How are recruitment businesses attracting, retaining and engaging their talent? Best Companies #RecHangout Special

The monthly LIVE discussion show for recruiters
How are Recruitment Businesses
Attracting, Retaining and Engaging their
Talent?
2nd April 2015
#RecHangout is supported by:

Hangout Participants
Mark Stephens
MD
The Recruitment Alliance
Alan Whitford
Recruitment Strategist
Abtech + RCEURO
Louise Triance
Community Owner
UK Recruiter
Louis Welcomme
CRM Comms Manager
Colleague Software
Kieran Behan
MD
Phaidon International
Graeme Hubert
Co-Founder
Consol Partners
Adam Metherell
Commercial Director
Chapman Black

“So you’re number 29 or number 40 [In the
Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For].
I’m a candidate and I might be thinking about
recruitment. Why am I going to come to you if
you’re number 29 in the list? Aren’t I going to
want to work for the guy who’s number 1?”
Alan Whitford
Abtech + RCEURO

“It certainly helps with attraction. I think
whether you’re 1 or 29 or 99 you’re obviously
doing something right. This comes from our
staff, this is not a corporate application process
this is independently audited staff members
replying to a survey directly.”
Graeme Hubert
Co-Founder
Consol Partners

“The reason we’ve all entered is we take
employee engagement and development
seriously to make sure the incentives and
programmes that we launch are actually helping
us improve. It gives us the confidence that we’re
doing the right things.”
Kieran Behan
MD
Phaidon International

“Organisational culture is something that’s really
difficult to measure. What the Sunday Times did
was allow us to measure our performance in a
structured way.”

“It’s not just the leadership or me as director that’s
responsible for the culture, it’s the guys in the
operations teams and it’s more of an accolade for
my employees that we’ve got a good bunch here
who like working with each other, look after each
other and help each other’s careers.”
Adam Metherell
Commercial Director
Chapman Black

“The guys take a lot of pride in our high ranking
take pride in what they do. People go home and
tell their parents and friends their contribution.
It helps us retain and find other people in the
industry going ‘am I in the right place?’”

“What is that differentiates our companies as
opposed to the others? What is it about your
particular company culture that does make you a
great company to work for is it just about the
money, is it benefits?”

“Culture falls into two categories: first there’s the
Business Culture that starts with the values.
What’s our vision? What do we want to live by in
terms of our engagement with our candidates
and clients? What’s really important that they’re
enforced and bought in to.”
Roy Ripper
Ripper Recruiter Training

“The second is Sales Culture: investment in
learning and development - it’s better to grow
our own; a plan and structure to take them from
graduate to a career path to director;
transparency, we’re happy to admit our own
mistakes and put them right; and environment.”
Roy Ripper

“The main golden thread is that it’s a growth story:
over 50% of business equity goes in the hand of
managers, there’s never a point where people can’t
move up, take on a new opportunity or learn a new
skill.”

“In others there’s a certain ceiling you hit but with
us the career path is made clear and everyone has
the opportunity to grow and learn. Everything else
there’s incentives in holidays and training a
development and we want to take people from
entry-point to leadership.”

“I am personally responsible for all of our
graduate intake and the three-month training
period. I use my experience to identify training
and development needs and I’m constantly
tweaking our training pattern.”
Mitch Sullivan
Agency Founder
Fast Track Recruiting

“We’re really listening to our employees and
when they see their ideas actioned they know
they’ve got a hand in the business. The top guys
are celebrated, new deals celebrated and we do
a lot of trips and incentives. The people making
real efforts also get to take part.”
Brad Shackleton
Recruiting Excellence
Coaching Academy

“Do you work more to celebrate the successes of
the top performers and let everyone else to aspire
to that, or do you work hard to build those bottom
performers up?”
Mark Stephens
MD

“I’ve got team leaders here who in their first 6
months, a lot of organisations may have let them
go. Now we’ve invested in them they’re in
leadership posts. We have the rising star award,
so that the new guys are getting an accolade and
they’re not being benchmarked against people
who’ve been here for years.”
Brad Shackleton
Recruiting Excellence
Coaching Academy

“What are the key attributes you look for to attract
this new talent?”

“It’s really hard to hire good experienced
recruiters. In 2015 we invested in a team to
identify experienced hires. Those recruiters are all
getting contacted by others, we’re looking for
people who have come so far on a journey, we can
give them progression and opportunity to move to
the next level.”
Mitch Sullivan
Agency Founder

“On the graduate side we do a lot of university
roadshows. We’ve identified the three key skills
and attributes: drive, ambition and intelligence.
We do face-to-face interview and we do
personality profiling and match that against our
culture.”
Roy Ripper

“We’ve had a similar experience with experienced
recruiters: it’s difficult, expensive and sometimes
hit-and-miss. We’ve got a recruitment team here
linked with universities and football tours where
our team takes on university teams and gets our
brand out there.”
Mitch Sullivan
Agency Founder

“Our single best source of hiring is our
employees, getting the word out between
friends. In terms of what we’re looking for it’s
not an exact science. You’ve got to have purpose
and be in the office for a reason. Less about
technical skills but them as an individual.”
Alan Whitford
Abtech + RCEURO

“We’ve got a 6-person marketing team, getting
videos out about life at Phaidon and reachout
via social networks. For people who aren’t 100%
sure about recruitment, there’s a 3-month
programme for both parties to test the water.
We’ve had some of our best hires from those.”

“All of our employees have business cards that
are blanks, they say I’ve enjoyed meeting you
you’d be a good fit at Phaidon and it’s yielded
some really good recruits.”

“It’s interesting that you’re focussing on your own
recruiting: I’ve never understood going Rec to Rec to
get your own people. It should be something to
highlight when you go to customers – you’re great at
hiring your own people and so they can trust you.”

“It is one of our USP’s that we’re an organically
growing company that the standard of work is
universal. If you’re a successful company you
want to find a system and a process that can
help you grow. You need to know when to use
those internal or external methods.”

“When we want to get numbers up pretty fast
we use rec2rec to provide that capacity. The fact
that we do our own recruitment ourselves isn’t
hugely important to clients. Clients want to
know that they’re working with someone that
they can respect and rely on.”
Alan Whitford
Abtech + RCEURO

“I spend 40% of my time on internal recruitment,
it’s a big thing that we invest in and it’s
important to be transparent in that. Advertising
doesn’t work in hiring experienced recruiters,
and it’s going to be difficult to move them.”
Roy Ripper

“We invested heavily in marketing last year,
brought on board a global marketing manager so
that our content, image and brand is much
stronger. We target specific individuals and talk
to our candidates and clients about them and we
target them with our story and vision.”
Roy Ripper

“What about the selection process, what do you
put those guys through before you give them a job?
Making a hiring mistake is expensive.”
Mark Stephens
MD

“In the junior end it’s a three-stage process – the
internal recruitment team will do a ½ hour
phone interview or VC interview really just
covering their background, motivation... We boil
those things down and we can work out if
they’ve got the right ingredients.”

“Then they’ll have an interview with one or two
managers that we think they’d fit with, and then
if both sides are positive we get them to come
back and do a one-day work sample and we find
that pushes the competition to the side.”

“I remember one of my first bad hires. The guy was
brilliant in the interview, good education and then
the first day at work he fell apart he couldn’t actually
talk on the phone. If we’d done that work sample we
wouldn’t have had that problem.”

“It’s important that we make sure we’re hiring
the right people, but also that they understand
what the job involves. If people have tasted in
the interview process what the job involves they
hit the ground running.”
Alan Whitford
Abtech + RCEURO

“With experienced people you need to start
talent pooling early, identifying high performers
within your competitors who might not be
looking now, but when they do, they’ll want to
move to you. One guy took us 24 months from
first engagement to coming on board.”
Alan Whitford
Abtech + RCEURO

“Talent pooling is identifying organisations –
competitors or businesses with top sales guys.
What we do is identify their top performers and
then we reach out to them and stay in regular
contact with them: if I’m in town and there’s a
candidate I’ll go and find them and have a drink.”
Alan Whitford
Abtech + RCEURO

“We’ve just opened two offices in North
America. Are there any tips for attracting
experienced staff in international markets, being
a UK headquartered global company?”
Roy Ripper

“What we’ve done is go out there two or three
times to the new location, go have drinks or
lunch with recruiters in that market. The more
you get into that country and understand the
work mentality, where are the hot areas, what
do people want from their career, the better.”

“The other thing that’s helped us is having at
least one person dedicated to each overseas
office connecting with people in that market, so
building those relationships means they’ll come
back to you. If you’re looking for a challenge, get
yourself a core of professionals and grow later.”

“We get people into the office and de-risk it. Say
‘come and see us, come and have a look round’;
we’re confident we’ve got a good atmosphere
and we find that once people get into the office
the level of interest in working for us goes up.”
Alan Whitford
Abtech + RCEURO

“It’s important to position yourself in the general
job market. What is your corporate goal, your
aim? For us it is the growth thing. We’re trying to
grow faster than the names you know and give
people responsibility far beyond others. There’s
a lot more in the short and long term.”

“You compete with other industries and have to
pitch the benefits of recruitment and why you
do things differently.”
Roy Ripper

Next #Rechangout:
Why are we still ballsing up
recruiting basics with candidates
and losing revenue?
Greg Savage
29th April 12:00 noon BST
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The Recruiters Hangout is a monthly, free discussion show, where special guests, business owners and
industry experts join our regular panel to share their top tips, insights and advice with a live online
audience. Viewers are able to send their questions and comments directly to the panel via our open chat
stream and take part on Twitter using our hashtag #RecHangout. Our aim is to ensure that our audience
comes away inspired, with new ideas, strategies and resources they can use in their own business.
The #RecHangout is supported by four hosts, including Abtech Partnership and RCEuro founder, Alan
Whitford, who makes sure viewers get the most from the show, asking the right questions and ensuring
the discussion stays on track; Mark Stephens, founder of The Recruitment Alliance and the F10 Group
and director at Smart Recruit Online; Louis Welcomme, Communications Manager at Colleague Software,
and Louise Triance from the UK Recruiter community, who looks out for your online comments on our
twitter hashtag #RecHangout during the broadcast.
Want to take part? Call Louis on:
01603 735 932 - louis.welcomme@colleaguesoftware.com

How are recruitment businesses attracting, retaining and engaging their talent? Best Companies #RecHangout Special

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