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Episode 21 - Part 1: Improving your recruitment process and attracting the right candidates
46 Plays2 years ago
In Episode 21 we are speaking to Chris Litras, Director of Development and Construction and Deverell Smith recruitment.
In this first part of the episode, we're looking at the recruitment process from planning when to start recruiting through to putting out job offers.
Chris has over 12 years of experience in the recruitment industry across both transport, development and construction.
In part one, we discuss:
🗓️ Recruitment process planning
📝 Creating a job description
📣 Job description vs job advert
🎯 Recruitment strategies and options
👀 Considering how candidates view your company
🚨 Recruitment challenges in the surveying industry
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Transcript
Introduction to Survey Booker Sessions
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Survey Booker Sessions. Tune in to hear from people working in a range of industries and roles to provide you ideas that you can take away and use in your own business. I'm your host, Matt Nalley, the founder and director of Survey Booker, which is the leading CRM and survey management system for surveyors.
Who is Chris from Devil Smith?
00:00:15
Speaker
So on this week's episode, we've got Chris from Devil Smith, who's going to talk to us about everything recruitment. So thanks for coming on today, Chris. My pleasure. Do you want to give us a bit of background as to, I suppose, your role at Devil Smith, what Devil Smith do? And then we can go from there, I guess.
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So, Devil Smith, we're a recruitment company across the property and real estate sector. Been established for about 17 years. Andrew Devil Smith set up the company many years ago. I've actually joined six months ago from a large corporate recruiter called Randstad. My background is construction and I look after development and construction here as a director of the business. So, my background involves transport, civil engineering, recruitment,
00:00:56
Speaker
primarily into main contractors and subcontractors. So I've effectively made the jump up to client side and across into property, which consists of, of course, residential, commercial, mixed use alternatives, industrial.
Why transition from construction to real estate?
00:01:11
Speaker
Awesome. So what got you into the property side of it, having had a sort of a mix of backgrounds, like in terms of transport as well?
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, to be fair, I kind of fell into transport and infrastructure recruitment, really. I didn't know what civil engineering was much when I was 22, starting an industry. And, you know, I did that for over a decade and I am very passionate about that industry. I guess I was equally passionate about real estate and my friends and family all growing up, you know, many of them are surveyors or architects or, you know, construction project managers, client side or property developers.
00:01:44
Speaker
Um, so it's something that I've always been interested in being a part of. And, uh, you know, that's the opportunity that came up and I came across and yeah, really enjoying it so far. But, um, the company I did work at, we covered this sort of sets before, whilst I wasn't directly involved in it. I was always looking over thinking I'd really want to go and do some of that. I love that. I've always been whispering to you in the background. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:02:10
Speaker
Awesome.
What is the importance of early recruitment planning?
00:02:11
Speaker
I suppose the context for today's podcast then is everything about the recruitment process, I suppose from planning when to start all the way through to onboarding people properly. I suppose on that note then, when do you start planning a new hire? Because obviously there's a lag between knowing you want someone and actually having them onboarded. When is the right time to start looking at when to start the recruitment process?
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, as early as possible, to be sure. It's something that should be done in advance where possible, just how companies need to plan their budgets, their forecasts, or their marketing plans. Equally, that should be where they start looking at staff resources, whether that is the time to review, reflect, and plan at the end of the financial year or the calendar year, depending on when that drops. But very much so to plan ahead and look at
00:03:09
Speaker
pipeline of work, whether they're major projects or frameworks or expanding your business lines, that should be the time where you start to look at what talent you've got within the business, what competency you've got, and what workload they have before deciding to go out to the market. Plus, this is assuming this is a planned hire and not a replacement for someone who's left, which is often unplanned. Absolutely, it's something that
00:03:36
Speaker
needs to be anticipated and creating a strong succession plan for businesses, just as important as many of the other functions.
How should recruitment timelines be managed?
00:03:45
Speaker
How long does the recruitment process take on average? I know there's different factors in there, like if you're bringing on someone that's already working, they've got different notice period lengths and stuff, but I suppose ignoring the notice period part potentially,
00:04:00
Speaker
I think it's grossly underestimated actually. Yeah, because everyone's got their best laid plans set out and there's so many variables and external factors. Positive outlook means some might plan for three or four months. But in reality, that's always going to mean five or six. If you factor in notice periods, I mean, I guess for junior to mid-level hires, that's something where notice periods aren't a huge factor.
00:04:24
Speaker
And also, you could plan for things way ahead when someone's retiring or they're an executive for the long notice. But generally speaking, I think our client base are chronically under projecting the time it takes to identify, attract, and onboard someone. But even after onboarding that person, you need to factor in the time that's going to take for them to get up to speed, get their feet under the table, and then become
00:04:49
Speaker
Productive, you know, when people talk about onboarding, they're not talking about productivity. They're just talking about learning the IT systems and then knowing everyone's first name. So, you know, we really like to work and engage with the client base as early as possible to create a structure of identifying that talent way ahead of the time where they actually need to recruit. So I think the more relevant question is not when to plan, but actually when to take action.
00:05:19
Speaker
Okay. Yeah.
How to identify hiring needs and create job descriptions?
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah. And that depends on the, as you say, when the, what's going on in your pipeline, when you think you want to be bring someone in and then going from there. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Awesome. Okay. So let's say you've identified, you need to bring someone, bring, bring someone in soon. What's the first step of the process? Is it coming up with a good job description, job advert and understanding what you actually want from the role or is there something before that?
00:05:44
Speaker
Um, I would say there's probably something before that, you know, we're always stuck with why, you know, why are we recruiting and, and, uh, what is our budget and what is the impact going to be if we do bring that person in, uh, what is the ideal candidate and what we're willing to, you know, have as a variable or negotiate, but then very quickly it does lead yes to the job description and writing that out. Um, really important for the job description to fold really firstly to.
00:06:12
Speaker
assess what the role is and what the expectations are for that role and what's required, but also further down the line that job description acts as a tool to identify and attract that candidate and set the company apart from the competition. And anything that provides clarity around the process is always a positive thing and the job description and a good advert are two of those things that provide that clarity.
00:06:39
Speaker
Do you find then that often people jump the gun and they haven't quite identified what exactly they're looking for? They know there's a role to be filled, but does it happen quite often where that's not being clarified properly as to... Yeah, it's very common actually. Often we work with clients and the role isn't even signed off. Oh really? Yeah, and what is typical is that a job description hasn't been drawn up formally.
00:07:03
Speaker
many a time we will write up the job description on behalf of our client and send it back to them for approval before going out to the market because frankly some passive candidates won't even engage until they've seen a job description. Yeah yeah I can imagine that. What's key then to a good job description and what do you need in there for it to make you stand out for it to be attractive?
00:07:28
Speaker
Uh, detail, um, detail on the company and overview, uh, you know, what the company does and why they think they're good, uh, role and responsibilities for the role, for the candidate and their expectations and whether those expectations are formal qualifications or accreditations or soft skills and strengths and key achievements that they need to bring. Um, and then finally, you know, what's in it for the candidate, whether that's remuneration package, bonus benefits,
00:07:58
Speaker
what the company culture is like and where they're going. I've seen job descriptions range from a paragraph to five or six pages. I'd like to think striking a balance in the middle there is probably appropriate, but I'd probably say the majority of candidates would prefer a bit more detail than a bit less.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But I agree, 26 pages starts to become difficult to spend the time going through when you're doing lots of job applications. It might scare candidates, mightn't it? You know, it might be a precursor to, ooh, if it's much hard work to read the job description, what's the role going to entail? But then at the same time, there's always benefits to putting different parts of these in. For example, you won't see in every job description, but many we see now include the reports in structure and also the interfaces internally and externally.
00:08:47
Speaker
because it gives you a bit of an idea of the role and then life. And we always find that's really helpful for us to, you know, give them a bit of an insight into the role.
00:08:58
Speaker
Interesting. Okay. When I'm talking about job descriptions and the enumeration aspect, one thing that you see come up a lot in conversations is salary competitive versus particular amount. What should be on that? Should a job description say what the pay is going to be? Because from my perspective, I think it's very hard for someone to know whether it's even worth applying. Are they in the right ballpark or are they going to be wasting their time? It's a good question, actually.
Why specify salary ranges in job postings?
00:09:26
Speaker
I think this is my personal view.
00:09:28
Speaker
the very best candidates may not apply for a role that says competitive salary. I think large corporates with a very strong presence can get away with it, but any SME business are going to struggle with that sort of, you know, non-value on their advert. Because, you know, what are the main reasons people move jobs? It's money, location, opportunity, culture,
00:09:56
Speaker
know, very much so nowadays, work life balance, and all of these things need to be demonstrated in a job description and an advert. If you're, you know, if you're not putting the the opportunity to increase your package, particularly in the in the current climate, which is, you know, cost of limit living crisis, I think you're going to lose out on a small portion of the market. At the same time, I think some companies internal values via
00:10:26
Speaker
talent acquisition teams, HR teams may deliberately choose to leave that out. Firstly, to leave an open scope to discuss, but also to find the candidate who's looking for the job using the right motivations and aspirations. But if we're going to go a rule for the majority, put the money on.
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it helps people also gauge whatever the role is. So if you don't put anything, it's hard to know whether it's, is it going to be 20,000? Is it going to be a hundred thousand? It could be anywhere, anywhere in between as well. Yeah, absolutely. I think the other thing is, you know, wage inflation is a very, very popular topic right now. And, you know, clients are, it's not just the, the war on talent is not just identifying and attracting talent, but also retaining existing staff.
00:11:20
Speaker
And, you know, in order to get a good candidate over the line, not only do you usually need to increase their basic or package, but also you need to do it to a point that's going to take them through a counter-offer scenario. Yeah. The existing client is going to be loath to lose a strong candidate, you know, and companies will throw the kitchen sink at this candidate. So, you know, they're going to make it very difficult and, you know, it's going to be filled with emotion and they're probably going to be made to feel quite guilty plus throwing a counter-offer and that candidate may choose to slick.
00:11:50
Speaker
And it's that initial interaction that you need to get them in front of you in order to demonstrate the values of your company and what the opportunity for the role is. And sometimes you're just not going to get that candidate in front of you if you don't show them what the role is going to be paying.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think, no, I'd agree with that. I suppose on the point you made about, you know, the role, the salary plenching open to discussion, is there a better word than to use in those scenarios than competitive? Yeah, in terms of... It's such a buzzword, isn't it? Yeah. I guess not to be fair. Competitive salary is the default, isn't it? It's the go-to term, you know, attractive salary, market leading salary. You could try and spin it and say,
00:12:39
Speaker
You know, maybe say market leading, a very, very lucrative package on offer. It's difficult because you want to attract the candidate who's right for the job and who demonstrates the right skills and expertise. But, you know, I'm probably talking as an agency recruiter here as opposed to an internal recruiter. And as an agency recruiter, I know that, you know, money does talk a lot of the time. So I would always opt to put a range.
00:13:10
Speaker
And that range should be appropriate for the level of candidate or the quality of candidate that I'm looking for. Yeah. Interesting. Okay.
What distinguishes job descriptions from adverts?
00:13:20
Speaker
And then I suppose on the job description aspect, what's the difference between a job description and a job advert? Job description is a formality. A job advert is the chance to talk to prospective candidates.
00:13:36
Speaker
the language is different. You could put the top line within the job description, but generally speaking, you're trying to engage with a candidate who's seeing this advert on a job board or on LinkedIn or maybe on industry press websites, but it needs to stand out. So you don't need all of the duties. You don't need all of the responsibilities. You just need the top line there.
00:14:06
Speaker
focus of that advert and lately you can utilize media, you know, images, videos, links to websites and all these other bits, you know, microsite career websites. I think you just need to get them over to looking at that run in a bit more detail. So that advert needs to be punchy. It needs to have really, really strong ad copy and it needs to be direct and speak to the person.
00:14:32
Speaker
who's looking at it, whereas the job description is, okay, this is what you're going to be doing day to day. This is the qualification you probably need to be considered for the role and whatnot. Okay. And so what would you, what do you think it makes the best job advert? What makes it stand out and engaging and gets the highest sort of view rates or conversion rates in terms of applications or click through to job descriptions? As an agency recruiter, we often co-brand with our clients and
00:15:02
Speaker
we will use multimedia really to track those candidates. I think Devil Smith have got quite a strong social presence and we do offer that to our clients. I don't mean to plug Devil Smith here, but just as an example, I think, how do we set our clients vacancy apart or our clients company apart from the competition? It's never been more difficult to hire good stuff than now. What is going on out in the economy
00:15:32
Speaker
is a factor for talent acquisition. So the candidate pools that we're hunting from now are really limited. It's less international. It's more UK focused. So I guess what makes a good advert is something different. Then that catches someone's eye to then read more. Something different to catch the eye, yeah. Might sound vague, but get creative.
00:15:59
Speaker
It doesn't always have to be a direct thing. It could be, you know, come on our website, have a look at our company, you know, have a feel for, you know, have a sense of what it feels like. Oh, by the way, you know, there's a really great opportunity here. I suppose that's where it ties back to understanding how your business is perceived by people generally. So, you know, even as a customer going onto your website or looking at your social pages,
00:16:26
Speaker
What's that saying about you? Because that will give the same, I suppose, same opinion to someone who's looking to come aboard as a potential candidate. This is it. Candidates that have got a lot more tools now to see and make an assessment over a company. You can go on their social media. You can go on Instagram and Facebook nowadays and look at a company. You can go on Glassdoor reviews. You can go on LinkedIn and see the people, see the profiles that are working for the company. All of these tools are available now.
00:16:56
Speaker
And whilst that's down to their marketing teams to ensure that's the case, it's then down to talent acquisition to ensure a really strong process of taking candidates through interviews and offer stage. And then finally, the leadership team and the management teams to care for that staff and progress them and promote them and retain them. But it is all about setting yourself apart from the crowd.
00:17:23
Speaker
And people will be looking at all of the tools that candidates have available now compared to the past are, you know, obviously LinkedIn, you can go on Glassdoor, read the reviews, you can go on the website, you can see the company values and, you know, ESG credentials or, you know, social value. All of this information is available online now.
What are the benefits of using recruitment agencies?
00:17:42
Speaker
So candidates will very much make an assessment on a company without speaking to an individual, and then they'll make a decision of whether they're going to apply for a role.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, so just as a general note, then make sure all of your touch points, whether it's customer focused or anyone that can see you has a good understanding of what you're about. In terms of promoting a vacancy then, so you've identified the need for someone to come and fill a role. You've got your job description and job advert.
00:18:16
Speaker
What are the different pros and cons, I suppose, to the options available around promoting? So I guess there's things like, you know, a recruitment agency like Devil Smith, there's, you know, LinkedIn ads, there's social media, there's job sites. What are the pros and cons to each, do you think? Well, I'll start with agency, because I work at one, but the pros of using any agency will always be because they're a specialist.
00:18:47
Speaker
So, you know, what comes with working with a specialist recruiter, they've got a network, they've got a little black book, you know, they've got experience and knowledge in that market. They'll know typical salaries and whether that salary is appropriate to be competitive. Um, you know, they'll talk about, you know, who's busy and who isn't busy. No, and that's, you know, traditional demand supply will say, you know, if you've, if you've got a client who, uh, who is actively recruiting more often than not, they'll be looking at their competition thing and okay, there's some, there's some talent here that can be
00:19:16
Speaker
approached. And the agencies, I think, you know, I've been doing this for 12 years now. What I've seen more so in recent times where, you know, there is a talent shortage is clients are leaning on agencies to come and work much more closely than before. And it's much, much less transactional. So, you know, a specialist consultant in particular field of recruitment will have candidates who turn into clients, clients who then start to recruit. And then therefore, you know,
00:19:47
Speaker
the wheel goes round and I think, you know, when you compare that to putting an advert out onto LinkedIn or onto a job board or onto a careers website, you may never get the right candidate because the right candidate may not be actively in the market, active in the market even. They may be passive, not looking happy enough, but certainly would hear about an opportunity or even passive, not looking
00:20:16
Speaker
absolutely happy in their role, yet if they were to be approached about what is perfect in their eyes, you'd then take that into an active candidate. And I think usually internal recruitment teams, talent acquisition teams within our client base won't have the capacity or the ability to do headhunting, which is when they'd go and engage with a specialist agency in order to do so. However, when you're, when you're recruiting for, for generalist roles, you know, whether it's,
00:20:45
Speaker
office support back office, you know, a lot of the time, it can be direct to the candidate pools, or if it's a graduate role, you know, there could be a system in place that that a company allows to, you know, work for alumni networks to bring in, you know, graduate space, for example, and promote from within.
00:21:02
Speaker
In terms of, I suppose, the LinkedIn ads and so on, how effective do you think that they are versus going through an agency route? And I'm not trying to sort of completely oversell one versus the other at any point. There's very much a discussion around this. But can you end up spending a lot of money and not getting much out of it in terms of LinkedIn ads or job sites? And how do you manage the quality control aspect of it?
00:21:28
Speaker
I think you've got to be in it to win it, to be perfectly honest. I think you need to put a LinkedIn ad out. Otherwise you may miss, you know, an absolute diamond candidate who just happens to be browsing vacancies for one reason or another. Um, you know, in terms of spend, you know, to value ratio, it's not particularly expensive. If it's a company who's recruiting for a senior surveyor, you know, maybe they can put a LinkedIn ad out.
00:21:56
Speaker
Maybe they could go to Rick's job board, and that would be a little bit more accurate in terms of facing the right market. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a LinkedIn ad. It could be on a general job board. It could be on a specialist industry job board. And I think there is value in posting those to have the presence and attract the right type of candidate. But at the same time, if it is a specialist role, I'd go back to engage with an agency who knows their market
00:22:25
Speaker
and who can identify passive candidates because you have to do the basics to attract low hanging fruit, so to speak. And unfortunately in the current climate, you will have that because unfortunately there are redundancies taking place across various industries. And if you don't have a social presence and you're not active on LinkedIn and you're not regularly posting adverts, those candidates are gonna be very much
00:22:53
Speaker
you know, qualified experience, bring something to the table, and there may be a flurry of activity.
What challenges exist with general job sites?
00:23:00
Speaker
And if you're not posting, you're going to miss out on those candidates. You don't always have to go to the specialist recruiting order to identify that key hire. But it's like spinning plates. You need to keep spinning all of them. And if one of them drops off, you may miss out.
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's a fair point. I suppose the the other aspect that just popped into my head as we were talking was around sort of like the general job sites, you know, indeed read all that type of stuff. Yep. I suppose when are they appropriate to use and how do you improve the quality that's coming through? Because I think there's my experience is it's very easy to put a job post up. But you can end up getting flooded with responses where people are just trying it and they might not even be relevant. How do you
00:23:44
Speaker
potentially manage that. Are there ways to be more effective on those types of platforms so you're not spending loads of time just filtering through stuff that's not relevant? There isn't really actually. Yeah, so you spot on that. It's very easy to post the advert. What's time consuming laborious is sifting through all of the applications. There's been times I've had 250 to 300 applications for one role. You've got to go through it. Some of the time recruiters just take
00:24:14
Speaker
the time pressure off a client. But yeah, I've tried loads of things over the years, you know, all of the teams that I've worked with, we've always tried to do things differently. And I think writing a good recruitment advert and good job description is more relevant to identifying the right candidate than blocking out irrelevant ones because you can't control that. And if there's one internal recruitment
00:24:44
Speaker
that internal recruiter at a company, they may be inundated and that's when they go, right, this isn't going to work for me. We're going to outsource this. But if I speak to the recruiters that I know, I think 90% of them would say, what takes most of your time? It's going through applications from job boards or other adverts.
00:25:07
Speaker
So I suppose on that note then, if you're working with an agency, what are the benefits to doing that in terms of what's it saving you as an internal recruiter or a business owner in terms of what you're not going to have to do? Because you're still obviously going to have to be involved in the interview. There's no way around that. And you're going to have to be involved in at least signing off a job description. So what are the bits that, I know you mentioned the black book,
00:25:34
Speaker
bit but I suppose interested in what's the overall process and what does that look like? Yeah so the benefits are it depends what way you choose to engage with a recruiter but you know often we will pre-screen the candidate whether that's on the phone or face-to-face at an interview you know it removes that first stage out on the client's behalf so we will have interviewed that candidate against the vacancy that we've discussed to take out
00:26:03
Speaker
you know, responsibilities, experience, qualifications. And then assess some of the soft skills, you know, you can read a lot from having a conversation with somebody, how they communicate and how they put their thoughts together and how they then communicate those, you know, are they concise points or do they kind of over-labour them? And you can give them a bit of a personality fit as well, a personality fit too. So, you know, working with a recruiter, yes, does mean that you get access to a pool of candidates.
00:26:33
Speaker
but it then means those candidates are vetted in a way that's tailored for your company. And I think, you know, what that then leads to is time saving, cost savings overall, because you're finding the right candidate for the job rather than a square peg for round hole.
How do recruiters improve hiring outcomes?
00:26:48
Speaker
And, you know, whilst there's a fee attached to it, I think, you know, when it comes to fees, and I'm stealing a quote from my managing director here, James, when, you know, when it comes to a fee, it's not about the cost, it's about the value.
00:27:02
Speaker
Yes. What value is that bringing? What is the impact of making the wrong hire or worse, not making the hire at all for a period? I think the impacts there can be pretty huge in this industry. There's lots of benefits, but I think that the benefits come with working with a good recruiter and a specialist who knows their market.
00:27:25
Speaker
opposed to just a recruiter. So there's lots of caveats, everything I say today. I suppose around that note, one of the things that sparks my interest is, do you know if there's any status as to not success rates, but not how long someone stays with the company, but they stay beyond their probation period at least.
00:27:48
Speaker
that they come on board and they work for a decent amount of time. Is there a difference between the recruitment route because they've been more vetted and there's a bit more of a process to it versus just finding someone through a job site or something like that and how long they might stay with the company. Is there benefits there as well? Or is it? Yeah, I think they call me biased, but I think they most definitely will be. I wouldn't be able to quantify it, but the
00:28:18
Speaker
Direct recruitment from our client base tends to be lower level for starters. And if there's a very, very good intake strategy at low level, and then good progression plans, you know, good learning development culture, you know, you will then have really good staff retention. But if you were looking gaps, mid to senior level, or, you know, executive and board level hires, I just don't think the volume of recruitment happens as much directly.
00:28:48
Speaker
I think the majority of companies will often utilize their own networks and who do you know in word of mouth and also internal employee referrals. That will only get you so far, but when you do need to go out and find talent, I'd probably say most companies will opt to use an agency because they just know that they won't be able to invest the time or the energy or have enough skill to find the right person. So the data would be skewed.
00:29:18
Speaker
I'd probably say the success of the candidate into the role is very much down to the client's culture and opportunity and how business is.
00:29:33
Speaker
Awesome, okay. So then one other thing that ties into this whole promoting of a vacancy aspect, and you've touched on this already, is the shortage
How can companies stand out in recruitment?
00:29:43
Speaker
of talent. So how do you attract or how does the company go about attracting candidates when there's shortage? Because within surveying there's often, you often see things around shortages of surveyors in terms of the number of people coming through, the number of people retiring.
00:29:57
Speaker
So how do you make, beyond salary, how do you make your job description stand out and engaging? It's a tough market. It's a tough market. Everyone's looking for surveyors. Recently qualified, senior, partner level, equity partner level. There's vacancies awash across the entire industry and all of the disciplines and types of surveying too. So how to do it, how to stand out, it really does go down to
00:30:28
Speaker
The company values and the structure are very important, but you only really get that if and if this is working via recruiter by engaging with the recruiter and allowing them into the business, giving them the time and the energy and the effort to talk to them about what those values are and meet the hiring manager and meet the team and see really what they're about and what their key strengths are and give them information about
00:30:57
Speaker
you know, the turnover or the profit or the pipeline of work or the company structure and what they intend to do with that structure going forward. And then therefore, where that individual blends into that structure. A lot of the time, recruiters will take a vacancy briefing from a client and just won't have enough information available. And when you don't have the information, you cannot then knowingly go out to the market and identify the right person because
00:31:27
Speaker
they're not going to engage with you. So, you know, sometimes the JD is a formality and it gives you a bit of a, you know, a bit of a tangible, a bit of tangible information to go to the market, but really what candidates want to see and us recruiters need to market the vacancy and the company is get down to the office and meet the people and spend the time. And that's the comment I mentioned earlier, which is I'm seeing a lot more of that now, which is a positive move for the industry.
00:31:56
Speaker
that clients are engaging very much so with their agency supply chain in order to go and find the talent because they know how hard it is. It's always been hard. It's getting even harder now. I think that's a huge factor for me. A vacancy can be advertised directly. They may not get applications. They may go to agencies and go, this is what we're looking for. I think the best agencies probably wouldn't work a vacancy unless the client was willing to
00:32:25
Speaker
bring them into their offices and have a sit down and go through it in a bit of detail. I certainly know David Smith would typically not work a vacancy on this. The client was showing that willingness.
00:32:35
Speaker
I suppose it signifies the intention and the seriousness of all the commitment to the recruitment process. Another thing that's popped into my head, head hunting, which I'm guessing is more something that you do as an agency in terms of having the black book, knowing who might be relevant from previous conversations, but is there a
00:32:56
Speaker
an upside and a downside to headhunting. As in, I suppose, you know, it's like in a relationship, someone leaves the relationship for someone else. Are they likely to do the same again? Or are there ways of, if you do headhunt someone, making sure that they're more likely to be engaged in what to say? I think, yeah, yeah. The optimist in me says, yeah. You know, when we approach someone about a role, we, you know, we try to cover everything.
00:33:25
Speaker
as much clarity as possible. And we, we guide that candidate through the process. You know, just because we're, you know, headhunting, it's a term, but, you know, all headhunting means is, um, attracting a candidate who's not otherwise active in the market. So, you know, if a candidate is active in the market and they're the right candidate for the role, then there's no difference to, uh, a candidate who was passive, is interested and be a market for the role.
00:33:55
Speaker
It's just the volume of options available for our clients who are recruiting and going back to your previous question on, you know, what does a client need to do to attract? It needs to be the right salary for the individual. It needs to have the right package. There needs to be the right flexibility available in the current, in the current work conditions. There needs to be the right progression. All of these things are basic hygiene needs now, but then I think what's going to get it over the line is being a right fit for that role.
00:34:25
Speaker
and having all of the information available to make an informed decision, that's going to be the thing that gets the candidate the job. Or should I say accept the job? Okay. And my last question actually on this particular topic is, and I can't remember what I read around this because it was a while ago now, but how much is to do with
00:34:44
Speaker
Um, I suppose some of the extra perks people because, you know, I saw something written about, um, people don't really care about the, uh, I don't mean to pick on this brand. It's just one I saw listed, but the perp box subscription or the, you know, the, the extra this, the extra that, how much of those peripheral. Benefits are important or which ones to kind of just really care about, um, which ones are supplementary that just sort of add noise on the description. Yeah. There's a bit of noise here and there. I mean, like I said, I came from big corporate too.
00:35:13
Speaker
a smaller boutique agency or medium sized agency. So the big corporate has a lot of the frills. But being inside that company, staff are constantly being reminded of those things and the general consensus is, you know, some of these are good. Some of them are not. I don't really mind. But I think, you know, a large corporate business has to cater for a wide variety of people.
00:35:40
Speaker
And then such a wide net means different expectations. You've got parents, you've got younger people, you've got people who travel further and might get a rail pass. That doesn't mean anything for someone else who's 20 minute walk or cycle to the office. But with smaller businesses, I think they do need to provide something to match and compete with larger corporate businesses. And if we use Perkbox as an example, it's better to have it than not, I think.
00:36:10
Speaker
When you have a bad culture, yet you're advertising all of the perks and benefits, it's a moot point. However, if you've got an attractive salary, a very good culture, great people leading, and then also these perks on top, well then actually it unlocks the benefits of using those perks because it's the cherry on top. So it can't be used in absence of all of the other things,
00:36:40
Speaker
But it's certainly nice to have those. And like I always say, it's about balance. You know, good salary, a good package, good progression, good benefits. They all come into one, rather than in isolation.