how are recruitment businesses attracting, retaining and engaging their talent? best companies...

The monthly LIVE discussion show for recruiters

How are Recruitment Businesses

Attracting, Retaining and Engaging their

Talent?

2nd April 2015

#RecHangout is supported by:

https://www.colleaguesoftware.com/



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 reachoutvia 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 - [email protected]



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how are recruitment businesses attracting, retaining and engaging their talent? best companies...

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