Customer story

Recruitment · 32 consultants

How Build Recruitment runs 5 offices from 1 live view

Build Recruitment brought in OneUp to make CRM logging worth a consultant's time. Five years on, it's how their directors manage every desk, from operative to executive, across London, Cornwall, Manchester, the Midlands and Scotland.

+22%placements, year on year

At a glance

Build's last 12 months, in numbers

Placements

+22%

Year on year

Fill rate

+10%

More roles filled, year on year

CVs per placement

-9%

Fewer CVs sent per placement

BD calls

+31%

Year on year

Oct 2025 - Sep 2026 vs Oct 2024 - Sep 2025.

Company
CRM
Offices: London, Cornwall, Manchester, Midlands and Scotland
Desks: Housing, construction and property - from operative to executive
Agency size: 32 consultants
Customer since: February 2020
Using: Reporting Gamification

“We're a competitive business and we hire competitive people. OneUp puts that on the wall. You can see who's had a good morning and who needs to get back on the phone.”

Ryan SmartManaging Director, Build Recruitment

The problem

Gaps in the CRM, and a board buried in spreadsheets

Like most agencies, Build were pushing hard on CRM adoption, and two things kept getting in the way.

Consultants had little reason to log activity promptly. Even placements didn't always hit the system the day they were booked.
Leadership was paying closer attention to KPI and SLA data, and the only way to show it was a stack of CSV exports and Excel spreadsheets. Charlie Vietro-Burton, Group Operations Director, could see that wouldn't hold up for long.

“We needed accurate logging to be worth a consultant's time. Seeing a win go up on the screen did more for that than chasing ever did.”

Charlie Vietro-BurtonGroup Operations Director

Why OneUp

The only option that did both jobs

Build scoped the alternatives properly. Analytics tools offered deeper reporting but did nothing for the sales floor. Gamification tools lifted the energy, but left managers with no real reporting behind it.

Build wanted both in one platform. It had to keep consultants motivated, give every manager reporting they'd actually use, and look the same in every office. The deciding factor was accessibility: a director shouldn't need to be a data analyst to run their team.

“Every manager gets the same insight, straight away. With OneUp, nobody has to build the report before they can act on it - the time goes into managing the team, not the spreadsheet.”

Charlie Vietro-BurtonGroup Operations Director

The real challenge

One standard across very different desks

Build place everyone from operatives to executives across housing, construction and property. On a trades desk, a good week might mean 15-20 interviews booked. On a senior white-collar desk, 3 is a strong week.

A good week, desk by desk

2 desks, 2 ideas of a good week.

Setting a single target for both means somebody loses. So Build set targets per consultant, against what good looks like for them.

Trades desk

15-20 interviews booked

Senior white-collar desk

3 interviews booked

If you judge both desks by the same yardstick, you either under-stretch one desk or demoralise the other. Spread those desks across 5 offices, each with managers whose time is better spent managing than building reports, and consistency becomes the hardest thing to protect. Without it, as Charlie puts it, leadership would be managing from last month's numbers instead of today's.

“A trades desk and a senior white collar desk are held to completely different numbers. Targets are set per consultant, so we manage everyone consistently against what good looks like for them.”

Charlie Vietro-BurtonGroup Operations Director

What changed

Every office now plays the same game

Wins go up on the wall

Logged placements, interviews and meetings hit the office screens live. When a consultant in Cornwall makes their first placement, the whole company knows about it.

+22%placements, year on year

Targets fit the desk

Build defined what good metrics and ratios look like for each desk, then set targets per consultant in OneUp. Everyone is measured fairly, and no one is measured by someone else's numbers.

+10%fill rate, year on year

Leaders see the whole business without asking

Every director has a live dashboard with what they need to manage their team. Nobody has to export a CSV, build a pivot table or chase an update.

-9%CVs needed per placement

Competitions pull the right levers

When business development needed a push, Build ran themed competitions around the World Cup and Wimbledon, built on the metrics leadership most wanted to move.

+31%BD calls, year on year

“Our operations team set it up so every desk reports on the same basis. That means I can see the whole business live, without asking anyone to pull it together for me.”

Ryan SmartManaging Director

The pay-off

5 years in and still compounding

Between October 2025 and September 2026, Build made 22% more placements than the year before.

The quality numbers matter most. Fill rate is up 10%, and it now takes 9% fewer CVs to make a placement. More of the pipeline is converting, rather than just getting bigger. BD calls rose 31% too, the same activity Build's competitions are designed to drive.

But OneUp doesn't make the calls - it makes sure every call is logged, seen and celebrated, and that every leader is managing from the same live picture. For Build, the screens are what got people excited at the start, and five years later the dashboards are what managers rely on every day.

“The gamification is what sold us, but it's the reporting that our managers now can't do without.”

Charlie Vietro-BurtonGroup Operations Director, Build Recruitment

Ready to run every desk off one live view?

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