The booming economy means it is proving harder than ever to find good people to fill senior jobs in fmcg companies. And it's an issue affecting every part of our industry. Take field marketing, growing at the rate of 25% a year, as more companies realise the benefits of employing the expertise of a field marketing company to provide all aspects of face-to-face marketing ­ from strategic out-sourcing of client sales forces to provision of tactile resources. Sure Field Marketing managing director Richard Finch says: "Field marketing companies carry out a wide range of sales and marketing activities ­ merchandising, sampling, roadshows, events, mystery shopping and sales staff. As well as supporting new product launches, there is a growing role in the independent sector. Finch has only just taken on his new role at Sure having recently departed from Headcount, another flourishing field marketing company, where he was director of sales and marketing. And he is the first to admit that as the industry grows so to does the need to recruit. Finch discovered his new challenge after finding it advertised in the Boardroom section of The Grocer. "To be honest" he says, "previously I would only have looked in the The Grocer appointments section to see our own adverts and those of our competitors. If I'd ever been looking for work I'd have looked in The Times or the Telegraph" Bryan Whitman, chairman of the Sure Group, agrees: "Prior to the creation of the Boardroom section The Grocer had not quite reached the level of audience that we were looking for to fill this important position." But Whitman was impressed with the response generated by his ad in the new section. "We had 47 high quality enquiries from senior executives which we short-listed to six candidates before appointing Richard." Sure has already built up an enviable record but is preparing to market to a wider audience as a serious alternative to existing service providers ­ but with a difference. "We're not afraid to challenge our clients," says Finch. "We have real experience and we get so close to our them that we can and do add value at the strategic level. "We will be recruiting more good people and will definitely be using The Grocer for both our in-house and client requirements. It is clear that the readership and the advertisers now go well beyond the traditional fmcg origins." {{PEOPLE MOVES }}