Chris Bennet - Building patches from scratch and carving out a European desk - without cold calling!

Welcome to the Recruitment Rollercoaster podcast. My name is Hishem Azzouz. Today I'm joined by Chris Bennett, who is a management consultant within Evolution Recruitment Solutions. He's worked for Evolution for nearly 5 years, has worked in recruitment for nearly 7, and for the last 3 years has solely focused on the Nordic tech market. And manages a small team of 5. Chris, thank you for joining me.

Hi Hishem, how you doing?

I'm good, I'm good. Excited to unpack your journey so far. Where I always like to start on this podcast is how Chris Bennett entered the world of recruitment. Let's start there because I know when we spoke before this, you actually told me you love recruitment. Yeah, yeah, let's start there. Still love it. How did you enter the world of recruitment?

Well, I went to university. I don't know how deep you want me to go here, but went to university wanting to go into the army as an officer, realized I didn't want to get shot at, so I came out of university with a physical geography degree and focusing on glaciers, and there's not too many glaciers knocking about nowadays. So my, um, a good friend of mine I went to university with rang me saying they're hiring at his place. It was a recruitment company in Warrington. Went for, like, it was like a big, like, 15 of us, banner, assessment center. Yeah, assessment center. I was most underdressed out of everyone. But they seemed to like me and yeah, yeah, that's how I got into it really.

What was your perception of recruitment at that point? How was it sold to you?

Oh, I hadn't got a clue what it was. All I know was for like the 3 months leading up to it, I kept applying for jobs and they were with recruitment companies and I thought that I was actually going to be working for recruitment companies, so I hadn't got a clue about it, to be honest. All I know that, yeah, my friend was doing okay, he was earning a bit of money, so yeah, I didn't really know much about it.

So, so at that point in your life then, was it just very much done uni, I needed a job, recognized I don't want to do the army? I know that you did a bit of the army cadet stuff while she was at uni or whatever, so like it was a real like, right, I need to get a job, I need to just crack on, basically.

Yeah, that was it really. Yeah, I wasn't doing anything at the time. I would have done anything. And then fortunately enough, my friend rang me and said, do you want to get into this? And then I've not looked back since, to be honest.

Okay, so just for context for people, so you worked at that first company, was it for 2 years?

Yeah, yeah, so it was just short of 2 years.

Okay, just short of 2 years. And it's all— you just told me before, this has always been contract recruitment? Yeah, so just short of 2 years, and then for the last pretty much nearly 6 now— no, 5 years, sorry— it's— you've been at Evolution, yeah?

Yeah, so the first company I was at, um, what did they recruit in? Mainly oil and gas.

Okay.

And you go into kind of— I went into that job and it was mainly like pure recruitment, not really the sales part of it. So I had a kind of a view on what recruitment was, which massively changed when I joined—

What do you mean pure recruitment?

What you just did? Yeah, delivery, finding candidates. You spend your whole day finding candidates. You weren't really qualifying jobs. I mean, the oil and gas industry in recruitment has been going for so long. It's a very established market, and therefore there's a lot of processes in place in place to kind of stop you from what I would call now doing proper recruitment.

Okay.

So, so a lot of that first 18 months was figuring out how to headhunt. Yeah. Which don't get me wrong is an incredible skill and one I advise anyone who's starting in recruitment to master very quickly because you've not got enough time to headhunt people when you get good at the job. Yeah, because when you get good at the job, you're trying to make your clients better, you're trying to find new clients all the time, and you see you've not got time to be headhunting, yeah, for 8 hours a day. So yeah, I really enjoyed my first 2 years, but I was kind of—

Yeah, how would you sum it up? Like, how— because obviously it's typically like the first year or so that can be the most difficult. That was definitely the most difficult for me, but like, obviously enjoyed it. Like, how would you sum up those first 18 months?

It's a good question. I enjoyed it. I didn't feel like I was with too many like-minded people, so difficult in that context. But no, it was valuable, let's say.

So it didn't— recruitment didn't chew you up and spit you out and Chris was like, right, okay, I'm not doing recruitment anymore?

No, no, I enjoy it. It's hard. It's really hard and I enjoy stuff that's hard. So, yeah.

Okay. So then joined Evolution, which I know is what we're gonna sort of focus on. So joined Evolution and the sort of first half of you being at Evolution was just for context. So it was UK market, right? Because for the last 2 and a half, it's been not the UK. And it was at like similar markets to what you do now in terms of tech?

Yeah. So I came on board and I remember interviewing a few companies when I decided to leave my first company and the owner of the business, Gareth, who did the property—

Oh mate, you must have been ripe, wrecked to wreck property, mate. 18 months.

Enjoyed it. I know, yeah. I came in, I did the interview, and I kind of decided I was going somewhere else. Okay. And then Gareth did this— I came into an interview at Evolution for, I think it was like 7 o'clock in the morning, because I needed to be at work at half 8. Gareth rattled on for about 2 and a half hours. So I was really late. So at that point, I definitely had to leave the company. But he gave me this big speech. He's a Manchester City fan, and I'm a Manchester City fan. Gave me this massive speech like the next Vincent Company. I just bought it. But when you was going to be the next Vincent Company? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Vincent Company of the company. But I bought it, but I thought I was kind of, kind of almost thought I knew everything in recruitment. Yeah. When I came to Evolution, and I didn't know, um, didn't know a lot, to be honest.

Well, let's talk about that because I think that's I think that's quite interesting, isn't it? That like, especially for those that worked at one particular company for a long time, it's like, you don't know. I think this is what's changed with this podcast and you have more access to things, but you can be really insular, can't you? And sort of be susceptible to, yeah, this is how our company does it. That's how we do recruitment sort of thing. But what would you say were the key things that you quote unquote didn't know or wasn't aware of or didn't learn in the first 18 months?

Oh, when I came to Evolution, I got given a patch that hadn't been worked before. No one had done it before. We had no clients. I remember during the interview process, they asked me to do a presentation. I remember saying, oh, well, what I do is go and speak around the company and see which clients fit in with my patch. And they said, with no clients? I was like, wow, right, that's, that's interesting. So anything around bringing on new clients I hadn't got a clue about. And if you're in 360, that is the hardest bit about the job.

Hardest part, right?

Where you're spending most of your time. I also didn't know about building a patch. But if you, if you've got a patch, then you've got to think of 20+ ways of finding people within that patch.

And was it just done on geography, mate? Just for context.

Yeah, it was. I did, uh, Northwest, uh, UK, Java contract.

Okay. That was the Chris Bennett patch that you got given?

Well, I quickly found out that people have been nailing this patch for quite a while. But yeah, that was my area. That's my performance.

So let's break this down then. So that first year then, or we could talk about the first 2 years or whatever, like what ended up being your plan then, Chris? Because I do get messages a lot around how to break new patches or how to start growing a new patch. And I know before we started this, you said this is something that you ended up really enjoying. But like, what, what, what ended up firstly, what ended up being the plan, if you had one?

I remember some really good advice when I came into this job that my director at the time told me, and he said basically, when, if you're running a shop and you're the only person at that shop. If you're not working, it's closed, right? And if you create a patch, you have to be working ridiculous hours. It's very, very difficult unless you've maybe done it 2, 3, 4 times before. So if it's the first time you've ever done it, then it's very difficult and needs a lot of time. Most of that time is going to be spent on admin. Yeah, most of it's gonna be spent on admin, which you need to try and do as much as you can outside working hours. Right? So that's kind of, that's the first challenge is that most recruiters aren't willing to do that.

Yeah.

Right? To the level you need to do it. Also, you've got to have the unreasonable and unattainable target of knowing actually everyone in your patch. Yes, anyone who is a Java contractor in the Northwest, you have to attain to know, right? And they're not all on LinkedIn. Yeah, they're not all in your database. They're not all on Stack Overflow. They're not on GitHub. Yeah, they're everywhere. Yeah, some are just not on any of these platforms at all. So you've got to attain that. And every single day you come into the office, you have to try to find more people even though you think you might know enough. So it's a really difficult mindset to have a goal that you can never achieve but always try and get to it.

I love that.

But it's a good one to have though.

So that was your mindset going into it. That was like the North Star of like, so basically, was the internal dialogue each day, what can I do today to take me a step closer to knowing everyone in my patch?

Yeah, so up until about a year and a half ago, I was always candidate-focused, which led me to the clients. I've probably changed now, but initially it was all always about trying to get all the candidates in one place so they knew me, they trusted me, I've met them, I could offer them value. Yeah, one of the biggest challenges in recruiting recruitment is offering value on a new patch. Right? When you've done a few patches, you can figure out ways of doing that more easier. But yeah, it's difficult to offer value. And therefore, I had to be at every meetup. Yeah. Meetup.

So was that— so that was that— so let's just break this down at the beginning, this new patch that you did, right? Because I know the Nordics patch was also a new patch that you out.

Yeah, yeah.

So this Northwest Java contract.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You shared with us what the goal was, a goal that you can never achieve, but it's something that sort of really you strive for. So like, so then you just go and say then you ended up really focusing on candidates and have been for a while. So you starting this patch then, did you then just start speaking, how you just start to speak to Java contractors or tried to speak to as many Java contractors as possible?

Yeah, yeah, that was it. I remember my target was that was to add 5 Java contractors a day.

A day, okay.

Bank, bank of candidates. And yeah, that's the aim. You've just got to keep on adding and keep on figuring out reasons to speak with them again. But to do that, you've got to add value. Yeah.

That's the hard bit at the beginning, isn't it?

Everyone's trying to do this. So figuring out where to add value is where the money is in recruitment, I think. So if you're a Steiner and you patch, go to the meetups.

How did you come across the meetups, Chris? Like, why did you end up looking at— why did it end up being the meetups that ended up being a good way to do that? Like, how did you identify that?

I believe Evolution got involved on the Agile Warrington meetup. Yeah, we host it at our office.

Italian, that is niche. Agile Warrington.

Yeah, well, yeah, there was quite a few people actually. It's amazing how many people you can get down for free pizza. So we started doing that, and Agile is a part of anyone in tech, that Agile is a part of their package in some way or another. So I went to the meetup, figured out that there's some value here. You can have face-to-face meetings with people quite quite easily. I'm like, wow, I'm striving to get these every day. So I went to the Java meetup in Manchester and was like—

How did you get an invite? How did you get an invite?

I didn't. I didn't get an invite. I just went.

On your own?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, on my own. And there was about 8 people there of which it's like they weren't bothered that I was there. Yeah. Because I was speaking their kind of their language.

How did you approach it? Let's just talk about that. How did you approach that meetup? Because I think this is because I think what a lot of recruiters, because events have been done and I think they're great. I don't think they'll ever be done. It's so important to bring people together and people love that community, meeting like-minded people, etc. But I think recruiters, I think when they think, oh, if I attend to a meetup, why do they want me there? Like, how do you approach it in a way where I guess you're not perceived as a typical recruiter going around there just to, you know what I mean? Like, how did you approach it? What was the mindset?

Well, first you've got to kind of admit you are a recruiter. And it just does, it does my head in when people are ashamed of it. Yeah. If you're ashamed of being a recruiter, don't be a recruiter. End of.

Love that.

Yeah. You are a recruiter. But if you start calling yourself something like a broker or a consultant, yeah, that's what you are. You're a broker of services. Yeah. And that's it. Especially on contracts. You're just introducing two people to another. And to do that, you've got to know everything in your market. Yeah, what's going on, who's hiring. So when you go to these events, yeah, if you're going to speak to them about jobs or asking for CVs, you've done it completely wrong. Yeah, you've got to be speaking about why— why— I used to write down a few questions that I would ask before I would go to the event and get them in my head. So every time I met someone new, I would ask them. And what I'd recommend is go to the person who stood on their own. It's easy to speak because they want to speak to someone as well.

How many questions?

Yeah, just like—

How many did you write down? How many did you prepare?

I always used to go in with the questions. So, where have you come from today? Yeah, that's a good one to get things going. And why are you here today? What are you looking to get out of today? And then just listen, have a conversation. Yeah. And then trust me, it'll end on recruitment when you say, I'm a recruiter. Yeah. I'm a broker. Yeah. Because they're interested, the clients. Um, and that's it. And you know what, throw in, give them a few leads, tell them who's hiring. Yeah. Tell them clients you don't work with who's hiring. It's not, it's not difficult. Add some value to their day. And do realize that that's just one of 100, 200 people you have to do it to get some business. If you start realizing that, that one is just part of the process, and therefore the outcome shouldn't really matter.

Yeah, no, Chris, I absolutely love that. I think that's such a great practical piece of advice on like, if you're going to a networking event, 100% prepare. I love that so much. And have— and I think what's great about that is you've got questions up your sleeve that just helps you just be a bit more confident when you're approaching people, right? And you're speaking to people for the first time, which is hard. It's not easy just to go up to random strangers and talk to people. But if you know what you're going to ask to get the conversation going, that's great advice.

Even if you go to these events now, you go to these events and you don't need to speak to anyone. Make sure you blog it incredibly. Yeah? So if you want to sit down there at the back, yeah, take some pictures and write something on LinkedIn about what's going on at the events, do that because that's a start. That's still better than most recruiters. Yeah? So if that's where you want to start, that's fine. If not, get the courage, have some preparation, and don't worry about the outcome. If they say, 'I don't want to speak to a recruiter,' That's fine. That's part of our job. Not everyone wants to speak to everyone.

Okay. So 5 job contractors a day, carried on doing that, recognised meetups was a good opportunity. You go to this one in Manchester. When did you— when obviously from what I was a permanent recruiter, but from what I understand, contract recruitment is the harder part, even though it's hard in perm, but the harder part is actually getting projects and clients and businesses that you can actually place contractors with. 'cause obviously there's more movement on the contract side, right? In terms of actual candidates. So how did you then shift this into a gear of working with your new client or whatever? What was the timeframe of you having this mindset? How long did it take before you actually started bringing on clients?

Well, when I went to that first meetup, yeah, I realised quite quickly that this could be much more, much more than it already is. So I asked, the woman at the front who was running the meet-up, if she wanted help, if she wanted— could I sponsor it, could I get involved that way? Because then once you've got that, then you've got another reason to speak to people, yeah? So you could get no business at all from the meet-up, but now you've got another conversation to ring, yeah? And I always just say, when you start your patch, you— I used to do 2 hours in the morning of canvassing and 2 hours in the evening of canvassing, yeah? Outside working hours, so like 7 till 9 and then 5 onwards, yeah? That was kind of my core time. And if you're speaking, oh listen, I went to this meetup, and we were discussing this, what are your thoughts? Or have you heard about this meetup? Or last time I went, they were talking about this and they wanted to speak on this, who do you know? You're having miles better conversations than do you want a job? Or are you looking—

And this is with candidates?

Yeah, this is with candidates. Now, where that, I suppose, when I started billing—

How long did it take you, mate? How long did it take you for you to make your first commission?

I got my first deal after 3 months. Yeah. And then after that, it took me to month number 7, I got my second deal. But month number 7, I got 5 deals and had an incredible month, to be honest. And contact, that just sets you up. I remember being on the car park of Cheshire Oaks, yeah, looking at my pair thinking, wow, just got out of my overdraft. And it was like quite a memorable moment. I thought, right, yeah, I'm in this.

Yeah, it's amazing because then it's that confidence, isn't it?

But it was from month 3. So up until month 3, it's all new. You're doing stuff constantly new. Got my deal sorted. And then after that, you think, I've done a deal, I can do some more deals. And everything that could go wrong went wrong. And so many learns between, let's say, month 3 to month 7. I remember sat, sat, desk over there, to be honest, where you can't see it. About half 8 to 9, just thinking I can't get anything, I can't land anything, I'm really struggling. And I rang my manager at the time and he was just saying, you're doing the right things, you're doing the right things, keep on going. And I did, and thankfully I did. And yeah, yeah, so month 7.

So let's just talk about that period, Chris, now you're just talking about that, just for a sec, and then we'll segue into how you then built on this. Because there'll be a lot of— if you think about now, the world that we live in, there'll be a lot of recruiters that will be— they'll probably going through that or have been going through over the last 3 or 4 months, right? May not have made a deal during the whole COVID period. So like, when you was going— like you said, made that first deal, you're like, right, I can do this now. Recruitment completed it, now to do it. And then you don't do any more deals until month 7. You just said, spoke to your manager and they told you keep doing what you're doing, but like, how did you push yourself through that? Like, how did you actually get through that? Because that's tough, that's not easy. How did you deal with blanking?

Thankfully, I've always, I've always worked harder when I'm not doing well. Yes, that's one thing that I was fortunate to always have, um, but you've got to rely on the people around you. Yeah, if you are going through, I suppose it's different to look at this initial stage of doing a 360 patch and compare it with what's going on at the moment. Yeah, but I suppose that there are some similarities. But when you're starting off a patch and you maybe you've never done it before, then you've got to trust the people around you. Yeah, you've got to trust the manager who's brought you on board. Yeah, that they know what they're talking about. And everyone uses the phrase like back to basics. Make sure you're doing the basics. Yeah, if you sat on GitHub all day trying to find one more Java developer, you're doing it wrong. Yeah, you're doing it really wrong. And therefore, you've got to, you've got to trust the basics of the job. So what people around you are doing, make sure you're doing that. So that's the first, first place to focus. But Yeah, it's difficult to compare it to what's going on at the moment. Right now, my advice to what everyone's going through now is if you, if you've already done well, you know what works, keep doing that. Keep doing that and the timing will come. Yeah, don't expect to be doing any better than you were doing before, but just keep doing that. Yeah, I suppose.

No, I love that. So the advice there, I think that's great advice, Chris. So basically what you're saying is if you're going through a real tough patch, if you're early on or you're doing the new patch or whatever, and yeah, you might have blanked for the last 3 months, 2 months, however long, I guess what you're saying there, and I really had to do this as well with the people around me because I got the same advice, Hishem, keep doing what you're doing, you're putting the volume of activity, work ethic, blah, blah, blah, is basically Trust what people are telling you around you. Trust the process. Because when you're in trouble is when you get up in your own head and doubt yourself. You're like, what am I doing, blah blah blah. So what you're saying is try and filter that out by really trusting what people say around you, basically, when you're going through those difficult periods. If they're generally saying, Chris, you're doing the right things, it'll pay off.

Yeah, trust the process of the basics of the job. Yeah, keep doing that. You've also got to kind of, in fact, you've also got to take some accountability. And you've also got to realize that if you want to get— 99% of people end up in a good place in life, yeah, have gone through all of these exact same things in one way or another. Yeah. So just appreciate that it's just part of the process. Even if you end up after 3 months not billing, they sack you, but you really love recruitment, that's not the end of it. It's just part of your process. Yeah. So that's— so just focus, understand that this happens, understand that you're accountable for it, and therefore you have to change. But just make sure you do the basics along the way.

Love that. So let's, let's fast forward then. How did you end up finishing in the first— in year 1 then of sort of trying to make something out of this path? Did your first deal in 3 months in? 5 deals come month 7, how did you end up finishing year 1 in terms of your contract book roughly? Or like, how did it plan itself out?

I think first year, yeah, I ended up bringing in about £100 grand, something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I think I was on about fluctuating anywhere between about £2,000 to about £4,000 weekly book value.

Okay, how— so obviously worked really hard to get to that point. You must— how did you feel going into year 2 of this patch then? Was you quite excited by it? Did you see what—

oh yeah, yeah.

So how— so obviously basically what you've done in that year 1 is work your absolute socks off to give yourself a foundation that hopefully you can take to the next level, right, going into year 2. So what, what was, what was the plan going into the year 2 and by the time you then switched to Nordics, but like, how did you plan on growing this patch so it's double what it is or whatever the goal was like? What was the plan to expand it and grow it?

I've always done business plans. Yeah. And at first I thought it was like a bit of like just a management tool, to be honest. I've always done business plans. At the start of the year. And if you said you were going to ask me this question, I could have checked my business plan. But I review my business plans probably, I probably did it about a month, 2 months ago. And like, I'm not joking, like 70, 80% of it has come true. Literally 70, 80%. Yeah. So what I would say is most likely I would have written down a business plan and committed to it. But I suppose year 2, I was obsessed. I was going to like at least 1 meet-up a week after work. 1 meet-up, yeah, probably 4 or 5 a month. I was in a position where I was working so hard that allowed me to sometimes do stuff outside Patch. Because people above me allowed me to do it because I would go above and beyond to do it. So I suppose I was in a good place in the company that I had the— they'd already understood I'd love this job and I was okay at it. So they gave me the flexibility to kind of chase other stuff. Yeah, if need be. If you're always relying on sticking to your current patch, there are limitations with that. So yeah, I suppose I just put myself in a decent position to explore other stuff.

Okay. So why don't we then, before we go into the Nordics piece that I'm really keen to get into, why don't we just give people context? So like maybe we can talk about, I don't know, where you, where your book was or where you were sort of billings-wise before you transferred over to Nordics. And then I'll, then what I want you to do is then just think about what, looking back, what you think were some of the key contributors that helped you achieve that, right? Which is what I'm keen to do. So I guess end of year 2, maybe we could just do that, or by the time you left, where was you at? So you said 100K first year, where was you at book-wise?

Second year, it was about— difficult to remember, it's been a bit of a roller coaster.

It's alright, mate. Just roughly, I'm not going to ask you the exact context.

The key milestones was that I left doing UK recruitment with just over a 10K book.

Okay, cool. So let's just, let's just use that as the guidance, right? Left by the time you got to around 10K book, right? Which is, which is great and considerable growth compared to where you was year 1. So let's just think about that for a second, Chris. And the reason why I'm digging into this is because A real common question that I get, and I'm sure you've had this now from your colleagues, is that I always get questions and people ask me, Hishem, I've hit this glass ceiling. I feel like I can't earn any more, or I've reached this billing target and I've always ended up trying to exceed it, but I've always ended up hitting the 200K mark or whatever it may be. Right. So I guess what I'm just interested to find out from you is what you think were some of the sort of core contributors that maybe you did differently, or the things that you really doubled down on that you think really helped you get to that 10K milestone?

It's getting yourself in a position with the company that you're working at that they trust where you're going. So I remember doing like 3 Scala deals in Dublin, which was—

Oh my God, that's definitely out of the patch, mate.

Yeah, yeah, it's out of the patch, but but no one else had it. And the company kind of trusted me to deliver on it. So what I would say is to get to a 10K book, I had to do work outside my patch, but also be incredible on my patch. So the way I did it, and it's maybe not helpful to a lot of people this, but it's just work ridiculously hard. That's it. There's no, If you're looking for a magic wand, then you're looking at 8, 9, 10 years of recruitment knowledge that you can put together and use that. But I didn't have that. I had, what, 2 years of resourcing at one company and 1 and a bit years of 360. That was it. So I had to— what I would say is, incredible at your patch, Also, you're going to be incredible at the peripheries of that patch because that's where your entrepreneurial spirit comes in and kind of your inner entrepreneur is that if you see something else that you have a gut feeling that it's worth pursuing, you've got to be, you've got to follow it sometimes. And you've got to be in a position in the company that they trust you to follow it. If you're, if you're a company that kind of doesn't allow you to do that, there is some limitations with that really. If you can just do stuff within your patch, I don't think I've seen— and I've only worked at 2 companies— but I don't see it. I've seen a 10K book with people just doing the patch.

Yeah, okay. I get what you're saying, and that's interesting. But I think the interesting, which is a really important point you make, Chris, is about this. We're talking about billings and all these things, but actually there's real value in building trust from the people around you. I couldn't agree with that more. Yeah, I think that's because I'm assuming now when we talk about Nordics, that was part of it. I'm assuming that, like, how did you then— I'm assuming that you saw an opportunity or— and then when, you know what I mean? So let's talk about for the last 2 and a half years then. So what have you— how did this come about? Why did you end up focusing on another patch that you've never done before, or the business has never done before. And yeah, the Nordics tech market, how did this come about?

So when I finished the Java Northwest patch, yeah, and I say I finished, I just moved on. Yeah, someone else came in, I kind of, I gave them a patch, and then I started doing Scala. And we started doing London as a company, and someone else has started that patch. Contract and said, Chris, can you help this person? And we'll be able to attack it as a 2. So I did it, and everything I was doing in the Northwest just wasn't working because it was nailed down by some companies who were just too good at it. Yeah, yeah. And you've got to kind of hold your hands up. It's like you're fighting a losing battle.

How long did you give it?

Say 8, 9 months. Yeah. Now, if anyone's starting out on a 360 patch, you've got to give it longer than that. But I'd already done one patch. I kind of, I already knew if this was going somewhere. Now, I didn't really change patches as such, but when I was talking about being really good on the periphery of patch, all the leads I was pulling from the Scala developer most of them in Europe. So I was like, fancy it, like, London's locked down. Yeah, they're just massive companies I can't break into. They've already got either PSLs I don't want to work on, or they've already got people who specialize in that as a company. I can't offer either of those. So let's go and chase some of these leads in Europe. And I was doing it a bit on and off. And it was nothing really was coming of it. And then I spoke to, spoke to one of the directors of the company and told him like what I was doing. He was like, well, you're only like chasing it for, let's say, an hour of the day. So he said, do it for 2 weeks purely. Yeah, chase all of those leads intensely for 2 weeks and stop them, everything else, focus. So I did that. Next thing I know, I got some I had a client in Berlin, I had a client in Amsterdam, and a client in Stockholm. And fortunately enough for me, the client in Stockholm was just about to like just go mental in terms of recruitment. So ended up focusing on that. And next thing I know, I've got a team of 6 people doing Stockholm.

Love that. Again, coming back to the entrepreneurial spirit, following opportunities, building that trust. So I love that. I think everything that you've worked your absolute socks off leading up to that point created your own luck to get that. Do you know what I mean? I really believe that everything that you put in there internally and externally in terms of what you've been doing gave you that opportunity. So let's talk, let's talk about this then and focus on this. So from that point then, Chris, just for context, how long have you been building that out then? So you mentioned their team of, yeah, small team, but from that point, is it what, 2 years? Was it 2 years, a year and a half? How long has it been, do you think?

Building the team. So it start— when I started pulling the clients in Stockholm and I started focusing on that, I was in a fortunate position. Like I said, I built enough internal trust that I had resources to help me get my book. So I ended up getting my book at one point to 17.5 weekly book value at one point, which was ridiculous. Wow. It's one of the best times I've ever had. But then it got to a point where it wasn't— I needed to think bigger as an individual and I needed to change into a manager. And I'd had several conversations with my director about where I wanted to go in my career. And if I was just gonna kind of rinse a couple of clients and just have people working as resources, there's only a certain level you get to in your career career, so I had to look at management and then since then, that's where all the challenges have been, you know, management and people and I love it.

Okay, so let's break this down. What I'm keen to do, Chris, but I'm keen to— so it's another real common question I get from recruiters that go for that journey, so I'm keen to dig into those challenges of management, how you've got better at it, what you've learned and we'll do that, but before I do, I just have to ask one or two questions around business development, growing this book, getting clients, right? So focusing on Stockholm, Nordics. Let's just go real practical here, Chris, because it's one of the most common things that I always get asked about. What was your best— what were your best methods, best ways of getting new clients to build up this book in a completely new patch? What was the most effective way for you?

It's the exact same as any patch. Get to know all the candidates, give them some value, and ask for value back. Yeah, simple as. Give them what's going on in the market, give them who's hiring that you don't work with, and then honestly ask them, can you introduce me? And that works.

Yeah. So it's leveraging, so you went really focused on candidates and then gave value, do what you do best, get to know them, blah, blah, blah, and then, yeah, ask for something in return and get leads that way.

Absolutely, it's leveraging those relationships. I suppose when you're building these banks of candidates within your patch, you know the companies they've worked for as a contractor, attract them. And therefore, you are constantly approaching them. If I'm— if we as a team, myself, speaking to candidates 2 hours in the morning and candidates 2 hours in the evening, you've got technically a full day of approaching these clients, approaching them, selling in candidates.

So for the whole rest of the day, Chris, sorry to butt in, you're doing what you— so Is it business to the BD?

Yeah, it's BD unless you've got any internal meetings or anything like that, but it's BD. That was when I was on my own, I suppose. Managing a team, you've got kind of other duties.

Yeah, yeah, of course. Okay, why do you think then, Chris? Because you hear this a lot, don't you? You hear this in recruitment that all our business is done through referrals, right? You always hear that, don't you? That you hear like, yeah, look, 'it's all referrals, blah blah blah,' and obviously a really successful way that's worked for you is, yeah, leveraging your relationships and candidates to get you introductions and get you into clients. Like, why do you think that's been effective?

We've been— we've chosen our patches carefully. Every time we've started a new patch, it's based on a patch that either I've done or it's on the edge of one of our patches. So Java, Scala, React, Java, all closely linked patches. So yeah, it's worked because we've always done something that's close to what someone else is doing. So I'm speaking as a manager now, really. And yeah, we've always, always tried to do patches that are very, very closely linked to each other. And I suppose, but during the day of doing BD, if you've picked your patches well, and you know the best candidates, and you're genuinely just selling it, I mean, in Stockholm, we don't do cold calling. We don't do it at all. No, I've never really done cold calling at all, to be honest, in my whole career. I've done it sometimes, only if I'm really, really desperate. I think Well-worded emails, clear emails, clear in mails, focusing. One thing I'm always clear with my team is that when we get these opportunities, when we've created something from in mails or emails, is having really clear defined outcomes of that meeting. Going over-prepared, yeah, and that's where you get your results because if you just go in and try and wing these meetings, you've missed such a big opportunity, yeah, that's so hard to come around. So yeah, I suppose.

Okay, all right, you might have just been talking about that, but what— okay, so just quickly, just real practical here, Chris, I know this will seem second nature to you, but I think it'll be something that people might want me to ask or whatever, but like, are we literally asking candidates here, and what you're getting that seems to be effective is 'Hey Chris, look, could you introduce me to X?' And are you then literally getting an email?

Are they literally then emailing you and going, 'Hey, like, what's the deal?' What we do now, what we do now, right, is that we've got a good client base in Stockholm now, so it is easier as such. We've generally got jobs to talk about. But if you've got a patch right now and you aren't video calling, that patch yeah, and setting up constant video calls, then you're doing it wrong. You missed an opportunity. Because you and me will have a conversation now on a video call and you introduce yourself, they introduce themselves, they know what they're on the call for, you're open and honest about what you want to get out the call. You do this enough and remember, if you're adding value to them, they're going to give some value back. At some point. So asking them, can you introduce me to your manager? Who's hiring within the company? I've been working with this person before. If you're doing that face to face and you're confident about it, then you can— new business isn't too difficult. But you've got to be able to add value to people. That's the key, I suppose. If you can add value to candidates, then they'll lead you in the right direction. Yeah.

And then the question I wanted to ask, Chris, before we talk about management: where do you see recruiters go— where do you commonly see recruiters go wrong with BD then? Because you spoke about—

they don't want to do it.

Yeah, so you just said under-preparing, like you work so hard to get that opportunity to see them on a video call, meet them, speak to them, over-prepare for those meetings. But where else do you see sort of recruiters go wrong?

You've got to be passionate about creating your own little business, right? And so you've got to— it means a lot when you get those meetings, it means a lot getting that client. So you've got to kind of have some like emotion tied to this. So I just, I think where a lot of recruiters go wrong is that they're here just, just to have a job, get on with it. If they can spec a candidate out and someone bites, brilliant. If not, it's not the end of the world. That's the difference between kind of people who kind of get mediocre results, which are still really good results in life, but compared to those people who get incredible results is because they've got kind of incredible outcomes that they want to achieve. Yeah, and they're constant about that. So yeah, I think, I think just being passionate about what you do, loving the job, and wanting to get what are quite bold outcomes but very achievable.

That's interesting. No, that's interesting. So you actually brought it down to Yeah, really understanding why you're doing what you're doing, having a real hunger and passion for it, which is gonna, yeah, help you get through. Okay, I love that. Management then, Chris. How long, so how long then have you been managing?

I'd say 2 and a bit years, I think.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

What has been your biggest challenges then? Because this comes up all the time, you hear all the time, billing managers, most difficult role in recruitment, like, what have been the biggest challenges for you then, Chris?

Micromanagement.

So give us a bit more, what do you mean? So then you ended up micromanaging people?

Yeah, so I came out of doing 360 and I'd done a few patches successfully. I thought I knew the way of doing recruitment. Yeah. And I wanted to make people successful. And therefore I was like, I can show you what I've done. This is the thing I've done. So let's just go with this. Right? So that's what we went with. And I would have, yeah, yeah, just like, this is the way we're doing it. Everyone just follow me. And it kind of worked. Do you know what I mean? But then, especially when we came into lockdown 4 or 5 months ago, you realize that you can't do that. There's so much— it's— you've got to trust people a lot more than I was doing. So that was my biggest challenge initially. Yeah, probably questions around that.

No, no, no, it's a really common one, Chris, right? Because What you're basically saying there is that what you did as a manager is you put— you basically expected them to do things that you do.

Yeah.

Which, there's no other Chris Bennetts, there's no other— like, you can't do that. This always comes out of this is that one of the common things is that, yeah, a billing manager or whatever will go, look, this is how I've done it, this is how I've created success for myself. 'So this is how I expect you to do it.' But actually, you can do that and yeah, it might work for you, but there might be a point, if that's lockdown, if that's different things, where there's limitations on that and you have to, like, what have you had to work out then? How people tick? What works better for other people? Is that what you've had to be more open-minded?

Yeah, I've learned quite, quite a lot over the last 4 months, to be honest. I just think where I went massively wrong was initially start with trust and proper trust, not like—

Yeah, like you hire them in your team.

Absolutely trust.

Like, yeah, yeah.

But make sure they are accountable, right? Make sure they're accountable because if you're always doing your system your way and micromanaging in your own way, then they've always got that to fall back on, the fact that, yeah, you told me to do this. Yeah, this is how you want me to do it. And therefore it's not theirs. Yeah. Losing, losing the passion that I've said is, is needed in this. So once you introduce accountability and trust, then so much better things start to happen and people start doing it their own way. And you start as a manager learning about different ways. So that's the biggest learning I could ever have in terms of, yeah, just, yeah.

I like— no, I love that.

That's awesome.

So you've learned to empower them to do it their own way, take accountability for what they're doing, um, and I guess, and yeah, really trust them. And then I guess within that, Chris, it's like you just being really happy and comfortable that there's some like core principles that you all agree as a team that you have are non-negotiables, but, and then, like, how crisp, like, you know what I mean? I feel like that's the other part to it, isn't it?

So right now, my team, we've got a few people on furlough, but we've got a team, there's 3 of us, and we only have, we have 3 meetings a week, catch-ups, yeah, so half 12 every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and that is just to check in with our everyone's here, everyone's doing. We have the option to do it on Tuesday and Thursday, but you don't have to, don't have to do it. And then we have— because right now it's the client side you need to focus on. Yeah, it's the client side that needs to work. It's the relationship management, it's improving those relationships, staying in touch with people. And because as a team we realize that's the most important thing Then we have a meeting every— well, a meeting actually every week, one-hour meeting on a Friday to discuss where we're up to with that. Yeah, so we've got kind of clear, defined goals as a team of what we need to be doing, and that's where we discuss. We finish early on a Friday, finish at 3, and then for that meeting, it's discussing where we're up to with that. What results have you got from that week? And that is where we hold each other accountable. And one thing I had to instill, I never did before, is that you have to get the rest of the team to hold each other accountable. That's including my team to me, that's including one of the team to the other part of the team, so everyone is holding each other accountable. And I suppose if they can't handle that, then that's where trust breaks down, doesn't it? And that's where you kind of have to That's the issue. That's how a lot of micromanagers are created as well.

No, I really like that. That's really interesting. I really like that. Okay, Chris. So what I would definitely be keen just to ask you to get your thoughts on, how have you gone about the Nordics market? Completely different country, different culture. How have you gone about— how did you go about understanding that? Because I feel like there'll be a lot of recruiters right now or have been due to this or will be thinking it in hindsight, like they do need to diversify. They shouldn't be like, you said about the patch and things like that, you should— God, we made a mistake in being Northwest Java, blah, blah, blah. And I think a great way, and I'm sure you've noticed this, that there's been more and more competition over the last 2 or so years of UK recruiters recruiting in the Nordics and other countries in the EU. And I think a big part of that is enabling recruitment businesses and recruiters to have a diverse way of being able to build their business, right? So I think one thing that always holds people back or what people are most curious about is, I'm in Warrington, I'm in Manchester, and I'm placing people in the Nordics, right? Like, how do people actually— how receptive are people to that? And how did you go about understanding the nuances of this culture?

Well, by default, if you're a British recruiter, you come with a tag.

Yeah, exactly.

But kind of wear that on your sleeve, really. Don't be ashamed, like I said before, don't be ashamed of it. You are who you are. Yeah, don't start pretending you're based in Stockholm. Don't change LinkedIn saying I'm based in Stockholm or based in Berlin or wherever you're doing that. You are who you are.

Own who you are. I love that.

And in Stockholm, in the Nordics, transparency is key. So if you're thinking about bringing any of your dodgy tactics or cowboy recruiting, it's going to fail.

How did you work out why? How did you work that out? How did you work out his transparency? Did you not?

I don't know. Oh, because it gets brought up 3 times a meeting. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have to be completely transparent. So your margins, what you earn, yeah, that is public information.

You pick that up on from the meeting straight away?

Yeah, yeah. And so if you believe you're charging a high margin, you better have a reason why you're doing it. Could be a completely legitimate reason. Yeah, it's a niche role. If it's difficult to fill, then yeah, be honest about it. But you might have to give some of it away because you are going to be transparent. So that, that was one of the difficult things at start because in UK recruitment, that's not really a conversation that comes up as much. But in the Nordics, it comes up from both the candidate side of how much do you charge and the client side of how much is the difference. So that was something that we quickly had to get over. Apart from that, if you are going to kind of approach doing another country, stick with what you know. Yeah. If you know Java, do Java in another country. If you know contract, do contracts. I've had some incredible support around me, my director helping me with the legal side of what we're doing. So make sure you've got people who are prepared to use their time to do that because it is different. Yeah, there are different contracts, there's different ways of doing things. If you do it in Germany, it's some of the hardest recruitment you'll ever do with the most admin. Yeah, so if you've not got a really good team behind you to help you, then you're going to struggle. But yeah, yeah, it's a massive team effort. Even the owner's getting involved. The owner of my company's been out a few client meetings with me. Be prepared to get out there when you can. Yeah, just be realistic as well. Yeah, it's going to take a while.

How long did you give yourself? Like, how long What happened?

Thankfully, I had my book still running. Yeah. So what I would say is that I've always— when you've got a good book and you've just done some deals and you're above your target, that next month is the time, the month to think about other stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's to think about the edges of your kind of market, the periphery. 'Yeah, what's going on there?' 'Is there anything else you can be doing?' That's the month to think about. It's not the month to kind of just like think, 'What a great deals I did. Yeah, I'm gonna have a bit of a chill now.' No, the next month is the kind of proactive work starts again.

I like that. So look, before we finish, Chris, what I was just keen to get your thoughts on— clearly someone that likes new business, winning clients, building out new patches, like over the last, obviously, couple of months, how have you, as I said to you before, I had loads of messages around, always have messages around business development, but even more so around how people have been approaching over the last couple of months, what changes they've made and all these things. Like, how have you sort of tailored or changed your approach over the last couple of months considering what's been going on on the business development side?

I've become best friends with my marketing team. Yeah, yes. A lot of the stuff I do now is centered around marketing, really. Yeah. So if you're 5, 6, 7 years into recruitment, thinking, you know, about recruitment and know everything about what's going on in recruitment, then one thing I'd suggest doing is go and learn about marketing and go and learn about automation and go and learn about data. And that's been my focus for the last 4 months, about being more of an all-rounded recruiter. So marketing has massively helped myself and the company to redirect our focus on, on different goals during what we've been doing. So like I said, we've been focusing a lot on improving our relationships, creating new relationships, and if you've got a really good supportive marketing team, it's a much easier way to do it. So that's my advice. If you've got a marketing team, go and hear their thoughts on what you're doing.

So just quickly, because I know we've spoken about this, if you don't mind sharing, so like what's helped you stay in touch, business development, is that you've been calling up people in the Nordic space and have you been putting people together or have you been basically—

We've been doing articles. Articles, cool. Yeah, yeah.

So again, coming back to your earlier point around having a reason to call people, that's what's really helped you during this period then, having a reason. It's like, hey, look, I'd love to jump on the video. We're doing a series of articles at the moment to talk about how you're getting on with things, what you think is going to change, and all these things, basically.

Yeah, yeah. So we've been doing, doing articles on stuff that's kind of relevant to our patches, relevant to our customers we're targeting. Like I said, we've got a meeting every week, or you write down all your clients and the patches within. There's plenty of stuff that marketing teams and freelance writers can write on if you go and get that content. So right now, it's very easy to have conversations about how teams have been reacting, how's your tech team doing working remotely, discussing stuff like that, and you are building relationships. And you're putting yourself in what we call the look situation, that if you're speaking to these people once a month during that, and then they have got a freelance position, everyone's like, 'How are you looking?' Well, no, you just thought of a different way, different reasons.

So have you seen a return? Like, have you— I know there is more to it. It's not just sales, sales, sales. There's actually an opportunity to give value, which you've already spoken about throughout this whole podcast, but have you, like, how, how is that, how has that helped you or impacted it?

I've, uh, my business plan this year, yeah, I think we had like 5 goals as a team and we're hitting 4 of them just on the financial part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so if you, if you're judging this year on finances, yeah, unless you're doing, I don't know, health tech and you specialize in, I don't know, logistics of food and you're doing that type of recruitment, then I imagine this year is going to be tough for a lot of people. But if you look at your other goals that you set at the start of the year that you are in control of, yeah, improving relationships, building up your bank, that unattainable goal that I talked about before of finding all the Java developers in the Northwest who are contractors, there's no reason you can't still have done this. In fact, it's actually easy to find people now. Doing all the admin work on the client side and making sure every client you're trying to approach, you've got all the email addresses, you've got the telephone numbers, you're constantly sending them information about what's going on in the market. These are all stuff you can control. So I would, I would argue that the amazing work kind of my team has done we are in a miles better position than we were going into COVID, and we've put ourselves in a brilliant position that once the market does pick up again, and we're starting to see that in Stockholm, the real reward is delivery.

Love that. So before we finish, Chris, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to Chris early on in his recruitment career?

Focus. Don't forget about other stuff outside recruitment.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, don't give up everything for it, I would say.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, just focus. Make sure, make sure you still see your family. Make sure you do still see your misses and stuff like that. 'Oi, fella,' or whoever it is. Yeah, because it can— there's no reason.

Yeah, because like when, when you said that at the beginning, it's like sort of what I went through my head is like, yeah, how sustainable is that?

No, it's not sustainable at all. It's, it's definitely— if you're creating a patch, yeah, you've got to be committed to that patch for about 9 months of very hard, hard work. So if you're with someone at the time, make sure they're clear about that, make sure they know. If you're not prepared to do the 7-8 months, then just be realistic.

Be honest with yourself.

That's the returns on it. And I suppose, yeah, back in the day, I was always work hard, work hard, hard, hard. But now I'm like, let's focus a bit more smarter thinking. Yeah. So I want to be honest, I wouldn't change much in terms of like, because I've actually—

Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's good advice, right? It's like, look, Chris, I know you want to work hard. I know you've got the hunger, but that doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice everything.

Yeah. It doesn't mean you have to sacrifice everything. Yeah.

Yeah. I love that, Chris. So last question then, how do you see the land lay after this? Like, what, in terms of recruitment, how do you, how do you see things changing over the next 6 to 12 months, in your opinion? What do you think is going to change, or what's, what you're interested or excited about in, in the sort of short to medium future?

I think, um, it's exciting to see how recruitment companies, uh, react to this. Yeah, the clients will always be the clients, they'll come back. Yeah, they'll start hiring, they'll start wanting to do PSLs, some will want to get rid of PSLs, the whole process of once someone wants perm, then want freelance, that'll always be the same. Yeah, but the, the, the change that will happen is how recruitment companies internally work with their staff. You'd like to think that your manager every month is, say, asking 2 questions really. How do you work best and what do we need from you really? Yeah, so if, yeah, if you work best 5 days remotely, yeah, not in the office, brilliant. If us as a team needs you in for 2, then that's going to be the challenge going forward. How do we make that happen between us? Yeah, do we need you 1, 1 day a week, some weeks in 2 days? Because the fully remote option is— I've enjoyed it, but can you grow a team on it? Now, you might be able to, but you're gonna have to have an incredible training team. You're gonna have to have an incredible training team who knows how to train people remotely. So people are gonna have to get good at that. So all of these challenges are coming up, but I think it's mainly in recruitment about how you train people remotely, how do you work remotely, how do you hold people accountable while working remotely. But it'd be interesting to see the days of shirts and ties, maybe they might be going, don't know.

I think that's going to be one of the most interesting things, everything that you're talking about there. It's going to be really interesting how people adapt, what changes, what a typical 5-day working week for a recruiter looks like. It's going to be interesting. Look, Chris, love your energy, love your passion. Excited to see from afar where your career goes, but it's been an absolute pleasure.