Ben Crichton - Labour Manager

Our story starts in Whiston Hospital on a snowy November evening in 1992, although truth be told we probably must fast forward to about 2011 to get to anything vaguely relevant.

After cycling through several dreams careers as a young teen including a roller coaster designer, entrepreneur and a pilot, I eventually went to University to study Film Production probably much to the dismay of my parents (they wouldn’t admit it).

"I had the opportunity to work with international music artists such as Snoop Dogg"

In between the usual University drink related shenanigans, I spent 3 years shooting, writing, editing, producing, directing, and crewing on around 40 short films. In that time I had the opportunity to work with international music artists such as Snoop Dogg and even supercar companies like Liverpool’s very own Mono BAC.

Having found a passion, I got a bank loan with a business partner, and Wildfish Productions was born, our very own videography company. In retrospect a bit of life experience combined with some marketing and business lessons would probably not have gone a miss because struggling to get business would be a rather large understatement.

This is when my recruitment career began. In 2015 I got a temporary job with Meridian working in their Mechanical and Electrical division whilst I worked out how I could restart my videography career, and unfortunately, I fell in love.

I was thrown head first into the world of Engineering recruitment, learning on the job (and fast) as we ran the recruitment for Jacob’s colossal job on the Bacton Gas Terminal in Norfolk. At peak there were around 350 people on the job, from Project managers to site administrators and everything in between.

My baptism of fire gave me a real passion for big busy fast paced recruitment (sorry Perm guys) and I have had the bug ever since. I became Labour Manager for Meridian’s Manchester based M&E division, supplying 1000s of workers to 100’s of clients across 100’s of sites around the UK.

2020 wasn’t a great year for anyone really, was it? The death of my dad due to Covid, a prolonged and rocky 6-month furlough combined with 90% of sites being shut in the UK presented a real conundrum. I had seen myself at Meridian for life, they had taught me everything I knew, but maybe, just maybe a new chapter was about to begin.

I made the switch away from agency to internal recruitment with Engenda Group in late 2020 as a labour manager to look after all things site-based recruitment. The chance to see the other side of the fence that I was not privy to, the sites, the access to the engineers and the staff gave me a fresh perspective on engineering recruitment.

Since then, I have run recruitment for around 12 major shutdowns, and numerous smaller projects covering small two-man jobs to 150+ full shutdowns, right here on our doorstep in Runcorn, but also as far as places like Grangemouth and even Denmark.

I have also been able to reignite my passion for videography, shooting and creating multiple videos for Engenda Group social media and website, covering things like talking head interviews, drone videography and general documenting of everyday Engineering life.

Engenda are funding a Masters for myself in Marketing allowing me to help take Engenda’s branding, social media and overall marketing output to the next level. I am looking forward to making sure that Engenda remain at the forefront of recruitment excellence, practice and innovativeness moving forward, whilst also pushing the boundaries of my Marketing knowledge to help grow the Engenda brand into a global name.