Recruiters have a key role to play in supplying candidates that buy into an an organisation’s culture, according to Rebecca Martin-Cortez, resourcing manager at Argos.

“There are a lot of retail managers that can do the job but it is finding the ones that fit the business,” Cortez told Recruiter.

Cortez’s comments followed a breakfast seminar, organised by McCarthy Retail Recruitment and Retail Week in London, where Jeff Grout, ex-managing director of Robert Half and business consultant, told delegates that the most effective leaders know instinctively when they need to seize control and when to let go.

Giving the example of England rugby coach Sir Clive Woodward, Grout said that following Woodward’s first meeting with the team in which players arrived late and were using their mobile phones, the team were instructed to return to the next meeting with their own rules regarding punctuality and mobile phone use.

The team returned with a ban on mobile phones in team meetings and a commitment to all players arriving no later than 10 minutes early to every meeting. Everyone bought into this new culture, as the players themselves had taken accountability for their own objectives.

A good recruiter will recognise those values, behaviour and cultural fit, says Martin-Cortez, a client of McCarthy Recruitment herself.

“It is about understanding the business. Kate’s [McCarthy’s] team has spent time in the business with store managers to find out what they’re looking for. It is not a case of taking a brief and sending a lot of CVs - it is finding out what we’re looking for and not sending people who don’t fit the business.”