Article sourced from Business & Innovation Magazine
Swindon cyber security recruitment firm Intaso broke the £1 million turnover barrier in just its second year of trading thanks to an explosive growth in the industry and the support of a creative agency.
Managing director Ryan Surry left a lucrative recruiting role in London to set up the company, which helps clients find high quality information and cyber security experts and sales staff, so he could spend more time with his wife and two small children.
He says a key part of its ability to keep pace with the rapid growth of the sector is the website and digital marketing provided for it by Chippenham creative agency Milk & Tweed.
“The cyber security industry is on an absolute rocket ship and every business needs it,” he said. “It is the fastest growing technology market and it’s growing three times faster than early IT. Every single thing that connects to the Internet needs securing now and in five years’ time, every single business is going to need a security function.”
Intaso, which has offices at Lydiard Fields in Swindon and in London, relies on the image presented by its website to help it stand out in an increasingly competitive market. Ryan said: “When 100 per cent of people in my industry spend 90 per cent of their time on a computer it’s essential to have a good online presence.”
“We wanted a site that looks polished and feels like we’ve been around for a long time, but also relates a little bit of our personality and some of the softer skills that we try and embed into everything. We work with some multi-national companies but also start-ups so we want to look credible but also young and dynamic and I think we’ve achieved that.”
When he left his job in London and used his contacts and knowledge of the cyber recruitment sector to launch the company in January 2020, things started well but within weeks the country was locked down as the pandemic hit.
“Recruiters were furloughing staff, but we decided to go on the offensive and brought in more staff while talking to the companies in my network about their plans,” he said.
“When things started up again we were in pole position to start bringing in business and we haven’t looked back.”
Intaso, which now has ten staff, is set to quadruple that in the coming year. With more and more companies expanding their cyber security departments, Ryan said the potential seems limitless.
Ryan, who lives in Chippenham, said: “The threats from hackers keep changing every day, and they find new ways to breach things. The growth in the industry will never slow down because there are always new threats.”
To meet the ever-expanding demand for new recruits he is mentoring on schemes to bring in people from other industries and helping his clients spread their nets wider in their search for staff. “The beauty of the cyberspace is there’s almost a home for everyone,” he said.
Milk & Tweed has helped Intaso’s clients by building a salary calculator on its website that benchmarks job requirements by factoring in responsibilities, location and experience to come up with a salary band required.
The agency’s creative director Jake Jeffries said: “Ryan wanted the site to look like a young, modern company but obviously with some sophistication. We also wanted to make sure Intaso and Ryan are seen as thought leaders. That was the idea behind the salary calculator because no one else has done that. And no one else is doing cybersecurity recruitment quite like Intaso either.”
Ryan added: “The website and the Search Engine Optimisation have evolved as the company has evolved. We’ve got a really good website that represents us brilliantly and we are performing well on Google, so we have a lot to thank Milk & Tweed for. When you grow as quickly as we have done you need to work with the right people to help you maintain your growth and I believe we have done that with Milk & Tweed.”