Marc Drew

Marc Drew

My recruitment industry experience stretches back 20 years, initially placing temporary workers into production, warehouse and unskilled positions, progressing into Engineering, Manufacturing and Technical roles.  My latter work focused more on overseeing RPO and Outsourced Solutions to some of the world’s best-known technology, aviation and defence sector brands.

During this period the market was experiencing a talent shortage as the skill set was niche and in high demand (something which in post-pandemic times is a recurring problem).

My customers faced a constant challenge in attracting the people with the skills they needed and who would fit into their culture, whilst also retaining their talent. Oh, and they wanted all of this at the same time as reducing recruitment spend.

As businesses started to focus more on a talent strategy, they wanted to build employee journeys which saw the recruitment team become Talent Acquisition and work in closer collaboration with HR leaders and the Hiring community, increasingly when live vacancies did not exist.

This meant there was a growing appetite for the recruitment provider to deliver insight, advice and strategic input along with hires. For the employer I worked for, particularly the finance contingent, it was hard for them to reconcile the benefit of the consultative versus the transactional. “if our advice doesn’t lead to placements, why would we do it?”

For the employer I worked for, particularly the finance contingent, it was hard for them to reconcile the benefit of the consultative versus the transactional. “if our advice doesn’t lead to placements, why would we do it?”

So I left and looked for a place where I could help businesses learn more about talent, take greater control of hiring (practices and budget) and make informed decisions to support the people and ultimately business strategy.

 I couldn’t find the right business, so I formed Cogito. Armed with a phone, laptop and a vision it began in September 2014. I wanted to build a company that become the trusted partner to businesses who wanted to improve recruitment, get more value for their budget, enhance their brand, build great candidate experiences and hire people who contribute to business success.

I wanted to establish Cogito as a brand that challenged the anecdotal view of why it was hard to attract talent, understand what candidates were motivated by and identify how employers could have a better recruitment model; I wanted Cogito to be about fact-based insight.

I wanted to empower businesses.

After 7 years, I am proud that we have evolved to include people analytics, research and employer branding in our range of recruitment solutions. We have worked with some of the world’s best-known businesses at the top of their industries and SMEs on their way there, with over 90% of our customers engaging us for repeat projects and many of our customers today were our customers in our early years.