Happy 5th Anniversary LT Harper

This blog is a bit of a special one – LT Harper turns 5 this month!

Naturally, it’s been a time of reflecting on our growth and looking back at the days when Justin and I started working in Carluccio’s rather than getting an office… before we both realised that nobody should drink THAT much coffee in one day!

When Justin and I came up with the idea for LT Harper back in 2017, we both felt like we’d outgrown the corporate environment and that we could be more impactful in a smaller business. We quickly came up with 3 things that have been the cornerstone of our business since then – operating in a niche market, building strong relationships in the industry we recruit for, and making an impact on DE&I in that sector.

Having both had success as tech recruiters in the UK and US for many years, we knew we wanted to specialise in a niche, technical industry where there was a genuine need for our help with recruitment rather than covering work that can be done more cost effectively by accomplished, in-house recruitment teams. It took us a while to decipher what exactly this niche would be, but then, serendipitously, I one day found myself watching an episode of Mr Robot and everything fell into place. We finally settled on specialising in Cyber Security!

At the time, I had 2 main frustrations with how recruitment was being done: 1 – it was transactional rather than based on solid, longstanding relationships with people in the industry and 2 – in the 15 years I’d been working in tech recruitment, the conversation around DE&I was still just that, a conversation. There didn’t seem to be much action and we wanted to run a business that makes an effort to affect change by helping to move the needle on DE&I in the sector we worked in. We’ve been doing just that through initiatives including our mentoring platform, InClusive InCyber, holding workshops so our staff feel more comfortable discussing DE&I with customers, and building a culture that appreciates the value of having a diverse workforce for us and for our clients. Another thing that has been really important to us has been establishing strong values to direct how we work: Balance, Relationships, Innovation and Expertise (BRIE). These four concepts underpin everything we do at LT Harper and has enabled us to build solid, trustworthy relationships within our community.

We met our first clients at Infosec in June 2017. To say that it was overwhelming to be at an event surrounded by so many cyber experts is a massive understatement! We didn’t know anyone, nor half the terminology people were using. On the flip side, it was immediately obvious from the conversations we were having over those few days that the size of our opportunity was huge.

I was pleasantly surprised to be making our first placements within 6 weeks of setting up the business. We’d met a client over coffee at Infosec who’d had a bad experience with recruiters, so naturally, they were resistant to working with us. However, they set us the challenge to find them a Cyber Security Consultant. We had a shortlist of 6 candidates over to them that same week and they ended up being so impressed that they hired 2 people… and so, we were off! It makes me proud to think about the reception we’ve received from hiring managers and talent teams over the last 5 years. Our specialism in Cyber Security and our genuine commitment to impacting DE&I in the sector seemed to impress clients. It’s been so refreshing to work with such a vast array of people who value the same thing and it reassured us that our decision to specialise and to make DE&I a true value add was the right one.

Since June 2017, we’ve started measuring ourselves around what we can do to help businesses achieve their DE&I ambitions. Just some of the things we’ve gotten involved with include attending and sponsoring events focused on Women in Cyber and becoming actively involved in volunteering time for the Tech Talent Charter. This has helped us to make a difference and learn what truly diverse and inclusive companies look like.

Our team has also grown, increasing from 2 of us to 18 operating in the UK, Europe and USA and offering permanent, contract and retained services. The cyber sector became even more of a focused growth area during the pandemic with everyone’s lives moving online. Onboarding and training new employees over a screen was a huge challenge and the leadership team really stepped up to giving new staff the best experience they could to help them become productive and successful as quickly as possible. Like all businesses during the pandemic, we really had to innovate around how we operated and continued growing.

Our client base has also diversified considerably. We now work with consultancies large and small, enterprise organisations and start-ups across all industry sectors and security vendors. We have team members who specifically focus on recruitment for Pen Testers, Security Operations, Incident Response, GRC, Security Engineering, generalist Security Consultants and professionals involved in all areas of the sales and marketing lifecycle at security vendors. We help clients build out entire teams from the most senior to the most junior team members. We are really setting ourselves up as expert recruiters specifically in the cyber sector. Nothing makes me more satisfied than to say that we have solid partnerships and relationships with jobseekers, hiring managers, talent professionals and influential people within the market and I think part of the reason for this is that we have always taken the feedback loop from the cyber community really seriously. We regularly seek out ways we can add more value. In fact, some of our best ideas have come from chatting to customers who make suggestions!

To conclude, the last 5 years have been such an amazing journey and I am so proud of what we’ve all accomplished. I cannot wait to see what else we’ll do over the next 5!

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