Acre : Sweetening profiles

A unique index introduces the right tone.

The Site

Acre, a UK-based recruitment agency for corporate social responsibility professionals, has an unusual way of introducing its own people.

Acre’s company information includes a Meet the team page. Access to individual profiles is via a string of coloured jelly baby-like figures at the top of the page, under an invitation to “Click around to find out more about our team”.

Rolling the cursor over any of the 19 figures reveals a name and job title; clicking opens a two- or three-paragraph profile covering the individual’s role at Acre, their career background and favoured recreational activities. None of the profiles includes a photograph.

The Takeaway

Acre as a company occupies a specialist niche in the recruitment market but an even more exclusive, if not unique, one in its way of presenting profiles of its own roster. Fun it is, in keeping with the approachable-but-professional tone of site content. Egalitarian, too, with no team hierarchy evident among the jelly babies pre-click.

In terms of appropriateness, the presentation gels with the company’s apparent ‘dressed down’ approach. Potential corporate clients hoping for a more straightforward and conventional index through which to research agency personnel might question the usability of the interface, but it at least lets them know what to expect. And no one, whether they love it or not, could deny the feature is memorable.

First published on 16 April, 2009