No business can ever stand still – and this is even more apparent in this year’s turbulent economic climate, when tougher times have hit the consulting industry, investment world and corporate budgets.
Consequently - 2023 has been a long year for those serving these sectors – which together make up the core of Freshminds’ business. But while both recruitment and consultancy have experienced challenging economic conditions, the agility and resilience of our experienced team and management have kept Freshminds right on track, improved our offering both to clients and our valued candidates, and have created new opportunities.
As we now look forward to 2024, Freshminds is in a better position than ever to deliver exceptional services to our clients.
Where we came from
Freshminds started out as primarily a research business in 2000 with a handful of staff and has ridden the waves of the past three decades: growing to up to 110 people, spinning off the research business, focusing more on recruitment, contracting to cope with COVID-19, and pivoting to remote working to support businesses emerging from the pandemic.
This month (September) marks the 23rd year since Freshminds was founded – and with that time, our business, our network and our strategy has matured. The analysts, graduates and associates we placed in those early years are now partners, CEOs, and leaders in consulting firms, private equity firms, global corporations and emerging, fast-growing innovative businesses.
Our ability to spot and place excellent, high-trajectory talent remains a core focus for our business.
Where we are going
While the business has changed and developed over the years, we are now able to focus on three clearly differentiated service areas. So, we go to market with a slightly crisper view of Freshminds and how we work with clients:
These name changes reflect the natural evolution of the services we are providing.
Freshminds’ core business areas
Consultants on Demand
Our first division is the freshly named Consultants on Demand.
Consultants on Demand is a curated network of directors, consultants and analysts, available on demand to transform your business.
Freshminds has been a pioneer of the contingent workforce model, serving up talent for agile project delivery from our strategy network since before many of these terms even existed!
Our ‘rent-a-brain’ offering started in 2000 and has evolved into this, our market-leading Consultants on Demand practice. The concept has not really changed – bring in the very best strategic and analytical talent to your business on a short-term, low-risk basis to ensure your business-critical projects are executed successfully.
Freshminds is the go-to firm in Europe for management and strategy consulting talent - from analyst to expert and for projects across strategy and planning to transformation and change. We continue in our ambition to be the number one provider in Europe in this space.
Director of Consulting, Thom Cunningham-Burley, said:
“We deliver thousands of projects every year, and the feedback paints a clear picture. Clients value speed, accuracy, quality and flexibility. They want the control that lets them build and empower their own teams, and we help them do that...
By expanding our Consultants on Demand capability we are positioned to drive impact across a wider range of strategy, transformation and innovation programmes.”
Search
Search is our permanent recruitment business. Across three decades, Freshminds has been helping our clients to identify and hire the best strategic and analytical talent. As our candidate network has matured, so we have naturally taken on more senior search and headhunting mandates for our clients.
While our senior talent may have worked in consulting or banking in the early years of their career they increasingly bring a wealth of hands-on industry, deal and delivery experience to our corporate clients.
This is now the core focus area within our permanent recruitment business.
Freshminds Search specialises in finding the very best strategic and operational talent across consulting, business and finance.
Research Consultancy
Freshminds’ Research Consultancy offering builds on our heritage in this space and combines our in-house expertise and methodologies with our world class talent network to deliver the very highest quality of research assignments to clients. Previously known as Managed Projects – our Research Consultancy is agile enough to deliver complex projects quickly; brave enough to answer hard questions; and experienced enough to rival the very best research and consultancy providers in the market.
Freshminds’ boutique Research Consultancy offers customisable solutions, expert insights, in-depth analysis, and tailored advice.
The staying power of great service
Managing director James Callander comments: “Over and beyond the ‘what’ we do, it is the ‘how’ Freshminds does it that really matters....for us it is all about a partnership between client, candidate and the Freshminds team. We are proud that many of our clients and candidate relationships have continued to thrive for over 15 years. Only by really understanding each other can we match the brief of the search, project or research case. And we hope that is why people come back to us throughout their professional journey as both clients and candidates”.
Adam Clements adds: “We are excited by the potential of each of our service lines to deliver great value to our clients in times of challenge, change and prosperity. Bring on the next chapter of Freshminds!”
