Ep 98: The Power of Control in Recruitment with Jeremy Snell

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
In this demanding, challenging economy and the cost of living and the stress anddistractions that we have, what advice would you give to a recruitment consultant who
needs to get a bit of life harmony and you know, can get burned out on this trip?
Because it's quite demanding.
How do you be present?
How do you...
Because I think zooming out sometimes can be the best thing you can do as opposed tomaking that next phone call.

(00:24):
Yeah.
best advice would be get a pig.
Jeremy Snell, welcome to the Purpose that Leads You podcast.
I'd like to have you on.
We bumped into each other a few times at different networking events.
I love what you're doing for the sector.

(00:46):
I think I came on your show about three or four years ago, actually.
I think you came on mine, but never done one in person, right?
No, we've done LinkedIn lives, we've done everything apart from meeting the flesh for apod.
Absolutely.
So delighted to have you on.
Before we go into your kind of backstory and what you do, what do you actually do?
How would you summarize what you do?

(01:06):
do I do?
If I give you the real version of what I do, I work with recruitment businesses, helpingindividuals identify ways to achieve higher levels of performance.
I help teams to be able to work better.
Ultimately, I help people to have more fun whilst doing the job of being a recruiter.

(01:27):
because I believe that fun comes from being good at what you do.
When you're good at what you do, you enjoy what you do, you get good chemistry set in yourbody because it's rewarding, it's fulfilling.
So it sounds maybe a bit shallow, but I like to help people to find the game that's hiddeninside the seriousness of recruitment and have fun.
See, I love that.
Obviously, there's a lot of coaches out there.

(01:50):
There's a lot of recruitment trainers out there.
And I think it certainly helps that you've been in the sector quite a while and you'vedone the things you're asking your people to do.
Give us a bit of background into your life before what you're doing now.
life before.
Sure, how far would you like me to go back?

(02:10):
Well, I normally ask guests since school, let's go with that.
let's find out a bit more about you.
Yeah, okay.
So I left, I went to school in North London.
I went to a school called QE Boys, which was a very academically driven school.
I followed a path at school that was one of the intention was I would become a researchscientist or my family of research scientists, PhDs, my brothers in Switzerland,

(02:36):
researching the cure for cancer.
And I was following the same tread.
So I did A levels in physics, chemistry, biology, maths.
I went to university to study microbiology at Surrey.
And there was a moment, I think, in a particular laboratory at university where I realizedthis probably isn't me.

(03:05):
Whatever it was in the Petri dish or whatever it was that we were doing at that moment, Ijust had this realization.
I've been following this.
path for such a long time because I felt, reflecting on it, I felt this is what I shouldbe doing because this is what everyone else has done.
And it just didn't sit right.

(03:25):
So I left university without completing much to many people's dismay.
But I was certain that I was doing the right thing.
But I was
I was totally fixated on what I didn't want to do.
And what frustrated people was I couldn't say it's because I want to do this instead.

(03:49):
didn't have an instead.
I just knew this so isn't me.
If I carry on doing this, I can't see that it's ever going to lead to a point where I feelrewarded or satisfied.
So I made a quick, my family say a quick decision to stop doing it.

(04:13):
And I heard an advert on the radio.
It was on Capitol Radio.
yeah.
And it was an advert for somebody to join the wine merchant to the Queen Mother, to jointhe buying team and to learn how to taste wine.
And they put it on the radio because it had been advertised.

(04:34):
Capitol Radio used to have a foyer with job cards in it.
And one of the DJs had taken this job card and said, listen to this job.
So I applied for the job and I got the job and I became a wine taster.
Yeah, and just around the corner from here, I used to go to college on Tule Street.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
At the Wine and Spirit Education Trust.
So I did exams.

(04:55):
So was at college one day a week.
I was working in this business for four days a week.
Yeah.
Slowly ruining my palate because of the quality of the wines that I was drinking thatmeant I would probably never be able to drink wine again.
Yeah.
And yeah, I suddenly felt, you know, this is quite a socially driven enterprise.

(05:15):
This is an interesting, you know, you can picture what the job was like.
So it felt very different from what I originally set out to do.
then the business got bought.
It got bought by an entrepreneur.
So I started working for this entrepreneur who stripped out a lot of the old bureaucracyof what the business had been.
And he started sending me around the UK to bonded warehouses to

(05:40):
taste wine stocks.
And I would taste a wine stock, I'd give them a valuation.
Based on the valuation, we'd set a selling price, so we would turn wine around from bondedwarehouses.
it was a chain of wine merchants called Bin Ends.
And we ended up on the front page of the Evening Standard because of the prices that wewere able to sell things for that other stores weren't able to do.

(06:06):
And I started to trade, became more of a trader of
wines.
And yeah, they did that like the whole thing was so different from
Yeah, from a highly intelligent family who are researching cancer and all this kind ofstuff to more of the sort of sales.
Yeah, yeah, complete.

(06:26):
Yeah.
And kind of, I get it was kind of a bit more wheeler dealer type work, you know, don'ttaste this stuff, give us a price on it, haggle what we're going to buy it for.
Let's make sure we've sold it before we pay for it.
Let's get this stuff turned around quickly.
And I just liked the chaos and the dynamism of it.
The business over traded, the business closed and

(06:53):
Yeah, I moved out to work in Ibiza and I became a bucking bronco bull rider.
And that was to clear my head.
And when I came back, I ended up in recruitment.

(07:15):
I'm sorry, it's such a long answer.
that's interesting.
It's interesting to find out the background.
Yeah.
So coming back to the UK, back from Ibiza, seven days a week I was working.
You know, the actual concept of what hard work was, feel, there.
And there was a one line advert in a newspaper saying, do working with people?

(07:35):
So your family was quite kind of academic, of like quite, shall we say, traditional, youknow, get the job, get the university, get the wife, get the car, get the house, of thing.
And you were not a black sheep for one of those.
Totally was.
How did that play out?
It took them quite a long time to come to terms with it.

(07:57):
And a lot would often be referenced about the potential that I had academically.
you could have been someone like a rock, a laboratory rocky, or you know, you could havebeen someone like, you were so good at what you were doing, but it just wasn't there in

(08:21):
the enjoyment, the vision of is this it was kind of,
It sounded like from very young age, kind of in tune, you know, had that intuition aboutkind of like, or certainly you wasn't going to be told what to do kind of.
Yes.
And I think that's probably helped your recruitment career, would you not say?
Yeah, yeah, I would.

(08:43):
My, my, my Myers-Briggs profile is ENFP.
So that's extrovert with intuition.
Yes.
which isn't necessarily, you would probably be an ISTJ as a scientist rather than an ENFP,so.
Do you think the criteria for a great recruitment consultant has changed that much overthe years?

(09:12):
Um, I do.
I think that, I think the fundamental job has become more sophisticated.
I think the level of self-awareness that's required to be able to self-manage is greaterthan it has been before.
There was very few distractions when you, you know, I joined recruitment in 1994.

(09:34):
The distraction was, it was, was the, it's the phone.
All the facts.
All the facts.
There's no email.
Nothing.
Not even obviously Instagram or anything like that.
So distractions were things like cigarette breaks.
now there is so many options.
think that's a very, very valid point in terms of like the productivity back then was,think, I can't even measure it 20, 30 times more I would have thought in terms of the

(09:57):
outbound stuff that people were doing because that's all they could do.
Yes, you don't want to talk ill of other people's opinions, right?
But I think there are a lot of there are a lot of generals out there who are trying tohelp people to win the last war still.
Do know?
yeah, of course.
Like in the old days, I'll call it the old days, right?

(10:18):
at my gray beard, right?
It did to me.
But in the old days, you dial 10 people and seven would answer.
Because they also had limited distractions.
They were desk bound.
Today you dial 10 people and two answer.
So the actual amount of input versus output.

(10:41):
Yeah.
The reward was quicker.
speed at getting good was quicker because you had a 70 or 80 % hit rate on a picker.
And you know, to get 10 conversations in one day from a BD perspective as a recruitertoday is hard.
think you and I both know it's not just about harping on about get on the phone.

(11:04):
But I do still feel that, you you're a master at the sequence in the automation and I'm abig proponent of that kind of stuff.
But ultimately, I do believe that that should be a vehicle to enable you as a recruiter tohave more airtime with a client in terms of a conversation ideally.
Yeah, yeah, totally.

(11:24):
Totally.
the use of technology, doesn't, it doesn't replace part of a process.
It enhances part of a process.
as it enhances your ability to have more meaningful conversations with people every day,you still have to intelligently use the tool.
If you bluntly use the tool, it becomes noise.

(11:47):
It doesn't do anything other than
Because the issue I've got, think a lot of it is good.
But I think there are some agencies out there that see it as a silver bullet.
And or they hide behind it and believe, oh, we can get to our candidates and our clients alot more quicker.
Yes, you can.
But behind that machine and that sophistication, if you're not constantly nurturing yoursales ability and your salespersonship and your ability to BD, build rapport, and all that

(12:13):
kind of stuff, it doesn't matter how great the tech is, it might get you in the door.
It won't close the sale.
No.
And at some point you're going to need to talk to whoever responds to qualify needs tounderstand urgency to start to develop a process that they buy into.
Because you also have to be consistent with the messaging you send out intelligentmessaging and then you're unable to articulate how that messaging develops into good

(12:40):
process, solid structure, during success.
do you think it's going to be like though?
Because there's tech out there that can kind of assess, not if someone's lying or not, buttheir commitment by their tone of voice and all that kind of stuff.
And actually I think there's so many consultants out there that see a qualified candidateas someone that is a match on a CV and a JD.

(13:04):
A qualified candidate, as you and I would probably concur together, is not just someonewho can do the job.
It's someone who
is qualified in terms of where else they're interviewing and all the other leads you haveto get and their commitment and all, know, amount of times when a deal falls over because
the consultant hasn't even asked where the other candidate's interviewing.
And you find out interview three, but you've got asked that every day.

(13:24):
what do think the landscape's like?
I mean, I've seen agencies qualify candidates just via email.
Yeah.
Well, different businesses, different processes.
The reality is it is still a human interaction that takes place between a consultant and apotential candidate.

(13:50):
And at a surface level, if the person has got the skills to do the job, then that might be20 % of the algorithm.
If what's on offer from the client meets the candidate's expectations,
has probably another 30 % of the algorithm.
And then another 50 % of it is all of the sensitive ecology of the individual and howthey're ultimately going to make a decision.

(14:14):
Because if the job looks good for the candidate, the candidate looks good for the job, butwe haven't had conversations about concerns, doubts, threats, the journey that they're on,
the drivers, their motives, what even led to them to decide to apply or to respond to themessage.
Yeah.
And if we don't understand that, we're kind of dealing with the shadow of the person.

(14:36):
And we're now chasing down a placement by trying to put a CV into a job description.
Absolutely.
This is a big, big kind of red flag for me.
I was going to ask you what the do's and don'ts, but I think a lot of where process fallsdown is communication.
And what I mean by that is how we're communicating a job or a JD to a candidate and howwe're actually presenting candidates to clients.

(14:59):
We do all this hard work to identify the candidate.
and we spend an hour and a half, well, maybe I can do it for you, you write up thecandidate, all you do is then you just send an email to the client and wait for the client
to come back.
It really frustrates me.
No, pick up the phone, leave a voice, do a video about the candidate.
I've had clients offer candidates directly after four interviews with an email kind ofstuff.

(15:20):
it's like, it's all these things I think that there's still gaps in the process that techcan't replace.
Yeah, yeah.
And some of the challenges, recruitment itself is a very simple process because it is sucha simple process.
An individual can believe that they've mastered it because they look at it as a simpleprocess because it goes one, it goes two, it goes three.

(15:42):
Actually, the journey from one to two and then from two to three is very sophisticated interms of how you improve the quality with which you pay attention.
to what's being said, what's not being said, how it's being said, like the whole empathpart of the process.

(16:03):
Because you and I could talk on the phone and I ask you, are you interested in this job?
And you go, yeah, I think so.
And I write down yes, because that's my shorthand for yeah, I think so.
And then I'll say to my manager, I've got this guy, Chris, he's really interested in thejob.
How do you know?
He said so.
And there's not enough interrogation or investigation that revolves around the I think soor the tonality or the

(16:29):
Yeah, that's very true.
But isn't there tech out there that now picks that up and it kind of like, but you stillthen got to investigate that.
That's the point.
but the text been there for thousands of years.
It's called the human ear.
And we're now trying to create tech to replace what really is a learned skill, which ishow to pay attention to somebody without listening to your own narrative.

(16:58):
That is the interpretation of what's being said.
Does that make sense?
well we get delusions of grandeur don't we?
We pull this vacancy and it's a great client, a great role, great business.
But actually you'll get six other agencies, it's 12%, you're dealing with HRs, mothers,aunties, uncle.
It's kind of like what constitutes a great vacancy and I think we just fall into thesetraps don't we?
Yeah.

(17:20):
I I quickly said, you know, the tech is the human ear.
People aren't patient today to learn skills as perhaps they were in the past.
Absolutely.
That's true.
Because we're in a world of instant gratification.
So it's easy to write things off and say, I'm not naturally good at that, so I'll get techto replace it.

(17:40):
When you get tech to replace something you're not very good at, it's very hard to know isthe tech any good.
Because you can't appraise tech that is replacing something that you're not very good atto then be able to describe it as good.
Yeah.
So it's, those who are willing to invest the time and the energy in the personaldevelopment who then when they get good, you become exceptional at listening.

(18:04):
You could look at that tech and be able to make a decision.
that tech good?
whether it's writing emails, it's creating cadences.
If you're doing that because you're not very good at it, probability is you're not verygood at assessing is what we're now following.

(18:25):
good enough for the purpose that it's designed for.
It becomes, that better than I can do it?
Or am I happy with it to let it go without thinking about is the recipient happy toreceive it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
I want to talk about your recruitment career, but whilst we're on the subject of all thiskind of stuff, if you was a recruitment consultant again, you started from today or

(18:50):
Monday, what would you do?
you know, how would you map your market out?
What would you do to build a desk?
That's quite broad question, I know.
I'll answer how I did that in 1994.
In 1994, I got a trade directory which had all of the companies that were exhibitingwithin a specialist marketplace who were all going to be under one roof.

(19:18):
And I used the trade directory to help me to start to identify the organizations thatwould become my audience.
And then having identified those organizations, then look at within that
collective of 500 companies.
Which are the ones that look as though they would be either the most valuable as customersor the ones who appeared to be most likely to be interested in services.

(19:44):
To be able to take 500 down to what ended up being what we called in the business thenifty 50.
So if you've got your nifty 50 out of the 500 and you invest your energy in the nifty 50.
Yeah.
You discover through qualification that one isn't as nifty as you had hoped.
Take it out, go back to the other 450 and let's find another one.

(20:07):
And what I would do on Monday would be very similar.
I would just use technology to help me to be able to do that.
I would make sure that what I was doing was having some fluency with the total sellableaudience for what I intended to recruit.
And then from that identify
smallest segment possible that would represent the highest value of being future customerswithout necessarily chasing rainbows.

(20:36):
So wouldn't be the largest businesses.
Yeah.
So, so, I met up with somebody recently who describes it as the Goldilocks principle.
Mommy bear, baby bear, daddy bear, the daddy bears are too big.
The baby bears are too little.
Yeah.
Let's find all the mommy bears.
And they might be like the 30 to 75 million pound turnover.

(20:58):
I think that's absolutely spot on in terms of identifying the right customers.
But what I found along my journey as a Ned and an advisor is that I'm really shocked abouthow a consultant even introduces themselves.
They say they're specialists, but they come across as an absolute general generalist.
Like I'm a financial services recruiter.

(21:20):
Oh, really?
You do banking, hedge funds, or all the other myriad of that.
I think how I've done it is how you've done it, but also
I've done a lot of BD through candidates.
instead of saying, hi, it's Chris here from Recruitment Limited.
I'm a Java consultant.
If the candidate works at, say, a fintech business or was quite fintech-orientated, I'llbe saying things, hi, it's Chris here from Java Limited.

(21:43):
We're a Java recruitment consultancy, particularly operating in the fintech space.
We're working with fintech client one and fintech client two.
I notice you worked at fintech client three, fintech client four.
My objective is to try and get you in front of some of these clients of ours over the nextcouple of weeks.
How does that sound?
I'm trying, and then your pitch is almost the same with the client where you're you'rename dropping competitors.

(22:05):
And what I mean by that is I feel that half of this is a mindset and positioning thing.
If you get that right at the start, people are more likely to engage with you.
What would you say to that?
Yeah, I totally agree.
think what's happened in recruitment is there's been too much of a partition put betweenthe word client and candidate.

(22:27):
And I think there are people out there today who if they went to a recruitment agency'swebsite and there was two options, click client, click candidate, they might not know
which one to pick because they're...
You're right.
I've always seen it as one customer in my head.
People who work in a sector.
And as you start to engage with people to help them develop professionally, that mightmean the next thing we talk about is strengthening a team, solving a problem with a

(23:01):
contractor.
taking a brief or a job or to help you professionally, what we might be talking about isguidance on salaries because you've got an appraisal coming up and you want to be able to
pitch for a pay rise.
Or it might be we're talking about how we could discreetly investigate a market on yourbehalf to find opportunities.
But ultimately there's value in our conversation if you intend to remain in the sectorusing the skill sets that you've developed.

(23:30):
long term in us knowing each other because at some point we will work together.
Yeah, absolutely.
What's your, I'm a old school 360 recruiter and it's taken me a number of years to get myhead around 180 and now I like it.
I think there's a time and a place for it.
I think I'll ask you the question actually, rather than me trying to answer my ownquestion.

(23:51):
What are the pros and cons of like the 180 versus 360 in your opinion?
consultant or the business.
general view on it I think.
both have a place.
I think there is a fitness for purpose that is often driven by the marketplace that isbeing traded in.

(24:15):
I think that the 360 model, it is more challenging to develop people to become competent360 consultants because of all of the distractions.
That shouldn't mean that we don't continue to do it.
interrupt you back in our day didn't exist at 180.
Everyone was 360, wasn't it?

(24:36):
Yeah.
But I can also see that the skill sets are, they are changing.
Like the job of now, in the old days, back to the old days, in the old days, the challengewas finding people.
There was no LinkedIn, there was no job board.
You'd go, you'd walk on the pavement.

(24:58):
Maybe on a Monday, you might get a CB posted through your box.
phone businesses to gather names of people.
Like you build your own CRM with calories and now everyone is visible.
the skill set is no longer about let's find some people, it's about engaging with peopleand engaging with people, nurturing relationships, digital outreach, starting to become in

(25:28):
some sectors a full-time job.
Yeah.
which is why the two 180 rolls.
Yeah, I've experienced information getting lost in ether.
So you've got the you've got the 360 client facing consultant dealing with the client andall the information, understanding the fabric of the business and the role and everything
else.
And then they pass the JD to the to the 180 person, just got to sell words on a bit ofpaper, and they're selling that sell words to the candidate.

(25:54):
And it's it's it's I think it works is when they're working in conjunction with it and theconsultant or the delivery person is is
knows the business.
I don't know, sometimes I feel there's too many cooks spoiling the broth.
But also I do recognize that...
There different skill sets, but...

(26:15):
Your processes need to be much stronger.
The integration between the 180 and the 180, the salesperson, the account manager,whatever you call them, and the delivery team.
There needs to be a much stronger handover process as a customer.
you could, like when you buy your car,

(26:36):
you buy a car, you meet a salesperson, you kind of build a relationship sometimes with asalesperson with test drives.
Then you get handed over to the aftercare, after sales team.
That's true.
get handed over to the service team.
if that handover process isn't good, you feel like you're losing something from theexperience because you're having to either repeat yourself.

(27:00):
You don't feel as though you're fully understood.
Yeah.
So there needs to be good process whenever you have multiple people that are part of acustomer's journey.
So I always say whether you've got one job on or a thousand jobs on, there's time in yourworking week to be BD no matter what.
I think people get this fear of even the phrase business development, what else do want tocall it?

(27:21):
You're developing business.
I know I always see it as every cause and opportunity to BD.
But I think I attended one of your sessions actually, where you talked about, I love thisactually.
I think you was in a meeting and it was, it JCB or something, I think you said.
and one of their suppliers, and you put a candidate into one of your client's suppliers,in maximizing the opportunity.

(27:46):
As an example, I train my consultants to, if you're sending a candidate to a role and he'sspot on for that role, why don't you at the same time send him to five competitors anyway
to open up?
all those kind of techniques, can you give us some gold there around how people canmaximize what they're doing as opposed to, I think,
We get two tunnel visioned on.

(28:07):
We've got to place that in that role, there's so many other opportunities we can createother roles.
What makes people feel that I need to place this candidate in this role does come from agood place.
They believe that this candidate is good for that job, that job is good for thiscandidate, and it then allows them to sell themselves the narrative of, so that's done.

(28:30):
She really likes them, they really like her, I can't picture any reason why it's going togo south.
So why do more work?
So what they miss is that...
If she is as good as you believe, I'm sure she is, five other businesses don't know youcan find people of that quality.
So unless you show five other businesses somebody of that quality, when you have them in aprocess, when your process is finished, you'll be going looking for business and you'll

(29:00):
have less of a calling card.
So the idea of, let's take to market a message that revolves around what is in demand.
Yeah.
as opposed to what is in supply.
Like if you encounter a candidate who is in less demand and you take them to marketbecause you haven't got something for them, you'll probably prove that there isn't any

(29:23):
demand for that person.
You have a candidate that is in demand because a client has jumped on the CV.
That's right.
It's not just about speccing candidates, but the amount of times people send a candidateover and they don't ask for the interview or they don't create urgency.
Things like this individual is going to be snapped up in the next two weeks, what Isuggested, no obligation, free working interview.

(29:44):
It's kind of like, I think sometimes we fall into the trap of we're not administrationpeople passing information from one individual to another.
I feel it's still a safe, it sells well, and sometimes we lose sight of that.
Yeah, yeah.
And you're in control of that whole decision as to what am I going to do next?

(30:08):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And to maximize on your productivity, what you do next should be linked to what you justdid rather than always starting something new.
So if I arrange the interview for the can, they don't go, great, that's sorted.
That's going to happen on Monday.
What am I going to do now?
I'm going to do some BD.
Right.
Who shall I call?
Here's 10 companies I don't know anything about.
That's good BD.

(30:28):
So I'll then phone these 10 strangers, begin a process of integrating myself into these 10strangers, manage the process on Monday that's taking place and not actually see that
there's
There's a candidate going for an interview on Monday that actually might also appreciatehaving an interview on Tuesday and Wednesday because then they're choosing between my job,

(30:52):
my job and my job.
Yeah.
And if I take to market somebody who I actually feel very positively about because theyare now in a process and I can show five other hiring managers, I think you're going to
like Belinda because I talk about
The reasons why Belinda has triggered an interview.

(31:12):
You know, I've arranged an interview for her because what they've seen in her is thisoutcome, this outcome, this outcome.
Yeah, and that's it.
that's, that's also, I think that's called next degree actions, knowing every all partiesknow what they're going to do next.
But also I think that if you can't get retained or exclusive, what I always try to do isget some form of control.

(31:34):
So you're on the phone for an hour.
Mr.
Clam, we spent an hour on the phone.
We've got a really good understanding of exactly sort of person you want the skill setwhat we're going to do now as part of our service level agreement is send you an email
with the job description that we just discussed.
If there's anything that we've missed, we want to tailor, let me know.
The email is going to have a schedule of when you're to first interview, when we're to getinterview feedback, when you're going to second interview, when you're going to offer,

(31:54):
when you're going to pay.
And this way we can make sure that we can manage the process for you.
Then shut up, see what they say.
And I think too often we qualify the job, we don't qualify the bloody process.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
And that whole process piece, like I...
I get how you're describing the word control.

(32:16):
prefer the word command.
Okay.
I would like the client to feel in control because I'm in command.
Yeah.
I'm command you, you lay out a schedule.
They now feel control.
They can see what's going to happen.
I now feel some surety.
You know what you're doing here.
It's not, yeah.
Let me see if I can find some CVs and see what you think.
And then we can arrange them interviews.
It's not, let's get the interview slots book and then kind of see what goes from there.

(32:41):
Like when I'm in command,
Typically we find that this process takes six weeks.
This is the timeline that we'll work to.
This is how we'll make sure that we avoid the pit hole.
Is there anything here that gives you any concerns?
Are you happy to work on this basis?
Clients in control.
I can come up.
Everyone's happy.

(33:02):
the benefits of that is that when you start presenting that schedule to the candidate andsay we've got interview schedule that they put that role to the top, they're more likely
to put that role to the top of their list.
Everything kind of helps, doesn't it?
So in terms of candidate acquisition, what have you learned along the way?
Because there's so many different ways to find candidates, I think, nowadays.
Have you got any sort of insight into other than doing a Boolean search, for example?

(33:28):
Yeah.
Biggest lesson early in my career.
No one likes to be called a candidate.
And no one likes to be treated like a candidate.
It starts to create a sense of commoditization.
The word candidate, the word candidate is really is a verb.

(33:50):
It's not a noun.
So I express candidacy.
I have entered a state of mind where I am now a candidate for something.
I know, I you, you what you're Yeah, you're kind of like one of many, kind of, you'reliving in hope, you're not anything tangible, I get it, yeah.
I do a search on LinkedIn and here's 25 profiles, if I accidentally say, I found 25candidates, I'm going to treat them like they have expressed candidacy and maybe suggest I

(34:16):
have a job that they would be interested in.
That has this assumption that they are ready to be treated like a candidate.
If I treat them like an individual and I help them to understand the benefits of enteringa state of candidacy because of what I have,
Yeah.
It speeds up the process because I engage with more people as people, as opposed toreaching out to profiles and treating them like candidates because they Google whacked on

(34:49):
my billion search strength.
Yeah.
One of things I like to do is that we do a list with search and say 200 come up.
What most people tend to do, they'll get a 200 long list, for example, and they'll spenddays, hours and days whittling through looking for the first four lines on LinkedIn going
yes, no, yes, no.

(35:09):
And then that takes it down to 60, then they might phone them.
My view is that I think that you should send an email on email to those 200 because thesearch you've created is
is good enough to say that they're probably at least 70 % there or thereabouts.
Send the JD to them.
But within that email, say the client's been very explicit about these four things thatthey must have.

(35:32):
If you've got this, this, this, and this, please provide a summary of what you've donewith that.
If you haven't, unfortunately, the client's not going to take you forward.
Therefore, you're getting the candidate to qualify themselves in and out.
And I think you're hitting more people more quickly.
Then I would do the phoning.
So what I'm trying to say is I think sometimes
We're too precise with these things for fear of pissing people off, but you can be quitecute about it and get the can it to do the work.

(35:58):
What should we call them?
Person.
To do the work for you sometimes,
Yeah, yeah.
But I'm sure when you do that search, you've got 200.
There's probably a good way to split it into two lots of 100.
Right.
And if I could split it into two lots of 100, I could A-B test something.
And if I can turn it into two lots of 100, I could probably turn it into four lots of 50.

(36:21):
Yeah.
And as I do that as four lots of 50, it might be that I decide, right, these 50, just tomake the maths easy for me, these 50.
I feel that they would define this role, if it was suitable for them, as stepping up.
These 50, I think if they were to look at this role, they would describe it as being anopportunity to become a big fish in a little pond.

(36:45):
These 50, I think might see it as being an opportunity to strike more work-life balance.
So as I start to think about how would they describe this opportunity to themself?
and I could then introduce to them, I feel that this could prove to be a career climberfor you because you're in a group of, I'm not typing you're in a group of 50, but they're

(37:10):
in a group of 50 people who've got three to five years experience in the same company withthe same job title.
I agree.
This is really important because I think the amount of times where we've got a legend forthis role, he's nailed on and the client goes for someone.
I think sometimes a client doesn't necessarily go for the best fit on paper.
Sometimes you don't know an interview, they might have gelled with the guy better becausethey've got the same footwear team.

(37:33):
It's a weird...
And sometimes you probably do need to kind of, you know, put in that wild card or whateverit might be or explain to the candidate.
the client.
is why I think when we're presenting CVs, the reason you pick up the phone and say thereason why I've sent you this CV is because yes, he's got 75 out of 100 on the the skill
set and experience.
I think culturally, he's got this and I think that's when that can be the differencesometimes, you know.

(37:57):
Yeah, and that creates the stickiness of hire and stickiness of hire is what creates valuefor money for the fee.
Yeah.
As opposed to the price that they paid for the transaction.
You you ask, you ask a client who's hiring somebody to join their team permanently.
What do they need to be in the first 90 days?

(38:18):
What do they need to become in two years?
Yeah, they'll have this picture of, yeah, actually, what does the trajectory look like forthis person?
what is realistic, what is possible.
And they'll interview people for the person that they could become as much as, you gonnabe able to do the job today?
And if you get overly fixated on this person's perfect for the job, well, they might notstick around because it's already everything that they're doing.

(38:46):
And if they're taking it for the pay rise, the joy of the pay rise disappears after twopay slips because very quickly pay rise becomes disposable income.
and then become standard of living.
You know, you forget about the pay rise quite
And I think we forget we're consultants, we are recruitment consultants.
So I think our role is to actually consult with the clients, say actually, Mr.

(39:08):
Client.
So I've got an idea how I would position this role with a prospective candidate.
How would you position it yourself?
There's that kind of, those kind of questions.
Yeah, yeah, yes.
And not every client has given that conscious consideration, which is how they then reactto what may be the curveball or the wild card candidate because something in their

(39:33):
unconscious means, I see something in this person, although they might not have all of theskills, I see a lot of potential.
Because there's a lot of potential, I think this is somebody that we could develop overfive years, not
just higher for the next 12 to 18 months.
You mentioned at the start when I asked you about you you improve performance, you make itfun, which I love.

(39:55):
I want to talk to about how you make it fun, but I think performance management is amassive thing.
I'm a big proponent of follow up because you are one of the best trainers out there.
But you know, as well as I do, you, we, I can do the best training session in the fuckingworld.
But if that's not followed up and measured and you don't know what outcomes you got fromthat, you might as well not bother kind of thing.

(40:19):
What you found, I found the biggest thing is basically not necessarily the training orlack of, it's the follow up, no?
Yeah, very much.
The training has to happen for the follow up to occur.
But the follow up, the follow up is where the learning takes place, not in the trainingroom.

(40:42):
Like if you go into a training room for three hours, you write copious notes, you havebeen exposed to ideas or tactics or processes.
You haven't really learned anything because you'll learn it through doing.
And the moment that you sit down to have your first go at whatever it is, interrogatingchat GPT, picking up the telephone to talk to a candidate.

(41:07):
learn and then you create beliefs about yourself, about the skill, about the event, thenstarts to dictate how you do the next one.
So the first time that you do it, you might be close to the definition that was given toyou in training.
you then iterate it and go, that didn't really work for me.
So I'm just gonna like, yeah, move this.

(41:29):
I'm gonna change this.
then within seven or eight goes, yeah, you're finding your voice or you're finding yourcapability.
You're also deviating from what was shared.
Yeah.
Without realizing how far you've deviated.
So the followup is how is your, how is your learning journey going?
Yeah.
Which is the application.

(41:51):
of what's been shared in the context of your understanding.
think it's that that balance of kind of you teach a framework or program but you do as youthink you're saying you give them a little bit of creative license to make it their own
version of but we're still on this track of this is what we need to do.
Yeah.
So the follow-up is really important to help somebody to recognize the development thatthey're achieving, the journey that they're on, to recognize some of the challenges that

(42:21):
they're facing.
It may actually be natural challenges that shouldn't be interpreted as failures.
It's just part of the journey of learning, right?
And if you've had three hours of time in a training room, you're probably going torequire...
at least double that in terms of follow up and conversational coaching discussions with amanager, a peer, a coach.

(42:47):
And you'll need an X amount of time to put this into practice.
you know, it's not going to go out there and press that button is going to work.
It's going to take a few attempts anyway, in general, isn't it?
in terms of the training that you've seen, what apart from follow up is I mean, what's thegood, bad and ugly you've seen in your in your time as a trainer?

(43:15):
Man, that's really difficult to answer in a public domain.
Things that have been good.
What makes good training is not defined by anyone other than the attendee.

(43:35):
It's the attendee's perception that revolves around value, relevance, and
I was going to say quality, it's the, does it actually feel as though it has my bestinterests at heart to help me to be able to improve?
Yeah.
Like the agenda of it.

(43:56):
Let's call it the agenda, right?
What is the actual agenda of what is taking place here?
Yeah.
Is this something that is being done to me with an outcome that I am a passenger to?
Yeah.
Is this something that is intended to help me because of things that are
inherent in my own challenges in attempting to achieve the goal that I have?

(44:19):
Yeah.
Or is it attempting to help me to do something to achieve somebody else's goal?
Does that make sense?
it does.
I think what you're trying to say there is that you need to empathise with them andunderstand, get them to understand why we're doing what we're doing.
bit.
Totally.
So that they walk into the room.

(44:40):
Like we will consider that there's a training room, right?
If someone walks into a training room and has limited understanding of what are we goingto do?
Why are we going to do?
Yeah.
How are we going to do?
And with what intention?
You know, if somebody's told you've got sales training next week, Tuesday, okay.

(45:02):
So true.
Is it for me?
It's for you.
Okay, what are we gonna do?
You know, but that isn't that doesn't tend to be like a pushback narrative.
It's a it's it's a spoken
So how do you do that when you walk into a did you walk into a group of people and justyou don't just spat out the training?

(45:23):
Do you warm them up a little bit or do you have to have individual meetings first?
How do you personally do to do that kind of
In a utopian world, time would be spent with each individual to talk about theirperceptions in terms of goals, objectives and purpose.
I don't always have time to do that or I don't have the physical presence to be there todo that with people.

(45:47):
What I encourage and expect of the businesses I work with is that there is a conversationbetween a manager and a person who is going on training that is a kind of cup of coffee.
Let's think about the training next week.
Let's think about what you could discover.
Let's think about what matters to you.

(46:07):
And to encourage the person to start to think about the relevance, the agenda and theintention.
Because when you're sent on training, it is with best intentions.
It doesn't always feel like that.
There's a guy, Stuart, Stuart, if you're watching, Stuart said to me,

(46:27):
Jeremy used to come into the business I worked at and I felt that training was somethingthe MD did to us using you.
Now I own my own business.
I understand far more the value of training because I now have a different perception asto what it is for and all of that was about intention.

(46:52):
This is what I do with my training that I do is I get them to visualize is one of my is my90 day plan is imagine in 90 days time where you are doing a deal a week, you got clients,
you got candidates, how does that feel?
think it's the same kind of thing where you're saying that eventually it's like myintention is to make something good off this, isn't it?

(47:12):
Yeah, yeah.
Like it or not, you are now sacrificing this many hours to be in this room.
And it shouldn't be because of the custard creams.
Yeah.
Or to be able to get away from sitting next to Barry, you know, you are here, I hope witha stronger intent.
Yeah.
But not necessarily.
Is that going to be the experience of everybody that is linked to training the the

(47:37):
And also, think, think, comprehension as well, what I tend to do or try to do at the endof a session is, can you just tell me what you've learned from this?
Because I mean, I think it's really important to get the feedback in the session as well,isn't it?
What do you think?
Yeah, I do.
And multiple times through the session.
Okay, each each piece of will call it content each pitch of content that gets unpacked.

(48:01):
Yeah, needs to have a moment of reflection to allow people to process what am I actuallytaking from this that is for me?
Yeah, yeah.
training is a buffet.
And as you walk along and you decide, I'm going to have

(48:22):
I'll have two of those.
When you're in training, you are doing that.
You are accepting some messages, rejecting others.
And sometimes you accept messages because of the comfort of the message.
And you're rejecting things that probably you should be more accepting of.
as you are making your selection on the buffet, if you haven't thought with enoughclarity, what is my intention going into this?

(48:48):
What do I really need to discover?
If you thought about that, you might actually go, do you know what?
don't think I like, paté, but I think I'm going to go for the paté.
Yeah.
And, be more intentional with what you consume and how you hold onto it to put it intopractice.

(49:11):
that.
So in your mind, what constitutes a good week?
know, what sort of inputs, KPIs, metrics do you think because there's so many peoplesaying all sorts of stuff out there.
What would be a good week and what would you measure?
I split things into three things.
Standards.

(49:32):
Goals, KPIs.
So standards, standards are behaviors.
They rely on nothing other than you to do it.
So the standard might revolve around whenever we take in a job, we complete thischecklist.

(49:52):
It's a standard.
And because it is a standard, it's for you to maintain that standard.
The standard might be every day,
The standard is we have 10 business conversations.
We might not call them sales calls, but we have conversations that revolve around businessthat helps us to be able to move forward.

(50:12):
Yeah.
The standard is 10.
And that is controlled by your own focus and energy.
So it totally sits in your wheelhouse to decide, do I want to or not want to achieve thestandard?
The goals, the goals are your expectations from delivering the standards.

(50:36):
So what do you expect to be able to achieve today from your 10 business conversations?
What do you expect to achieve this week?
when you go through the checklist on a job, do you know?
And as you start to set goals, goals are aspirational.
So there will be weeks where you have an intent to achieve something, but you don'tachieve it, but you're aspiring to achieve a number of goals.

(50:58):
The KPIs, the KPIs are the performance metrics that tend to be relationships between twonumbers that are either conversions or percentages.
This is the trick, isn't it?
You could make 100 calls to a butcher, baking a candle maker and get nothing.
You one call to CEO and get everything.
Correct.
of thing.

(51:20):
So as you, you, as you look at the relationship between standards goals, what starts toreveal itself is a set of KPIs that is often dedicated to the individual based upon where
they're at.
So when a business says you didn't hit your KPIs this week and they're talking aboutstandards, I get the intent, but it's for me, it's the wrong language.

(51:46):
You turn up to draw a basic salary to
deliver set of standards.
Yeah.
Like the standard
standard is something that you buy into.
Yeah.
Because the standard is the definition of what is our minimum expectation of self.
Yes.
Forget the business is expectation.

(52:07):
It's minimum expectation of self.
So when I think about what a good working week looks like, have I delivered my standards?
Have I done the work that is required to increase the probability of achieving my goals?
Yeah.
And do I feel as though I am
seeing an improvement in my ability to achieve my KPIs because I'm getting better at theconversion of one thing into another.

(52:33):
psychology of that because when you start with standards you're almost kind of like it'smaking you look at your own behavior isn't it which then drives the outcome anyway
usually.
Like a standard could be could be measured in time.
could be.
I worked with a business where one of the standards in the business was 60 minutes ofreading a week.

(52:55):
Everyone had to 60 minutes reading something.
Yeah.
And it didn't matter what you read.
Yeah.
What you needed to do is to then summarize back to the team.
Yeah.
I read three chapters of Dan Pink's book.
Yeah.
This is what I've taken away from it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I read.
this essay that was written by, you know, and having people consume something to thenprocess it, to then share it with the team.

(53:21):
It was helping them to have better quality conversations with their clients.
And in fact, in that business, part of the work that I was doing with them, the title ofthe course was, How to Have Business Conversations with People Where the Agenda Isn't
Talking About Recruitment.
You're just to talk about their business, to talk about their goals, to talk about theimpact that things that are going on in the world is having on projects, workflow,

(53:51):
stability.
See, that's the thing.
think before we start with any of the sales training or the metrics or the operations, Ithink it's positioning your recruitment consultant as not positioning the client as some
sort of superior being.
They're a human being.
Have a conversation with them.
All these long-winded massive introductions.

(54:12):
I'm Chris O'Connell from Recruitment Limited, Recruitment Reveal.
I'm about to talk to you about recruitment, but I've said it so many times, so you knowit's coming kind of introduction versus...
yeah, just.
talk to the guy, you know?
Or the girl.
What do think?
Yeah, yeah.
And actually what they want to talk about at some point could lead to a conversation thatis about people and talent and hiring and retention.

(54:38):
It doesn't have to start at recruitment because we work in recruitment.
Yeah.
And it's that ability to be able to slow down.
Yeah.
To have a more meaningful conversation about everything else that then creates a
greater opportunity for you to earn the right to talk about what you do.
I also think that back in our day, there were a lot more bigger businesses in recruitment.

(55:02):
And it's all about driving headcount and rack them high, pack them high.
Now it's obviously that the tech is replacing some of that.
And I think the market's exposing some of the businesses.
But it's probably going to be about getting more out of less, I think, isn't it?
Yeah.
What's your view on how the market is now and looking now in terms of, because there aresome deals.
I was at an event yesterday.

(55:23):
I think there was 84 deals that
know, recruitment deals that went through, are still people buying businesses and, butit's just not the same anymore, it?
It's just smaller, smaller businesses out there.
So how do you think that affects the sector?
I think it affects almost every business in sector and outside of sector, right?
I think that as we see things like the cost of employing people is increasing, everybusiness in the country will be having conversations that revolve around productivity.

(55:53):
Anyone who works in recruitment should be talking to their clients about how do youmeasure productivity in your team?
Like a finance team will measure productivity, a sales team measures productivity, awarehouse will measure productivity, and productivity has never been more important.
Yeah.
And now the productivity is revealing itself to be the most important metric inrecruitment.

(56:14):
It's not the vanity metrics of headcount.
It's how do we produce more with less people?
Yeah.
And the only way to produce more with less people is to start to really look at what isthe performance of a good business?
Yeah.
What are the structures and the systems and the processes that give people the freedom tobe able to do more of the higher dollar?

(56:37):
activities.
Oh, absolutely.
I think I saw a post of yours about pipeline.
I love pipeline in terms of I can always assess somebody's capability or what they'regoing to do, not by how many deals they've done.
But I call it like a traffic system.
You've got your green clients where you've got your live roles.
You've got your amber clients where you're nurturing them.

(56:57):
You know they've got something coming up and you've got your red target clients.
The more kind of almost the more yellows and sorry, the more ambers and reds you've got,the better.
What worries me is the people I've got six jobs on.
I was like, okay.
And you've got nothing coming behind that.
what's your what's your view on all that kind of stuff?
The importance of, you know, feeding the machine if you want.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a lot of people who are deal watchers.

(57:19):
Yeah.
And they over invest time watching what's going on in the things that are probably playingout and done.
Yeah.
I'm not thinking about where will the next piece come from.
It creates feast and famine.
Good month, good month, bad month, good month, good month, bad month.
Yeah.
The time to be at your most attentive to your pipeline is when the placement pipeline isrich.

(57:44):
Bring more in.
Yeah.
And you call them the reds.
The more red that you have in your project plan, the happier you should be.
June looks good.
Yeah.
You know, what we're doing today is likely to be influencing outcomes that we'll becelebrating in seven weeks.
Yeah.
But to interrupt you, it's things like there's gold in them hills already.

(58:07):
What I mean by that.
If you've just placed someone that has offered and accepted, get the manager name andbackfill that.
There's things like that you can do without even thinking about it, isn't there?
Yeah, there's a whole race to get jobs filled quickly.
And if the journey to fill a job goes from A to Z, A instruction, Z job filled.

(58:28):
There are a lot of people who don't focus on the journey from B to Y.
And because they don't follow the journey from B to Y, they miss all of the intel, thegossip, the stories.
You have the candidate who phones you and says,
I'm sorry, I got your email yesterday.
I've been really busy at work.
I didn't have time to call you back.
Okay, no problem.
You're good for next week.

(58:49):
And they don't investigate any of you.
What's going on at work?
Yeah.
Yeah.
They don't discover that their managers just walked off site, you know, all of the thingsthat just comes from being present.
Yeah.
Because I'm paying attention to the journey from B to Y.
So on that point about being present and the whole wellbeing piece, you live on a farm,which is a dichotomy being in an office, but in this demanding, challenging economy and

(59:15):
the cost of living and the stress and distractions that we have, what advice would yougive to a recruitment consultant who needs to get a bit of life harmony and you can get
burnt out in this room?
Because it's quite demanding.
How do you be present?
How do you...
Because I think zooming out sometimes...
can be the best thing you can do as opposed to making that next phone call.

(59:36):
Yeah.
best advice would be get a pig.
It's gotta be on the trailer, that one.
Good answer.
If you want to have good harmony with the world.
Spend time in nature.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(59:57):
Down time is really important.
Like recruitment feels very grind, grind, grind.
And moments of downtime.
It doesn't have to be duvet days and off.
Just taking some time out to...
Like if you get out of, if you're in an office, you get out of your chair, you go to thewindow and you allow your eyes to focus on infinity.

(01:00:19):
Like look at the clouds, know, just something that helps you to like screen, screenstaring is bad for us.
We're hunched over, we're looking at a screen.
If we're feeling under pressure, we've got tension in our jaw.
I've done some stuff with you online, you desk stand, you stand sometimes, don't
Yeah, I desk stand for meetings, I desk stand for online training sessions, I desk standto record things.

(01:00:48):
We are creatures who have evolved to solve problems whilst moving.
Yeah, yeah.
We're not designed to sit in chairs and angst over problems that are outside of ourcontrol.
No.
So, you know, get up, move, get some air.

(01:01:08):
And the fun element you mentioned, how do you inject that in your businesses?
Ultimately, recruitment is a game.
What annoys people in recruitment is they've decided what the rules are of the game, butthey haven't shared them with the customers.

(01:01:30):
And the customers are playing a different game with different rules.
So if you're doing recruitment and you're playing to Queensbury rules, and actually theclient has decided to go full on mixed martial art in the octagon,
You might not discover that until they told you it was exclusive, but they're interviewingthree other candidates.

(01:01:51):
So you can get frustrated with your perceptions of people breaking the unwritten rules.
So because recruitment is a game and it doesn't have any rules, it doesn't have a starttime and a finish time, it doesn't have any of these boundaries, we start to have fun when
we create the rules and as we start to create the rules that we wish to work by, we sharethe rules with our customers.

(01:02:13):
Right.
And as we talk to our customers about these are the rules.
create psychological contracts that helps us to be able to ensure that we both haveclarity on.
Yeah.
What are we actually playing here?
What is the goal?
How long is the game going to last?
What are the rules?
You and I could leave this room, go to the pub, play pool, and I'll pick up the white andyou'll go, what are you doing?

(01:02:38):
I'm moving the white.
Yeah.
You've got two shots.
You can't pick up the white.
Yeah.
And we start to discover we've got different rules for things and we have to then make anew agreement as to what rules we're playing by.
And then we discover another one that you think is two shots on the black.
And I'm like, no, no, no.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the, the, these ideas that we have that candidates shouldn't do this.

(01:03:01):
Why do clients do that?
Yeah.
So it's how we respond to these because it happens with any people.
We're not selling a book, car, pen, a watch.
It's a person.
as you know, as well as I do, I can't work myself out, let alone anyone else, you You gotto just roll with the punches.
I think a big element of good recruiter is that ability to literally be agile and adapt.

(01:03:24):
This curve ball comes in from a client or a candidate.
It's that ability not to react, isn't it?
It's to respond, isn't it?
Totally.
And how you choose to respond.
That's what matters, right?
It's not what happens to you.
You know, the person lets you down, how you respond to that.

(01:03:44):
They're just playing a different game with different rules.
But also I've done so many times when the candidate said, no, no, no, no, no.
don't see noses.
No, I see noses.
Yes, it's like you don't always have to take the first thing that happens as read.
You can still try to negotiate and convince.
And I think sometimes we give things up too easily as well.
The candidate said no.
OK then.
Well, have you not asked why or challenged it or tried to turn him around?

(01:04:07):
it could be, why he said no?
It could be something so small.
I think sometimes we, and the client as well, we're scared to do that.
Yes, because because we're not.
We're not willing to find out what are the rules that they are playing, what's the gamethat they're playing.
Yeah, we're too fixated on our rules and our game.
Yeah.
So because we're like, well, they said no.

(01:04:28):
And in my rule book, that means this.
Well, maybe in their world, they're playing a different game.
And if you started to ask them more questions about what is your actual goal?
What are you looking to achieve?
Yeah.
Maybe if I understood your goal and what you were looking to achieve.
that's the game.
Now, now I maybe I could show you this in a different light under the rules of your game.

(01:04:50):
that's that's instead of jumping down to that it's it's it's it's the that goes back toempathy, empathy, and understanding.
I think it's nothing that's the difference between good and great sometimes in thisindustry.
So how come you ended up as a what you are now?
What would you describe yourself as actually?
you how do you
How would I describe myself?

(01:05:11):
I would describe myself as a business performance coach.
To anyone else outside of a podcast, I would just describe myself as a guy who works inrecruitment.

(01:05:32):
I'm a coach to business owners that revolves around results and performance.
Some of that results and performance work happens working with them to help to be able todevelop systems or structures or processes or people.
Some of it works by me then engaging with members of teams and consultants and so on.

(01:05:55):
ultimately, I coach more than I train.
Yes.
performance and performance is defined by the goals that people have and the objectivesthat they've got to start to define what's good, good, what will good look like.
I think it's not just all your tricks, your methodologies and your program.

(01:06:18):
I think you, what I do as well is when you say coach, it's so important.
It's coaching the leaders how to communicate these things with their team as well.
think a lot of it is how it's delivered as well.
yeah, You know, like if, if we looked at probably 65 % of the conversations that I havewith people initially, it revolves around behaviors of others.

(01:06:45):
Yes, right.
Yes, of course.
only candidates would do this.
I wish my clients were more like that or our team need to get better at, right?
So, people's frustrations revolve around the behaviors of others.
Without really thinking about what drives the behaviors of others, we're back to the rulesof games.
And people do things with a positive intent, always.

(01:07:08):
We might question it as whether it was positive because we're comparing it to our rulesand our game.
But as I encounter people who
have these questions about other people's behavior.
Ultimately what drives it is their beliefs, their thought process.
Everything stems from that.

(01:07:29):
So if you're a business owner, people aren't picking up the phone enough, Jeremy.
What are their beliefs that revolve around the phone?
Well, how am I meant to know?
You know, it's that.
Well, that's really where you need to be.
Because if you're not doing work there as a coach, they actually helping people to yeahquestion their beliefs that revolve around an Activity.

(01:07:54):
Yeah, you're just trying to drive the activity.
Hmm.
You're probably coaching people to become resentful
Absolutely.
They'll do it out of resentment rather than because they have to.
Compliance.
absolutely.
So it's not actually, it's not the act of picking up the phone.
It's the reasons why they won't do that.
it's just, And I think you summarized that really well.

(01:08:16):
We're kind of coming towards the end.
been fascinating.
So quick rundown of your career then.
You kind of stopped at university, then you got into recruitment.
You worked at some big firms.
And what were you, a consultant?
Or what were you, contract perm?
So, first job in recruitment was healthcare, temp, high volume, care assistants,domiciliary care, RGNs, residential social workers.

(01:08:48):
in that market on there, I just think half of them don't turn up.
Shouldn't say that, yeah.
I didn't know any different, right?
that's the market that I went into.
started, so it was a catering recruitment agency that wanted to begin in care.
So they hired me to just investigate how to place care people.

(01:09:10):
So I did that for a couple of years and loved it.
Just fun, just chaos.
And then I moved north.
And I got a job with a business called Humana International.
joined Humana as an exec search consultant in the machine tool industry, which was veryexciting all across Europe.

(01:09:36):
exec, you know, temp recruitment to exec search as a franchise business.
It was, it was, it was a really good learning experience.
I've to me to previous one.
Yeah, still recruitment, but it's different.
Yeah, yeah, And in that business, so when I was in that business, I was 24, 25, andprobably the youngest person in that office by about 30 years.

(01:10:04):
Wow.
Because the majority of them were in exec search, having spent 25 years as a supply chaindirector or 30 years as a CTO.
And they were then working their little black book of contacts.
Whereas I was just working a phone.
with no contacts.
Which was great.

(01:10:25):
But it didn't have what felt like true longevity because of the franchise model that itwas.
So I went to a business called Hayes.
Some people will have heard of Hayes.
It was a very different animal to the one that it is today.

(01:10:45):
It was very new business orientated.
It was quite wild west.
it was on the rise then, back then, was it?
I joined the accountancy and finance division before it was called accountancy and financewhen was called accountancy personnel, because it just been acquired by Hayes, the
business accountancy personnel.
So I worked at Hayes and spent a good eight years at Hayes before moving to a more agile,scaling, regional finance recruitment business called SF Group.

(01:11:19):
the SF group as well actually.
Yeah, they used to they used to partner with my previous business of mine that they had agood name in that particular niche didn't know they quite well.
Yeah, and I joined them.
in a rapid growth phase for them that while I was there, headcount went from 40 to maybe100.

(01:11:40):
To interject though, this is really interesting.
I always feel a great recruiter, and that goes against the grain of being niche, but Ithink a great recruiter can operate well in any market because fundamentally, it's still
the same thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
And people can get quite precious about their market or their processes.

(01:12:04):
You know, I know that there is a snobbery around exec search and retained.
Yeah, I went from doing I had 160 temps working for me on low hourly rate and pittance onmargin.
Yeah, went to executive search and was doing

(01:12:24):
30 to 35 % placement fees.
Yeah, only retained salaries 150 grand plus.
Yeah, loved it.
Yeah, feel one was more superior than the other.
Yeah.
I mean, what's the doing good?
Obviously, you have the IQ because you went to the, but if I had the choice, I knoweveryone says this to degree, but the choice between IQ and EQ, I think EQ is, it goes

(01:12:52):
back to that intuition thing you said, right, the start.
I the reason why you've done well is that you don't, it's not like I say as bold as youunderstand people, but you understand people better than a lot of people in recruitment.
think that's so important is, or sometimes you just,
It's the ability to kind of take a risk and ask the extra question or, or just becausesomeone says, no, it's, it's you believe you can get them to say, yes, it's a bit of an R

(01:13:19):
one.
Do you know what I'm trying to say?
It's very hard to describe that magic dust.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, the most common thing people would say to me when I worked in exec search andthen when I worked at Hayes, because a lot of my interactions would begin on the phone.
Yeah.
Build relationships, maybe challenge things, maybe be sometimes edgier than the averageperson.

(01:13:44):
And then I would get to meet people.
They would say one of two things to me.
I thought you would be taller.
or I thought you would be older.
So pre beard, I looked like a kid and being shorter than average.
Yeah, right.
I look like you know what I mean?

(01:14:06):
People would draw these pictures.
I get that loads.
When I was doing it, my client said I sounded like 40, but I looked about 14 because Ididn't have a beard.
I get it.
But that's the art of the phone.
You can create a perception of pretty much any persona, can't you?
It's the tone, it's the tonality again, isn't it?
Yeah.

(01:14:27):
And tonality is like all the tech that exists in the world right now for recruitment.
The most important bit of tech to learn to use is your voice, your tonality, and yourcapability to be able to project with congruence your beliefs to help somebody else.
your tone is very subtle, it's quite soft, but I think you deliver things I've seen youpresent as well.

(01:14:54):
It's just proved that when you're giving feedback to a person as well, you can say onething and someone else could say exactly the same thing, but they think you're a hero and
he's an absolute asshole.
You've said it in such a way, you could be saying something like you're fired.
You could say in such a way it's like...
okay, I'm fired then.
It's such a psychologist.

(01:15:14):
So it's a lot to that in terms of the psychology of that, isn't
Yeah, yeah, very much.
That's an R I think that you pick up along the way.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
It's like everything in life.
It's a skill that you refine.
It's not a...
I don't think there's anything in this world that is an innate talent.
People see things as talent without seeing the work that has happened to allow it to looklike a talent.

(01:15:42):
Yeah.
And that's sometimes the difficult thing for people in recruitment is they join theindustry.
Yeah.
They don't feel immediately talented at it.
And see others who they might describe as being talented, but they didn't see the workthat they did.
Yeah.
In the three years before they got there.
Yeah.
And now that they haven't seen the work that they did, they see the work that they do.

(01:16:05):
Yeah.
She doesn't have to make a hundred calls a day or he's not on the phone all the time andhe's doing like half a million.
Yeah.
Without seeing all of the journey.
Absolutely.
That helped them to get to where they are.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
you go, any sort of gold nuggets you want to leave, know, say the audience is mainly agood recruitment consultant, what sort of, what can you leave them with to give them some

(01:16:32):
hope for 2025?
Everything is possible.
Everything is possible.
And when we talk about recruitment, impossible is an opinion.
You can decide how you react to things.
You can decide how you feel about things and how you react and how you feel has a massiveimpact on what you do.

(01:16:56):
You can spend all the time moaning about the lack of jobs or the uncertainty in the world.
We can start to see the opportunity that is hidden inside the thing that you're moaning.
because there will be a smaller percentage of people who slow down enough to look for theopportunity.
Yes.
Because they're too happy to join the moaning club outside the building.
Yeah.
Vaping together, moaning about what's going on.

(01:17:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whilst one or two decide to stick it out and find the genuine opportunity in it.
that's brilliant.
I think that's a life advice as well, isn't it?
You know, you are what you think and what you can create anything with the right mindsetattitude, mate.
Absolute pleasure.
Thanks for coming on.
Thank you very much.

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