What inspired you to found your own recruitment agency?

 

I'm not sure we call this inspiration, what happened is that I was working for two recruitment agencies beforehand and I was not impressed by the transactional nature of how recruitment functioned in those companies. On the other side, I had lots of inspiration from family friends that ran an executive search firm, a rather well-known firm, and I wanted to pursue recruitment more in the direction of the executive search style. This led me to found a company that will be able to bring down the executive search model to the level of mid to senior management.

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Recruitment is often perceived to have a bad reputation. Why is that?

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Actually, recruitment very often has a terrible reputation and rightfully so, it is quite a deserved reputation. What people don't understand is the history of recruitment. The history of search starts in the late forties, early fifties with consulting organizations like McKinsey, Egon Zehnder, Heidrick & Struggles, and Spencer Stuart's, big companies that grew into executive search firms with placing candidates in boardroom and c-level positions. At the other end of the spectrum, you had job centers. They were approached when a factory needed factory workers or when there was a need of nurses for a new hospital, so a lot more transactional recruitment. Where it got interesting is when firms needed to hire a manager, not an executive but a manager, into an organization and naturally a place to go would be an executive search consultancy. However, this was a retain search that wasn't big enough in money and it wasn't what executive search companies specialized in. 

 

As there was no middle ground, companies went to job centers. The recruitment industry as we have seen throughout the eighties, nineties, and two thousands grew out of job centers together with the transactional practices of quantity over quality. 

 

Unfortunately, this has persisted. A lot of people have fallen into recruitment for the wrong reasons. For the reasons like “It's a sales job where I can make a lot of money” rather than looking at it from the perspective of “This is a job that has a huge impact on people's lives”. When you sell phones for example that is okay, it is great, it is fun, but it is not really going to change the trajectory of someone's life whereas in recruitment you do have the responsibility for the trajectory of their career and changing their life. 

 

Recently I received a message from a candidate that I placed 5 years ago in Berlin. This person wrote to me “I just wanted to say thank you for making Berlin possible for me, I am now moving to Paris with my wife and my newborn child”. The fact that he was brought over to Berlin made it possible for him to grow professionally. Something like this really makes my day as I have had a positive impact on someone's life and unless you understand, see and feel that, I don't think you're going to be successful in consultative recruitment or executive search.

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What factors do you think are important for choosing the right recruitment agency?

 

Great question, there is a whole group of them. In my nearly 20 years of working in recruitment and 13 years of running my own agency, I have been asked for references maybe 5 times. Which, I find insane. If I am about to start working with a new lawyer or an accountant, business-critical positions, I want to see references. I want to know did they come from the right place, what jobs have they worked on, have they worked with companies like me, have they filled the types of positions that I am looking to fill, and so forth. I never understood why recruitment agencies are just taken at absolute face value, they can post anything they want on their website. It is important to ask for references. Second thing is, make sure that you're working with a recruitment company that knows your niche, that understands your geography. That would be like if someone came to me today and said “We would like you to hire someone in Singapore”. I know very little about hiring in Singapore, I don't have a network there. I would be probably able to do it but am I the right business to support that? Absolutely not. What I can do, is recommend someone or I can vet agencies for you and help you identify the right company to do that.

 

Once I was asked by a company to pitch their business and the job back to them. They wanted to see how we as an organization sell them as a business to candidates. I think this is a tremendously powerful thing because, ultimately, what you want is to work with an agency that understands you and represents you to the market as well as manages your reputation. There is an element of reputation management in successful recruitment. This is also why I highly recommend that if you are working with recruitment agencies, work on a retained fee basis, because that brings them closer to you.

 

Were there any cases when clients were not satisfied with the provided service? If yes, what were the reasons?

 

Issues with clients usually come from misaligned expectations. Some clients want to see 25 CV's a week and this is not what we do. During our meetings, I make it very clear that we are an agency that prefers the quality of profiles over quantity. If we can ensure the client has 2 great profiles they can make a hire from, to me that is much better than having 20 average profiles they need to sift through. 

 

Ultimately, clients pay us as an agency to take the leg work out of their search and to facilitate a successful hire. Once a client was complaining they weren't getting enough CVs. The fact was, the candidate they ended up hiring was already in process within the first 3 profiles they received but this was solutioned through having a conversation with the client and going through what their needs are. We helped them understand they don't need more CVs, they just need to ensure they are able to hire from the great candidates they already have in the process. Most of these issues can be resolved through effective communication which is a big thing for me.

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In your podcast appearances you often say “Agency and inhouse recruiters are not competitors” can you elaborate on that as they are both trying to close the same positions?

 

No, they're not competitors absolutely, they are partners. Inhouse teams and agency recruiters have different superpowers and they have different capacities. Inhouse recruitment is by design very reactive to the needs of the business. If a hiring manager comes in one morning and says “Hey, I need to hire 3 Java developers”, the inhouse team has to react to that immediate need. The inhouse teams are also very commonly working across the whole scope of positions, from sales and marketing through to tech and product. They have a much broader scope and by default they can not have the depth of specialization, the depth of niche knowledge an agency recruiter has. However, inhouse teams are also the ones that have more impact on hiring managers and are able to ensure effective processing and a positive candidate experience for applicants. What agency recruiters do, they work within a niche, have a specialization, are able to go into much more detail with regards to hires. They are also a lot more by default proactive. Agency recruiters are hunters. They go out, they find candidates, they engage with those candidates on behalf of a company, they motivate people to send the application they would normally not send. The candidates the agency recruiters are speaking to are not the same candidates an inhouse team would be speaking to. Also, we need to look at time. Inhouse teams are under tremendous pressure because they have a lot of positions across a lot of areas to fill. They have a lot more scheduling and direct interaction with hiring managers which can take up additional time. Whereas, agency recruiters dedicate their entire time to hunting and deep interviewing candidates and bringing them out. Between these two teams, there's a symbiosis. There isn't a competition as it is not about who found the candidate first, it is about working together to make the hire happen.

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What distinguishes good hiring services from poor ones?

 

You mean apart from success? Well, success doesn't always make a good or bad service, sometimes success happens out of luck. I like to think of a good hiring service as one that is representative of the company, one that provides candidates with a positive experience regardless of whether they are hired or not, and one that enables a company to make an effective hire within the fewest possible candidates. We are talking about conversion rates. From the CVs that are sent home how many are converted into first interviews, of those first interviews how many are converted into final interviews, of those final interviews how many are converted into offers and what is the offer acceptance rate. That is if you want to break it down on a numerical basis. On a personal basis it is about what information is being fed back to the client, how is the recruiter providing market insights, is the candidate process under control, does the candidate receive the feedback, is the feedback shared back to the clients, and so forth. The communication aspect is a huge element in successful collaboration.

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What is the difference between recruitment and recruiting?

 

I hate recruiting, I absolutely hate it. I think it's the devil's work whereas recruitment is a completely different thing. It's a very thin and fine line between those two. Recruiting is what I talked about earlier, the transaction, it is “Hey, do you want a Job? No, move on.” It is the Tinder approach. The transactional job center mass-market approach has little regard for the individual, for the future, for the career, for the impact on the business. It doesn't matter if the person stays there for 3 months or 3 years or 30 years. That is everything that I've been fighting against in my career. Recruitment is however strategic. Recruitment comes from a place of understanding that it doesn't matter what is the most important function in your business. If you don't have the right people to execute that function, you are stuffed. It's just not gonna happen. Who you hire has an impact on who you are as a business, it has an impact on how your culture evolves, it has an impact on how customers perceive you, it has an impact on how your departments collaborate, it has an impact on your evolution. And this is both evolution personally as well as a business. Recruitment is not something that is taken lightly. There is a really good book called "Powerful" about how Netflix sets up their human resources operations. In that book, it shows exactly what recruitment is and how powerful it is. For example, at Netflix you can miss any meeting, any internal meeting if you have an interview with a candidate. This also means if you have a meeting with the board, the candidate interview takes precedence over that board meeting. It is all about bringing the right people, understanding that recruitment of top hires, top performers into the organization are what builds the organization. It is a very premeditated strategic thought process to bring on the right people. So I love recruitment, I love the strategy behind it, I love the people-focus behind it. I despise the recruiting transaction.

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You often talk about staff retention. Isn’t this bad for an agency recruitment business?

 

This goes back to the recruiting versus recruitment mindset. If we are talking about recruiting and the transaction, obviously it is the best thing for your business. You place someone and that person leaves 6 months later then you get A, to replace that person, and B, the opportunity to place the same person once again in another company. That is going to work a few times however, your reputation will catch up with you very quickly. The client is going to realize what you are doing and they are not going to want to work with you. They are going to tell their friends about it, they're not going to want to work with you. Whereas, let’s think about the alternatives. You place someone into a job as a product manager. The company takes the job very seriously and allows this person to grow in the company. This person becomes a senior product manager and then, 2 years later, becomes head of product. I've seen the story. Now. If they become head of product most probably they are going to be running the team and after running a team, they are going to need to hire for that team, sooner or later. I guess what they are going to do is to come back to you and say “Listen you did such a great job with me, we kept in touch over the years because you're serious about your work. Why don't we work together again? And you help me to find 2 more people for my business.” Moreover, those relationships will multiply and ultimately lead you to have more understanding of the market. They will enable you to organically grow the business rather than be another one of those recruiters that picks up the phone and goes “Hey, got any jobs?”.

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How do you see the industry in the future?

 

I believe that people still hire from people and people still work with people. This means that no matter how much AI and machine learning solutions we throw at hiring and recruitment in general, there is always going to be the people aspect, not at the level of the gig economy but the professional level. There's a certain element that can be, I don’t want to use the word automated but can be refined through technology such as sourcing or defining target candidates pools for example. However, the effective engagement is not something that you can automate with people. They already quickly see through automated messages even though automated messages are getting better through NPS, machine learning, and AI. People don't want to be hired by robots. People may be open to being aware of opportunities by robots but they want to hear about what's in for them directly from a person, from someone they'd be working with and they can make a connection with. I think the pandemic situation that we've been in over the last 15-16 months has highlighted just how important that human connection is for people. We are social animals by design and as such, we need that connection to others, we need to feel part of a community and the computers are not very good at that. I expect that recruitment, in general, will become less transactional because parts of recruitment will be automated. However, those basic skills that we saw in the fifties and sixties in the rise of executive search, is the area that's going to be developing where the true differentiating factors will happen.

 

Being effectively represented to the market, as a business, for the purposes of recruiting will become more important. There is already a huge shortage of skills in the market within certain specific areas. So there is no doubt in my mind that recruitment will continue to be important and will continue to have a huge impact. We are already seeing this, companies have a newfound respect for recruitment and hiring. Although, recruitment is still seen as part of HR whereas in my opinion recruitment has moved away from the realm of HR and has moved more into the realm of branding, marketing and PR with an element of sales. I think there is a renewed war for talents happening now and it is about how you stand out as an organization in order to make that successful hire. I do expect that recruitment will continue to grow in importance.

 

Do you have any tips or pieces of advice you’d give to someone who’s thinking about starting his/her own company?

 

Number one, be very honest with yourself. A lot of people think when they start a company they can do it better than everyone else, they will be the next Mark Zuckerberg. You need to be very honest with yourself as to what is your pain threshold and what you want in your life and career. Starting a business is not for everyone. It is the steepest learning curve that you will experience in your career. I remember when I started my own business, I learned more in 3 months of running my own business than I did in the previous 3 years of being an employee. You also need to understand what is your plan for you, I am not talking about the business plan I am talking about what is your plan for you. What do you want? Do you want to be a one-man or one-woman show? Starting a business you just bought yourself a hamster wheel. If that is what you want, that's great. Some people want the freedom to be able to work for 6 months, make good money and then take 6 months off. But be honest with yourself if that is your plan and act accordingly. However, if you want to start a business and scale that business you need to be very clear with yourself about what that means. That means a lot of stress. It means you're not going to take a holiday for quite a long time. It means switching off is going to become difficult. It means that in your relationship with your partner, there is going to be your partner, you, and the business. It means that you will need to push yourself outside of your comfort zone consistently. It means that you will need to make tough choices. It means that you will need to continue to learn all the time about things you didn't think are ever necessary. I didn't think that I needed to learn anything about accounting and bookkeeping across 3 different judiciary's but guess what, I have to. It is pretty serious stress and it is not one that is for everyone. It requires lots of grit and a lot of focus that you need to create for yourself. When you are employed to do a specific job, what that job is, is your focus. If you start a business, the business is your focus. The business has so many elements that you need to figure out what you need to focus on: when to make hires, when to develop certain skills or when to step away from certain parts of the business for example. It is an adventure, it is not a job.