!
So you are based in the London office, and Chris is here in Sheffield. How do you both coordinate your work and make sure everything is running smoothly?
I try and come up and Chris will come down a week a month. We operate in a siloed way and, because of the markets we cover, it’s important for us to be in both areas. We’re on the phone talking to each other all the time, emailing, on Teams calls, but we make sure that we do spend the time in the offices together.
I think sometimes, when you’re in this founding growth period, when working on your own, it can be difficult to keep yourself motivated. It works quite well, changing things up and working in different offices. It keeps momentum going.
Looking beyond this founding period, what do you think the future of the company looks like?
We definitely want to grow. But the key thing is we don’t want to grow too fast. I’ve seen lots of businesses have hyper-growth, hire 20 people and then a year later, lay off 10. We want to make sure that we’ve got enough clients and a successful business before we start bringing people in. But that’s been going quite well. We are looking to get a couple of heads in, in the next couple of months, across both London and Sheffield.
What is it like recruiting in the tech industry and what sets you apart from everyone else?
There are unique challenges with recruiting in the tech world, the first being that talent is quite expensive. There’s a real disparity between what the bigger players can pay between what startups can pay, and you often find startups can’t compete with those bigger companies.
“I think you’ve got to be careful for it not to become all-consuming. Chris’s wife, my partner and our family are under strict instructions not to digress too much – we don’t want to bore everyone else with work!”
The technical landscape is constantly changing. What was the ‘in thing’ in tech maybe two, three years ago probably isn’t now, so it’s difficult for non-tech specific hiring managers to keep up with the pace. With the development of data AI cybersecurity and more cloud infrastructure coming in, it’s important for recruiters to be on top of that. If you’re using an agency, you want to trust they know where to get the right candidates.
Every recruitment company will say relationships are the most important thing. But they really are. I think the key thing for us is when partnering with IT businesses, we don’t just want to partner in one particular area. We want to help across the board. We want to be seen as an extension of your business, rather than the kind of recruiter that keeps sending ‘Hail Marys’ in hope something sticks.
You’ve worked all across the UK, and throughout parts of Europe, but how does Sheffield compare to other cities when it comes to the tech sector?
Talent in this industry is generally quite difficult to find. In Berlin, for example, you have to look overseas, because the market is quite saturated. Similarly with London. Sheffield has a good talent pool. There’s an international community, the universities and you’ve got the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. There’s a nice playground to take from. And people want to come to places like Sheffield. Obviously, people always want to go to London, but with the injection Sheffield has had from advanced engineering, we’re trying, to be small but mighty.
Sheffield is the world’s biggest village. But that allows people to foster relationships, build lasting partnerships and makes people feel like they can be part of a community.
