Metro Bank, the first new high street bank in the UK for over 130 years, has agreed to outsource its recruitment function to RPO specialist, Consort Group, for a further three years. The deal follows on from an initial agreement to outsource recruitment to Consort concluded in March 2009.

Consort Group is targeted with bringing the total number of Metro Bank employees to 400 by the end of the year as part of a drive to expand the bank’s existing Store network to a target of 200 sites by 2020.

“Our focus is on our customers,” says Metro Bank CEO, Craig Donaldson, “and to make sure that we provide them with the best possible service, we have taken the view that we should partner with the experts in process areas such as recruitment and IT, the best of breed who can provide us with flexibility and scalability. We’ve chosen to work with Consort Group because getting recruitment right is incredibly important to Metro Bank – our people and the service they provide are the key points that set us apart from the competition. Consort have shown they have the passion, the commitment and the expertise to deliver exactly the sort of people this organisation needs.”

“The relationship between Metro Bank and Consort Group works so well because we are both highly entrepreneurial businesses with a total focus on customer service,” says Consort Group director, Julie Bullock. “Working with Metro Bank is a fantastic opportunity to create and build a state of the art recruitment function which can identify, attract and deliver the type of individual who will make the bank’s ambitious growth plans happen.”