REVOLUTIONARY RECRUITMENT KNOW-HOW FOR RESOURCING PROFESSIONALS AUTUMN 2015 WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK
CARILLION’S JON HULL ON THE ART OF CONSTRUCTING CONTINUAL RECRUITMENT
DIGGING HIS SCENE P.14
HUMAN TOUCH: INSIGHT: CREATING TESTING THE BUZZ TO TIMES FOR RECRUIT HEADHUNTING P.7
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P.20
TRUE GRIT: DO YOU HAVE THE X-FACTOR? P.31
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W E LCO M E
CONTENTS
Creating a buzz P20
NE WS 04 Facial recognition Image searching is set to play a big part in sourcing candidates in the future
05 Spotting store talent Retailer Oliver Bonas takes hiring to shop floor
COME IN AND GET WARM WITH OUR AUTUMN ISSUE OF IN-HOUSE RECRUITER!
06 Seriously playful Online games maker King makes a play at candidate attraction
INSIGHT onsider this our pre-holiday treat for you, the in-house recruitment professionals who want their very own print publication. It’s also a treat for this team, who also produce Recruiter, to showcase some of the finest thinking and key personalities of the profession. We have proudly served the in-house community for nearly a decade as part of the ‘recruitment revolution’, and we are delighted that our relationship with you continues to deepen as the in-house discipline itself matures and thrives. Tell us what you think — and how we can best serve your insight and information needs in the days, months and years to come. ●
C
Contact me at deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk or @editordeedee on Twitter
RESOURCING IN AC TION 14 Digging his scene Jon Hull, head of resourcing at construction and facilities management company Carillion, on constructing continual recruitment
07 Search and demand Clients want more value from their executive search partners
10 Challenges for recruiting in-house An extensive report from The FIRM shows the current state of in-house activity
DEEP BACKGROUND 20 The human touch When creating a buzz around a corporate brand, honesty is key to the entire conversation — especially when it comes to recruiting
PERSPEC TIVE 13
View from in-house Emma Mirrington
IT’ S ALL AB OUT YOU 29 Peer-to-peer: 7 ways to make a difference True grit: do you have it? P31
Matthew Jeffery, SAP
31
Life coach True grit; Quality networks
34 Not a lot of people know that Karen Morris-Lanz Passionate about people P34
DeeDee Doke, Editor
EDITORIAL +44 (0)20 7880 7606 Editor DeeDee Doke deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk Reporters Sarah Marquet, Graham Simons sarah.marquet@recruiter.co.uk graham.simons@recruiter.co.uk Contributing writers Colin Cottell Production editor Vanessa Townsend vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk Senior designer Karen Warren Picture researcher Akin Falope
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ADVERTISING +44 (0)20 7880 7607 Sales manager Tom Culley tom.culley@recruiter.co.uk Senior sales executive Josh Hannagan josh.hannagan@recruiter.co.uk
RECRUITER AWARDS/INVESTING IN TALENT AWARDS +44 (0)20 7880 6236 Events Rebecca West rebecca.west@redactive.co.uk
RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING +44 (0)20 7880 7556 Giorgio Romano giorgio.romano@redactive.co.uk
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PRODUCTION +44 (0)20 7880 6209 Production executive Rachel Young rachel.young@redactive.co.uk PUBLISHING +44 (0)20 7880 8547 Publishing director Aaron Nicholls aaron.nicholls@redactive.co.uk
In-House Recruiter is sent to 5,000 in-house recruitment and resourcing professionals.
© 2015 Redactive Media Group. All rights reserved. This publication (and any part thereof) may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in print or electronic format (including but not limited to any online service, any database or any part of the internet) or in any other format in any media whatsoever, without the prior written permission of Redactive Media Group. Redactive Media Group accepts no liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein. The publishers cannot accept liability for any loss arising from the late appearance or non-publication of any advertisement for any reason whatsoever. ISSN 1475-7478
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NEWS U P DAT E
Thales uses Bart and co to meet tech talent DEEDEE DOKE
FACIAL RECOGNITION
GETTY / ALAMY
SAR AH MARQUET
4
IMAGE SEARCHING IS SET TO become “a serious part” of sourcing candidates in the future, Randstad Sourceright’s head of recruiting strategy and innovation, EMEA has predicted. Resourcers in global recruiter Randstad’s Budapest sourcing centre have discovered significant advantage to using imagesearching tools to identify and track potential candidates, Balazs Paroczay told In-House Recruiter. Through an image search, Randstad sourcers can match various accounts to specific individuals regardless of display name, and therefore reach out to them in more ways. IT people are particularly likely to use a nickname on online platforms, he said. Class photos also help them pinpoint candidates. For instance,
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class photos posted to Facebook are invariably tagged by multiple people which, if it is a university class, can lead to more similarly qualified candidates. “This can be a really, really smart solution to identify classmates... Usually for niche positions,” he said. “I was running a search in the UK... and it was a really niche engineer position for a defence company, these kinds of engineers are not present on LinkedIn.” He said he identified a UK defence magazine that had been digitised and found in it a group photo of defence engineers, giving him multiple candidates. While such search tools are not widely used, he said: “I truly believe this will be a serious part of future sourcing.”
A “slightly quirky” approach to fuelling their talent pipeline has created a buzz around technology business Thales e-Security in Cambridge’s highly competitive ‘techie’ community. About 100 people attended a ‘sold out’ event hosted by Thales on 8 October featuring a techie-friendly talk by author Simon Singh about his book, The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets. The book suggests that writers of the wildly popular, animated Simpsons TV show were enamoured of numbers, and “drip-fed morsels of mathematics into the subconscious minds of viewers”, as a reviewer from The Guardian explained. The aim was to lay the groundwork for conversations with attendees who might fit Thales e-Security’s expertise and skills requirements over the longer term. This type of talent tends to not have a significant presence on LinkedIn and can be hard to unearth, Katherine Burrage, director of resourcing at the e-Security business’s technology parent company Thales Group, told In-House Recruiter.
IN-HOUSE ROLES IN DEMAND AN ANALYSIS of in-house recruiter roles advertised on Recruiter Jobs, In-House Recruiter magazine’s job board, shows significant demand for few jobs. ● In the first six months of 2015, the greatest number (41.130⁄0) of users classed themselves as in-house recruiters, though only 4.160⁄0 of jobs advertised were for in-house roles.
4M FOR ONLY...
M
4%
IN-HOUSE ROLES
41% CONSIDER THEMSELVES IN-HOUSE RECRUITERS
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NEWS U P DAT E
SARAH MARQUET
Author Simon Singh’s techiefriendly talk helped Thales attract a new candidate community
“We were looking for ways to be different,” Burrage said. “Cambridge has some fabulous talent but it’s hugely competitive. Everyone [technology companies] is here.” Publicity for sign-ups to the free event was concentrated on the Cambridge rail station, a magnet for commuters to and from London, and a local business network with traction in the area’s myriad start-ups. The early evening timing was geared toward people on their way home from work. And in addition to the talk itself, the publicity promoted the offer of a beer with Thales engineers on the night. Burrage was pleased with the results. “The event was great,” she said. “Simon [Singh] was fantastic, and we were delighted to have some really interesting people attend, with some great discussions and networking afterwards.” She is exploring ways that the concept could be rolled out across other Thales divisions.
● Of the jobs advertised, most (32.380⁄0) were recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) roles, followed by talent management roles (30.740⁄0).
25%
ARE IN-HOUSE EXECUTIVE SEARCH RECRUITERS
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31%
JOBS ADVERTISED TALENT MANAGEMENT ROLES
● The greatest proportion of inhouse users (24.890⁄0) said they were in-house executive search recruiters, followed by RPO recruiters (21.750⁄0).
Spotting store talent DEEDEE DOKE
A YEAR AFTER decentralising its store staff hiring, lifestyle retailer Oliver Bonas is declaring the move a success, and has focused its support office resourcing team on recruiting for 90 entirely new roles to the business. The new roles reflect the retailer’s “biggest areas of development” such as e-commerce and design, said Sarah McCullock, resourcing partner — support office. Speaking exclusively to In-House Recruiter, McCullock said: “We’re constantly evolving at the moment. We’re at that stage where we’re starting to bring in specialisms. Our biggest areas of development are e-commerce and design for jewellery and accessories.” While some roles must be filled externally, other new support office roles are “massively” being filled internally when possible, McCullock said. The drive to recruit specialists has already seen the retailer make its first hire from abroad. The transition to decentralising store staff recruitment has involved training store managers and assistant managers in recruitment and selection. Skills taught include spotting and identifying talent, she said. “What is the skills gap? What are you looking for?” Because each of Oliver Bonas’s 44 stores has an individual personality, product range, customer base and different pace, “the person you employ has to be right for that particular store”, McCullock said. “It’s not always about the CV — have they got that spark, that design drive, that quirkiness and customer interaction? What does that look like?” Training involved a course, “loads of coaching” and today still includes site visits from the company’s HR partners and refreshers, she explained. The store managers have taken to it well, McCullock said. “They’re so excited. And they pick up the phone and ask for advice. We welcome it.” Any lessons learned? “We could have done it sooner,” McCullock said. “Not everyone likes recruitment at first. Usually it’s a training or confidence issue. Once they’ve done it, they love it.”
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NEWS U P DAT E
MOST PEOPLE WOULD HAVE HEARD generated nearly 3,000 applications of the addictive online game Candy within a few weeks of going live. The Crush, but how many know of King, careers site drew 56,000 applications the company behind it? last year, with an increase in visitor This lack of familiarity was numbers of about 80%. exactly what the Swedish games Putting the EVP to work for maker faced as it set to grow, as retention saw the company global employer brand manger included two noteworthy steps. Robert Käck explained at creative King underscored its interest agency Pink Squid’s recent The Art in greater company cohesion and Science of Employer Branding by amending its business travel event, co-hosted by The Guardian. strategy of providing senior-level King enlisted the help of Pink employees with business class Squid to develop an employer value travel and the rest of the company proposition (EVP) or employer brand, with economy class with a policy to attract potential employees and of offering all in the company retain and engage staff. the same standard. As Käck explained, the company The other step involved a wanted to keep a sense of fun and table football game provided for entrepreneurial spirit employees. The ‘players’ as it grew, resulting were initially all white in the development of males; the company TH E N E W B R A N D Seriously Playful as the had some figures I N C LU D E D A EVP. The new brand repainted to reflect King’s Robert Käck and below, King’s newly-developed Seriously Playful branding
KING MAKES A PLAY AT ATTRACTION SAR AH MARQUET
was demonstrated greater gender and ‘ LI FE AT K I N G ’ through a revitalised, racial diversity. HAN D BOOK light and playful Retention has A N D ‘ K I N G LI S H ’ approach to language significantly improved D I C TI O N A RY used in website copy at King with annual E XPL A I N I N G and creating both staff turnover overall TEC H N I CA L TE R M S a ‘Life at King’ down to 3.3% but Käck onboarding handbook declined to give the and a ‘Kinglish’ dictionary to company’s previous churn rate. explain technical terms. Käck’s advice in implementing King experienced a 95% increase an EVP and gauging its success was in followers on LinkedIn in the next to enlist other departments such 10 months after Seriously Playful as marketing and ‘piggy-back’ tools was implemented in January 2014. like brand trackers; train HR in the It also saw a 40% increase in brand brand; create alumni networks so engagement, and the careers site those leaving the company become brand ambassadors; recruit and manage talent development against values; and embed the EVP in social channels. The most important thing, he said, was to consider the entire employee journey: attraction, onboarding, motivation, development and exit. Seriously Playful is now used in overall branding. It also led to multiple award wins. ● See p20 for more on how the focus of recruitment marketing has widened
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INSIGHT EXECUTIVE SEARCH REPORT
THE BEST WAY T O HEADHUNT THE SEARCH IS ON The results of a major new survey of executive search firm clients is a clear wake-up call to the executive search industry — and offers pointers for clients when looking at providers BY COLI N COT TE LL
IKON
he 2015 Headhunter Industry Survey of 44 companies, including the BBC, KPMG, Nestlé, Santander and BT, by boutique executive search agency Baxter Neumann, found high levels of dissatisfaction with the performance of executive search firms in key areas including quality of service, value for money and time to hire. The survey, carried out earlier this year, confirms anecdotal evidence that with clients increasingly calling the shots, the traditional ways of doing things within executive search are on their way out. It identifies a clear trend for clients to reduce their reliance on executive search firms by bringing more searches in-house, with a majority saying they intend to increase the level
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of their in-house search activity. Despite talent shortages, and growth in the market overall, the clear implication for executive search firms is that they need to adapt to the changing needs and expectations of clients or face an uncertain future. The survey confirmed that the traditional fee structure charged by global search firms of 33% of total remuneration has virtually disappeared, as clients demand better value and clarity about what they are actually paying for. “The research we conducted reinforces that clients place more value on the consultant relationship, skills and expertise than the executive search brand,” commented Gerry Baxter, managing partner of Baxter Neumann.
Only 50% of respondents said they were satisfied or got value for money from executive search firms, with only a quarter saying they represented great value for money. The remaining half indicated dissatisfaction over poor service, with four out of 10 (41%) respondents saying that service was ‘inconsistent’. Although clients say they are prepared to pay ‘the going rate’, the survey indicates the growing popularity of fixed-fee arrangements, with 67% preferring this option and only 33% a fee based on salary. The practice of linking fees to the total remuneration package rather than base salary is in serious decline. Further evidence of the extent of change across the sector was the almost complete absence of the x
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INSIGHT EXECUTIVE SEARCH REPORT
POWER POINTS
1⁄
Ask your executive search firm what services they can provide that other search firms or your business cannot.
2⁄
Is your executive search provider prepared to be flexible on the size and structure of fees? Make sure they are open and transparent with what you are actually paying for.
3⁄ x traditional monthly retainer paid to a single search firm. According to the survey, 95% of respondents see no value in such an arrangement, with only two of the 44 firms participating in the survey now paying a retainer. If search firms show up badly on value for money, then their performance on time-to-hire should also raise concerns across the sector. Respondent feedback, including comments, indicates that client expectations of six to eight weeks to deliver a short list are frequently not being met, with many search firms taking between 10 and 14 weeks. The survey also raises question marks over search firms’ ability to deliver on their promises to clients, with only 4% of respondents rating their ability to provide ‘global reach’ as ‘excellent’. In contrast, more than half rated it ‘poor, inconsistent or satisfactory’ and only 25% as ‘good’. Overall, the survey found that only 80% of searches are completed successfully. Of these unsuccessful searches 30% are due to a lack of quality candidates and 10% result from the search firm not moving fast enough. Search firms will already be familiar with the fragmentation of the market, and the survey confirms the continuing trend for clients to engage a portfolio of search partners, with boutiques
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4⁄
Can they fulfil and deliver on their promises?
Rather than simply being just a pure search company, see if they add additional strings to their bow. Do they provide supplementary services, such as salary surveys, and other market intelligence that makes them stand out from their competitors? Only 55% of clients said they receive such insight, but more indicated they would value it.
5⁄
Feedback provided by firms participating in the survey suggests search firms could be missing a trick by not providing pre-joining plans to help successful candidates to know the business before they start work.
6⁄
What about offering a structured onboarding process that would help new executives hit the ground running in their new role?
RESE ARCH WE CONDUC TE D RE INFORCES THAT CLIE NTS PL ACE MORE VALU E ON THE CONSU LTANT RE L ATIONSHIP, SKILL S AND E XPE RTISE THAN E XECUTIVE SE ARCH BR AND G E R RY BA X TE R
(48%) and small independent firms (19%) being seen as an attractive option. Just over half of respondents (55%) indicate they have an existing preferred supplier list (PSL), with 81% having between three and five search firms on their PSL. The survey emphasised the importance given by clients to the relationship with a specific search consultant. Two-thirds of respondents indicated this was the key factor when choosing a search firm. This contrasts with only 34% who said their decision was fee driven. Seniority of the role and access to international candidates were given as the most important criteria by 42% and 31% respectively.
For search firms, perhaps the most concerning aspect of the survey is the continuing trend for clients to reduce their reliance on external third parties by bringing more searches in-house. Three participants said they conduct 80% of their searches in-house, while for the remaining 41 companies the percentage ranges between 20% and 30%. More worrying still for external search providers, 60% of firms said they are looking to increase their in-house and direct sourcing search activity. This survey sends out a clear message to the executive search providers, that as an industry it is failing to meet the expectations of clients in a number of key areas. However, responded to in the right way, it could also be the spur for firms to adapt to the rapidly changing executive search landscape, to listen more closely to their clients, and provide a more responsive and better value service. ●
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INSIGHT THE FIRM ANNUAL MEMB ERSHIP SURVE Y 2015-16
TOP CHALLENGES IN RECRUITING SKILLS FOR IN-HOUSE The current crop of in-house recruitment professionals lacks digital skills across their remit, from applicant tracking system (ATS) acquisition/rollout to careers site development and mobilisation, creating one of the top challenges in 2015 for the profession, a survey by The FIRM [Forum for In-house Recruitment Managers] has revealed
his lack of skills internally is amplified by recruitment teams’ resource constraints given highvolume hiring pressures, a report on the survey findings also shows. Other top challenges identified by the 205 respondents to The FIRM’s 2015-16 annual membership survey were finding capable candidates, especially in technology, healthcare and education, the quality of mid-tosenior level candidates available for hiring and retaining top candidates once hired. The survey of its 8,500 members posed 50 different questions covering eight different subjects: Structure, Strategy & Operations; Future Talent; Attraction & Sourcing; Technology; Selection & Assessment; Measurement; Recruitment Process Outsourcing; and Challenges. Here are some key findings…
T
TRACKING TOOLS What do you use to track online metrics?
● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Google Analytics
10
Access Excel
13%
Your ATS Two other catch-all 'Other software' categories
●
Webtrends (00⁄0)
22%
L L L19 L L 20%
1%
9%
HR (up from 190⁄0 in 2014)
Line manager
Procurement
Elsewhere
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49%
INTERVIEWING
22%
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5%
11%
Omniture
In your organisation, who do your recruitment budgets sit with?
Recruitment/ resourcing team (down from 500⁄0 in 2014)
1%
1%
I don’t…
RECRUITMENT BUDGETS
47%
B13
The proportion of respondents who do not track online metrics has risen from 17% in 2014 to 22% in 2015, despite the increasing availability of simple tracking tools with most web platforms and services.
If your company uses video interviewing, do you expect use this year to [specify]?
63%
36%
4%
Increase
Remain the same
Decrease
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INSIGHT THE FIRM ANNUAL MEMB ERSHIP SURVE Y 2015-16
JOB BOARDS/CV DATABASES
FUTURE TALENT
What types of job boards/CV databases do you use?
Which of the following Future Talent programmes do you currently have in place?
Favourability for generalist platforms has significantly increased in 2015.
26%
Mainly specialist eg. industry/ role-specific boards
49%
22% 24%
GRADUATE PROGRAMME
45%
WORK EXPERIENCE PROGRAMME
NONE OF THE ABOVE
About equal
MBA PROGRAMME
3% 2%
APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMME
25%
Mainly generalist [CV-Library, reed.co.uk, Totaljobs, etc]*
SCHOOL LEAVER PROGRAMME
4%
SELECTION PROCESS Do you use any of the following as part of your selection process?
O O9 O O O O O 1 O O
88% 91% 80% 62% 45% 38% 30% 19% 1% Competency based
Telephone interviewing
Presentations
Assessment centres
Group exercises
Case studies
SOFTWARE
79%
61%
67%
Employee referral programme
12%
5%
26%
Onboarding
16%
11%
9% Preemployment screening
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do not outsource any part of the recruitment process
29%
35%
No
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None of the above
Do you currently outsource all or part of your recruitment process?
60%
56%
Yes
Under construction
Strengthbased assessment
OUTSOURCING
Do you currently use a software product to help you with [specific function]?
● ● ●
Video interviewing
Interviews
26%
7%
outsource some or all
are considering outsourcing some or all
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FIND THE PERFECT
CANDIDATE FASTER WITH
POWER CV SEARCHTM 3.53 MILLION ACTIVE CVS¹ WE HAVE EXCLUSIVE CANDIDATES THAT ARE NOT FOUND ON OTHER DATABASES²
ADVANCED SEARCH
TECHNOLOGY
WE FIND THE MOST RELEVANT CANDIDATES WITH THE LEAST EFFORT FOR YOU BY USING SEMANTIC & BOOLEAN METHODS
POWER CV SEARCHTM RECOGNISES: • • • •
ALTERNATE JOB TITLE NAMES RELATED SKILLS RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONCEPTS PUNCTUATION VARIATIONS
DATA CLEANSING OUR CV DATABASE IS PERIODICALLY CLEANSED, ENSURING THAT THE JOBS SEEKER INFORMATION IS UP-TO-DATE
FIND OUT MORE AT MONSTER.CO.UK/BETTERTALENT
1. Monster Internal Data, October 2015; 2. comScore data, 2015
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PERSPECTIVE
EMMA MIRRINGTON is director at The FIRM and talent director at Write Research Company
O
ne of our largest growing areas of membership at The FIRM [Forum of In-House Recruitment Managers] is inhouse recruiters working within entrepreneurial start-ups. These organisations don’t necessarily have their own HR function but due to their doubledigit growth have found a need to bring their own in-house recruiter on board to help them with the challenge. The challenges they face are quite different from those working in large corporates. Recruiters in start-ups work in exceptionally fast-paced environments with rapidly changing teams and little to no forecasting. An extreme example: at one start-up, a line manager invented a whole new team/skillset overnight, despite saying the week before that they had no recruitment needs! No process, no budget, no salary bands and no employer brand — it is often a ‘green field’ site that can be incredibly rewarding. Lyndsey Henderson, head of talent acquisition at rentalcars.com, says: “There is no place for a ‘that’s not my job’ mentality. Instead, have fun and you can make of it
RECRUITING FOR START-UPS
QU ITE OFTE N THE BUSINESS L ACKS U NDE RSTANDING OF TIMESCALES TO HIRE AND DETAIL AROU ND E X AC TLY WHAT IS NE E DE D
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what you will. There’s a weight of responsibility in feeling that your ability to bring people into the business has a very direct impact on its culture and how quickly it can grow. You will take this home with you more than any other job. Be prepared that it will be hard work but incredibly rewarding.” A major challenge is stakeholder management and trying to manage the entrepreneurial managing director who, as he has been heavily involved in recruitment, believes he knows more than you do. Ensure you are seen as the ‘hiring’ subject matter expert. Quite often the business lacks understanding of timescales to hire and detail is missing around exactly what is needed — “Just get me someone with PHP [web development server-side scripting language], Rob!” Building collaborative stakeholder relationships based on honesty, reality and capability is key to success. On a more practical level, establish remuneration models, terms & conditions etc early on to avoid complications further down the line as the organisation scales up. Matt Jones, talent manager at Response Tap, says that creativity is also fundamental. “Budgets are always going to be tight so create incentives to encourage
colleagues to refer friends, and utilise the in-house skills you have to design and implement candidate attraction campaigns.” Andy Wire, international talent acquisition specialist from PA Consulting Group, offers excellent tips on points to consider, fresh from a recent workshop he conducted in Beirut with around 30 start-up founders and entrepreneurs: ● Differentiate the company. What is unique, special and valuable about the start-up? What are the company’s mission, values, culture? Link the hiring need to these aspects. ● To hire the ‘best’ people, specify what ‘best’ looks like. A key differentiator is the quality of the team you build (ideally people with complementary talents and who go out of their way to get things done). ● ‘Hire slow — fire fast’ is a common hiring mantra, and very pertinent to start-ups (where a bad hire can have a negative impact). Hiring shouldn’t take months but take due care. ● Talented employees who fit with the company’s culture, values, and mission are likely to stay, but can’t just be left to get on with things. Develop their skills, acknowledge their contributions and empower them with leadership opportunities to have the best chance of retaining them. ● Seek people genuinely interested in and excited by the specific mission of your start-up — not just the start-up ‘experience’ (too often the latter very soon prove to be risk averse and they leave). If nothing else, follow the concise advice of software engineer and Stack Overflow entrepreneur Joel Spolsky: “Hire people who are smart and get things done!” ●
Thanks to all members of The FIRM who contributed towards the content of this article
KATY PH I LL IPS
↗
VIEW FROM IN-HOUSE
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RESOURCING IN AC TI O N
HULL CONSTRUCTS CONTINUAL RECRUITMENT AT CARILLION BY CO LI N COT TE LL
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PHOTOGRAPHY: AKIN FALOPE
Being proactive rather than reactive has become something of a Holy Grail for recruiters. Achieving it is another matter, however. Just ask Jon Hull, head of resourcing at Carillion. On joining the FTSE250-listed construction and facilities management company at the beginning of this year, Hull says he was struck “by how almost every individual hire was a surprise”. Almost nine months on, the surprise is still evident in Hull’s voice, as we meet in a café close to Carillion’s London offices in Euston. This is despite the fact that, as he points out, the firm made around 3,500 permanent hires last year, and routinely recruits hundreds of quantity surveyors and civil engineers and various types of managers a year. Many recruiters will be familiar with the stop-start nature of recruitment that Hull found at Carillion: obtain the authority to recruit, follow the process, hire an individual — and then wait until the next hiring manager comes knocking on your door. Hull quickly came to the conclusion there was a need to do things differently. As he explains, the stakes were high. “We don’t have products or warehouses full of stock — if we can’t staff contracts that either means we won’t bid for them or we lose money on them, and in a low margin business that is not good news.” For a company operating in the construction sector, where it can take
six months from winning a contract to a new recruit actually starting work, Hull was looking for a way of putting his 19-strong recruitment team on the front foot. Describing an almost ‘eureka’-like moment, “it struck me,” he says, “hang on, we know there are skill shortages, and geographical challenges in certain parts of the country, why wouldn’t you always want to be talking to good people?” Although a radical departure for recruitment at Carillion, Hull likens the new approach to that routinely used by finance directors, who forecast sales based on the pipeline of future work. “On the premise that we can’t deal with those projects without staffing them correctly, why wouldn’t you take that sort of view of the people requirements?” Or, as he explained it to some of Carillion’s managers, “you wouldn’t stop prospecting for new IF YOU HAVE clients because you A PIPE LINE have already got some”. OF PEOPLE , To Hull’s way AND HAVE of thinking, this led quite naturally INTE RVIEWE D on to the idea of a FOU R OR FIVE candidate pipeline. “If you have a pipeline of OF THE M, people, and you have THE N YOU interviewed three, four or five of them, ARE AHE AD OF then you are ahead of the game, and you THE GAME have a competitive advantage,” he says. It’s particularly suited to construction, he says, where contracts take a long time to x
IN-HOUSE RECRUITER
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See your recruitment agency through Eploy. It’s your business. You know what it needs to succeed. If you want to achieve your goals, you need to visualise WKHP ȴUVW :LWK (SOR\ 5HFUXLWPHQW 6RIWZDUH \RX FDQ set your targets‌ then smash them. (SOR\ +HDGV 8S 5HFUXLWPHQW
Jane Emerson
Jobs on this week : 28 Perm GP this month : ÂŁ21,886 Perm GP target : ÂŁ20,000
Connected calls : 65 CV’s sent this week : 53
Brad r d Whitehead ead d
Jessica Smith
Connected calls : 50 Jobs on : 22
Sarah Fry
Placement GP this month : ÂŁ26.4K Interviews this week : 35 Candidate meetings this week : 5
Team Stats CV’s sent
Team GP this month : ÂŁ127,687 Jane Emerson Sarah Fry Brad Whitehead Sienna Holmes Jessica Smith John Wyatt
ÂŁ28,265 ÂŁ26,451 ÂŁ21,886 ÂŁ18,431 ÂŁ16,760 ÂŁ15,894
178% 178 %
Tom
105 5%
Brad
98% 98 % 143% 143 %
Jessica John
Team CV’s sent vs Target
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CARILLION KE Y FACTS
£4.1bn
24,000
3,500
2014 REVENUE
NUMBER OF UK EMPLOYEES
2014: PERMANENT HIRES
x come to fruition, “so why wouldn’t you keep those candidates in the pipelines?” Hull got to work, switching some of his junior recruiters into using social media to find likely candidates for Carillion’s critical roles, then “starting to warm them up with relevant and interesting online” content, which gives them real insight into “what people at Carillion are like to work with and what they do”. It’s a twoway conversation, he emphasises, that allows his recruiters to get a better understanding of the available talent pool, and what they think of Carillion — insight that can be shared with hiring managers. Hull’s recruiters are expected to identify between six and 10 candidates for each role “who have been checked out and are broadly of the right ilk”, he says. Hull draws an analogy between potential candidates and the customers of a business. “Do you know them and what they are doing? Sometimes they will be a customer and sometimes they won’t [be], but I want to know what they think of us, or at least that they
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RESOURCIN G IN AC TI O N
WE’RE
HIRING
4,400
1,500
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OPEN VACANCIES
do think of us. If you treat the market like a customer rather than just filling one job at a time, you stand a better chance of success.” IF YOU “If you are always marketing, you will get a TRE AT THE view of the market and where the demand is, and your recruiters are your sales guys — they MARKET LIKE close the deal. If you think of it like that rather A CUSTOME R than bums on seats — that is what we are trying to do.” R ATHE R THAN Supplementing this, Hull’s team works J UST FILLING closely with the Carillion’s resource planners, who tell them how many bids for contracts ONE JOB AT are in the pipeline, and which ones Carillion has the best chance of winning. This allows A TIME , YOU Hull and his team to build a picture of future STAND A BET TE R recruitment needs between three and six months ahead. CHANCE OF “We know we are going to need a project SUCCESS manager in the North-West to staff this project, so why don’t we start pipelining it now, and why don’t we don’t start talking to the relevant hiring managers,” says Hull. As part of its efforts to fill the pipeline, Hull explains Carillion plans to more than double its graduate intake, with about 120 due to start in 2016. There are signs the new approach is already gaining traction, Hull says, with time-to-hire dropping “often by at least 10% where managers have adopted pipelining”. He points to how in its road-building division, ahead of 20 roles being officially authorised, 15 interview slots have been filled through LinkedIn and Carillion’s applicant tracking system (ATS). In its building business, as a result of pipelining, they are already making offers for roles that aren’t due to go live until October, “effectively a time-to-hire of near zero”, says Hull. “LinkedIn and Twitter followers are going through the roof, up 40-50%,” he adds. From the start, Hull has seen the importance of getting buy-in from hiring managers. “My job is education because while some intrinsically get it, some don’t,” he says. First, there is helping them to understand the big picture “that in certain markets, the supply of talent is not infinite”, Hull explains. Then comes the task of persuading them to plan three to six months ahead, and highlighting their role in early engagement and having conversations with potential recruits. For some hiring managers, “the penny has dropped”, Hull says, and one group has now set aside Friday afternoons to have coffee with potential recruits.
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However, old habits die hard: “Others quickly go ‘we’re not going to need anybody for three months’… It is not resistance, it is embedding the change; that is the challenge. There’s no magic wand. It is slow and you have to keep reminding people to change their mind set.” Nor is pipelining an exact science, says Hull. “The timing isn’t always right for some individuals, or they find another job,” he says. However, he argues this does not diminish the need to engage with potential candidates — including, for example, those who came second when they applied to Carillion previously. As soon as they apply, candidates are entered onto Carillion’s 250,000-strong applicant tracking system [ATS], allowing recruiters to tailor the frequency and content of communication. Although it is still early days to make a full assessment, Hull is confident that many benefits will flow from the new way of doing things. Not only improved time-to-hire and time to productivity, but starting new recruits as close to day one of projects as possible also means they can be inducted better, he says. Carillion’s work on diversity and inclusion also benefits, as his team is better able to target particular groups, such as women, with specific messaging. Hull says ultimately, the new approach “is about handing the hiring manager choice” and raising their satisfaction levels. He goes on to contrast this with “a reactive recruitment market, where the manager feels pressured because time is against them”, which often leads to higher costs for the company in agency fees and higher salaries. It is too early to say whether this bold approach will be successful, but at the very least, by urging managers “not to stop just because you have one or two hires and to keep their toe in the water”, individual hires should no longer come as quite such a surprise. ●
JON HULL CAREER HISTORY JAN 2015–PRESENT Head of resourcing Carillion 2013–DEC 2014 Head of resourcing UK and Ireland, Sodexo 2008–13 Acting head of HR APAC and global head of recruitment, RS Components
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THE BRAND DEEP BACKGROUND
THE HUMAN TOUCH RECRUITMENT IS JUST ONE FACET OF HOW AN EMPLOYER’S IDENTITY AND REPUTATION MUST PLAY OUT IN
HOW TO CREATE A BUZZ
THE MARKETPLACE, BUT HONESTY IS KEY TO THE ENTIRE BRAND CONVERSATION
BY D E E D E E DO K E
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POLICE THE BRA ND ENCOUNTERS DEEP BACKGROUND Havas People developed a recruitment campaign involving both the recruitment and assessment of new constables for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) police
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THE BRAND DEEP BACKGROUND
he expression “recruitment marketing” is today practically a misnomer for the activity supporting a drive to find new hires. Even “employer branding”, or crystallising what a particular organisation is like to work for, may be an expression drifting into obsolescence. Instead, defining an organisation’s overall identity or corporate brand, and subsequently figuring out where the employer identity lies, is now the focus of many consultancies that have traditionally been tagged recruitment marketers. It’s all so much, much bigger now in this era of global volatility, hyper competition, shifts in how people and businesses work, ubiquitous and omnipresent social media, and scandal-riddled institutions, industries and companies. And even when recruiting is the aim, whether looking for a ‘Harry Potter’-type to head innovation for a financial services company or a prison officer, the challenge is to accomplish more than sell one job to a successful candidate. “There’s a recognition now that there’s no such thing as three separate brands — employer,
DA N G R EG O RY CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF HAVAS PEOPLE
consumer and corporate,” says Tom Chesterton of Tonic Agency. “It’s about the human brand. “And what is the output of all this?” Chesterton continues. “There is nothing around ‘I’ve got a job I want to fill’. It’s about ‘what do people think of us?’. It’s reputation driven and longer term: does someone know us, do they like us and do they trust us?” In recruitment terms, the presence of ‘like’ and the ‘trust’ will translate into whether people want to work for that organisation or not. But as Chesterton points out, an organisation’s ability to recruit the people it wants is one output only of the overall brand. Dan Gregory, creative director of Havas People, tightly sums up the shift for the job the former recruitment marketers must do as getting involved in “a deeper way of thinking”, and attributes much of the pressure on organisations to think about their reputation and its wider impact to social media. “With social media, you can’t hide,” he says. At the same time, he adds, while authenticity is “unavoidable” under the glare of social media, “organisations are still afraid to be totally honest”.
D O IT FO R DAN I E L
TO M C H E STE RTO N TONIC AGENCY
“It’s reputation driven: does someone know us, do they like us and do they trust us?”
Havas’s MoD campaign needed to be mobilefriendly to spread its message as far and wide as possible
However, a willingness to lay one’s cards as an employer on the table is delivering rewards for brave organisations, which have dared to take the leap. “When you hit rock bottom, you get brave,” said agency TMP Worldwide (TMPW) in a case study analysis of its award-winning integrated campaign in 2014 to recruit social workers for Coventry City Council (CCC). ‘Do it for Daniel’ highlighted the case of four-year-old Daniel Pelka, who was starved and beaten to death by his mother and stepfather after various local authorities in Coventry failed to effectively intervene. TMPW’s work with the council included research, which revealed an existing shortage of social workers was likely to increase, with 43% of social workers considering moving out of the profession. The research also pointed out that social workers thought most recruitment marketing was “sugar coated”. What they wanted was “an authentic, honest portrait” of both employer and challenges. “This was not your average brief,” says Heather DeLand, creative director at TMPW, about CCC’s social work recruitment drive in the wake of Daniel’s highly publicised case. Social work jobs, she adds, “are a tough sell in the best of times. And there’s not a social worker on this planet who doesn’t associate Coventry with that case”. The feeling at TMPW among the creatives assigned to develop options for Coventry was, “we just need to tell the truth”,
“With social media, you can’t hide”
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THE BRAND DEEP BACKGROUND
DeLand says. Out of a range of ideas emerged the concept of ‘Do it for Daniel’, which DeLand says was “the scariest out of all of them because of the level of opening your heart it requires. But everybody here got behind it, and we took it to them [CCC]”. The initial reaction was mixed, she acknowledges. “They really struggled with the decision to go out with a campaign like that. The last thing Coventry would ever have wanted to do was to exploit that poor kid one tiny bit more than he already had been.” However, all involved subsequently came to see the concept from a different
H E ATH E R DELAND CREATIVE DIRECTOR AT TMPW
“There’s not a social worker on this planet who doesn’t associate Coventry with that case”
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IT’S THE IDEA THAT COUNTS! Will the next whizzbang tool make the difference to your brand or even just your recruitment? The experts say no — much more important are the old-fashioned human touch and a great idea. Havas People’s Dan Gregory says: “What definitely
Below and left: ‘Do it for Daniel’ print and digital campaign on both PC and mobile devices
won’t make a difference is jumping on the bandwagon of the latest technology. Facebook is here to stay, and Twitter — but it’s all about storytelling. But sometimes there’s no story to tell.” Adds TMPW’s Heather DeLand: “There’s always a new toy, a new
app; we have holograms, immersive experiences — these gadgets will come and go. It’s just giving people a human experience across the whole life cycle, and holding their hands through the process.”
perspective. “When you look at it from the angle that we can learn from something that has happened, it’s almost saying, ‘In the name of Daniel and any other vulnerable child out there, we are so determined now to change the way we do things and make sure our service is so robust that this will never ever happen again’, they just thought, that is the right reason to do this,” DeLand explains. Daniel’s father in Poland was contacted to seek his approval for the campaign. He gave it, the campaign went ahead, and all of the social workers required by Coventry were recruited — a success, DeLand says, “which was unheard of for us”. Of the Coventry council, she says: “It was so brave of them. They knew some people would talk about it.” However, the campaign’s supporters included the British Association of Social Workers. “We’ll do a campaign, we’ll think it’s going to be great and it doesn’t always get the results — but this one did,” DeLand muses. “And this was the one, against all odds, that succeeded. That’s a victory.” x
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THE BRAND DEEP BACKGROUND
x S HARI N G TH E I N S I D E STO RY ‘Telling the inside story’ describes the nature of the challenge faced recently by Havas’ creative director Dan Gregory in developing a campaign involving both the recruitment and assessment of new constables for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) police and for HM Prison Service. Gregory says personal characteristics necessary for someone to not only thrive but survive in these jobs had to be effectively communicated and candidates assessed for them. “We were digging as deep as we could,” he says. Candidates needed verbal skills, “being smart about how you connect”, patience, focus and constituency to walk around 12 hours, among other
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characteristics. “We needed to give people access in a different way, to show people the kind of environment you could be working in, the types of problems you might encounter — it was ‘inside out’ marketing.” The attraction piece of the MoD campaign focused on taking the search to a wider, more passive audience through mainstream media such as the Monday-Friday free newspaper Metro and its tablet version. The campaign also took a traditional symbol of police work — a gun — and replaced its components with visual symbols of the characteristics needed: shoes to represent a lot of walking, a watch for patience, a crossword puzzle to echo problem solving, keys for responsibility and headphones to represent listening or empathy.
G RE AT G LO BAL ADVE NTU RE
MIKE HANBRIDGE CONSULTANT FOR BRAND & INSIGHT AT THIRTYTHREE
“The brand should be fit for purpose”
Below: Havas ran a print campaign for HM Prison Service, showing potential candidates the types of environment they could find themselves in — literally ‘inside out’ marketing
When is a recruitment campaign not a recruitment campaign? While consultancy ThirtyThree might disagree with such a description of their Great Global Adventure campaign for insurance provider AXA, the goal was to familiarise more people in a targeted age demographic (17 to 24) around the world with the company, so that they would see AXA as a potential employer when they were ready to enter the world of work. The problem was, AXA had no brand recognition to leverage. The solution ThirtyThree developed: offer the best-ever graduate recruitment prize, an all-expenses paid trip around the world, the opportunity to do two internships and to take part in a volunteering or community-based project in which AXA was already involved. The game was “a global treasure hunt”, says ThirtyThree’s Mark Beavan, head of digital. “It wasn’t about recruitment so the challenge was in no way, shape or form designed to identify desirable candidates,” Beavan continues. “What it was designed to do was generate a database of people who were engaged with AXA, had maybe slightly higher awareness of AXA as a result of going through this game.” The company’s global graduate recruitment programme could then be marketed to the database when the application period opened. Of the 25,000 who registered to play the game, about a fourth — 8,149 people — actually finished it. In Beavan’s view, the average time spent playing the game of between 40 and 45 minutes was the real success. “We had a huge amount of engagement
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THE BRAND DEEP BACKGROUND
VIRGIN MONEY When Virgin Money wanted to recruit a Harry Potter-type to be its head of banking innovation, the drive to find this person had to be as innovative as the successful candidate and reflect the company’s own
disruptive bent. Created by TMPW, The Most Creative Interview in the World was the vehicle, an elaborate immersive exercise involving occupational psychologists. Tested on invited human ‘guinea
time with those people, so these people… had a huge amount of exposure to the brand of AXA and to their key values, some important facts and they were made aware of the global nature of AXA’s global recruitment programme as well.” Increasingly, the business strategy prompts more conversations about an organisation’s values and brand, says Mike Hanbidge, ThirtyThree’s consultant for brand & insight. “If you think about some of the starting points for a brand project, it’s more likely that a company trying to change where it is, or it could be going through some sort of change, whether that be a merger or rationalisation or changing what it offers due to market conditions.”
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pigs’ (journalists) to see how actual participants might behave, the assessment received news coverage, which then caught the attention of legitimate candidates. “Someone who’s going to come
M I K E B E AVA N HEAD OF DIGITAL AT THIRTYTHREE
“It was designed ned to generate a database of people who were h engaged with ult AXA as a result ugh of going through this game”
into a head of innovation role isn’t necessarily a jobseeker,” says TMPW’s Heather DeLand. The successful candidate was an already tried and tested innovator — a co-founder of music identification app Shazam.
Hanbidge echoes his peers in the creative sector when he talks of the new holistic direction for ‘brand’ as “really encouraging and interesting”. He says: “The brand is clearly a means to an end and should be clearly fit for purpose to help you meet that end.” ●
TIPS FOR SMEs Comparatively few organisations will have the money or manpower of Virgin Money to spend on recruiting or employer branding. So what does a smaller, less well-known company do to shine brightly to bring on new hires? Here’s advice from TMPW’s Heather DeLand: ● Are you doing simple things like responding to people when they apply and giving feedb feedback if they’re not su successful? That m means a lot.
● If you’re inviting people in for an interview, think about how’s the room where the interview’s taking place, who’s there and how much love and support are you giving people? ● The more you can invite someone in to experience your organisation before you hire them, the better. The warmer experience you can give them, even if they don’t get the job, they remember you fondly. ● Keep it warm and human across the whole process. Keep your candidates close, and keep them warm.
L : ThirtyThree promoted AXA’s Left g global recruitment programme tthrough its Great Global Adventure c campaign to help candidates get tto know the AXA brand and really e engage with the company
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Here at Penna, we come to work to make a difference. Collaborative. Supportive. Inspiring. Accountable. We’re proud of the values that we work by, and we move as one team. Sure, we’ve got the awards. But most importantly, we’ve got the right people. So if you’re interested in working for a company that nurtures talent and champions career progression – consider us. To view all our current vacancies, visit our website http://mixitup.penna.com/#home or call our MD Julie Towers on 07764 791736.
Proud of the work we do. Proud of the company we keep.
penna.com @pennaplc Penna
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I T ' S A L L A B O U T YO U P E E R-TO - P E E R
7 WAYS YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE ↖
Want to be successful at whatever you do? You have to have the desire to make a difference. Here are rules that I live my professional life by
M AT T H E W J E F F E RY is vice president – global head of sourcing and employment brand, SAP
➊ DON’T EXPECT TO BE ‘SPOON FED’.
You control your career. Don’t wait for others to provide opportunities. You have to seek out and then seize them yourself. Create your own path by building relationships with peers and people you aspire to be like. Aim high and touch the sky.
➋ NEVER GIVE UP. Knockbacks are learning experiences. They help us grow. Everything in life is a challenge. Rise to it. If you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else? ➌ NEVER BECOME A SHEEP AND
FOLLOW THE HERD. Don’t do
PETER SEARLE / GETTY / SHUTTERSTOCK
something because everyone else does it that way. Peer pressure is the path to serfdom. Don’t do something because ‘it worked in the past’. Challenge everything, develop creative solutions to age-old problems that others have simply accepted. Leaders lead, followers follow.
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WHE N I STAND BE FORE GOD
➍ EMBRACE INNOVATION AND CHANGE.
AT THE E ND OF MY LIFE , I
Change is not scary. Times change. New situations arise. The past is just a moment in time. The future is what matters. Embrace the new; learn from the past.
WOU LD HOPE THAT I WOU LD
➎ BE HUNGRY TO LEARN. Never stop
YOU GAVE ME
learning. Technology changes. New ideas originate. Once you lose the desire to learn you are no longer on the cutting edge. When you believe you know it all, arrogance has possessed your soul.
NOT HAVE A SING LE BIT OF TALE NT LE FT AND COU LD SAY, I USE D E VE RY THING
ERMA BOMBECK
➐ DON’T TALK THE TALK, WALK THE WALK.
➏ DON’T BE PUT OFF BY THE
‘COMMENTARIAT’. Social
media has given rise to those whose existence depends on them just commenting and make a living out of criticising new ideas. Leave them to aimlessly shout on the sidelines, with their zero influence and do your thing, your way. Frank was right… he did it ‘My Way’. You should too!
Life is about results. Don’t talk a good game. Just deliver. Execute. Demonstrate ROI [return on investment] in all you do. Only when you get results can you claim to be successful. Being full of hot air by making grandiose claims only diminishes the ozone layer. ●
Share your tips for recruitment and work success by contacting editor DeeDee Doke at deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk
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I T ’ S A L L A B O U T YO U LIFE COACH
TRUE GRIT WHY IT MAT TERS AND HOW TO RECRUIT FOR IT BY S T E FA N H E N D R I K S A N D H A N N A H P R I E S T, DIRECTORS OF SOLUTIONS, MIND GYM
TR AIT S O F G RIT Why is it that people with equal intelligence and similar opportunities can fare so differently in life? The answer may lie in traits such as ‘grit’. Grit has been defined as perseverance and passion for longterm goals, in a 2007 article for the Journal of personality and social psychology by A L Duckworth, C Peterson, M D Matthews and D R Kelly. Grit is not the same as resilience. It is not the same as ambition. Ambitious people seek fame and recognition. People with grit are determined and persevere — contributing to a more resilient nature along with other factors. They ride out the tough times and stick to their long-term goals. Several studies have shown grit to be a stronger predictor of long-term success than factors like IQ and conscientiousness. In other words, gritty people continue where talented people stop. On top of that, people with grit reach higher levels of education, stick at their jobs longer and work harder. Subsequent Duckworth studies have found that men with higher grit levels are more likely to stay married, as well as highlighting links between grit and children’s success in the US National Spelling Bee. Grit and hardiness have also been found to predict persistence and achievement in the US Military Academy at West Point.
C AN YO U D E VE LO P G RIT ? This is open to debate. What is clear is that people who demonstrate grit may be more likely to give optimistic explanations for events, focus on what they can do rather than what’s outside their control and draw on whomever and whatever they need for support. These are all behaviours that we can learn.
RECRU ITI N G FO R G RIT
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ALAMY
For those jobs that require the combination of passion and perseverance described as grit, how can you detect it? In a 2015 study by Paul G Stoltz, among recruiters, the chances of being hired increased when people described their experiences as goals achieved by overcoming obstacles. So candidates should frame achievements in terms of perseverance of long-term goals, and recruiters should recognise the great importance of these attributes. A useful tool is the ‘grit scale’ — a self-report instrument with surprising reliability. [https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/ duckworth/pages/research] Participants are asked a series of questions about their interests, how often these x
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I T ’ S A L L A B O U T YO U LIFE COACH
x change, and how they persevere in the pursuit of them. The scale seeks to measure consistency of interest and perseverance of effort. Participants rate themselves from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ for statements such as:
QUALITY NETWORKS BY S I M O N E A N D E RSO N
● I focus on my existing projects without getting distracted by
new ideas ● I am actively working to achieve a personal goal I set more than a month ago ● I push myself to meet goals, even when it would be easier to reduce my targets ● I have accomplished something that took me several years to complete However, a low score might not mean an alarming lack of grit — it can take years for people to discover their passion and interests. Equally, a number of different jobs on your CV does not mean you are uncommitted any more than a long stint with one company shows you are passionate. So a sensible approach is to ask about candidates’ passions and the times they have persevered to achieve their goals, then make your own judgement. Aside from recruiting only the grittiest and most hardy individuals, how can you increase your own likelihood of achieving long-term goals? Demonstrating grit is key to developing it in others and psychologists believe there are two main ways to become grittier: by shifting our mindset, and by developing our ability to handle stress. ●
Co-authored by Stefan Hendriks and Hannah Priest, directors of solutions at Mind Gym, a psychology-based performance consultancy. www.themindgym.com @themindgym
Recruiters like to think of themselves as great networkers. However, the emphasis is too often on number of contacts, and not enough time spent on thinking about the strength and weakness of individual contacts in your network, and their value. Networking is not about developing as many relationships as possible or handing out large quantities of business cards or the number of connections made on social media. Networking is about adding quality to the relationships you choose to enter.
CO N S I D E R TH E STRO N G A N D W E A K CO NTAC T S I N YO U R N E T WO R K A 2013 study by Dr Ivan Misner and Max Steen, ‘The Strength of Strong Ties in Business Referral Networks’, concludes that weak contacts — superficial relationships from CALL FOR ACTION social media, for example — yield an How many strong and average of 0.4 new weak contacts do you contacts a year. have in your portfolio? On the other hand, Is this mix balanced to close connections, suit your challenges? which are often faceto-face contacts, Are there weak yield 7.4 contacts or contacts you need to upgrade and give references a year.
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INCREASING YOUR OWN LEVELS OF GRIT USE STRESS TO GROW SET YOURSELF UP TO FAIL, OCCASIONALLY Faced with a challenge, we put in more effort and our performance on subsequent tasks improves. AIM FOR EXCELLENCE, NOT PERFECTION When obstacles occur reframe what success is so you can achieve it and move on to the next task. ENGAGE WITH OTHERS Engagement with others is a hallmark of a highly hardy individual. Be interested in other people to avoid isolation that could dampen your energy.
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CHANGE YOUR MIND REGAIN A SENSE OF CONTROL If you constantly focus on what’s out of your control, you’ll feel overwhelmed. Instead, focus on what you believe you can influence. BE OPEN TO CHANGE Grit isn’t about following a single course of action, no matter what. Be flexible and see obstacles to your goal as a challenge not a threat. EMBRACE CONFUSION AND FRUSTRATION These emotions aren’t signs that you should give up, they are markers that a breakthrough is on its way. SEE THE BIG PICTURE Grit is about playing the long game — remaining consistently committed, as well as pushing past challenges. With any long-term goal or project, interest will wane occasionally, so keep reminding yourself why you started in the first place.
and strong contacts There is no that should be absolute conclusion downgraded? concerning the perfect network mix, but the aforementioned study may help you decide how many face-to-face contacts and how many social media contacts will suit your personal challenges.
Weak connections could have certain advantages: you may benefit from them without having to put much energy into maintaining the contacts; they can offer you surprising opportunity; and they may, over time, become strong relationships if your focus changes. Time plays an important role in deciding how close our network relationships will be: the more time we spend with people, the deeper and more stable we consider the relationship. ● Excerpted from The Networking Book by Simone Anderson. Published in 2015 by LID Publishing.
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I T ' S A L L A B O U T YO U N OT A L OT O F P E O P L E K N O W T H AT. . .
The box Brownie
KAREN MORRIS-LANZ
PASSIONATE ABOUT PEOPLE THERE ARE HIDDEN TALENTS BEHIND MOST PROFESSIONALS THAT THEIR WORK COLLEAGUES NEVER KNOW ABOUT — AND THE WORLD OF RECRUITMENT IS NO EXCEPTION. THIS ISSUE WE LOOK DOWN THE LENS AT K AREN MORRIS-L ANZ
eople, it seems, are my passion both inside and outside work. I have always been a keen photographer. I can remember having a box Brownie camera as a child and spent hours trying to put the film into it before being able to take a picture. Recently, I entered one of my photos of people from China into a competition called ‘Shoot The Face’ and I was a finalist rather than outright winner. It’s an international competition and is entered by professional photographers to get awarded and noticed. I did not think in a million years my picture would be recognised so yes, that was very satisfying.
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KAREN MORRISLANZ is HR director at Securitas
I have spent more time capturing people in photos. I love to capture the essence of the person in the picture. I want a picture that looks like them to their friends, feels natural and allows the viewer a glimpse of the real person. Sometimes to do this you really need to spend time with the person to get to know them, so that’s a bit like an interview I guess? One thing’s for sure: you get out what you put in, so that’s definitely the same as any talent management process. My shots of people in China came after I spent time quite a bit of time just sitting with these people. While we didn’t have any common language, non-verbal communication was key. When we are recruiting, we surprise ourselves by how much we pick up on non-verbal signs. I also find that people need time to get comfortable and to relax in front of a camera. In the same vein, people need to take time to feel relaxed at I LOVE TO CAP TU RE interview and as recruiters it’s our THE ESSE NCE OF job to make people feel that they can open up so we can capture THE PE RSON. TO DO their skills and coach them. Right THIS YOU RE ALLY person, right time, right place fits both photography and recruiting. ● NE E D TO SPE ND Tell us about the hidden talent, hobby or interest of yours or a colleague's at recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk
TIME WITH THE M... A BIT LIKE AN INTE RVIEW
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CARILLION’S JON HULL ON THE ART OF CONSTRUCTING CONTINUAL RECRUITMENT
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