Jason Rumney - The Do’s and Don’ts of the USA market, and the power of automation

Jason, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Hishem. How you doing?

Good. It's been a little while. I haven't been the best at get— making this happen, so I'm excited it's happening now. Um, obviously for everyone listening, why I was really, really keen and excited to, to get you booked in and have this conversation with you was, as I'm sure you've obviously really picked up on and, and seen. There's definitely a real trend right now in terms of a lot of UK-based companies expanding, growing, going over to the States.

Mm-hmm.

And obviously, uh, obviously in preparation for this, you told me that you actually set up your US entity in 2014. So a bit before maybe the ma— major trend of, uh, UK recruitment companies. So really excited to, to dig into, yeah, the journey over the last 9 years with your own recruitment business and have a real focus on the American part of that journey. I guess where we would like to start is the million-dollar, million-pound question, which I'm sure you've thought a lot about since growing and hiring for your own business. So I'd love to hear your take on what you believe sort of makes up a highly successful modern-day recruiter, the characteristics, the traits that you feel they may share in common.

Cool. So thanks for having me on, first of all. Um, I think just on that question specifically, I think I've seen over the years from myself kind of joining, uh, an ex-S3, uh, kind of business owner at italent, where most of it, um, used to be kind of all about money. People that were money hungry would be great at recruitment. I think over the years I've started to see more kind of introverts and extroverts that can, given the right training and time, can actually work really well in recruitment. So I think some kind of words that I'd say that come to mind are people that are disciplined, people with a 360 mindset, people that like to network, but also people who have a passion for the markets that they're actually in are people that I've seen do really well and are really successful in industry.

360 mindset, tell me about that. What do you mean by that?

So just someone that's always looking for new business, doesn't matter where they are, Um, can be on the train, can be at different events, can be with family, can be with friends. Um, but just having that kind of always looking to network. Um, because sometimes the best connections we have are with friends and family, uh, and we actually don't go out to them as, as often as we maybe should do.

Strangest environment that you picked up a client then? I have to ask you that, I'm sorry. You started with like train party, like, I don't know, any story, any story there out of interest? I had to ask.

Um, that's going back a bit. Most of it is probably, probably when I'm drunk at a club sometimes. I used to always carry— yeah, I used to always have, um, kind of business cards with me. Yeah, exactly, old school way of doing it. Um, so yeah, I, I used to kind of always carry them around and most likely picked up. Um, actually one of our biggest clients was from someone that was an event and they were outside in the smoking area and just happened to talk to someone and get connected.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, I had to ask that with what you said.

That's all good.

What I was going to say, so I guess before we go into the entrepreneurial journey, just always like to ask this because so many people fall into industry. I think way more people should be choosing the industry and there's a big part why I started this podcast. So I'd love to just to just hear your take on like what, what a career and yeah, a long time in recruitment has given you, your life professionally, personally. What, what has it given you that maybe you least expected?

Well, I guess I, I kind of expected gray hairs and, and almost being bored from it, but I guess that's probably most people. Uh, I, I think that the, the attraction to recruitment, I think, um, most people kind of— well, I certainly kind of fell into recruitment like most. Uh, it's not something that I was looking to do during university, but I think it definitely has opened my eyes and ears to being able to travel the world in terms of what we do, and just starting from a junior recruiter into eventually kind of running my own company. Um, so I think with that has kind of lots of challenges, and I think the, the fact that the industry is so fast-paced, that there's so much to offer, uh, the fact that you can kind of go from, uh, having zero experience to 2 to 3 years experience of being able to be approached to be headhunted by companies in a different country, a different continent. Uh, you can't really get that with most other industries. Usually you have to wait, uh, for someone to come knocking at your doors and have at least 5 to 10 years of experience. But I think that the, yeah, the incredible thing about recruitment is you can kind of, yeah, go from one to the next very quickly. Um, all about hard work usually.

Okay, so let's go into this entrepreneurial journey of yours then. So I'm gonna just start by just framing it up for people, and then please, please correct me or just let me know if I've missed something or whatever. But I think with these types of things, it always helps just give people a bit of context.

Sure.

So in terms of like where you are today, I think obviously the number that I put down is like, yeah, you're like 46, 47 people. In terms of headcount-wise, right?

Yes.

Um, and I think obviously you've been on this trajectory of growth, um, obviously during and post-COVID, as what I got down here is like pre-COVID you're around the sort of 20-head headcount mark, right? So obviously founded— were you the solo founder of yours?

Yes, yes. So yeah, I was the solo founder and brought in a business partner, um, who actually was my accountant and actually a close friend who's non-recruitment focused. Yeah. Um, so, um, yeah, he comes more from an ops kind of legal finance sector, and he was going to sell his company. We're always planning on doing something, but he was going to sell his last company that he was CEO of, um, pending the Brexit result. And after that didn't go through, he was like, okay, now's a good time to join. Um, it was mainly kind of when I moved across from the UK to the US, which was—

yeah, that's interesting—

was 2015.

2015, yeah.

Ever since that, um, kind of time, we, we kind of work like chalk and cheese, and, um, yeah, it works really well.

So when did you start the company?

2013.

2013, yeah.

Okay, cool. 2013.

I had 2009 for some reason, don't know where I got that from.

I think 2009 was when I got into recruitment.

Oh, okay, right. Yeah, got you. Okay, so So yeah, start. So, okay, founded the business 2013. Like you said, you then actually moved to the States in 2015, right? Specifically LA. And then, so that's a good milestone there. And then obviously in terms of like the worlds that you're recruiting, obviously what I've got down here, we've got tech engineering, go-to-market team, data science analytics. And then obviously you've got another brand that you recently invested in, renewable energy. And then what I also jotted down here is, obviously in terms of like the type of business that you do, but you don't just do contingent recruitment. You've got people that do 360 recruitment, but yeah, you've got RPO, you've got different solutions that you obviously offer to your clients and your customers. Um, so in terms of the actual US market, so were you obviously serving that or focusing on that before you went over in 2015? So how long have you been operating and doing business in the States?

So I guess in terms of, um, the state, so I got into crypto and blockchain super early, so I'm talking 2013. Um, I was hiring mostly across fintech companies in the UK and Europe. Um, saw a gap in the market, started reaching out to companies in San Francisco and LA, which is where most of the hubs were. So a lot of them were raising tons of money. Didn't see many competitors and was doing that for a while of kind of reaching out to companies, still had UK customers, um, and was— had a small team in, in the UK there. But when I started to see the kind of the, the salary ranges and, and the money that these people had, I was like, okay, cool, uh, I need to kind of get some momentum here. And within 18 months, I, I ended up, yeah, moving over to the US. So, um, I think I put up a message on LinkedIn and someone that I used to work with was actually in Toronto, um, and looking to move over to California. So set up the company with him over there, um, and had a small team, uh, that, that didn't work out, um, for various reasons within like 12, 18 months. And, uh, decided to, yeah, kind of move away from that. Um, but yeah, it was, it was in LA. I actually wanted to move to San Francisco. My wife wanted to live in LA, we chose LA probably more for the sun, but also if I was going to be hiring recruiters over from the UK, which we did, um, it's probably a better place for people to be based just because of the sun and it's probably slightly cheaper than San Francisco.

Yeah, sure. Okay. So you'd be, so basically been, so that means you've been operating, doing business, all these sorts of things for what's that, nearly what, 7 years then?

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, okay, cool. Amazing. And then final thing that would just be useful, what did you do turnover-wise last year, last financial year?

I think we're like 12 to 13 million.

Okay, awesome. So like, what I love about this, I'm so excited to get your thoughts on this in terms of like how you've evolved your business in the American market and these things, because a lot of people just starting this or in their first year, right? So, I guess like, let's firstly just focus on more on like the traction. So what I mean by that, on like you building a brand there, doing business there, and building a loyal client base, all these types of things. And then let's then segue into how Jason has gone about building a recruitment business over there, the culture, how you've attracted people and those things. So when it comes to, I guess, the traction side of things, I guess the first thing that would just be good to get your perspective on was like, yeah, what the go-to-market strategy looked like. So I guess, like, I think obviously you said that you were doing, you were doing, you're reaching out to people while she was in the UK and then you went over there. But like, what was thinking, thinking back? And then I'm going to ask you what you would do differently, but how did you approach it? What was the go-to-market strategy then in 2015 or before around then?

So I think it doesn't really change from one market to the next. In my personal opinion. Uh, I've always had a great network, always been able to kind of pick up business at conferences or whatever, but really speccing out candidates is, is, is how people grow market. Um, especially kind of when I was initially kind of reaching out to crypto companies. Um, like I said, I saw a lot of these companies raising and, um, was working with a ton of people. Um, so it wasn't really any of the clients that I picked up were UK clients. Who had just set up in the US. It was more me doing the old BD methods I used to do and picked up clients that way, but in the US.

Okay, fair enough. And then from what you know now about the market, anything you do differently? Does that still work? I know there's not like a silver bullet, but if you're, if you're, um, speaking to someone about growing a desk from scratch in the US now, what would be the sort of strategy? What would be some of the key things that you think would be key to, to make sure that it's successful, or you have the best chance of it being successful?

I think that's a part of it. Um, I, I think if you look at the, the people that we have here in Teletext, uh, you'll see a lot of our, uh, recruiters generally have like 5 to 15 years of recruiting experience. So with that generally comes with people that have been building markets over the last 5 to 15 years, and still start speccing works, going to conferences, works Uh, but generally we have a— we work with a lot of VCs and we plug in there. So we have a lot of inbound coming into us from referrals from VCs, referrals from some of the founders. One of our clients who I worked as— worked in back in 2014, um, he was like a 20-year-old kid, uh, Stanford dropout. He— his company I think has raised over $900 million. They're now Series E, uh, valuation, and, and He's— I think he's on the Forbes list of like one of the top 5 billionaires, um, in the world right now. We've hired for tons of his companies. He keeps on doing intros. Um, so it's stuff like that. A lot of these people are super, super smart that we work with in the US. So Y Combinator-esque and people from Harvard, Stanford, etc., who— some of the brightest kind of brains out there. So, um, yeah, I think that's kind of come just down to growth that we've had and just from our name being around for so long. I think a lot of people kind of like to work with people that they know or been referred more so maybe in the, in the US than in the UK.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So what you touched on a bit on there, but like for people listening, it may be— let's be really frank and honest here, like it takes time, uh, to be in a position where someone like that is, is making consistent introductions. It takes you proving and delivering how good your service is, these things. But I guess from your experience, for people listening that want to get into that position where they've got some really good relationships with people that refer them the back, that they're someone that they should be speaking to, what, what are the principles to get into that point? If I'm someone that wants to be, yeah, getting in front of these VCs and, and building relationship and getting these people to refer me to companies that I can support, like, what are the principles to, to get into that point where I'm then being the person they consistently refer.

I think under-promise and over-deliver. I kind of often go back to that. Um, and not saying you can do something if you can't, um, because people kind of quickly get found out in the market. And, um, I live and die by that kind of often. And certainly with the amount of work that we, that we take on, it's great if you pick up a client, but if you can't deliver into it, it doesn't really matter because they're never going to kind of come back and use you. So, um, We, I think the way that we generally work and we use a lot of tech and automation to help do our work, but with the majority of our clients, we have Slack channels with them. We're not just plugging in and just putting kind of resumes onto a database. We have weekly sync-ups, we have Slack messaging with them. So it's definitely more of a modern approach, which we've learned over the years. It definitely didn't start that way, but with a lot of people hiring en masse, like, yeah, it's kind of definitely needed.

Interesting. So I guess from all the things that you've learned, it might just be second nature now, but like, did you, did you operate in UK, Europe markets before?

Yes. Yeah.

Well, I'm sure you like talk to people about this if you're hiring people in the UK and maybe haven't done this before, but what would you say that like the main nuances that maybe you have to maybe learn the hard way or pick up on when it comes to like doing business and being successful in the UK compared to the US, do you think?

So yeah, I think it's just a slightly different market. I think some people kind of go to the UK— oh, sorry, go to the US and expect it to be very similar, when it depends on the area that you focus on. Um, and yeah, we tended to go to California first. A lot of people go to New York first, and it's quite similar to London, quite maybe what— maybe more difficult to get into because there's lots of recruiters that are in office. They can go to more kind of client meetings and you can build relationships there. Um, so I think just in terms of the way you approach the market, um, and I think, um, yeah, just utilizing some of the experience you have in the UK, getting used to having lots and lots more rejected offers, because I think generally with the markets that we operate in, um, you're working high fees, but also there's more companies, more opportunities to for kind of people to kind of go elsewhere. A lot of— I had one recruiter come over and his first 12 offers was rejected. Yeah, first 12 were rejected when one— oh my God, yeah.

Why is it— why is this?

Just, just was a bit unlucky. But sometimes, like, you need to go through some of that in order to kind of come. And it's all about having that resistance, because someone who— someone else could kind of quite easily go into that and then just be like, this isn't for me, I'm going to go back and just focus on the UK.

Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Okay, so let's— keen to get into some granulars here, and then I want to talk about how you've gone about growing this business. So just some common things that I always get asked or that people are interested in. So when it— I know that this isn't your entire recruitment business and the service that you provide, but like, just, just to be helpful, what, what are— you don't have to give me the exact number, but typically what, what terms would you expect to to sign and agree on with customers? Is it, is it in the 25, 30, 35%? Like, what, what we're talking, what have you typically seen?

Yeah, so definitely recently like 25, 30% on contingent. Uh, we'll see what happens with the market, kind of. It may go, may drop down to 20%, but typically like because of the referrals, we can— yeah, 25 is probably the standard. Um, yeah, we have— yeah, we've signed a lot of clients up at 30% recently, but Um, yeah, I'd say that those are definitely—

people always interested in that. And then obviously, I know it's all relative, but then obviously salaries, like, and the fee opportunity then tends to be bigger.

Yeah, so just on that, I think in terms of the salaries typically that we're hiring people, um, it's probably $140,000 to $400,000 base salary. Um, and in terms of fees typically our fees are like, I think average this year is like 42, but I think typically between 40 and 110.

I think it'd be like the typical average deal size.

Yeah, but we also do a lot of RPOs, as you mentioned. Yeah, we also do a lot of retained work as well. Um, so I think not a one-size-fits-all with certain clients, and sometimes we have a mixture of RPO plus contingency, so we're getting double whammy.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay.

No, thanks for sharing that. Cause that's always like typical things that people ask, right? And I think, look, what would you think about— I see it in a different way, but I've definitely seen a few people like communicate online how like they feel that you are doing recruitment in the US is also being perceived that it's like easier than UK. I don't perceive it that way, but like, I don't know, what do you say about that? Cause I'm like, yeah.

Um, I wouldn't say it's, it's, it's easier. It's definitely different. Um, but yeah, I don't know about that.

Um, yeah, I don't think, I don't think people are making out like that. For me personally, the conversation that I'm having is like, it's just as hard. Like it's, it's just as difficult. There's just as many challenges. However, the thing that why people are getting excited by it The main things that I hear, and you let me know sort of what you feel about it, is one, the actual rewards in terms of like all the effort that you put in is potentially 20, 50% larger in terms of the fees and these things. Absolutely. Then it comes down to like, we've all been there, right? Particularly UK recruitment market is so fucking saturated and it is really competitive. That isn't going to entirely go away in the US, but it's just so much more vast. So in terms of like always coming up against the same people, you might obviously miss that. And then, and then also this real reputation around the recruitment industry and staffing is just entirely different to the UK or Europe where recruiters are seen as dirt on the shoe potentially. Right. That's some of the common things that I continue to hear, which is why people were excited about this opportunity. It's not that it's easier in my view.

I think the one big difference is that I look at the UK and the US And at university in the UK, most people fall into recruitment. No one says before university they want to get into recruitment. It's always falling into recruitment. In the US, people see recruitment, recruitment as careers, and they look at the whole piece of coming in as someone to help schedule, and then they get into a trainee recruiter, into recruiter role, then they go down, even look at recruitment, which is usually sourcing side, and then the sales part that they call the business development side. So, uh, and then you can go to internal stuff. So it's, it's seen as a career and people want to get into it before university. I think that's probably a big difference, but also the, the, the crazy like numbers, uh, that, that, that people are doing and the crazy funding rounds. Like you look at like a Series A or a Series B company in the UK that may be 20, 30 million. In the US, it's, it's often 50. Yeah, yeah, they've got more money to play with. The VCs are vast, and that's probably a, a big reason why the funding and, uh, yeah, the hiring is a lot more than in the UK.

Okay. And then, and then before we go into, uh, like you in terms of growing this business, I guess this might be sort of come under this category, but I guess a real common strategy that I continue to hear and talk to people about is incubating it from the UK, trying to build traction, then going over there. What, what's your thoughts on this? Again, I guess there's no perfect way of doing it, but if you're sitting down right now speaking to other recruitment entrepreneurs that, that see the potential in their markets in the US, what, what would your strategy be, or what would you be speaking to them about that you feel would give them the best chance of, um, building a successful, um, team and, and part of their business there? Would it be doing business first in the UK and then going over there? What do you think?

Yeah, I— good question. I think there's, there's a lot of companies that seem to just incubate, and you can't tell on LinkedIn that those companies that say they're based in certain locations versus not, uh, because yeah, I mean, I think my LinkedIn actually says LA still, so I probably need to change that.

Yeah, people change. Obviously it's the first thing they change, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, um, I think that you need to have a plan and you need to have a strategy. The hardest things is doing the hours from here and A lot of people don't want to do the West Coast, where personally there's more business there, so they go and take the East Coast. And I think it's saturated of UK recruiters that want to do the, the, do the East Coast but won't, yeah, won't do the West Coast hours. So they just stick to kind of East Coast companies, uh, where a lot of our clients kind of generally hire remotely anyway. So I think you just need a plan to be there. You need to speak to good lawyers. And, um, if it ends up kind of going from, okay, it's going to be 3 months, it ends up being 18 months down the line, but you're seeing traction, get people out earlier, um, and that's the best way. Like, I think it's, it's definitely hard for people that they're moving into a new— say they, they join a new company and they've got a new company, new surroundings, um, and yeah, kind of just starting from scratch and not knowing the market. So I think it's always good to try and move one of those kind of metrics, and if they can be settled in a company, understand the markets from the UK and then move over there once I've got some traction. That's definitely the way that I did it. I would probably do it again if I, if I could. But yeah, but I guess a lot of people—

what sort of traction would you be looking for? Like, like, like, out of interest, would you be looking at the billings and the performance on that side before you go over there? You're looking at signed terms of clients? What, yeah, what sort of traction would you be looking at?

A mixture of them all. Um, I think if, if you're based here and, um, I'm working up a roll-up against you, say you're in the UK, I was in the US, and I'm working the right hours and I've got 5 hours ahead to kind of focus on people where I can take calls, 9 times out of 10, I'm probably going to beat you to kind of hiring for that client because I'm on the right time zone. So I think if you're trying to get everyone in an office trying to do the US hours, it's tough. I've been there, I've done it for a while and moved over. I was in the US for 5 years, but I'm there frequently. Usually every 8 to 10 weeks I'm in the US still. So, um, I still kind of still work on those time zones most of the time because it's tough certainly doing kind of West Coast from the UK.

And what do you think about like ideal situation that you have sort of first people on the ground that you've built trust with, you've built relationships with from the UK? Have you ever had experiences of like— I know you had a bit of an experience where you hire someone that's experienced that is the first person on the ground, like, how do you feel about that? Because it seems for a lot of people that I speak to, ideal scenarios, they, the people that are the first on the ground is the people that they understand the culture, they've been part of the UK business, they've been doing it there and they've just got that trust element, whereas might be a bit more difficult if I'm looking for someone like Jason that's got 5 years experience that can open up our US function. What do you feel like, think about that?

I used to think the former, but I actually think the latter. I think If you're going to be focused in the US, you, you should have your first person on the ground should be a US person rather than trying to move over a UK person into a new, into a new sector. I'd hire from a competitor and have them being the first person, um, would be my preference rather than just having someone that knows the culture, etc.

Why is that? You said you used to think the former, but why, why, why is that?

Because, because I, I think I, at times I've had UK recruiters. We are a US company after all. And you should be hiring predominantly US people, uh, because that's what's going to grow the company. It's, it's difficult, and you add different elements if you have to have someone that needs to have a visa. They may not like it, they may miss home, so they have to kind of come back. So I, I think I used to think that the former because of that, um, and now I would probably hire US people for US jobs most of the time if I could.

Interesting. Yeah, okay. So let's talk about how you've gone about growing this company then and built the business that you have. I guess what, like, you obviously you've had some dramatic growth during the COVID period, like nearly almost doubled.

Yeah.

Like, was that always the plan to grow a business like this? Did it sort of organically happen?

It's more organically. I think we could have grown Prior to that, I think we're just very cautious with, um, not taking in any investment on and hiring the right people and keeping that culture. Um, so yeah, we definitely grew during COVID uh, like most recruiters. Um, I think it's just down to demand, uh, to be honest. Uh, we inundated, and it was probably rough for a month or so with companies kind of like deciding where their focus was going to be. We always have more than enough clients that we can kind of work on. We lost on, on a few different projects because they just got kind of, uh, canned, but we've always had a great team that does new business and we're always generating new clients. So I think we were quite fortunate with the clients that we were working with, and they just pivoted. And, um, yeah, it allowed everyone to work remotely, which is great.

And obviously what's interesting about your strategy is that you, you Do you only hire experienced people, typically hire experienced recruiters?

So that's the, that's the model that we've, we've kind of gone after recently. Um, it tends to be with us recently, probably over the last like, yeah, 2 and a half, 3 years. And I think if you look at the tenure over the last 2 to 5 years, we haven't lost people to other agencies. We may have lost a couple to internal kind of companies, but we've been able to have that core team that we've kind of trusted, um, and who've been able to kind of help scale that even during a, um, even during kind of COVID times when people are remote. So, um, yeah, typically we've hired people with experience, and it's not like we're, we're going back to an office. We have offices if people want to use them. We meet up really regularly, um, so we do a big Christmas and summer party. I was in New York last week with the team. We do big incentives, and then people go out and meet. So we've got like hubs of people in Atlanta, in Washington, in LA, in Miami. Um, but we hire experienced— some of our best performers are working parents, which I know probably a lot of the people that you're speaking to, uh, as soon as people have a kid, they kind of back off somewhat.

I think that's changing. I think, I think in terms of life changing, yeah, in a good way. Yeah, I think previously when, yeah, you were building your career, I think it would have been like 'Oh, I've got to now choose raising my family over my career and these things.' But I think, like you said, around the work from home and companies being way more flexible, well, I think that's completely been put on its head. So just, I'm really, really curious about this then. So it's a couple of things. So just to clarify, so when you say experience, what we're talking here, like, like 5 years, decade, like typically? I know there's not going to be a perfect amount, but typically what we're talking and what range of experience?

Sure, I'd say probably 3 to 20 years of recruitment experience.

Okay, cool. So talk me through— I speak to so many recruitment leaders that say, I don't want to hire experienced people because they have a kind of bad traits, bad habits, they can't unlearn them. Like, what, what do you think about that?

I agree to a certain point, but I think a lot of people just need to be in the, in the right environment to succeed. Um, and a lot of people have come in and almost like retrained. And have done incredibly well. Um, so, um, I think a lot of the, the junior people with no experience need handholding. We've had some incredible people that, that have just come in and done really well who are super junior, but I think we have a different mentality and, and we work with people and we use a lot of tools and automation, as I mentioned earlier. And, um, it works. And we have a balance of the type of clients that we work with, from from stealth mode companies to post and pre-IPO kind of companies. So I think, yeah, just because people have had a lot of experience doesn't mean to say that, yeah, they can add a lot of value with the experience that comes with that.

What— I'm sure you may have had to learn this the hard way, but I guess what, what, what things would you typically look for in an interview environment that may be red flags that might indicate that I might join your business, Jason, I've got this experience, however, I, I really am someone that is unwilling to learn, or like not, not willing to take things on board, like anything that you've become really good at looking out for, or non-negotiable for you?

I think egos, um, probably, probably the biggest thing. And if for me, like, I can— as much as I may be able to work with them, if the team doesn't, and if they give a thumbs down to them, then we're not going to hire them. So it all comes down to for us, like building the right culture, and the rest will sort itself out. And, um, yeah, that's probably the main red flag— job hopping, you can say. Yeah, I'd say that. Yeah.

But how do you— I'm like, what are we looking for here? Like, they're just— in terms of just the way that they come across, just in terms of some of the things saying, like, just, just if you can't have a beer or a drink with them, well, they're not going to fit into our environment.

But we have a really experienced kind of recruiting team, and, uh, we get together. And, and yeah, if, if they don't like that person for whatever reason, then we're not going to hire them. Um, so I think— I know it's hard to kind of point it out, it's just something that, um, the team manages to kind of, um, yeah, figure out. And I think probably another thing for us, like, if people are looking for an office environment, that's not us right now, so we don't hire them. Because it's not like we're going to be going into an office with a team. That's not the type of people.

Well, this is the other thing that I really want to get your thoughts on. So you're saying that, like, yeah, so I think you're saying that what you are and what you're not, like you said, you're flexible, you give people the autonomy, their experience, you give them the opportunity to retrain and learn and improve. But how are you approaching that learning and those things with these people remotely? Like, how approaching that? Because I don't think anyone's cracked this, and, and it's difficult.

It definitely is difficult, and I think you have to be on the ball. And, um, we've just brought on board a learning and training manager who's someone that's been with us for the last 4 years as a senior recruiter, and then she moved into a principal recruiter, and then she moved to an RPO, and now she's coming back as our full-time trainer. So we're constantly doing training with people to upskill, um, and work with people.

What does that actually look like? We're doing like weekly Zoom sessions. Have we got a Slack channel that we can share?

Yeah, we're always on Slack, so we're, we're a Slack-first kind of company, and, um, we often share stuff on different channels around training, and I do a lot of the training as well. Um, so, um, that can definitely be done. You don't need to be in a classroom. I think there's certain aspects that if you're in a, a classroom or an office, um, and you can look around when people doing closing calls, I think that's definitely a benefit of being in office. But, um, we, we're definitely used to kind of giving people autonomy. We can tell if people are working or they're not working. So it's a constant thing that you always need to look out for, but everyone needs to be constantly, um, kind of trained and going through different scenarios because the market's continuously evolving.

So how do you, how do you go about, like, I guess, how do I word this? But how have you gone about just like, what's been the approach on then like productivity activity in this sort of remote setting? Is it just, are you very much like outcomes-based? Like, look, if you get this done, I don't care how you do it, whatever hours, like what's been the approach on that front? Has it been very sort of freeing on that sense as well and less structured?

It's definitely not less structured. Like people haven't like, should know how many, profiles that, or how many reach-outs they need to do in order to get X amount of candidates that equate to X amount of interviews that equate to X amount of offers. So, um, we know those numbers and it's, it, it varies based on, uh, experience of the, of the recruiter, um, versus the market that they're working in. So people know those metrics and should know. We constantly remind people, okay, you're just recruiting and you're just putting people into a search and they're having calls, here's the number that we expect you to kind of be at on a daily basis. If, if, if, if, if it's flagged that people aren't doing it, then we start looking into the finer details and stuff. But we give people trust and we have Slack channels for all the various clients so we can tell people that are working and people that aren't.

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. And then what about like You know, obviously we like, when we spoke about this and like, obviously you seem really passionate about the culture. You said there around like really protecting that culture and not hiring people that you think could potentially damage that culture. What are like, I'm just trying to understand like what are some of the non-negotiables that you might do? You mentioned the summer party, the Christmas, but on the weekly, daily, monthly basis, what, what are you doing that you think is impacting and creating this culture? Like, are you doing weekly, wrap-ups with it? Like, what are you doing that really you feel helps continue to build that culture in a remote environment? Because I think that's also difficult. What does that look like?

So Tuesdays we do weekly spin class. A lot of us have Peloton, so we do that. Uh, weekly yoga class. We, we do a lot of games with the team. Um, but a lot of, a lot of the people, like, a lot of us play COD. Uh, that's how I hired someone, via COD, from someone that was referred. Um, so Yeah, yeah, yeah. I spoke to him like a couple of years ago, and the first time I spoke to him was playing Call of Duty. The guys got me into it kind of during, uh, during COVID And, uh, yeah, each their own.

That's interesting.

Yeah, I think it's just, just having that morale. And a lot of the team that's been with us since we were— when we were in, in office in LA, um, when we were 4 days a week there, has kind of been felt that me and Gary, um, as business owners, we're more like people's friends rather than business owners. And we've had a lot of referrals from people that have worked for, uh, different companies. And, and we have a lot of internal— we've got an internal team as well. Um, so I think just naturally, like, treating people with respect, always looking to go above and beyond, giving them the best benefits out there, giving them the best commission structures out there, um, giving them a platform. Like, we're a very diverse team, and that's super important for us, super important for a lot of the clients that we work with. And they see that and they want to be a part of it.

And then what about, again, going a bit granular here, but just, just curious, like, what's, what's the sort of approach when it comes to, to management remotely? Are we just doing like weekly one-on-ones all done on video? Again, is that just all done in that way as well? Just same way, but it's all over video?

It's all done via video, but again, we have like, we sync with the different teams, um, engineering, go-to-market, data science, and energy. On a every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but we're constantly going back and forward on Slack. Like, I've muted my Slack, but I can already see all the Slack messages that kind of come through just in a short space of time. So yeah, we jump on calls with people, um, and but again, we give people— people, we know the searches, and you don't need to always speak to people on a daily basis. We have a lot of recruiters with families and kids and they've got different times that different people work, but people get it done. And, um, yeah, often you'll send someone a Slack message and they'll get back straight away. So it's easy to jump on and hop on calls with people.

Now, thanks for sharing. I'm just super curious about this. Like, I'm sure obviously you're sick to death of seeing all the work from home things and all that on LinkedIn, but I just find it so interesting. Unlike—

yeah, it works for different environments. Some people want to be in an office That's not the direction that we're going in, definitely not right now. And we still manage to meet up and it's still a great culture and environment.

So as you mentioned there around like just building a great culture so people refer people, but what's been some of the most successful, effective ways for you to grow this business from an internal hiring point with American people and American recruiters? Like what's worked on that side?

I think it's just a lot of the events that we're doing and going to like incredible locations for incentives. I think, um, seeing the growth that we've had, um, not having to report to investors and telling the story. So I'm often front and center. I'm the first call that people have. I still do a lot of reach-outs, probably about 80% of the, of the people that we've hired have come through my own network. We work with a few direct-to-direct kind of companies, but I make sure that I'm, I'm there.

Do you not have an internal recruiter?

We have internal recruiters, but if it's more attractive to people to— that I reach out to them first if I have the time. So I still prioritize time in order to do that, uh, because yeah, I have internal recruiters, but, um, they may not respond to those internal recruiters and they may respond to me. Um, Yeah, so I definitely make sure that I, I'm pushing on that side.

And then, and I've spoke to, obviously, look, typical UK model, right? Lower base, higher comms. Like, I spoke to a few people based in the US where they thought they might be able to have that approach in the US, but that didn't really work, uh, in terms of what they just found is that obviously you can go into a corporate recruitment career where the base is, is way more higher, maybe less comms if in like an internal recruitment role. Like, how's that? What do you think about that? Is that something that people need to be mindful of, that they might not be able to, like, expect to hire people with, like, that same sort of, like, base salary, com split? Are they gonna have to put more into the base? Like, I found that out quite a lot from speaking to people, that they're quite surprised with the bases that people would expect.

Yeah, I think that the market's always continuously evolving, and, um, yeah, some people want to go into an internal recruitment role, but I personally think there's no better time to be an external recruiter right now because there's so many jobs. Obviously, you're seeing in the market that a lot of internals are getting cut from small to large companies, just down to the market conditions. Um, so I think there's definitely experience from both sides, both an agency versus internal roles. Um, but I think the, the chance to work in specific areas and work with multiple clients is very attractive to people and Yeah, we may lose a couple of recruiters to internal roles, but we kind of expect that. Um, but yeah, like, it just depends on the personality, uh, of the, the certain recruiter and what, what stage of their career that they're at.

But I guess, sorry, what— maybe I wasn't, I wasn't very clear. Sorry. Like, have you found— like, when my, my first recruitment job, I was on a 20K base, right?

And it was common, I'm saying, like 18.

Yeah, yeah. So like, I was in the— I was just asking, that's really common. Right. So obviously, as you said, it's a career in the US. It's something that people want to get into. But what I found is when I've spoken to people that start their careers in the UK or started their business in the UK and then went to the States is that they haven't had as much success or it's been as effective. Unlike Jason, yeah, I want to offer you a job for my company. I'm going to give you a much lower base in comms. That didn't quite play out. That's what I was just curious about.

Yeah. Okay, fine. Yeah.

I think, yeah.

People know the— need to know the costings of the US because it's expensive to hire people. People are at higher base, the minimum. Um, yeah, the lowest I think that we're on is like $45,000-$50,000 on a, on a base salary, and that goes kind of up and up and up. Um, so I think, yeah, it's expensive. And then if you, you put on top of that, a lot of companies pay 401(k). A lot of people have— we have 100%, uh, health that's covered. Um, if you don't offer that to, um, recruiters. Yeah, you're just going to struggle to kind of get— you're going to struggle to get people. And that can— I think with— that's about $350, $400, um, dollars per person per month. Um, if they have a family, it's more. So yeah, there's stuff on top of that that kind of eats into your top line that you wouldn't have to do in the UK. So I think you need to be mindful over the experience that you're looking to hire. And also kind of target the right locations. And you may want to avoid like San Francisco, New York, and some of those more expensive cities out there in order to kind of find people that are maybe more reasonable with what you're looking for.

And you know, like you said, you've got people in all these different hubs. Obviously there's so many positives of being able to hire people remotely in different areas, but like how— like it's just so vast, isn't it? Like you can also just get lost, like where do we start? So like have you purposely Tried to have little hubs or like look in particular states or because like there could be so many different places that you could find people. Like, how do you—

Yeah, yeah. So I think initially we started in LA. Um, today we're in like 14 different states across the US. The states have just organically kind of grown. Um, but yeah, we kind of, because of the clients that we work with and a lot of the searches that we do, Like, I think COVID opened my eyes and ears to the types of people that we could hire. And, um, yeah, like the time zones, kind of trying to figure out everyone's time zone can be challenging. But, um, I, yeah, I think don't always go for people in certain states and try and avoid those expensive states if you can. Uh, but it depends. If you're hiring remotely, it shouldn't, it shouldn't matter to you. If you're hiring in for a specific location, then yeah, you're probably gonna have to pay a premium.

Yeah, no, interesting. So a couple, couple final things and then let's wrap this up by just talking a bit about what you're excited about, what's on the agenda. I guess that this might, uh, we could end up talking about this for a while, to be fair, but I have, I wanted to ask you, like, do you think, do you think if I'm a UK recruitment business owner right now and typically how I worked with people in the UK is on a contingent exclusive basis. I might be doing a little bit of retained, but I'm mainly working with people on an exclusive basis. Do you think I'll be really missing the trick if I don't have any other sort of solution in the US? Because I think when we spoke, what I thought was interesting was how you said that the hiring projects and opportunities typically with US companies, not all the way, all the time, is that you might speak to a US company and they're like, look, Jason, over the next 12 months, we want to hire 30 to 50 people, but maybe a UK or Europe-based business, they might be saying 5 to 15. Do you get what I mean? So like, I guess what I'm trying to ask you is, you know, obviously you do like RPOs, retained. So you think like people really need to think about what solutions and products they can bring to the US market if they want to be more successful there? Is that really important? Or could I just go over there and just sell exclusivity and just work contingent? What do you think?

I'm not a fan of exclusivity, but yeah, you could definitely do that if you want to. I think you evolve with the companies that you're reaching out to, and I think a one-size-fits-all approach of just going down the contingent where looking at like different add-ons can, uh, definitely help. I look at a scenario that we had when I moved the business from like 2016 to mainly focus on the US, and another company that I have venture, uh, was a guy that I, I used to work with and trained up, and they focus now on the UK and European because we were kind of dipping our toes in the water with some of those clients. But I needed to move away because our, our focus for IntelliTech and IntelliTech Energy was purely on the US because that's where, uh, we were getting a lot of traction. So I think in terms of, um, having different services, so often we're referring clients that we've got in the US that are looking to open up their first, like, European or UK office, doing intros from that side and, and vice versa. And it works really well. Um, but I think that, yeah, I, I think to go over in the, in the US where people want to work with you, they see you more as a valued long-term partner, um, definitely you should be selling retainers if you can. But selling a retainer isn't always the most profitable stuff to do, um, so you need to kind of consider that sometimes working at 25-30% on contingent is actually better, um, is less hassle, and you actually make more money. So there have been times where certain projects that we've done actually haven't panned out, and we wish that we just stuck to a contingency agreement. So, um, it's not— yeah, it's not the be-all and end-all with, uh, with working on retainers.

I guess I think what you said there that I've sort of really underlined and thought was like, evolve with the customers that you're supporting and partnering with. I think that's the best way to approach it, isn't that? Yeah, maybe not having a one-size-fits-all and thinking about what those things are, but then evolving with what you're asked for, how you're helping companies Exactly.

We've worked with a lot of clients that have gone from Series A to Series E, uh, or from Series D to IPO and have sold the company. So there's different iterations that kind of come with that. And sometimes they need you, sometimes they pause for 6 months because they're building an internal team, and then they come back to you. So I think it's, it's— you've just got to try and think one step ahead and always be selling to your clients and Sometimes it may not be the right time and that may be best and then go and look for other business. So yeah, it definitely goes full circle.

Okay. And then I have to ask you, this is one of the common things I always get as well before we finish is what are like must-have tech tools? I know you said a lot about automation. Don't want to give you all the secret sauce away, but I always hear about ZoomInfo. That's one that I always hear. What tools would you be like, you know what, definitely check these out for the American market, be most effective? What are we saying?

Don't want to give away all the keys to the castle here.

Yeah, but mate, you can have all the tools, but it's about how you use them.

100%. ZoomInfo I had a while back. We use it now for energy, but we're less of a kind of trying to make 50 to 100 calls and more kind of automation. So I'm a big believer in automation and I often say to the team that if something, if a task takes more than 2 minutes, you need to be automating it. So I've used like products like TalentBeam, which was acquired by Monster a number of years back. Um, super early. We use a tool called Reply, which is, I think, very similar to Sourcewell. Uh, email automation is amazing for what we do. Um, and yeah, we use stuff like ContactOut. We've got a few other different tools that we use, but I'd rather keep those under wraps.

Wait, so you said Reply? I've never heard of that. Reply.io. Reply.io.

Yeah.

What was the other one? I'm not, I'm not gonna get it to say all of them, but what was the other one? It said content.

Uh, the other one was called, uh, TalentBin. It was acquired by Monster and it's not as good as it was, but I used it super early. But often, um, I have a lot of connections in the VC world and, um, a lot of them kind of come out and want me to test like new tools. So we get like first dips on a lot of stuff before it comes to market, which is definitely super helpful.

Yeah, okay, nice, love that. No, I appreciate you sharing that. So what's on the horizon for you guys then as we come to an end here? Obviously had some really exciting growth. Like if you got, obviously recently invested in obviously the energy brand, which is really exciting. That's coming up to the first year. Like what are you excited about? What have you got top of mind over the next 6, 12 months of all the things that's going on? Like what, yeah, how are you feeling about things?

Sure, so it's definitely an interesting time for the market Um, and yeah, we'll see what happens there. But, uh, we're opening up a couple of new areas. Um, so we're going to be hiring for the government and government agencies. Uh, we're just going through our final approval of that. Also, um, in the market and doing like latter stage interviews for opening up a life sciences division, uh, which is super excited about that. Energy is a big area of our growth. Um, so probably expect the team to be 5 to 8 by the end of the year. And then just continuing to, to kind of grow the team and work with the team, develop people. Um, yeah.

And you enjoying the journey?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, I've never worked harder in my life than right now, but yeah, super proud of the team and, and, um, we've got some incredible kind of targets to hit. And yeah, hopefully the markets stay buoyant, which I fully expect it to. Um, and yeah, kind of trying to knuckle down and crush it. And a few different initiatives that we're looking to kind of do, a few more incentive trips that are going to work. So where's home for you, uh, right now?

Like, what do you— where would you call home, out of interest?

Because right now, Northwest London, bushy. Um, which—

but like, what would you call— what would you call home? Is it America? Is it LA? Is it UK? London? Like, do you know what I mean? Because you've been in a few different places, mate.

Yeah, um, I'd like to say I'm a nomad, but I guess my wife would kill me if I said that. Yeah, probably.

So, okay, you don't like being attached to anywhere?

Yeah, I know. I guess now that my eldest, who's 4, is starting school, uh, probably the UK. But we, we go back and I travel quite frequently, um, anyway. So, um, didn't want to move back from the US but was kind of forced to during COVID because my wife was pregnant with our second and haven't kind of gone back, relocated, moved the dog over, which is a hassle. But I'm still there kind of frequently.

And yeah, nice. No, I was just curious because obviously you've been in different parts of the world, you know. Yeah, I wasn't sure what you would deem as home.

Sometimes I'm sure, and yeah, sometimes I'm not sure either. Um, but, um, as you can probably, probably tell.

And you— wait, you got, you got the dog all the way from the US to the UK?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, that must have been— oh my God, some German.

I wasn't in LA to see that kind of happen. Um, one of the guys was living in my house, and yeah, that was horrible to kind of think of, kind of him being on a plane during COVID But yeah, we managed to get him back.

Nice.

He was— he's been part of the furniture because he used to always be in the office.

Really? Of that?

Yes.

Well, um, Jason, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for being really honest, sharing a lot of things. I know a lot of people find this conversation really helpful and useful. So look, like, I may like— kudos to you on everything that you've built so far. I'm sure there's plenty more to come. But look, Jason, really appreciate your time, and thanks for joining me on the podcast.

Thanks for having me on.