For the first 3 months of McGregor Boyall’s existence, the phones didn’t work. A phone strike meant the only available line (and this was the pre-internet ‘90s remember) was in the phone box out in the street. No phones meant no recruitment and recruitment was, after all, McGregor Boyall’s business. There was only one thing for it: a home-made ‘Out of Order’ sign. For a short while, the public phone box became the company phone box. It broke the rules but it saved the business.

The company’s founder, Laurie Boyall, cut his teeth on America’s West Coast during the ‘Klondike years’ of the Tech revolution. Arriving back in Britain was like stepping back in time. The ‘Computer Age’ had dawned, but what that actually meant for business was anyone’s guess. Recruitment was surely, somehow, ripe to embrace the infinite possibilities of Tech.

 It didn’t do much, but just by existing, it placed the company streets ahead of the competition, poised for what was to come. Today, data is the currency of success - in every industry, but none more-so than recruitment. The way data is screened, distilled, filtered and refined sets one company out from the next. On top of this, recruitment is the barometer of commercial and even social change. Staying ahead of the measure of change itself must be the ultimate challenge. McGregor Boyall embraces the challenge:

If the art of recruitment is like panning for gold, so is discerning true innovation in the tsunami of data evolution. “I’m a miserable optimist”, says McGregor Boyall’s straight-talking founder. Three decades in the business have ironed out naive ideals. What’s left is a wise openness to genuine advances. Hence the company’s long-standing relationship with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has changed the world of recruitment

McGregor Boyall’s partnership with LinkedIn works in three main ways, one of which is a direct recruitment environment, where they source quality candidates. LinkedIn provides “an effective productivity tool” in which Laurie can monitor metrics to constantly measure how effective the relationship with LinkedIn is.
Another element, which is just as important - it has allowed Laurie & team to establish, nurture and protect the McGregor Boyall brand online.

LinkedIn has been “a game changer”, allowing the firm to engage and communicate with talent communities and scale with a broader reach than they would have been only able to dream about in the past.

Lastly, a really good use of the platform has been for business development. McGregor Boyall uses it to map organisations, profile certain individuals, and to send LinkedIn profiles to interviewees prior to an interview.LinkedIn allows McGregor Boyall to continually keep up with the ever evolving recruitment industry & they know that change is inevitable: