Fashion & Lifestyle Recruitment for Clients

Q: How do you decide who to recommend?

Our Recommendation Standard brings together what we know about the business, the role and the person. We use it to decide whether we're prepared to recommend a role to a candidate, or a candidate for a role.

Encore Recruitment finds and recommends people for the roles our fashion and lifestyle clients need to fill.

We have a Recommendation Standard for doing that.

Key Takeaways

We recruit permanent, fixed-term and freelance employees across the UK for brands, retailers, suppliers and importers across fashion, accessories, footwear, homeware and beauty.
Our Recommendation Standard brings together the business, the role and the person before we make a recommendation.
We stay involved with clients and candidates right up until the start date.

Representing Your Business

When you ask Encore Recruitment to recruit for you, you're trusting us to represent your business and the role to people you may want to hire. What we learn about your business, why you're recruiting and what you're looking for shapes how we present the opportunity.

Candidates are deciding whether the opportunity is right for them too. They want to understand what they're being asked to consider, why it could be relevant to them and whether they want to take the conversation further.

That understanding also informs who we look for and the conversations we have with them.

Explore our primary Fashion and Lifestyle sectors, or review the detailed breakdown of our Recruitment Process to see how Encore Recruitment works once we're instructed.

Finding and Recommending People

We find people for your role and decide who we believe you should consider.

Encore Recruitment is built on over 25 years of UK fashion and lifestyle recruitment experience across different sectors, functions and corporate structures.

That experience informs where we look, who we speak to and what we look for when we do.

Skills and experience give us a starting point when we're looking at someone. Conversations give us more: What they've done, what they want next, what interests them about the opportunity and what they could bring to it.

A search can involve a lot of people who you never see. Some aren't right for the role. Some aren't interested. Others become more interesting as we learn more.

That work happens while you're getting on with running your business. You don't need to see everyone we've found or spoken to. You need people worth considering for the role you need to fill.

Our Recommendation Standard brings together what we've learned about your business, the role and the person. It applies both ways: Whether we're prepared to recommend the candidate for the role, and the role to the candidate.

We only share a candidate's details with their knowledge and agreement.

Sometimes we won't have someone we're prepared to recommend. If that happens, we'll tell you what we've learned and revisit the search with you. That could mean continuing, reconsidering part of the brief or agreeing another way forward.

Read the guidelines behind our Recommendation Standard.

Supporting What Happens Next

We stay involved with you and the candidate while you both decide whether to continue through the process, right up until the start date.

Interviews, feedback and further conversations give both sides more information. Questions come up, and perspectives can change. The hiring decision remains yours, and the career decision remains the candidate's.

When both sides want to proceed, Encore Recruitment stays involved through the offer, resignation, notice period and preparation for joining.

While a start date closes that recruitment cycle, it doesn't necessarily close the relationship.

Some of our client relationships go back nearly 20 years, long before Encore Recruitment was founded in 2020. Since Encore Recruitment was founded, 90% of our clients have instructed us more than once (as at August 2026).

FAQ

How do you decide who to recommend?

Our Recommendation Standard brings together what we know about the business, the role and the person. We use it to decide whether we're prepared to recommend a role to a candidate, or a candidate for a role.

What happens if you don't recommend anyone?

Not every search results in a recommendation. If we don't have someone we're prepared to recommend, we'll tell you what we've learned and agree what happens next. That could mean continuing the search, revisiting the brief, pausing or taking a different approach.

What happens after you recommend someone?

You decide whether you want to progress the candidate, and the candidate decides whether they want to continue. Encore Recruitment stays involved with both sides through the decisions that follow and right up until the start date.

Have a Role to Fill?

If you're recruiting a permanent or fixed-term role in fashion and lifestyle, tell us about the role. We'll arrange a conversation to understand what you're looking for and whether Encore Recruitment can help. You can either Submit a Vacancy→ or Contact Us→