Agency celebrates 30 years and £60 million into local economy

A Thame recruitment business, whose three current recruitment consultants have a combined service of 40 years with the company, is celebrating 30 years in business in the town.

In November 1986, Suzanne Young started Downtown Recruitment. She saw a gap in the market in Thame and the surrounding area and was confident she could fill it. This proved to be the case, and Downtown quickly became the leading Thame recruitment agency. Suzanne’s son, Steve Young, joined the business in February 1997 and has been running the company successfully for over 15 years. Steve himself recalled:

Changes over the years

“Over the last 30 years, the recruitment industry has seen many changes and has grown rapidly. When Suzanne originally started the business everything was record-card based. This was eventually replaced by a database and then specialist recruitment software to help in all areas of the recruitment process. The original local newspaper advertising has now been taken online through the many online jobs boards. Downtown Recruitment still has a large database of locally sourced candidates that contact the company whenever they are looking for a new job.

“Over the years, the company has dealt with numerous local businesses and helped to place over 3000 people into permanent roles and around 5000 people into temporary work placements, helping to put more than £60 million into the local economy.

“The local employment market has been strong since 2011 (after the last financial crisis) and unemployment levels in the local area are currently around 0.4% compared to the national level of 4.8% in November 2016.

Development brings stimulus to the local economy

“Due to Thame’s proximity to London, many people commute to work. However, there is a strong local employment market. This has led to a skills shortage in some sectors. Due to Thame’s ever increasing popularity as a market town, the population has been growing. This is mainly due to the many new homes that have been built in recent years and many more that are currently under construction, bringing in more potential employees to the local area. In addition, there has been a steady stream of new business units being built in Thame, Long Crendon and other parts of the local area, bringing in more local businesses and helping to stimulate the strong, local economy even further.

“Downtown Recruitment looks forward to continuing to support the local economy through our continued business success and to working with many local companies,” concluded Steve. “We also look forward to finding interesting roles for new job candidates and the returning candidates that we have previously found work for.”