Delivering World-Class Experiences & Becoming a Seven-Figure Business with Abi Dunn

I think I've always been pretty aware of what I'm good at and not good at and not shied away from that. Aside from that, I don't think at any point I was, if I'm honest, was thinking, crikey, I need a business partner. I probably totally undervalued the impact that a business partner could have.

Welcome back to another episode of the Recruitment Mentors Podcast. I'm your host, Hishem Azzouz, and in this week's episode, I was joined by Abbie Dunn. She's the founder of 68 People and she runs a specialist hospitality recruitment business and then entered the madness and your world is hospitality.

The bottom of the bottom. Yeah.

So it was, you know, one of the most impacted industries. In 2020, their turnover was $122,000 and there's 5 people in the business. In 2021, that grew to $464,000 and 9 people. In 2022, that grew to just over $1,014,000 and 2023, $1.7 million with 24 people. And they're on track to break the 2 million mark. What I love about this story and the passion that Abby has is her entire commitment to delivering a client and candidate experience that is exceptional. She's one of the very few leaders that speaks about experience non-stop. One of their core KPIs within their business is Net Promoter Score. Their fill rate is extremely high and they want to make it even better. How, how do you uncover people that align with values in the interview process. Yeah, it's hard, and you kind of always think, God, how can we enjoy this week's episode? Abby, welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

So we, we sat down in November 2020 when our conversation went out.

Yeah.

So by then you were— you had your first— you had a first full year in business because you started in 2019 and then entered the COVID madness, and your world is hospitality.

The bottom of the bottom.

Yeah, so it was, you know, one of the, the most impacted industries. So I've always, like, outside looking in, I've always, like, really found how you've approached things really interesting, like on the branding front, the values, just, just how you've gone about your business. So while I was really keen to, you know, have you back on the pod is, you know, I think it's, you know, safe to say you've really gone on this growth journey. Not just— I'm not just talking about headcount, revenue, just I think you've really evolved your business over the last like 3 years. So I think today that's what we're going to be uncovering, because I think there's going to be a ton of learnings for current recruitment founders, aspiring recruitment founders, on some of the things that you've implemented, that you've learned, that you've executed, which I think a lot of people can learn from. Because I know you, you don't, you don't, you know, paint yourself with the brush of like, I'm a typical recruitment founder. Like, you're a typical recruitment founder.

I'll ask you that at the end to see what you think.

Okay, cool. So let's just give everyone some immediate context. So if I get any of this wrong— yes, Phil, just let me know.

Okay. Yes.

So the— some of the key metrics. So 2019 turnover, 305, there's 3 of you. 2020, 122, there was 5 of you. Uh, 2021, that increased to 464, and there was 9 people in the business, but 5 builders. 2022, um, just over a million, 1.76, 14 people in the business, 9 billers. And then 2023, 1.7 in turnover, 24 people in the business, 15 in, uh, billers. And the 2024 goal is to break the 2 million mark, which is really exciting. And you've put— I'm just— you've put 24 and 15 again, so I'm assuming you're, you're aiming to do that with this same amount of people currently.

Yeah, I think next year for us is you know, making the people that we've got on the team better, focusing on training and development.

Love that. So one of the things that I was really interested in that you kindly shared with me was, uh, the, you know, core of your business is recruitment, but then you've got these other, uh, you know, products called Class of '68. Uh, you've got international, um, part of your business that's growing, and you've got consultancy. So consultancy is 5%, international 9%, Class of '68 8%. Yeah, so keen to go into that. And then I guess the final bit of context which I think would be useful for people is, uh, and again, you can let me know if I'm wrong here, but I asked you like, what, what's Abby's role now? Um, and I think this would be useful for context. So you have a business partner called Charlotte, which we're going to go into because that's been quite pivotal. And then, you know, the couple of bullet points we put under yourself is you spend a lot of your time coaching, training the existing team. Involved in marketing, the BD strategy, just strategically thinking about how you can keep moving forward as a business, and you're always thinking about how you can improve the candidate and client experience.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I lose sleep over for sure.

All right, cool. So let's start with the million-pound question then. In your, in your opinion, what are the, the characteristics and traits of a successful recruiter in today's market?

Um, Well, there's a few, isn't there? I definitely think, look, if you, if you can't prioritize your work effectively and you can't work at speed and have this kind of sense of urgency, recruitment's probably not for you. We've certainly found over the years that this emotional resilience to decisions that are made helps. You know, we probably a few years ago now, I was noticing people being, you know, pretty emotional about decisions that clients are making or candidates are making. It's like, we can't operate a business like this. So we brought into this kind of cause and effect principle that, you know, as long as a very, like, self-reflective— I think we're a very self-reflective business. And I think that the consultants that do really well are the ones that are constantly saying, look, what could I have done differently? Or they get into a point of off the stage of saying, okay, I've done everything I can. I know I've done everything I can. I've referenced, my experience was great. I'm not putting square pegs into round holes. And at that point, if the decision doesn't go your way, you know, it's cool. I think this emotional rollercoaster that we were on was a challenge at one point. So, so yeah, this definitely not— I don't think we have a blame culture around blaming consultants and candidates for decisions. And I think that can create a shitty culture. So from my point of view, that's a really good behavioral trait that we need to have. And I think, you know, we've got to be, we've got to be experts. And that's not always easy when you start in recruitment to be an expert. But to me, the expert isn't about telling. It's not about saying to a client, this is what I think in actual fact. I don't think a lot of the time a client won't give a shit about your opinion. I think you've got to coach them, you've got to question them. And, you know, yeah, we can drop in our expertise, but actually, you know, a lot of— we're talking to a lot of people directors and operations directors who've got significantly more experience in their field. So I think being influential and expert but without being a knob is a pretty good trait of a recruiter.

Yeah, I really like that. I really like that emotional bit that you were talking about because I think that can just help you in life. Yeah, like not, not, uh, yeah, not to be the first person to point the finger at other people.

Yeah, and you've got to be careful because you can't come across like you don't give a shit either. There's the other way around of, yeah, whatever, it doesn't matter. It does matter. Um, but I think, yeah, it's pretty liberating to constantly be reflecting, thinking, what could I have done differently, rather than trying to manage other people's behaviors. Um, I certainly, you know, I've found that for the last few years when I've kind of adopted this technique myself.

No, no, honestly, I love that so much. Um, a quote that— or like, whenever I talk about stuff like this, a quote that I always keep front of mind is, whoever you point the finger at, you give power to.

Yeah.

And I think like, even in like in recruitment, if you're always pointing the finger at the client and candidate, it's going to be a pretty rough time. Yeah. And how do you improve, right? Exactly.

You can't self-reflecting, thinking what could I have done differently, gives you choice and power to do things differently. If you're constantly thinking, oh, what did they do wrong, you know, then you just stay at this, stay at basic level.

Yeah, definitely. Okay, cool. So a couple of things that I just want to get straight into with you, if that's okay. So like, we did a podcast before, so for anyone listening, feel free to go back and listen to that, but we sort of spoke about the first year in business, then COVID happened So I want to just go straight into a specific part of this timeline of this journey, which is Charlotte joining, basically.

Yeah.

So which was May 2021.

Yes.

Right. Because I find that really interesting, uh, just because, you know, that year you had a solid year of turnover and then you like over-doubled the turnover the year before, and then you've continued growing. So why don't, why don't we just start with what, what would be really interesting, interesting for you to share is obviously you started this business on your own. Like, what were some of the signs that kept showing up for you that made you feel like, fucking hell, if I— like, I, I really like the idea of bringing someone in, or if I just keep it myself, then I'm maybe not going to get to where I want to. I don't know. But like, what were some of the signs that made you to start think about someone like Charlotte joining your business and bring them on the journey with you?

Um, well, I think I think I've always been pretty aware of what I'm good at and not good at and not shied away from that. You know, I don't really enjoy sitting in rooms analyzing P&Ls. The team will be laughing. But, you know, I know I've got strengths. But aside from that, I don't think at any point I was, if I'm honest, was thinking, crikey, I need a business partner. I probably totally undervalued the impact that a business partner could have. But Charlotte had been a friend for many years and I knew her capability. And I suppose being totally honest, I was like, I bet it'll be really fun.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. I hope she doesn't mind me saying that, but I knew she'd be fucking great, obviously.

But what did you think would be fun about it?

Well, we're really good mates and Yeah, we've worked together before in a previous life in hospitality, um, and I didn't— it didn't really enter my head, any negative side of it, any— maybe because, you know, I've had to put some ego stuff aside for sure during this journey. Um, you know, we— she's— we're business partners now, and, um, but the process, the, the benefits that it's bought in terms of the speed at which we can make decisions, how, you know, having two different opinions and coming to a conclusion, just the level of so much more fun. It is fun. You know, we, we had a strategy meeting yesterday and we were both like super excited about it. And it's just two of us sat in a room for 9 hours, you know, it's— but and I didn't have what I didn't know what I was missing. You know, I didn't know that that was, that would be so cool.

No, I can relate. I can relate to that. Like, having a 9-hour strategy session on your own is fun. Yeah, yeah. And even though you can actively share the, the things that are in your mind about your business and the genuine with your partner, your friends, it's, it's not, it's not the same. Like, they, even though they could maybe be really good listeners and go, oh, that's really interesting, I understand that, they don't.

Yeah.

Now you've got someone who's on you know, you're— is in the boat with you, you're rowing in the same direction. And I totally get why that would be— why that would be more fun. Like, I get that.

Yeah, being the founder, it is that we, we share the same values, and that's, um, super important. Would I advise people to go and find a business partner that they'd never worked with before? I don't know. But, um, it— you know, we— because we knew each other so well, and, you know she's brilliant at certain things, and I think she would say the same about me. And, you know, that what I do think is important in that relationship is trust. And yeah, we, you know, we trust each other. We trust each other to do the right thing for the business. Um, I can't imagine how it would be if we didn't, didn't have that. I mean, it would be obviously really shit. Yeah.

So less interested in like the nitty-gritty details, but I think people would be interested, maybe people that started their business on their own actually have maybe thought about the idea of bringing someone on if it is the right person or that. But the way that you set it up is, uh, over a period of time Charlotte just basically earns, um, owns more and more of the business. And obviously you would agree, like, X amount, but over time as the business grows, um, and length of service, her like share in the business grows, right?

Yeah, yeah. And from an experience background, Charlotte had not worked in recruitment before. She'd done recruitment, but she— her background was actually in hospitality and the niche that that we work in. So having that experience and, you know, she'd, she'd operated large businesses, so she brought a skill, you know, that I didn't have. And I think that's probably quite important to kind of think about what you, what you, your weaknesses are and find, find someone that can do that.

What was, what was the job spec?

I don't think I have a job spec.

No, but like, what was like, because I think that'd be helpful. So like, what?

Yeah. Okay.

What ended up being— I'm sure it's evolved. Yeah, you told me some of the things that fall under her remit, but like initially when you're bringing this person in, yeah, what are like the core things you're like, right, these are the things that you're going to be responsible for, going to be focusing on?

Charlotte comes to the party with more kind of red energy than I have. So she gets shit done. Yeah. So, you know, the kind of things like immediate changes that were made, like it sounds small, but meeting cadence, for example. So now we do, well, you know, since Charlotte's joined, You know, we do— everybody in the business knows their meeting review schedule. Every meeting has got etiquette around it. So it's got an agenda, it's got a timescale, it's got action points, it's got minutes. That's a game changer. That's because you get shit done. So, so operational processes.

Yeah.

I suppose I knew what best practice was, but I'd not written it down anywhere. It was in my head, you know. And so there's been quite a lot of getting stuff out of my head you know, into some kind of system or process. And I think she saw quite quickly that in order for the business to grow, I needed to come out of recruitment, you know, physically talking to candidates and having a billing target, for example. And that she made that possible by us having systems and procedures in place that, you know, we hadn't had before.

Why did she think that was important?

Um, because that, that ties you to— I think that limits growth. You know, the stuff that I work on now with the team and from a more strategic business, I definitely spend a lot of time working on the business rather than in it. And I know that's really tough. That's— that was what I always found tough, and I definitely found it tough. I found it tough maybe stepping away from clients or handing things over that I'd held the reins of for so long. Um, but I can see now the beauty of doing that.

Okay, that is interesting that you go to something as like granular as like a meeting cadence.

I know, yeah, and that's huge. The other things, for example, with the team, they've got, you know, regular reviews, a review document. I mean, KPIs for another one. I always— I remember writing a blog, I can't remember if I mentioned this last time, about recruitment isn't a numbers game. And recruitment is a numbers game. You know, I came out of quite a big agency and thought, I hate it, I hate the numbers, hate the number of calls, number of calls. But actually, you know, you can't improve anything unless you measure it. And as long as you measure the right things at the right time, because measurements create the culture, you know, we talk, for example, a lot about fill rate. Um, we talk a lot about NPS, so, and Charlotte's been able to see that from a different angle to me, and, you know, from a more operational kind of generic good business angle, as opposed to having years of being indoctrinated by other, you know, recruitment practices. Um, and so that's been really beneficial. I think where what we've seen over the last few years and what's supported growth is where where we measure stuff, like what we measure. Like, for example, look, if we measure— if we purely measure revenue, the behavior that that kicks out is sharkiness, right? You just want to— we're just going to do what we can to get revenue. If we purely measure CV sends, I'm going to send as many as I can and the quality will be shit. So it's real consideration of where we accelerate and push on what we should measure and what that behavior kicks out. We talk about that a lot.

Okay, just before— like, I want to go into that, but just quickly, you sort of highlighted it, but there'll be a lot of people listening to this that manage a team, lead a team, run a business, and have meetings. I, I can relate to that as well. So the fact that you led with that, clearly you feel that's had a big impact. So I just want to make sure that for people listening, they can maybe consider implementing some of these things. So how, how did your meetings run before Charlotte joined? So you said the meeting cadence, you mentioned the weekly reviews, minutes. Yeah, just give us the granular things on like how they run before and how they run now with Charlotte involved and, and why the net positive of that.

We'd have meetings, um, I'd probably, if I'm honest, um, you know, it would be quite easy for me to move them and now that never, you know, that doesn't, that wouldn't happen. And I can see the benefit in that, um, but I think, so for example we'd have meetings and we'd, we would maybe float around about subjects and you can kind of become obsessed about certain detail. And then, you know, the meeting runs over, blah, blah, blah. You kind of bring in the whole team into meetings where that's unnecessary. Maybe that was linked to the size at the time. But certainly Charlotte had come from an organization that, that had a kind of cadences in place. So the changes that we made were, for example, now we meet with the leaders every Monday morning at 9:30, so that's the leaders' meeting. Then the leaders go into their meetings 10:30 till 11:00. Everybody's got— there's an agenda, set agenda every week, same agenda. So, you know, whatever that might be, candidates at final, we talk about— what's really important to the meeting is we open it with value highlights and highlights from the week before and kind of people that have exhibited our values, you know, like shoutouts, value shoutouts. So that's, that's, you know, Monday morning. I know people, some people disagree with early Monday morning meetings, but that sets a really nice tone for, you know, it's not just straight into numbers. We talk, we're really transparent with business revenue over the whole business. So there's a transparency there, although it's not a— so we talk about it a lot. Um, we then, you know, we're going to talk about areas of focus for everybody and candidates at final. That messaging then gets transcended into the next, you know, the leaders going into their teams. Um, everybody, we do, um, monthly reviews with the consultants and then quarterly reviews with the leaders. Um, we do a biannual conference, um, And again, it links to cadence. We've got a set format for each thing. So we do mentoring sessions where some of the team have mentoring mentors within the business. But everybody knows that they've got this set, set number of times that we communicate as an, as an office. We've got two offices, one in Manchester, one in Lisbon. We communicate as an office, communicate on a 1-to-1 basis and communicate as a company. Um, I think that brings a calmness, right? People know what's expected and what's happening.

I appreciate sharing that. I find that super interesting because definitely guilty— I mean, there's 4 of us, but guilty of moving like one-on-ones and certain things. So there's like— but when, when— what I've definitely found, because I've recently implemented a different meeting which is like a specific meeting with sales, with marketing, with customer success and like when meetings go well, they— you feel really good about them in terms of like when you feel they're productive. Yeah, is that like— I think there's so many meetings happening across just businesses in general, but recruitment businesses, where people walk out of them and go, that was a fucking waste of time.

Yeah, I— we can't always stick to it, but I know I've got about 50 minutes of mental capacity when it comes to a meeting, um, and so I, I do struggle after that. And so I appreciate that other people must do as well. But I think that the bit where you get shit done is the action points and saying who's going to do what by when. And they're reviewed, you know, Charlotte and I, for example, will have a monthly board meeting and have action points from that and they're reviewed when we come back in. So yeah, I do. I mean, it sounds pretty boring, doesn't it? Meeting cadence.

But it's pretty impactful.

Yeah. Yeah.

So what I'm going to go into next then is how you've set up your business because it is, it is different. Okay, I would say in, in the—

I'm gonna take that as a compliment—

the BD function, the talent consultants, like how you set that up, I find that, that interesting.

Yeah.

Was it— when did it, when did it evolve like that? Was it in 2021 it started like that?

Um, I'd— I suppose when we set up, I'd always done the business development personally and had the consultants. Um, there was never I knew when I went into another agency, the bit that I hated about the job was the cold calling part that people wanted you to do. And I didn't want to do it. And I, you know, I just didn't have that in my life. I didn't want to do it. So I was really appreciative that actually people that might join us now, and if I'm selling this as a great opportunity for people to join and they suddenly landed with something that they don't want to do, I've never done before. We've got a slightly different model that we take on people from hospitality operations. Yeah. Um, so I was doing all the BD at first, and then as we grew, that became, you know, that was unsustainable. But I always knew that, um, if we got to a certain point, I would separate out that function. I knew it was a different skill. I knew that, um, the focus— I wanted the consultant's focus to be on client experience, existing client experience, and candidate experience. That's where I wanted them to spend their time to love what they do. And so, yeah, we've— we knew that that business development function was unique and needed to be done by a different team. So currently we have two head of client success, they're called now. We've had a tweak there, but they will be responsible for taking new clients through a sales cadence, and then they do what we call discovery calls. So they, at that point, kind of diagnose the challenges of the business, find out how we can help, and then that will get passed on to either the recruitment team, the biggest part of the business, or if, you know, if it's a training need that they've got, we can pass that on to— we've got a training division, or if it's an international challenge, so they need specific international talent, then it goes to that division. Um, you know, we're evolving it all the time. So we're now questioning as an organization whether that those two girls both called— we've got five Abbies in the business. Really?

Five? Fucking hell.

Um, so Abigail and Abby, spelled differently to me. Um, uh, whether they're going to have some involvement in account management of, of bigger clients.

And I think that's probably going to be the next step because the way that you've done it was they got a percentage of revenue for the first six months.

Yes.

Client that they brought on. Yeah, let's— I, I love this approach, by the way, because I just love the fact that even the fact that you've got discovery calls in there. Yeah, like so many recruiters don't have that step. Yeah, because, you know, my world's training, and we've done a bunch of training stuff on this, and a lot of people don't do that. Because what I really love, what you just mentioned there, is they're trying to diagnose problems.

Yeah.

Right? And a lot feels better to do that. Yeah, but also it's giving you— yes, enabling you to have an opportunity to truly understand what their problems are so you can, you know, offer the best solution.

Yeah. And we've got to— from day dot, we've got to come across like we're experts. And if we start talking about vacancies and roles, what jobs you got, you know, it's transactional and we'll be treated like shit. I am, you know, and, um I've— when I've been— when we've, when we've not had a great client relationship, it's because, you know, reflecting, um, it's because I've gone in as some kind of subservient yes sir, no sir, but it, you know, we'll do anything, we'll work on whatever jobs you want. Um, and now I have a totally different attitude to that. Yeah.

Um, honestly, I love it. I think this is one step in the process that if recruiters were supported in effectively implementing this, it would have a big impact.

100%.

Like a soundbite I've said multiple times on here, and she always dropped me a note saying thanks for mentioning the pod, but I think it sums up perfectly. So we had, um, uh, we had a girl, she was at the— she was on the panel of our Manchester event, Amber Penrose, right?

I watched it, she was fab.

Yeah, so she did a training session with us, and what I always remember saying is what made her go from the £400 grand villa to an £800-900 grand villa was she stopped chasing vacancies and she only chased problems. Problems. Yeah, right. And like we spoke about her process where the first step is that discovery call, and that's where you're saying, look, yes, I understand you have roles, vacancies, we can talk about them, but first, in order for me to be honest with you and advise where I can help, I need to understand where you're at, how we got here, why, why is it important you get this person, what happens if you don't get this person, what have you tried so far, what hasn't worked, what has worked. Like you need to understand, you've got to stop people talking about the vacancy.

Actually, you've got to push back because the client might want to jump into that. But you've got, you know, we definitely find we want to push back and go just— the other reason we push back is because we've, we've got two different teams of people that they're going to have a conversation with. So they're going to have a discovery call and then they go on to have a role brief with the recruitment team. And we're really conscious that it can't be telling the same thing twice. So we've got to really separate. Okay, discovery is, is more strategic. You know, what, how can we help? And then role brief is, right, okay, tell me about the behaviors and responsibilities for this job.

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Yeah.

And the, the process is they have a sales cadence that they follow that enables them to have the best opportunity, the best chance of booking a discovery call.

Yeah.

How long is often a discovery call?

45 minutes.

45 minutes. So they're asking for 45 minutes discovery call. Um, and then curious then with what you just said, after that, yeah, obviously they're then recommending the solution, right? Whether that be, well, from what I've learned today, these are the reasons why you should speak to our recruitment team and why they're best positioned to support you with your challenges, or this, I'm going to introduce you to Abby, who's head of training. From what you said today, this is why I'm doing that.

Yeah.

In between that, on the recruitment side.

Yeah.

Because a lot of people won't have a training division. Like, are you having terms signed in between that?

The BD team agree the terms.

In discovery?

Yes. Or they, they will say at the end, so they'll talk through our process and at the end of the call say, I'm going to send you the terms over. Um, and then they'll have that discussion.

Yeah, I mean, they do that in discovery. Yes, I was thinking that because they're not going to have that job briefing if— surely if you haven't—

we've learned the lesson the hard way. Yeah, we don't go any further than that until we've agreed terms.

Okay. Um, all right, so if I'm listening right now, the often pushback that I've heard from people, um, was Yeah, but like, I've got a client, I've got a company that has vacancies. Yeah, that I can start working on. Yeah, and they need help with them. Like, I'm not gonna miss out if I say, hey, hey, whoa, wait, wait, let's have a discovery call first and then we'll talk about the roles. Like, I might miss out.

I'll challenge them on fill rate, right? Because our fill rate, I think, is significantly higher than a lot of other contingent models. You know, we're hoping next year to hit 60% fill rate.

At the moment it's 45%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's definitely higher than—

Yeah. So it's about the quality and it's about how you— if you cut corners, you know, that behavior is mirrored by the client and you will be treated like a recruiter, not as a partner.

Yeah.

And I don't want to be treated like a recruit, you know, just to fill this for me. I, I want to offer a professional service, and that's about taking time to, you know, it's, it's a significant cost for somebody. I don't want to cock it up, so let's do it properly.

So just two, two final bits then. Um, one What's the typical, uh, like, what's— what have you found to be the most effective agenda for that discovery call?

Um, so, um, we've done some training recently, so we, we talk, um, about— we go through success criteria for the business and for their business. We talk very little. We don't really talk about us at all. We'll talk maybe at the end for 1 or 2 minutes. Like, what I think is a big change, you know, when I've— when I was in-house and had recruiters come to me and they get the bloody deck out and you're like, I don't really give a shit about your values or your, you know, how nice you— how good a deck you can put together, you know, like a 20-page deck. Like, come on. So we talk the whole— all the steps really are about their business and the challenges they're facing. What's their vision? What, what experience they've had before with other recruitment businesses, why they're at that challenging point, and talking about then how we might be able to help them. And then I suppose we then create a bit of a sense of urgency with putting a plan in, in terms of, okay, well, this is— if you wanted somebody, if you wanted this in place by then, this would be the reverse engineering, what dates we would need to start Our process is pretty laid out as well. We know that it takes us between 8 and 10 working days to create a shortlist. We know that on average people have between 4 and 6 weeks' notice, so we can pretty much predict when we can— we know that interview stage takes 2 weeks. Yeah. So that's a really good kind of way of putting that out. And then, you know, we don't hide away from the fact at the end that the client might need to go and do something like write a job description, like, you know, and that's— we then summarize the call and talk about what we need to go and do and what they need to go and do. Yeah. And look, we're changing this all the time, but we've learned this the hard way of doing— me really getting really excited about a new sexy brand or— yeah, in hospitality, that's hard as well because Yeah, as a customer, you know these brands and you think, oh God, that sounds great. I really want to work with them. And then you realize you've won a fricking 4 agencies and they've got a big direct team. And you think, actually, this is, this is not a great client in terms of the commercials.

It also helps you to understand, like, have more clarity on that. Is it, is this a great company to work with?

Yeah, we do. We're in the process of the moment of qualifying clients internally. That's not easy to do without knowing, until you've started working with them. We don't know how great they're going to be at communication or how shit they're going to be. What we can do is qualify jobs fairly. We can qualify them by location, culture fit, people culture, salary. So we do have a measure of qualifying jobs and we, as a business, think that we should be spending our time on jobs that score over 7 out of 10.

Say that again.

7 out of 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't always do that because sometimes that we can fill a 3 out of 10 job and we really want the client, or we've got capacity. So there's lots of different factors at play, but I think having this consultant mindset of, okay, if I need to prioritize my time, I should prioritize it on a 7 out of 10.

Yeah. Okay, now I appreciate you sharing that. So very much focus about them. And yeah, the reason for that is you're not going to be able to come up with a solution if you're talking most of the time, right? So the, the, just on that, what have you found? Because it's something I was looking at because this is my process as well. Discovery call, again, it's very much about them. I need to understand the problems, why we're here, these things, what we tried so far, what isn't working. And then from that I can then say, well, from what I've learned today, these are the reasons why I think it'd be worth our time to like progress to the next step. But what have you found to be like your, um, what do I want to say To be fair, actually, I was going to ask you around your, like, conversion from discovery to then signing, because you've added that extra step.

Yeah.

Do you know that figure, or like that conversion of done a discovery call, they've signed terms, now they're a new client?

I don't, I don't know an exact measure, but I would say the reason we start measuring something when we've got a gut feeling that there's a challenge, and I know it'll be above 90%. Yeah, you know, it's really good whether that converts into revenue, you know, sometimes, you know, it's different.

Yeah, but I think that's because the reason why I'm asking that is like people might think, oh, that's just like not worth the hassle, I'd rather just go straight into the vacancy, right? So if you're saying majority of the time will sign terms, we're not saying that every single time that's going to be, you know, 10 out of 10 job, but more often than not, even though we've added that extra step, whereas another recruiter just goes straight in, Abi, tell me about these, you know, general manager jobs Sounds great. Going to that.

Yeah.

Okay, fine.

We are up against that. We're, you know, and that is especially when we've come down to London, we're up against that more and it's really hard to trust your process. Um, but I've got to believe that's the right thing to do because I've got to believe that we want better client relationships and we want better jobs to work on.

Yeah. And for those of you listening, you can showcase that by your process. Yeah, I found that like if I, if I take you through a sales process and you're impressed, and like, you can, you can, you know, stand out just by implementing like a really solid process even before you start working together, I could make your perception of me— wow, these guys are really impressive, what is it going to be like when we start working with each other? Yeah, you know, exactly.

And if somebody wants to do it quick and dirty, then maybe they're not the right client for you anyway.

Yeah. So just fun final bit, I know you've gone grounded there, but that will be helpful for people. Um, what's, what's the, like, what's like the core message around why it's worth your time, Abby, the hiring manager, to give me that 45 minutes? Like, what, what have you found to be the most effective message?

Because, oh, in terms of what I would say to a client?

Yeah, because like we're talking about, especially now you're facing in London, like, I haven't got time for that. Like, let's just go straight into these jobs, I've got sign-off. Like, let's just get into it. I just spoke to these guys down the road. Like, they've told me that they can work on these. I only want to speak with one other agency. Let's just get straight into that. And you're going to— whoa, wait, hang on a minute. Let's—

yeah, I'm saying, look, we, we want to understand that, that you're right for us and we're right for you. Um, and it's setting your— you know, it's setting that messaging out that you are equal, that you're both coming— your time is as valuable as their time. And you want to make sure that if you're going to work in this contingent fashion, that you want to know that they, they're a decent operator or that they, you know, operate in a certain way. So although you— look, I understand you might not say that we want to work out whether you're a good client, but that's, that's ultimately what you mean.

Yeah. Okay, cool. And then, so then passed over to the recruitment team, and then you've got talent consultants that speak to clients that manage processes but are then entirely focused on speaking to candidates, growing, uh, getting the shortlist together, presenting them.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. So curious then, how many— I don't know, this might not be something you measure. I wasn't asking you—

stop asking me shit that I don't measure loads.

Sorry, sorry. So I'm gonna ask you about that. I want to go into the experience, but just final thing.

Okay, okay.

Two people, like, what— how many discovery calls have these people typically like what, what's ended up being, um, in a week?

Um, they— I don't know what their actual target is, but they will have a target. Um, I, I imagine they're doing between 5 and 10 a week.

Okay, cool. Nice. Experience then, let's talk about that. Yay! So, and so I found it so interesting and love the fact that one of the core KPIs is NPS.

Yes.

So obviously you're measuring, and that's a, you know, a way for you to measure client and candidate experience.

Yeah.

Um, so do you want to explain NPS for people that— because we use NPS in our business.

Yeah. Um, so we, we've— we chose to use it because we work in hospitality and it's a real, um, key indicator. It's ultimately the, the answer to 'would you recommend us to a friend?' Um, and if you score 9 or 10 You counted, if you're 7 or 8, you're passive and taken away, and if you're 5 and 6, you're detracted. So, we thought it was a relevant measure because our clients would understand it. We approached it from the fact that we can easily, if we want an ego measure, we can record MPS at placement stage. So, we can ask candidates, how did you find us when we found you a great new job? And we can ask clients, how did you find us when we found you somebody? But actually, that is not the real way to measure, you know, to measure feedback. And if we're putting so much time and effort and energy into consultant training and development around experience, we need to measure at different points. So we measure it throughout the candidate journey, whether you get a job with us or not. So as soon as you've been put into any kind of process, you start, you start receiving feedback surveys. And as a client, as soon as you have gone through the discovery and role brief, so before you've ever had a candidate, we start asking you what you think. Um, yeah. Okay.

Love that.

So both our candidate and our client are over 90. Yeah. Which we keep going back and going, this can't be. And I get people who fill out the survey, it's polarized. You either fill out a survey because you love a service or you hate a service. And I think we, you know, we do a good job and we became, you know, we're obsessed about this perception of recruiters and making sure that we're offering, you know, a really valuable service to our clients. And I know it sounds corny, but, you know, it is when you're talking to a candidate, the most joy you can get is finding them a job that improves their life and well-being and you know, we've got, we've got a team of people that that's what they want to do.

So just to paint a picture then, we've spoken a lot about the client side, so let's just focus on the candidate side for a sec, where oftentimes it can— the experience can be like, the ball can be dropped.

Yeah.

So if I go through a process with you guys, yeah, um, I get, uh, I, uh, get registered, I'm talking to you about my experience, you're telling me, you're qualifying me—

I'd never use the term registered.

Okay, sorry. Yeah, you're qualifying me, um, You then end up telling me about one of the jobs that you're working on with one of your company— with one of the companies you're working with. And you then decide to go, yeah, you know what, Hishem, I think we'd really like to put you forward to this one. Yeah. So then you put me forward, I then get an interview request, I then have that interview, I then don't get progressed to the next stage. Where— how many times am I going to be asked, would you recommend 68 people to a colleague or friend?

You've probably been asked 3 times by then, but if you fill it in, you don't get a repeat survey.

So once you filled it in, you don't get asked again?

You get— it's survey dependent. So we've got like a cadence of what you— you know, you wouldn't get asked the same question, same survey twice if you filled it in. But just to go back slightly, look, we treat— until this year, We've actually spent the last 2 years focusing on candidate experience. So, people, candidates approaching us have a discovery call as well. So, their discovery call is about career motivators, what's going on with them, you know, what they're, a bit about what their experience is, really diagnosing their problem. So, when we diagnose their problem, then we can work out whether we've got solutions for them. And I think that is, that we, we, we're transparent. And sometimes we say to candidates, look, I'm sorry, you're great, but I don't think we've got something for you right now. We're going to, you know, we create a 68 locker for you. So we create a space on the system. I mean, it's an ATS where we've got your motivators in there. And if we have anything that comes up, we'll be in touch. So at that point, we've not raised expectations that say we're going to come back to you next week. So that's— so I think that's the first point. Second point is then If we, we're always understanding from our client discovery call what our, what the selling points of that business is, and they've got to match those motivators. So we're kind of diagnosing, right, okay, could this company fit, fit this candidate? And so we send them away to look at a role. At that point, we then do what we call a face-to-face. So we would then do like a range of competency-based questions based on what the client's looking for. And so they've spent Following that, there's another bit, and I'm convinced that this is like a key differentiator in terms of candidate experience, this interview preparation. You know, we're not sending an email, your time and, you know, who you're meeting. It is kind of really in-depth of, right, tell me what you think about, what do you love about this business? So we're doing a bit of mock interviewing, or, you know, I think it's like it's coaching, it's coaching people. And I think that does set, we've got to find a way to set people to set us apart as a candidate service. We've got to give candidates a reason to come back to us and keep using us. And actually, if we're just going to fly them through a process and go, there you go, meet that person, why the hell would they ever come back to us? So we've got to protect that candidate experience and say, look, whether you've got a job through us or not, we hope you've had a great experience. And that interview preparation, I think, is really important. We spend around You might laugh at this, around 2 hours with every candidate before they get to a client.

What, for discovery on average? 2 hours?

Yeah. Oh yeah, I know.

Yeah, but you weren't— you can't be doing that unless you're like— what's being the outcome of that is like positive, net positive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And look, could we make efficiencies there? You know, I challenge you to go and look at our reviews and see if we should be spending any less than 2 hours.

I'm gonna ask you then I feel like you've just answered that. I was going to ask you, like, any— anything— like, I feel like it's more about— I feel like you would have got to that process that you just described by, like, making slight changes, small processes.

Yeah, fucking it up, do it again.

Yeah, exactly. So, so I was going to ask you, even though being aware it's probably a bundle of, like, small changes over time, yeah, that's then resulted in that, and then you're sort of maybe happy for it for a period, and it's like, right, what bit change that. I was going to ask you, like, what have been some of the, like, big levers you've pulled that you think has sort of really had an impact on the 90% plus? It seems like you've really taken your interview coaching properly.

Yeah, definitely. Um, definitely.

What about not getting a job? I feel like that's where oftentimes the experience can be dropped.

Yeah, so feedback. Look, I think the consultants see their relationship with their— or the business sees their relationship with the candidate as a kind of lifetime relationship. Um, so that is, they might go through a short process with us, but that's, you know, this— they're still part of our network, you know, and, and we see that as a— that we're trying to grow this big network. And, and, you know, we don't— again, it's not transactional. We don't want a candidate to come in and then go to somebody else when they're thinking about job hunting. And in hospitality, that happens relatively often. You know, we want them to pick up the phone to us. We want them to think, right, I've got a career coach and I've got someone that's my pal that I'm going to pick up the phone and talk to. But then that is a cultural thing about our team. And I think, you know, maybe a separate conversation about how we live our values and say what we do and don't do as an organisation that makes sure the team can deliver that to candidates. It's how we all act, it's how Charlotte and I behave in the business that will, you know, and how we talk about other people, how we talk about candidates, how we talk about clients. You know, behavior breeds behavior, and, and I think we've got to be so careful that we're living our values, and then the rest of the team will do that via candidate conversations.

Yeah, I wanna, I wanna ask you, as you come to the end here, like, how, yeah, how you because you're clearly so passionate about what you were just talking about. Yeah, how— what you like, what you believe you both do that really enables that to happen, you know, 90% of the time. Yeah, but just quickly, I think it's worth highlighting with what some people might be like, oh my God, 2 hours before, like, for every candidate, right? But like I said, you— there's no way you'll be doing that unless you see like net positive. Yeah, personally, I think Something I always remember, um, it's someone you should be connected with actually. I think you really get along. He recruits in the FMCG space, and again, we— I remember when he did like a training session with us, we were talking about how to consistently generate candidate referrals.

Yeah.

And where he's had the most success is making sure the candidate experience is world-class for people that don't get a job. Yeah, and some of his biggest customers have come from— Abby didn't get a job at BrewDog that I was in the process before. However, she then went to Honest Burgers, and she's someone— bring them up again. But anyway, she then went there and was like, Rich didn't help me get a job, however, world-class experience. Rich, can you help me at Honest Burgers? I'm assuming you've got a lot of stories like that.

We've got— look, we've been honest, we've tried a load of refer a friend and Do we have a load of people that we've paid out the bloody vouchers to? No. But I think actually there's loads of, um, just it's happened, you know, without our knowledge, just saying, oh, so-and-so told me to speak to you, so-and-so told me to speak to you. That happens so many times a day to all of us.

Yeah. So look, for those of you listening, what I take from that is like, like you said, it would be really easy to ping out a survey. Abby's got a new job, she's got you know, some 68 People merch, like they've sorted out all that. Abby, like, would you recommend us to a friend or colleague? Oh yeah, absolutely. But it's the people that aren't, you know, fortunate to get the job, like what experience you're creating for those people, because they could be your biggest detractors.

Yeah.

And your biggest promoters.

And we don't always get it right.

Yeah.

And but it's how you react when you don't get it right. And what we do, you know, we could say fuck them, you know, they don't know, you know. And actually, we don't— we obsess over the ones that we don't get right, and that's what changes process, and that's what changes experience.

So with all this being so important, that's what I just wanted to ask and get your thoughts on, is like, as you, as you grow, I know you're very much focused now on getting the most out of your existing people rather than worried about headcount and stuff. But still, there's a lot more— like, I feel like the stuff that you've spoken about today, people listening are going to feel a lot more confident to be able to roll out for it to be consistently executed if they're like have a smaller team and, you know, they can influence it by proximity maybe. Whereas like you're, you'll probably be on that now. So what you were talking about, how, you know, you, you talk like, um, how you and Charlotte talk people lit, like talk to me about how you feel like you enable those to be the standards. Yeah, like how they're, how those, how they've become the minimum standards. Because there's a lot that you've spoken about which I can imagine, like you said, you lose sleep over because it only takes one person. Yeah, to be like, fuck, I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do that today. I'll just— I'm sure Abby won't know. Like, do you know what I mean? Yeah, that the likelihood of that happening is more and more.

Yeah. And I think, look, the culture in a business is created by the people operating it. And we're, you know, Charlotte and I are always conscious of that. We've got to do what we said we're going to do, and we've got to live and breathe those values. And we do have— look, whether people think values are a load of shit or not, um, they work for us. And when we've got— and they work for the team, the team get excited about them, we reward them, we talk about them, you know, we, um, highlight them at all our conferences and meetings. And we have little crappy awards for, you know, the Value Master of the Week. And so they're alive, you know, in the business. And we take the piss out of each other. It's not very expert, is it? One of our values is expert. So, you know, they're alive. And I think that, A, you've got to recruit the right people who share those in the first place. But then because we're not teaching old dog new tricks, you know, we're not taking people from having bad habits, we're creating habits. So they're learning a totally new skill when they come to us because they come in from operations then. I think that's when we've had real success. Um, whether I should say or not, when it hasn't worked out and we've taken people from other recruitment businesses, um, because it's too hard to unpick.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. Yeah, because the people that you're hiring are coming, they've got the hospitality and industry context, but they're coming entirely open-minded with no evidence on how recruitment should be.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a blank canvas in terms of recruitment, so why would they now do it any other way?

Yeah. Um, how do you— like, I do understand that probably lead domino to having those standards consistently being met is hiring the right people. Yes, it's probably the lead domino. So with you being so— how, how do you uncover people that align with your values in the interview process? Um, I feel like that's hard.

Yeah, it's hard. And you kind of always think, God, if How can we gawk at recruitment as recruiters? Like, I think you've got to have a really robust process. We— part of our process is they have to present for 10 minutes on anything they want, anything they're passionate about. And that shows loads of, you know, we've had really fun stuff, really weird stuff.

What stage is that at?

Second or third, depending on whether they've met both of us or— but everything's face to face. Um, and yeah, God, there's a lot— so much gut feeling goes into recruitment, isn't there? But, um, hopefully we, we've also, you know, got some pretty— we've had some, you know, proper recruitment training in terms of competency-based, right? Okay, you know, do you exhibit these values? And, and talking to people. So we'd probably spend, you know, I might spend an hour with somebody, Charlotte might spend an hour with someone, the team gets involved, um, and then they present some in 10 minutes on whatever wacky thing they want to present on. But then there's always a bit of gut feeling, right?

Yeah. So what are you going into next year then? You know, you have intentions to keep growing the important business numbers.

We can say revenue. Revenue.

What, what are you like being laser focused on? Like, what are you and both you and Charlotte got really top of mind? You said you had a strategy day recently, like What are the things that are really top of mind that you're really going to double down on, stay close to?

NPS, client NPS. I feel as though this— the tables, we've spent the last couple of years really focusing on candidates, and I feel as though, you know, that's— I'm sure that's— other businesses are finding that, that now we really need to laser focus down on our client experience and kind of obsess over that for a bit. So client experience and fill rate. Fill rate is a— however you look at fill rate, there's no downsides to it. So if you can improve that, like I said before, if you— there's a negative behavior attached to really pushing a certain KPI, for example, CV send. But with fill rate, there's no negative behavior.

Yeah. If you really push that, it's only net positive.

Yeah. Yeah.

So true. That's actually really— that is one of those metrics. That's so true.

Yeah. And so we're going to really focus on that. We're going to, you know, focus on how we negotiate exclusivity. And how we get that fill rate from 45 to 60 without reduction in job number. So that's the big— that's the strat. That took us 9 hours.

9 hours just to walk out with those two things. Job to fill ratio is how to get there.

I love that. Obviously there's so many things that affect fill rate.

Yeah.

You know, your consultant training, your— well, everything. Everything affects fill rate, doesn't it?

Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah, but I do— you are right. I think it's a great North Star metric, isn't it?

Yeah, I hope so. And it's weird, it's something that we don't discuss with clients because you sound shit, right? If you only fill 45% of the jobs you get, it sounds shit. If you only fill— um, so it's not really a metric that we would discuss with clients, but I know that we're significantly great, you know, better at it than some of the businesses that I've taken the metric from. Um, but yeah, it feels like our internal North Star right now.

Yeah, like we've, we've helped some companies, like that's been like a metric that they've really wanted to improve with training. Yeah. When we're doing discovery calls and identifying those pains, like for a lot of these people it's like 15%. Yeah. Job to— is their job to fill ratio.

Okay, that makes me feel good.

I mean, that's like, we're with like 45 different recruitment companies. I'm not saying that all that, but like quite a few times it's been around 15-20% and they want to get that up from a mental health of your consultants capacity as well.

I mean, look, I'm always conscious that when we fill 45% of our roles, it means we don't fill 55% of them. And you can't analyze one without the other. You've got to find out why you're not filling the 55%. And that the mental challenge of doing fucking 55% of your work and it not leading to anything is depressing. And I don't, you know, I want to level that out for the consultants.

Yeah. But I think also, I know you were saying you may not want to shout from the rooftops that we are fill rates 45%, but if you're communicating to— if you're able to articulate to, uh, potential clients and customers like, this is the evidence that we've gathered so far as to why job to— the job to fill ratio is normally this. If we implement these things or get really good at this with you, yeah, it should actually mean that, you know, 70% of the time we're like, we're going to be successful for you.

Yeah.

So like, if you really think about that, you're only going to be able to find things that then you can use that in your process, right? Like, this is why we need to have the discovery call. This is why we do this. This is why this is important to us, because this is the benefit for you.

Yeah. Yeah. And it is laying out, you know, back to your challenge about your process is laying out and setting an expectation. Like I keep seeing on LinkedIn, no one cares about your process and they don't. It's true that I don't think they do, but I think You've got to set expectations and say, we're going to do this. We're going to, you know, we need to— we need another 40 minutes of your time to talk about the intricacies of the role. We need— because that's— we know from our measures that that is the best possible chance of us. Yeah.

No, no, I don't— it depends. It depends on the framing. Like, no one cares about your process, Abi, if you're talking about your process just because it's your process.

Yeah. And it's a process.

Yeah. And I do care about your process if you're saying listen to, like, this is our process because it gives— this is how it benefits you. Yeah, yeah, it's just the framing, right?

Yeah, and it is just unframing. That is, I think as a business, I'm really conscious that we never— we're selfless. So whenever we're talking to a candidate or a client, it's always got to be— we've got to act in their best interest, not our own. And any conversation that we're having, if we start talking about, oh, we need to get that interview in earlier, we need to, um, this needs to happen, and and it's selfish. It's about us wanting to hit a target, our revenue. We fucked it.

Yeah, yeah. It's been a pleasure, honestly. Love the way that you're approaching building your business. Like, I could speak about this a lot. I actually— I've really enjoyed that. So hopefully everyone listening, I think there's loads of takeaways there. Definitely things about process, whether that be meeting cadences, discovery calls.

The team will be laughing that I'm coming on to talk about process.

No, I, I, I think honestly there's so many things, and I've I think kudos to you. Keep, keep doing what you're doing. And like, oh yeah, I just, I just love the way you're approaching your growing your recruitment business. So thank you. Thank you.

What a pleasure. Thanks very much.