Jack Grierson

Jack Grierson 

Tell us about your career journey so far 

I’ve been at Cogito coming up to about four years. I originally started in Recruitment after University working for a local company where I was originally from, but I didn’t enjoy the experience and wanted to find something different. I moved to Bristol and saw an opportunity to join Cogito as a Researcher. It felt very different to how normal recruitment agencies worked.  

I then moved up into the Lead Research Consultant role, taking a bit more project responsibility and account management. And then, about a year ago, I moved into my Solutions Lead role, overseeing Hiring Intelligence. We still manage recruitment projects for clients, but it’s very different to how it’s done in a standard recruitment agency,  

What does a typical day look like? 

Typically, I’ll be overseeing and managing multiple projects with clients. That may be for the RPOs that we run and sometimes it’ll be one-off talent-mapping projects as well. A typical day would focus on making sure that the team know what they’re doing, what they’re working on and the objectives around the project. 

Then I’ll be checking in with the clients a lot of the time as well. Lots of catch up meetings, making sure that they’re happy, if seeing if there’s anything that they need from us.  

What do you like about the role? 

We’re not as focussed on targets at Cogito. We’re more focused on the end deliverables and how you get there. That means you can manage your own workload and have that freedom to try new approaches, or have those in-depth conversations with candidates, without having to worry about how many calls you are making. There’s less of that pressure which allows people to be a bit more comfortable in hitting those targets and knowing what they have to do. 

Tell us about the clients 

I suppose we are fairly generalist in what we do. Over the years we’ve helped clients working in mortgages & financial services. We’ve worked with Solicitors, Retailers, Engineering businesses and anywhere and everywhere in between those. I think that generalist approach allows us to take lots of different experiences from different industries and approach things in different ways. 

What does it feel like to work for Cogito? 

It’s an interesting one, being a mature start up. I’d say it’s still got family values. Maybe that’s because it’s a flat organisation. For example, our MD sits with everyone in the office so he can just talk to one of the Researchers and ask how they’re doing, and vice versa. In that sense, I think, it’s quite a mature environment as well. There isn’t that standing over each others shoulders and saying, “What are you doing? Where’s that going? Have you hit your targets?” People are left to get on with their work and manage their diaries as well. 

I’d say it’s a unique culture that I probably hadn’t experienced myself, but is one that brings out the best in me. I would also say that there is a clear passion that runs through the business. There definitely a great opportunity for anybody joining to come in and be a part of something unique, interesting and different, but still be succeeding at the same time.