LIVE Podcast Webinar on Cultivating resilience and going the distance in Recruitment

Good evening everyone, and we're on. We are on, Ollie. I think we just had the 30-minute countdown. We're definitely on. Um, good evening everyone, um, welcome to the first ever live podcast webinar. Um, this is definitely new to me, so bear with. However, um, I've got some great panelists with me this evening. I mean, Ollie, Rhonda, and Andrew. Uh, who are going to do a very short intro, uh, very soon. Um, but just quickly, just to set the scene, um, and to, to help all of you guys, um, firstly, what's going to be really important on this, and I want to make sure that all of you guys, you're giving me your time, which I really appreciate, and I want you to get the most out of it. So you should be able to see, um, the Q&A section on the right, and basically at any point that you want to ask a question, get involved, then you can just type it there. And when that question's there, you're gonna be able to click upvote, um, and add to the questions. So feel free to do that at any point and upvote the questions that you definitely wanna get asked, cuz I wanna make sure that you get your questions answered. Um, so before we go into the intro, all of you should know that this podcast is sponsored, supported by Hunted. Um, And I think we're just talking about this a minute ago, but I think in the current adversity and challenges, there's definitely been a huge number of recruiters unfortunately being made redundant and have now got to overcome new challenges of potentially getting a new job. And speaking to Hunter today, they've sort of worked really hard to ensure that they're showcasing the brands that are definitely recruiting. And are planning on growing. So make sure that you check those guys out. And if you are in that unfortunate position, then check that out. So look, let's get started with Rhonda. If you, if you go first, just for everyone's benefit, introduce yourself to everyone and then we'll go from there.

Brilliant. Thanks very much, Hishem, and welcome everybody. It's absolutely great to be doing this live. My name is Rhonda D'Ambrosio. I am the Transformation Director for eBenAble, an organization that supports recruitment businesses for L&D based on a foundation of good mindset. I'm also the founder of Mental Health in Recruitment, an initiative that's going to be getting driven out more across 2020. And that's me, a pioneer for good mindset and mental health in the recruitment industry.

Thank you, Rhonda. Who wants to go next?

I'll go. No fighting. Hi guys, yeah, it's Oliver Perry here. So I am nearly 6 years into recruitment. I'm still very much in the trenches. My last role was 5 years back in the UK and I took the jump to move to Dublin. So I've been in Dublin for like 6 months now, lead a team of 4, billing manager, very much, yeah, very much a foot soldier still in the game. So, yeah, okay.

And look, Ollie, you've got the question already, so let's answer it. Where did Ollie get his shed from? So let's just make that really clear for everyone. Well, you just share why you— why are you in the shed?

This was, uh, this was, um, this was—

come on, we can—

we can hear my girlfriend's, uh— you got me.

Yeah, yeah, we got here.

Yeah, yeah, this is, this is, this is mine and my girlfriend's like, um, negotiation in terms of what she wanted in the house and what I wanted in the house. And the only one thing I wanted was a man shed at the bottom of the garden. Absolutely no reason whatsoever. I was 6 months ago, I made the decision. Maybe I knew coronavirus was coming and I'd need somewhere to do some work.

I think that was the first question straight out the gate. Thank you, Will Grashof, for that. I'm not surprised that Will's asked that question. But, um, Andrew, just for everyone, I'm sure a lot of people seen you on LinkedIn, but short intro to you, Andrew, and then gonna ask you guys some questions.

Yeah, sure. Uh, thanks for having me on. Thanks to Hunted for organizing as well. It's good to be here. Um, so I'm Andrew McCaskill, 15 years of recruitment and exec search, and at the moment I split myself between kind of both sides of the hiring equation. So I spend half my time working with executives who are on the move, and I've got a business called Career Jump, which helps them with that transition, and the other half working with disruptive recruitment leaders on strategy, marketing, social selling, and scale-ups. So yeah, really pleased to be here.

Cool, thank you. So look, as the original theme for the event that we was gonna do in person was, cultivating resilience and going the distance in recruitment. I think with obviously the challenges over the last couple of days and weeks, I think it couldn't be more topical. I think we'll definitely touch on the coronavirus, but this live podcast webinar is not going to be all about the coronavirus because I think we are just hit with it every single second. I think there's loads to talk about in terms of resilience and recruitment. So I guess firstly, let's start with what, what do you, what does resilience in recruitment mean to you guys? Let's start there. When I say the word resilience in recruitment, what does it mean to you?

I think for me, in recruitment and with most things, resilience is quality of thinking. It's how flexibly we think about things and how well we can respond and adapt to the challenges around us.

I like that. Ollie, what does resilience from recruitment mean?

Yeah, so I am, uh, for me it's the, it's the difference between like hope and certainty. So the, the net margin between those two things. So how hopeful you are of things happening or how certain you are of things happening, the wider those two things become apart the more resilient you evidently have to be. So it's just, for me, it's that gap in between those two things. Narrow that gap and you reduce the amount of time you have to be resilient, basically.

I like that. That's a really interesting little equation. I haven't heard that before. That was great.

Yeah, yeah.

Andrew, what does it mean to you, sir?

I think resilience is mastering your emotions and your ego at times when they're tested.

I like that. Um, and I think recruitment and ego, definitely. Yeah, I think that sometimes a lot of people think they just come both together, don't they? I think I'm glad you included that. So look, love that. Let's go, let's go straight into this. I'd love to just get some stories out of you guys. Um, what, what has been sort of your lowest point in your recruitment career? So far, and how did you bounce back and keep going?

I don't want to always go first. God, there's been so many. I've been in the industry for 22, nearly 23 years, so I think for me personally, the biggest one was around about 2008 with the downturn across various markets. I was a year into starting up my own recruitment business, Maida Technologies, and, you know, people didn't want to spend money. And I think the hardest part is everywhere you looked, and LinkedIn wasn't quite as big then, it was at the sort of the dawn of everybody using LinkedIn, so certainly not the level of videos and presence that we've got today. But yeah, what I found is that people were talking us into a recession. You know, the negativity, the, oh, it's doom, oh, it's awful. And we knew so many people around us that had also set up at a similar time that just decided, no, we needed the stability. So, you know, the way in which we responded to it back then, you know, we'd set up— if anyone's listened to the podcast, and for those that haven't, you know, I set up because I wanted flexible working. I was a mum, I had two very small children. The industry wasn't giving me the flexibility to do the job for, you know, a business, a company. So I did it for myself, and we had to really dig deep with the relationship building. And that, for me, is— I'm not going to say it's how we got through it, but by being authentic and building real relationships with people, as opposed to just those transactional placements to get money on the board or to get a deal, sort of, sort of, I think saved might be a bit too, you know, dramatic, but it enabled told us to keep doing what we were doing and we had a very, very clear reason for needing to keep moving forward.

I think that's definitely going to be important in the present from that experience for sure. Ollie, what's been the sort of lowest point for you? Out of interest, as you said, you're someone that's in the trenches, you're a foot soldier. What, what, what's been the lowest point for you and how did you bounce back and get through that?

Yeah, so I, um, mine was— mine's quite simple in terms of it was kind of like an 18-month recruitment wall that I hit in my first job. Um, it was hard. It's hard to quantify at the time, but it's more like, do I want to do this? Is this right for me? Things aren't going your way kind of thing. And I can't really give myself any credit for getting out of it. A lot of it was, it was the people around me, was the management at the time, my colleagues at the time, and it was a bit of a reset thanks to their kind of positivity. And if it wasn't, if it wasn't for it, if I was handing my notice into a different manager or a different colleague or whatever, it might have been different outcome. But I am, but yeah, I was, I was very lucky for the people around me at that time. That helped me through.

What sort of things were they communicating to you then?

A lot of it, a lot of it was, a lot of it was talking about actually what had happened. So I think you create this theory in your head that's actually not true of your lack of ability or your lack of confidence. And it's actually sometimes it takes somebody else to tell you what's happened before you can actually see what's happened yourself. So a lot of it was that. And obviously there's a lot of, a lot of belief and a lot of, a lot of like positivity in terms of, Ollie, you can do this. Nothing kind of wizardry, but sometimes just a bit of a pat on the back and a bit of positivity goes a long way. So yeah, and ever since then, to be fair, I've had quite a nice upwards curve and stuff at the moment. New market, new desk, small team, startup nature, so there's daily challenges. But yeah, probably that 18-month period of being in recruitment was probably at my lowest, yeah.

Okay, thanks for sharing. Andrew, I think whenever people see you, it's just a big old smile, so—

Oh yeah, it's been a breeze. I just killed it, absolutely killed it.

Now, so yeah, what— yeah, share with— I'd love to hear sort of a tough time for you and Yeah, there's heaps, mate.

Your podcast is the most aptly named podcast on the planet. Yeah, the roller coaster is absolutely right. So, uh, definitely the lowest point— I'm not going to go into detail because I'd rather not sob in front of 150, uh, viewers— but definitely the worst one I had was, um, the day before last year's kickoff meeting when I was running an executive search business with people I cared about. My wife was the FD, blah blah blah. Um, I got a text—

was the FD?

Yeah, my wife was the FD. Yeah, I was, uh, so we were all really intertangled. A lot of my best friends work in there. I got a text message from the other shareholders to go to a hotel, and everybody got wiped out.

Uh, wow.

So that was devastating, absolutely devastating. Um, on a— but you know, it's a cruel game sometimes. Like, you know, that's one of those kind of once in a life type scenarios. But I remember a load of times, like, recruitment just screws with you. Like, um, yeah, I remember, you know, missing out on promotion targets by a couple of grand, or having it—

have—

having a dropout which meant the commission that I thought I had coming that was going to be a holiday in 2 months' time had disappeared, you know, like, because you've already spent it in your mind, right? Yeah, recruitment just has this horrible way of kicking you in the nuts when you don't see it coming, and and it can be really, really deflating. So yeah, yeah, a roller coaster, as you so aptly put it.

Now, thank you. So before I ask the next question, Kevin Adams shared a great question that quite a few people have voted on. So let's go into that because this was sort of the next sort of thing that I want to start talking to you guys about. Obviously, all of you have been involved in recruiting for your own teams and works alongside other people. But Kevin Adam asked, do you think resilience is an inherent skill or trait, or is it something that you can train? What do we think about that?

You can train it.

Okay, yeah, elaborate, talk to us.

Well, it's something that compounds over time, it calluses over time. So I know for a fact, and this is the funny thing about resilience and the pain of what you have to go through when you're showing resilience, is actually it's growth, isn't it? You're building growth while you're going through those challenges. So I've definitely taught myself, albeit I have noticed I've been eating too many cookies and reaching for a beer every night this week. So, you know, it does still sit underneath. You have to be very, very self-aware and work at it all the time. But the more you can learn to practice things like mindfulness and manage your state and detach your emotions internally from what's happening externally and focus on the controllables, You can build up that strength over time, in my opinion.

No, yeah, what do you, Ollie and Rhonda, what do you think about that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think resilience is a lot about your environment in general, so the people around you, specifically your management, have such a big influence on your ability to be resilient after the fact or for the fact, more importantly, like Andrew says, in terms of the growth to get there. So yeah, absolutely, of course, of course with everything there's a lot that any individual needs to do, but yeah, absolutely, the people around you, your management, have a big, big say in how an individual is going to be resilient in recruitment.

Okay.

I would say that, you know, if you look at how we're programmed very early on from birth and in schools and the experiences that we have in life. Some of us have great experiences and we naturally have a quality of thinking, a positive way to view the world. We are solutions orientated. Those of you that are familiar with Carol Dweck's work may say that yes, those individuals are in a growth mindset. You know, that is into a degree, that's an inherent inbuilt thing that has almost been cultivated over time. Where it starts to get sort of interesting is the individuals that haven't been able to maybe cope with the things that have happened to them, haven't been great quality of thinkers, and these are the people, like Andrew said, that absolutely you can work with. You can talk to them about the way in which they process things, the way in which they acknowledge what's happened to them, what they're looking at in terms of what is in their control, what they can influence versus the things that they can't deal with or influence. But kind of like— and Claire Mohammed, she just popped up and asked a question about resilience being a scar or growing pains. You know, resilience is a— I almost sometimes use a rubber band. You know, you get a fresh rubber band out the packet and you know that it's going to stretch. But sometimes the more you stretch it little by little, the further it will go. You couldn't necessarily get it to that point straight away, but over a period of time of sort of seeing where your boundaries are and seeing where your, not your breakpoints, but your susceptible areas are, you know, that's the continual work in progress. That's the acknowledgement of the things that have happened. And, you know, Hishem, do you mind me jumping in and referencing John's question about the interview process? This is where it really pulls together because, you know, invariably when people have dealt with things that, whether it's adverse whether it's challenging things in our personal lives, when we overcome those and when we get through them, our mind knows that we've done it before, so therefore we can do it again, and that builds an inner confidence and a sort of a focus that all ties together.

Yeah, I've got a— there's a really cool way of spotting resilience at interview that I believe—

so, Andrew, the question was from John, just for— is it, how do you recommend questioning for resilience as part of the interview process?

Yeah, no, great question. The answer is the questions don't matter as much as the answers that are coming back. What I mean by that is somebody who's resilient will own their journey, so they'll have an internal locus of control. So if you were to say to a candidate who I would say would be low on resilience, talk me through your CV, they'll say, well, I went to the first company, the product was rubbish, then the economy turned, so I had to— yeah, always externalized.

Yeah.

If you look at people who own their journey and they say, well, I went to the first company and I didn't do the due diligence around the product. And so it turned out for market. But they have this— they're not passengers in their own life. They have this ownership and internal locus of control. And that's an absolute— I'll tell you, if you're interviewing for your team tomorrow, I would take internal locus of control over pretty much anything. It's absolutely the one.

Yeah, that's awesome. So I guess so we definitely agree then that Resilience is something that, yeah, it isn't, isn't inherent. It's something that you can continue to work at. It's through your own experience, these sorts of things. So I guess on this sort of tangent then, how can people— because a lot of our job, particularly maybe obviously your job now, Wally, and you've spoken about the managers and the environment, obviously likewise if you run the— but how can people that do have people around them that they're responsible for, how can they start instilling resilience in them and the people around them? How can they go about that and approach that?

So from a, from a very, sorry, from a very like low-level point of view, right? So we're talking about a consultant doing their day job. And one of the biggest things for me is, is to de-risk a lot of, a lot of what you're doing. So have your processes and be honest with yourself in terms of, with yourself, but also your management having an influence and de-risking what you're doing. A lot of resilience comes from doing things wrong for such a period of time and then getting smack bang with something out of the blue, then all of a sudden, oh my God, I have to be resilient now because it's all gone wrong. So from a low-level point of view, managing a trainee or a rookie or a senior or whatever it has to be, it's a It's about, it's about understanding what you're doing at every single point of that process and de-risking every single point of that process to understand what's, what's going to happen. It's all, it's all—

So when you say de-risking, you're saying, just to let you know, Wally, you will get rejected when we're doing this business development session a number of times. Yeah. You mean like communicate what the, the, the challenges they're going to face?

Yeah, absolutely. Honest, honesty is so important. But it has to have a, for me, it has to have a real level of positivity and support. I think you see so many times in recruitment people hitting other consultants with the stick to try and prepare them for getting hit with a stick from a client or candidate. It baffles me a little bit because then you're kind of saying, well, you're going to have to be resilient double over now because I'm going to be as hard as I, as the client is. You know what I mean? So I'm against that kind of thing. I'm on about like, I'm on about being honest with them about what's happening, but making sure it has levels of positivity to it. Otherwise you're not giving them a chance in hell, in my opinion.

Yeah, no, that's fair. Yeah, if they're worried about getting rejected by the client and then getting hit by a stick by Ollie, yeah, I'm gonna be double scared.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would coin what Ollie's saying. When you talk de-risk, the way, the language I often use is about clear expectations. If you set clear expectations with people, the people around you, and you tell them what to expect. So somebody brand new coming into our industry, that is told to pick up the phone, that is told to make the calls. You know what, we all know that it's— I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's very, very rare that you're going to make 5 calls and have success on every 5 of those calls. So if you make people aware about whether it's calls, whether it's about process, whether it's about, you know, other people and how the team works and how you're expected to behave, not only does that build trust, but it definitely works towards building resilience.

Hmm. I like that. And then I guess on this then, I think, like, how do you guys think the sort of importance or need for resilience has changed as the industry's evolved? I mean, particularly obviously Rhonda and Andrew, you've been in the market longer than me and Ollie. And like, so as you were saying earlier, Rhonda, of your story, LinkedIn wasn't very prevalent then and these things, but like, like, how do you think, yeah, the need or the importance of resilience has changed as the industry's evolved?

Andrew, if you don't mind me jumping in, you know, I think that, um, it's evolved in a couple of ways, some largely positive and others in somewhat negative way. Um, if you look at the different demographics we have and the different generations that are coming into the workplace, the, the newer generations, your Gen Zs and so on, they are living in a world with a very, very different set of rules. You know, back in the days when Andrew and I were, you know, dinosauring it about, you know, we didn't have tech, we didn't have email. We were lucky if we had— oh God, I actually don't know how old you are, Andrew. I might be doing you a massive disservice. I had a fax, and we used to stand at the fax and send CVs through and stuff like that, and an old Rolodex.

That's mental.

Yeah, so, you know, I think that somewhat working in those times and conditions, you know, that builds a level of resilience because we didn't get the sort of instant gratification that a lot of recruiters now get based on the connectivity and the tech and everything else. So what I mean by that with regards to, you know, your Gen Zs and the workforce that's going to come into play, you know, they have been switched on since birth. You know, my kids are so technical, you know, they're using all the platforms, they're using TikTok. So that also means that they're more susceptible to some of the, you know, the bad stuff that happens online, you know, the trolling and everything else. So on some levels, I think that they are going to have a level of resilience. But also, you know, that mindset, that mental health, it's becoming far more of a, you know, a normality. You know, I don't believe we're there yet as an industry. You know how I feel about that. But, you know, it— yeah, yeah, I'm not saying you need a cuddle. I'm not saying it's about entitlement. What I'm saying is this is just the way of the world now. We have to adapt.

Yeah.

And yeah, if we don't adapt, how are we going to overcome?

Yeah, I think— and I think, um, Rose has just, uh, asked a question which is really in line with that. I'd love to get, um, your thoughts on that, which was, um, yeah, do you feel people have become shielded from needing to be resilient with the emergence of technology and social media, etc., e.g., the lack of cold calling.

Yeah, right. You can hide behind an email.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's interesting, right? So I think, yeah, I think you're right. It's the, oh, I don't want to put this out in case I don't get any likes and being resilient around that and all the different things now rather than being willing to pick up the phone and getting told no a number of times. Anything to add on that, Andrew? What do you think from your experience and your own journey?

Yeah, I think how we get resilience out of our teams has changed. Like, when I started, it was very much about just beating people effectively into— it was, you know, emotionally beating people into Everyone kind of took an Army, Navy SEAL, Hell Week type approach to it, where it was kind of sink or swim, you're thrown in the deep end, all that. And that's, you know, it's questionable how relevant that is now. And I think a lot of organizations need to shift. So how do you build resilience now? Well, my view, and a lot of work that I'm doing with recruitment organizations, working with one called Colabs at the moment, we've done a lot of work on this, is around purpose. So I think how you build resilience in teams now is through being able to define a mission and a purpose that underpins your organization, because the, the generation coming through now are very purpose-driven. They don't have necessarily the financial pain to the level that we did when we started and aren't purely money motivated, albeit they are of course money motivated to an extent. And so you have to be able to articulate something that's bigger than the organization that then makes those people resilient to delivering on that mission, because it's in service of something that's bigger than just hitting their numbers. And those— I'm really predicting in terms of all the uncertainty in the market and everything at the moment, that the businesses that go well during this period will be the ones that have a clearly defined purpose and mission that underpins what they do, because that's what people fight for and serve and push through for.

Yeah, I think That's such a good— I think that's— I think you put that really well. And I think that Mike Richards just put a question around that, Andrew, so feel free to elaborate slightly. But Mike Richards just said, going the distance, as Andrew said, internal resilience is great, but we are recruiters facing an uncertain external world currently. What advice would you give recruiters in these weird times to prepare for the recovery? So is it very much then like really be clear and understand why you're doing what you're doing? And what you're in it for and why you're serving the people you want to. Is that part of it then, that's going to help people get through this and prepare for the recovery?

Yeah, I think we're seeing that anyway. People are serving their communities in a really positive way. I did a live broadcast this morning when I had some time, and the first thing I did was compliment the recruitment industry because I think we get a terrible rap, and yet this week I've seen—

It's been amazing.

The response in terms of how— there's so many people doing stuff for free, heaps of people working for free, offering career coaching for free, you know, rep to reps free, all sorts.

Who'd have thought?

I know, but I think you're right though.

I think that's great to see.

Yeah, so I've been really impressed. I think there's— yes, to prepare for what's to come, we need the mission element, that's for sure. But we also need to be agile with our services. We've got to stay relevant. We need to be thinking about, you know, things such as flexible resourcing models whereby we can deliver interims not on a day rate for 6 months, but unbundle them by the hour and trade them into the marketplace. We need to be looking at putting teams in. We need to be looking at helping identify the big pain points of where we're at and how us as an organization and our people can solve it. All that stuff. I think we need to be super agile, but super agile in service of a mission and a purpose that's bigger than an individual.

Rhonda, anything to add to that? Because obviously, I think you definitely, obviously, from the adversity you went through, you definitely had to innovate and adapt, be agile. Anything to add to that from your sort of experience on that point?

I just think tying in what Andrew said about the company mission, the purpose, but also to the individual. Mission and purpose and making sure those two things are aligned. So a huge amount of the work that I'll do will always sort of start with quite a lot of stuff around deep behavioral motivators and drivers to make sure that everybody is facing in the right direction. So, you know, if you've got an organization that's facing what we're facing, you know, yes, it's very tempting to sit behind closed doors and think about strategy and, you know, have a creative conversation at a senior level, but opening it out to the workforce and including and creating that environment of trust to find a creative approach to what people could be doing and giving everybody a voice. I think individually you've got that level of empowerment then when people feel that they are a part of something and that we are all in this together, and it just, it does breed creativity. It creates a safe space for people to, you know, put an idea out there, do something different, reach out to clients, approach it in a different way.

I love this bit around the transparency and the open communication as well, Rhonda, in terms of that trust building. I think too often we're not candid enough with the people that are in the mission with us, and I think people, you know, what they invent in their heads is a lot worse than the reality quite often, and if it's not, then they need to know too, and so I think I've never ever met a recruitment consultant in my life who moaned that their director over-communicated with them. Yeah, it's never happened. And I don't, so I think, yeah, that comms piece, that trust-building piece, that all helps create psychological safety. And Rhonda would be the expert on that, but it creates psychological safety, doesn't it? So that people can then continue to be resilient and push through.

Yeah, yeah.

And then on, sorry, go on, Ollie.

Sorry, what I was going to say on Mike's question about what to, um, what to do now, basically, in terms of recovery, I find it really interesting because As a recruiter now, in terms of this week of speaking to candidates and clients, you've kind of— this isn't a solution, sorry, I haven't got an answer— but you've kind of made your bed at this point in terms of how you've treated your clients and candidates up until this point. And you will lay in that bed for a little while to come. So, like, in terms of cold calling a new business now and asking them for a hand, like, you're on the back foot and it's It's really the recruiters now who have treated their clients and candidates properly up until this point are going to be the ones that get through this. And I know that's not a solution, but I just find it interesting.

I love that.

I love that.

And it's also not just the clients and candidates, just to add to that, it's the employees, right?

Yeah, definitely.

I think, as you're saying, we all need to make sure we're on the right side of history on this thing. When the dust settles, and the companies that stick by their employees, who are only shedding people because it's for survival, but it's a last resort. But the companies that are finding ways to put their people first, serve their clients and their candidates, they can have a huge competitive advantage when this thing springs back, and rightly so, because they're going about it the right way.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think what I just wanted to— I wanted to talk about Joanna's question when we were talking about the sort of individual mission and purpose and these types of things. I think what I definitely had to learn the hard way and get better at early on in my recruitment career was definitely taking the emotion out of things. So I think it just ties in quite nicely with the individual piece. So Joanna's question: consultants build really strong long-term relationships with their candidates' clients. How would you train consultants to keep a certain level of emotional detachment to ensure that when they are let down, it's not taken personally rather than professionally? I definitely had to learn that the hard way, but what are the thoughts on that? Great question.

I think it's a fantastic question, and what I would say is it's not, in my experience, not necessarily about emotional detachment, because you're right, these relationships become quite meaningful. It's about setting from the outset very clear boundaries and understanding what that relation looks like, relationship looks like. And, you know, I had it the other day with somebody that I'm talking to. We were talking about some commercials. As two individuals, we get on brilliantly. And instead of saying, you know, Rhonda and this person, like Rhonda and Hishem, it's like, well, actually, what's going on with, you know, even Abel and, you know, Hishem? Actually, Hishem, what's your company called? Yeah, you know, so it's separating and creating those boundaries to be able to have these conversations here at this level and then having a commercial conversation where there's an impact and you can talk at an organizational level. And, you know, I'm talking about doing that from when I was running my own business. So, you know, if you're working for somebody else, it's much easier to do that. I think if you detach yourself too much, are you going to be authentic, you know, or is that going to be picked up on? I don't know what you guys think.

Ollie, what do you think on that? How have you got better at sort of taking the emotion out of things and not taking things so personally?

Sorry, maybe that's me.

Yes, all right. Did you hear what I said?

Sorry, it's all right. Yeah, I, yeah, I got the question. I didn't know you're asking.

I'm good.

Um, I actually, um, I actually— no, no, it's fine. I actually think, um, emotional attachment is probably almost a strength in a recruiter, um, being able to I know I agree that too much of it can make you fall off a cliff when something happens, but I definitely take somebody who's got a lot of emotional attachment in what they're doing over somebody who has no emotional attachment, because I think just genuinely the service you will offer will be better. So I agree, it may get to a point where you may have to step in, but talking from my experience, I'd say the more emotional attachment to what you're doing, the better.

I like that. Okay, um, really like James's question on, um, do you believe that people who have faced adversity or hardship prior to getting into recruitment are predisposed to being more resilient in the job— in the job, sorry. What do we think about that?

It's funny, it's very helpful.

Go on, Ollie.

Yeah, no, I think you all have preconceptions when you interview people, like this unconscious bias that you do, and I developed something that I'm not saying is right at all, but you kind of can't get away with it, but speaking to people who have had really bad jobs before, seeing them as somebody who may step into recruitment and see the best of it, and it's funny that you speak to some people who had jobs that they hated and they were working all God's hours and they were doing a really mundane job job and then stepping into recruitment and looking at it and being like, what do you mean you have to be resilient to this job? It's well easy, what you on about? So it's funny really, I actually do agree with it. I actually do agree with it to a certain degree that you can, having a job where you had to show resilience prior to getting into recruitment can definitely help, yeah.

I'd link it back to what what was said about personal experiences and adversity and hardship outside of the employment world. You know, Hishem, you know I talk about my experience with my mum, my mum being ill and us getting told that she had a terminal illness and losing her very, very quickly. And when you go through this level of adversity, it gives you perspective, and perspective is a massive leveler because it enables you to take a step back and understand what's really, really important and what isn't. So, you know, if I have a, if I have a really bad call, if, you know, I'm shut down, if I don't get an outcome that I want to something, for me it's never going to be as bad as some of the stuff I've had to deal with that is life-changing. So I, I do think it impacts.

Yes, always good. Um, I've done quite a few podcasts recently And sort of it's come up a few times on the business development front. Like if you do get rejected 5 times off the bounce, like remembering that no one's died and just put things in perspective, it does help.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it definitely does help. So look, we've spoken a lot about resilience. I think the second part of this is that if we do sort of work that resilience muscle, that gives us the best possible chance of going the distance in recruitment. And as we all know, not a lot of people don't make it past the first 12 months in recruitment. So I guess from, from your own personal journeys and experiences and the people that you met during your career, what are some of the sort of habits that you've seen most commonly in recruiters that have gone the distance? What comes up for you guys when I ask you that? Someone go first, please.

I'll go, I'll go, I'll go. I think a lot of what I'd say, the first thing that comes to my mind there without even thinking why is repetition. So, and I link it to resilience because things will happen in your day or week of being a recruiter where you may have to be resilient, that come out of nowhere. But I think a lot of things happen to a lot of people because they don't have that process. They don't have that repetition. They don't have their plan laid out to be able to spot where things can go wrong. And they don't have their A's, their B's, their C's and their D's. And then all of a sudden they're jumping into, they're jumping into the unknown. And then that's when they get hit with that, with that kind of need for resilience. So for me, it is that ability to repeat your processes, repeat the good practice that you need to do. And then it's all about analyzing what you've done. So a lot of people, something will go really wrong for them. And they won't, and they'll just take it on the chin. They may be really, really resilient. And you won't know that they're in a bad place. But they won't look back as to why something went wrong. They won't analyze it. They won't look at what caused those setbacks and then it's not going to help them moving forward. So yeah, I'm a big stickler for process, repetition, and I feel if you can install that kind of framework as a recruiter, it helps, it helps manage the unexpected.

Interesting. Anything else to add there on the common things, the habits and things that we see in people that go the distance, have a long tenure in recruitment?

Yeah, I don't believe there is any common habits other than the topic that we're talking about. So I think the process point's a good one, but I never kind of liked process. The moment I thought I was in any kind of process, I jumped out as quick as possible. My numbers were always all right. So we did a study once, a large recruiter, and what we're trying to do is to unpick the magic formula. And this is why our world's so interesting. Interesting, right? So we picked out the top 10 billers out of 1,000 consultants, and we were going, right, we're going to look at this crew and work out what is the magic formula for recruitment success, right?

Yeah.

But all these people were between £600 million a year billers. We had 5 women, 5 men, so clearly gender was irrelevant. We had 4 different ethnic backgrounds, so that was irrelevant too. We had everything from, at one end, incredibly process-driven people when we did kind of the Thomas International stuff on them at the time, and at the other end, complete wideboy phone jockeys who were wheeling and dealing. IQ was very variable, even EQ was variable actually, which was a surprise.

Interesting.

High EQ, but actually not having EQ and not caring maybe helped manage that emotional side you're talking about. The only one thing— oh, and the ages were 22 to 55, so there was There was no age, really varied. It was mental. Yeah, you couldn't have got a more mixed group of people if you tried, either personality, age, background. And we had everything from the sons of millionaires to people who grew up on a council estate. It was ridiculous. And the only one thing was that they all scored above average on the grit test, which is, yeah, which is exactly this. It's all about resilience.

That's interesting.

So that was the only common denominator between all those people, the top 0.1% of of one of the large recruiters in terms of the big billers.

That's really interesting. Okay, thanks for sharing that. Great insight. Um, great question just come through from Ashley Lawrence. Um, I think really timely in the, in the current, um, landscape. So the question is, um, I think back to your point, Ollie, on people have already made their bed and these types of things. Like, so Ashley's question is, what advice would you give to recruiters to overcome current market conditions and what metrics can you use as a barometer of success or performance in obviously the current market conditions? I think that's a really interesting question. So I guess, Ollie, what are you making sure that— what are the sort of non-negotiables for you in the last couple of days that you're making sure that— obviously Ashley's your boss as well, so hopefully you answer this correctly.

I was going to say, yeah, he should be telling me the answer, right?

Pass this one on, mate.

But what, but yes, like what, yeah, what, what are the non-negotiables for you on currently right now? What are you making sure you do on a daily basis to make sure that you're doing the right activities?

So, um, I think, I think we all think we're gonna, I think we all think we have the best quality service out there, right? We all, we all want to be offering the best quality service. I think increasing that quality right now is, is so, so important and making it apparent. So thinking outside the box in terms of the offering that you have for your clients, being agile in terms of offering them a strategy of how you're going to approach the market differently. Without kind of going into too much detail on it, doubling down on your client relationships now is the most important thing, and you really will find the clients that do trust you right now and find those clients, double down on those clients, and make sure that you really offer the quality service they want. And it's a two-way thing, right? A lot of it now is, it's not us telling our clients and candidates what they need to be doing, but it's really ever, even more importantly now, understanding what their needs are. That you might presume their needs are, they need a cheaper service, or they need temporary people, or you might presume all of these things, right? Just because of what you're hearing, it might not necessarily be what they're after. They may be after something completely different. So really identifying the need of your clients in this current market conditions or whatever, and real double down on it. A double down phrase, I've learned that from your podcast.

So what's— what— so what— so the last couple of days or week, what's the typical day look like for you then?

It's been getting every single client that we are engaged with on the phone and identifying what their needs are right now and what their landscape looks like in the next couple of weeks, because they're not, they're not going to give you the answer right now. They might not have the answer right now, but it is identifying their pain points right now, their needs, what they need from us over the next couple of weeks. And once you know that, right, so once you've taken that kind of like audit of your client base, it's then the next steps are led by that. But yeah, that's what it's been like this week. And it's really refreshing, right? Because you're now speaking to clients and you should be doing this all the time, but you're now speaking to clients and really just, you only have one purpose on that call and is what do you need right now? What do you need from me? And it's quite refreshing actually.

And how's that actually, how's that been received then?

Yeah, yeah, really well, really well. It's funny because we have some clients now that want more, that want more contact from you because they're self-isolating or they're social distancing. It's funny, you've got your clients emailing asking for a virtual coffee because they're lonely. But yeah, it's been received really well with the clients that you already kind of had that relationship with. In terms of the clients that maybe haven't treated with the best quality service, going to them now and doing that is a little bit trickier.

But it's been very much focusing on having good quality conversations with existing relationships. That's what you've been focusing on.

Yeah, absolutely. But then on the flip side of that, just to conclude, on the flip side of that, there are going to be clients out there that aren't getting service. Efficiently or effectively by their recruiters, because I know agencies that have let 50% of their work staff go overnight. Like we're talking about not having the right values or morals or not being prepared. So there's going to be clients out there that need a bit of loving, if that's the best way to put it. Yeah.

So, yeah, especially if they had the relationship with those people that have been let go as well.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Wanda, anything to add to that? What have you seen?

Yeah, well, I'd be tempted to, you know, really strip it back and simplify it and, you know, not a metric as such, but I think the most important one, which definitely ties into what Oliver was saying, which is actually doing what you say you're going to do. You know, we laugh, we joke, but all too often we will have those calls because people are giving us more time. It's getting on the phones, you know, The phone calls, are we just talking to people or are we getting outcomes from them? But if you are asked to do something, whether it's to follow up, whether it's to do something else, just doing what you say you're going to do goes a huge way in this job.

Huge way. I think that's great. And then just on this point, I think this ties quite nicely with Campbell's question. And I think a big part as to why I started this podcast talking about can we change the perception of the recruitment industry? And I think back to your point, Andrew, on it's been great to see the amount of people that are paying it forward and being willing to help. And Campbell's question is, do you think that the resilience, hard work, and empathy required to be a recruiter at this current time— what we're talking about now, Ollie, with you speaking to clients, like listening to them, listen to their needs— and he said, will this be recognized by both candidates and clients and in turn have, hopefully have a positive impact on the long-term opinion of the recruitment industry?

Yes.

You'd like to think so.

Oh mate, and you're gonna like this, I think now is the time to be delivering as much content, as much marketing, building an audience, being seen to be proactive, sharing. The key metrics for me, I loved what the guy said around, you know, it's a contact sport that we're in, right? But I would be Zoom calling all morning and then content marketing and social selling all afternoon. I think as an industry, we have a chance right now. Our audience is, you know, on their laptops at home and we have a chance right now to be Zooming them in the morning and then resetting how they view our industry and what we're doing in the afternoon via all the good stuff that's going on online. So I'm hoping the current cadence of social media traffic that our industry is putting out is gonna continue onwards for some time to come because it's a huge opportunity for the industry right now online.

Yeah, I do wonder how many home office setups we're gonna see in the next 2-3 weeks. I don't know if that's gonna die down.

How many sheds?

Yeah, how many sheds? There's been a lot of them. But no, I think I've had a lot of conversations over the last couple of days on Hishem Azzouz, not sure how, like, should I be talking about this at this current time and all that. And I think my sort of view on it has just been just like right now is definitely the right time to be front and center in your market, being someone that's giving value, being positive, sharing ideas, talking about the solutions that you're coming up with your clients, sharing the challenges. And yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's definitely worthwhile being front and center in your market right now. And I think there's, I've seen loads of cool stuff. Whoever's watching this, there's recruiters that are doing live webinars and giving free interview, video interview advice, or how to write your CV, or there's loads of things you could be doing right now. I think I've seen quite a few videos on people doing, they're creating a virtual pub and you can join the Zoom call. And like, there's so many cool things that you could do right now, which is going to be all about bringing people together. And I think, yeah, I'd love to see like this hard time now have an impact on the recruitment industry in a positive way. Okay. So I'd love to hear from you guys on this question. What, what's the sort of one piece of advice that you've been given in the past from a manager or colleague that you think has had the biggest impact on how you handle the tougher times in recruitment?

Tomorrow's another day.

Nice and simple, that definitely helped. Anything else, Ollie? What's the best advice that you've been given?

Yeah, my opening statement about the net margin between hope and certainty was something that I've always remembered. It was from a trainer that from an external trainer that we had, a brilliant guy.

And come on, you got to name him, mate. You got some good kudos when you shared that, mate. Who is it?

No, I will do. I didn't know if I was allowed, mate. I felt like it was a BBC broadcast. No, his name's Jeremy Snell. I don't know if you know him.

Okay. I've seen the name, actually.

Yeah, he's great. He's got a great social presence as well. So you'd love him, Hishem. But no, he was the one that said it to me. And that's how I look, that's how I look at resilience now. I really analyze, I'm really analytical with everything I do and I really analyze it and if I felt like I was being hopeful in that situation rather than I was being certain in that situation, whatever that situation may be, then you kind of hold yourself accountable to it and then it helps you preempt what's going to happen. So yeah, that close, that close, that net margin between hope and certainty and That's the best bit of advice.

Andrew, best piece of advice?

Yeah, my first ever manager in recruitment told me never to be vulnerable to one deal.

Oh, I was so— that was me at the beginning.

Yeah, me too. Hang it all your hopes and the holidays on one thing landing. You gotta cut, you gotta, yeah, never be— be relentless in ensuring that you're not just vulnerable to one deal making or break your quarter. That's not the game. As you move up into exec search and stuff where the numbers get bigger, it becomes even more important because you can have a $40K swing on a deal. And so yeah, never be vulnerable. So always, that means always have a backup candidate for a start. And it means always have a number of things going on, which sounds obvious, but so many people kind of get a couple of people at final interview on something and then you're done. We've all done it, and you kick back, but don't be vulnerable to a candidate, don't be vulnerable to a deal, and you'll be in good shape.

Yeah, I like that.

I think you really do, you know, tongue-in-cheek, saying about tomorrow's another day, but you do have to take a step back. That gives you perspective, whether it's another day or whether it is a lunchtime or whether it is, you know, a bit of terrible news, the candidate not getting it, whatever it is, you know, take that deep breath and get some clarity around your thinking so that you can, as I, you know, my little theme and my strap, choose your response. Yeah.

Love it. Yeah. That's, um, I was definitely a victim of that last week. Just really, really focusing on what I can't control. And you can really, you can really, I was just thinking about this event. Am I going to do it? I was on the phone to Ollie, coming over to the UK or not, he could be trapped in Dublin. I'm just thinking about it all the time as soon as I woke up, looking at the news. Great way to start my day. Definitely not. And like, you can just, but you can really quickly find yourself in that loop.

Yeah. I've got a 15-year-old daughter that's woken up to be told you're not doing your GCSEs. Yeah. You think most kids would be absolutely delighted. She's crushed, you know, she's a grafter, she works really, really hard. And, you know, her immediate response is, oh my God, this is terrible. What's going to happen? And, you know, even though she hates it, hates it when I'm coach mum, it's you know what, we don't know enough at the moment. You know, there is no point worrying about it, overthinking it, because you're stealing time from yourself. Yeah, yeah.

And I think just really understanding that, yeah, it's that, yeah, choose your response, focus on what you can control. It just really helps in situations like this. Like, it really does.

Hishem, do you have a journal?

Yeah, I have. So I've been a bit lazy with it over the last couple of months, to be honest.

But I've dropped off, but I'm going to pick it back up in the current environment, I think.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know why.

That's a big group accountability there, Andrew. We're all being checked in now.

Yeah, there you go. I've made my public pledge. But that was some good advice someone gave me, although I don't know why I dropped it again. It's building those habits.

Yeah, since having my own business and stuff, one of my biggest challenges has been just fitting in all the typical Hishem stuff that makes you feel good about everything else. A lot of my eggs have gone into the business basket for me. But yeah, no, journaling, I'd say over the last 2, 3 years I've journaled and it's made a huge difference. One of the great, the great things that I used to do, which I used to absolutely love, is at the end of the year I just book a day in my diary where I'd read my whole journal for the year. And it's just such a great exercise to do. And like, it's so easy to forget where you was at the beginning of the year, let alone 2 months ago and how you were feeling and what you were talking about. But But yeah, journaling for me, just writing how you feel down, just there's something really powerful in that.

I think if I can tie that back to resilience, because you've just absolutely coined it, you know, I said about the elastic band.

Yeah.

When you go back and you acknowledge how far you've come, so how far you've stretched the band, you know that going into the next year, like look at Brexit as an example, right? Look at where we were at with that. We've got on, we've moved forward, we've got this. When we look back, we'll know that the next piece of uncertainty, the next challenge, we'll be able to overcome it because we've pushed our resilience a little bit further.

It's just so easy to forget. It's so— it's— I don't know why, it's just so easy to forget where you was and the things that you overcame and the challenges. I don't know, it's interesting that. Um, so yeah, really interesting question from, um, Rob that's sitting at the top there. Um, again a bit more in line with the current climate, but I think it's a great one. So Rob's question on the ongoing, on the going distant, going the distance point, how important is it that business owners, managers, team leads really continue to qualify their own staff and understand what is important to them and what distance means to them to help foster resilience? I think that's really interesting.

Yeah, it's everything. If you go back to what I said about the values of the individuals, the core drivers, if you don't know your team and if they really I don't know you, right? You're not going to be on the same page. There is not going to be that transparency which will build trust, which will create trust, and which will therefore build resilience. I think it's, it's a basic fundamental thing that needs to happen.

How often should people be doing that? Like, how, how often should people be checking in with their guys and really trying to understand, yeah, what their long-term vision is, why they're doing what they're doing?

I think if you're talking real core values, drivers, and motivators, it's an exercise worth doing every 6 months, you know, if you're doing it properly. It's not a 10-minute conversation because we all know this, things happen in life and we reprioritize. Nobody has the same values throughout their life, yeah, we react, we respond, we adapt.

Okay, um, I just want to say to everyone watching, definitely still got a couple of questions on the Q&A, definitely encourage you. So we've got sort of 15, 30 minutes left. If you want to ask, ask Ollie, Andrew, Rhonda any question, then make sure you put it in there and we'll ask it. And something that I wanted to ask you, I think we've spoken a lot about the challenging times, overcoming the difficult times and these sorts of things. But I think what's really interesting is, and the question I want to ask you guys is keeping yourself motivated when you actually hit your billings target. When you are actually at the top of your game. I think that's also a real challenge for a lot of people. I've sat down with a lot of people on the podcast recently where they had that top biller badge, and when they got it, they found it really difficult because all they were thinking about was maintaining that and thinking about dropping that. And if they didn't have the top biller badge, what were they? So the question I have for you guys is, we're talking about the challenging and these sorts of things, but But how can people keep themselves motivated when after they've hit their target and after they've hit their billings target or wherever that target may be?

Yeah, I think the error is, and I've worked with a few top billers on this, I think the error is just comparing yourself internally. So I'd kind of go up to a half a million biller who, yeah, maybe let their ego get carried away a little bit and have been showered in massive bonuses, gifts, and a trip to Miami every week. And sit them down and ask how they were doing against external top billers for a start. So other people in their industry that might be outperforming them, some of their peers who are same age who are in different industries but outperforming them. I think it's— and I don't know whether this is healthy, Rhonda, you'll have to tell me— but I think what always helped me was to have a nemesis. Okay, like a worthy adversary, right? Yeah. So in Australia I had one. He was awesome. He was so bloody good. And whenever I felt like I was dialing off, I was like, what's he up to? I bet he's on it.

Yeah.

Really healthy competition.

It got a bit unhealthy when I started scanning pictures of invoices that I was sending to his clients over to him and stuff. But generally it was healthy. Despite my immaturity, because it was always that kind of nagging thing in the back of my head. You know, I come in one morning and I wasn't quite on it. It was like, I bet he's killing it. Yeah, right. I need to go. So I think there's something about having— and if you look back in history at top performers in any sport or in any kind of thing, there's always a worthy opponent and some kind of worthy adversary in there, hopefully in a healthy way.

Yeah, that's interesting. I like that. Rhonda, what do you think about that? Like, how can people remain motivated when they feel like they've, yeah, they've hit their targets or got to sort of maybe at the peak?

I think what a lot of people aren't very good at is doing that inner analysis, that self-reflection, that understanding of what personal development looks like to them. You can call it being the best version of yourself if you want to. You know, it sounds a bit cliché, but you know, when we don't understand what our existing version is and then what the upgrade version looks like, yeah, we've got nothing to aspire to. So if you really want to tap into the, you know, I like to talk about brain chemistry and happy chemicals. And in this instance, we're talking about dopamine. We're talking about being able to motivate ourselves and anticipate what that next level looks like.

Yeah.

If you've got no idea, for example, what your career looks like after Top Biller, You know, if you don't have a focus on, well, actually, I don't just want to be top biller for 2019, I want to be top biller for 2020, 2021, or know that, well, I've got to achieve this and I'm gonna get this promotion, and that promotion is gonna mean that, you know, oh, it's life-changing, I'm gonna get a bigger mortgage, or we're gonna be able to do this. You just, you have no direction. So it's about really tapping into, you know, you don't necessarily need a coach to do that. You can do it you know, by yourself. There's some fantastic resources out there, but, you know, look at what your, what your map looks like. Look at journaling last year. Where were you? Where are you this year? Where do you want to be the year after? It doesn't have to be a really prescriptive 5-year plan, but if you can understand, you know, what that journey looks like, it's much easier to then work towards achieving it.

Yeah, I think, yeah, knowing what the next part is Yeah, that's, that's probably the key.

Your only real competition is you yesterday.

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, stop stalking these people, Andrew. It's not good.

I couldn't help it.

I couldn't help it.

Um, great, slight, slight change, um, but I think definitely worth talking about. So, um, Joshua King, I mean, yeah, this must be really difficult for, for people early on in their recruitment career in the, in the current landscape. But Josh's question, if you were 3 months into recruitment as I am, what would be your approach, knowing what you know now, to this situation? Um, I mean, yeah, Josh, not, not the best cards to be dealt, but no, I disagree.

I disagree, honestly. I think that, Josh, you don't realize it yet, but this is the best thing that's ever happened to you. I can't tell you the amount of people who joined recruitment in 2008, 2009 who have gone on to be successful business owners. And I think it's because if you're born into the fire, then, and you have to work at a certain pace, a certain creativity, a certain hustle to get by, then as the market starts to come up, you are going to fly, mate. So hang in there. You haven't been dealt a bad hand. I think you've been dealt potentially the best possible hand for your career.

Yeah, I mean, the adversity we're talking about, you can get through this, Josh. You're going to breeze it.

I really mean that, yeah, 100%.

I think he asked this question about what he could be doing, and I think there is that, whether it's this situation, which is difficult for all of us, there's some first-time experiences for everybody, but I'm a firm believer of modelling excellence and looking at the people around you that are seeing success, are working with particular clients that have still got the lines of comms up, that still want to be billing and so on. You know, have conversations, be bold, And I've always said, you know, no question's a bad question. I think just be inquisitive and speak to the people that are around you that have been in the game a little bit longer and look at what they're doing and their responses right now.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, Josh, you should definitely be looking at the people around you and asking for advice and help and stuff. But I love that you just disagreed with me there, Andrea. I think that's— I love that you just came back and I think that's great. Ollie, anything to add on that? What do you think? Like if you were really early on in your recruitment career, knowing what you know now in this sort of current landscape and market, what sort of things would you be thinking about or advice you'd be giving yourself?

Yeah, going back to, going back to what we're talking about, about the external environment as well. Someone gave me a really great analogy on that. And when we talk about being that top biller and like what's next, Andrew's saying you always look internally, so true. And kudos to you, Hishem, to be honest, because we now have the ability in many ways, including the podcast, to actually look externally at what's going on. Before, you had no idea, you had no information. So someone gave me that analogy about having a jar of fleas with a lid on, and the fleas would jump and just hit the lid. Obviously, if you take the lid off, the fleas would still only jump that high and only reach that high until you put another flea in that jumped a bit further. Yeah, and all the fleet would see that going, what's going on here? Like, I didn't know you could do that. Um, I'm gonna— Kevin gave me that and he asked the question earlier, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna give him that one. But I wanted to, I wanted to give that analogy out because we were talking about it. But in terms of, um, is it Josh? I've got his name in terms of—

I've marked it as answered.

Oh, it's gone, it's gone. In terms of what to do now, I genuinely think it's a time— and again, he probably doesn't know this yet, so he has to be around the right people but it's a real time where the opportunity to be different and the opportunity to raise the bar to a level that is, that is other people aren't doing in the industry. This is the time to do it. You can get, you can so easily, we've all done it, get caught up in the noise and the business of the industry. And you see so much going on. You see all these successful people and you feel like it's all about being fast-paced all the time. And I think now is potentially a time where you can really, differentiate your offering in terms of the quality of what you're doing and raise the bar. If that's through social selling, if that's through day-to-day phone-based stuff, whatever it is, I think it is a time now where you can potentially— are going to trim the fat a little bit, but as an individual, you can really raise the bar in what you're doing on a day-to-day basis.

And just to finalise that point then, because I think this is a great question, Claire just said, so what helped you think is good for people to ask for right now in the current climate? I think that's a good question. Like, what should people be asking for help for?

I'm going to say mindset, not just because that's what I do, but I think mindset, it, you know, we don't typically offer that across the industry.

Yeah, yeah.

If we get people's heads in the right places, then the way in which we respond to it definitely changes.

Yeah. So yeah, but I think that's the thing, as you said, historically that hasn't always been in the conversation. So, like, how do you even approach asking for help on that? Like, I guess, do you know what I mean?

Do you know, I did— is the question gone? Did you move it? Um, yeah, I think, I think there's still— despite, yeah, the, the industry, we still struggle, but we're far more open about it. I think that there are people that are going to be surrounding us as individuals that do respond in the right way, that can give you advice, that, you know— I think there's a really big difference between like positive chirpy thinking and what I would call doing like sticking a plaster over it. Oh, it's going to be fine. Oh, it's going to be fine. I think it's that real conversation, real honesty, and really not being afraid to have that level of conversation with somebody. You know, I think that is it. Is it that obvious to say that transparency, communication, I think that's at the minimum. What we can be giving teams at the moment.

So I guess with that, a good question from James just on this point is like, how important is downtime and switching off when it comes to going the distance in recruitment, do you think? Again, maybe something that's become more in the sort of conversation over the last couple of years, well-being, and a lot of businesses that I've been working with, speaking to, now have personal development budgets, they have well-being plans and all these types of things, but So what can recruitment employers do to ensure their people maintain a balance? I think that's really interesting.

I think we've done well to get to 7:10 and not talk about this, to be honest, because it's probably quite an important part, isn't it, in terms of like extracurricular, in terms of work-life balance, in terms of mental health, physical health. It's actually, probably is work has a real strong correlation to resilience in recruitment now. The one thing, the one thing recently for me in terms of extracurricular things outside of work that have really helped is actually an education thing. I think we can get so— we're in recruitment, we're in such our own little bubble. We speak to recruiters all the time. It's all— you go home, you talk about recruitment, it's all you ever talk about. It's such a bubble. I think external education has been a real, real, real good thing for me in terms of of books, podcasts, whatever that may be. It's only new for me, do you know what I mean? Last year I had a New Year's resolution to read one book every month and I read one book all year. So I'll get better at it, but this year I've had a big thing about it in terms of being able to turn recruitment off and do something else.

How do you think that's helped you?

It gave me so many more ideas. It gave me so many more ideas because so many things in, in, in the big wild world that's so relevant to recruitment that you never even think of until you go and find it. Don't I mean, you're kind of always talking about like, um, getting a candidate to interview, always talking about closing a deal. It's all really specific to recruitment sometimes, and there's so many things you could learn in terms of like personality traits or, or sales skills or just fictional stuff, whatever it may be, that actually you then relate to your day job as a recruiter and you kind of implement it in management or in actual recruitment. I've found it so fascinating and like I said, I need to do more exercise and I mean we all need to do more exercise. I think that'll help but in terms of education, I put that as like an extracurricular activity that's really helped, um, that's really helped my day job if that makes sense.

Do you think that's helped, do you think that's helped you sort of like continue with your recruitment career because obviously you've been in the industry for quite a while now. Do you think that's had an impact on you sort of going the distance?

Yeah, definitely. It's definitely reframed my like mindset of like the recruitment career, if that makes sense. Like giving me, I don't know, giving me vision of like different paths it could take just by looking outside and looking inwards. So yeah, absolutely. I think it's good to to get out of this bubble a little bit and look inwards, definitely.

Okay, and then Andrew, what are you like, what do you think employers can do to ensure they're sort of trying to influence or impact the work-life balance that a lot of people need and want today? Anything that you're seeing or have heard in the context you've had?

Yeah, I think where we're moving to is more tailored employment experiences. So I don't— work-life balance is what we kind of talk about, work-life integration, because I think it means different things for different people. And I think what we're going to get is rather than just exchanging our time for money— and it'll be interesting to see how this goes with the current climate as well— I think what we're getting is someone agreeing to deliver an outcome and some value but then they're being— them being able to tailor to an extent with some freedom within a framework how they go around doing that, accessing all the resources that the company provides. So I think it's going to be a more tailored— I think it's— I think where people go wrong on work-life balance is they go, well, they blanket it for everybody. It's totally different. Like, work-life balance to me is totally different than work-life balance.

Yeah, so true.

To my wife, you know, Yeah, because we have different preferences and ways of working and we peak at different times during the day and all that stuff. So, so yeah, I think, I think it needs to be tailored.

Yeah, I think that, and then again, that ties into over-communicating to the people in your business and these types of things, and that can be part of it, can't it? Yeah. Um, so just on your point, um, Ollie, I'd be interested actually. Um, Claire just said like, so what podcasts have obviously, besides The Recruitment Rollercoaster, What podcasts have you really enjoyed? What podcasts are always in your podcast library that you always want to listen to and have had quite a good impact?

Yeah, there's a really good— I follow a guy called Jordan Peterson, who's like a professor at university, and that's the one that I bought his book.

It's quite hard to read that one.

Yeah. 12 Ways— no, the second one. 12 Rules of Life. Yeah, I really liked it, but I was just so bad at reading. Yeah, I was like, right, can I listen?

Yeah.

And I was like, can I listen to him? And then I've started listening to older podcasts of him, of his, and it's been— it's just so left field from recruitment, but it's so engaging and it's so like, um, almost inspirational. We talk about, we talk about what we're looking for externally, and sometimes you are just looking for a bit of inspiration, aren't you? You are looking for someone to look up up to and a goal to reach. And yeah, I found that with, with his, with his stuff. There were some things that were more closely aligned to recruitment. There's a marketing podcast to listen to. I can't remember the name. I feel really bad because I should be plugging it. There's actually an HR podcast that's really interesting to like understand what people within the world of HR are talking about and trying to get into the get into their frame of mind. So there's a few things, yeah. Absolutely things that have nothing to do with recruitment. Cricket Tail Enders of the World podcast is probably what I listen to the most. I don't think many people on here want to listen to it, but yeah, even if it's not pure educational, sometimes a bit of fiction, a bit of non-professional helps me a lot as well. Just just to turn off.

Andrew, what's always in your podcast library?

Yeah, so Humans 2.0 is awesome.

What's that? What's that called?

Humans 2.0.

Humans 2.0. Okay.

Yeah, they have to. Yeah, that's like a personal development one. I like Impact Theory in that.

Yeah, Impact. Tom Bilyeu is good.

Yeah, I like him in that genre. Obviously some of the Joe Rogan stuff is good, albeit it's bloody long.

So yeah, very long.

But he has, I think he has some really, really interesting people in there as well.

Yeah. Okay. Cool. So look, as we sort of come to the end of this, I guess, what would be your sort of, sort of what, just to leave people with things to go away with, or like what would be your sort of parting messages to sort of where we are today with what's going on? What would your message be to people today that no doubt are going to need resilience, are going to have to push on if they're serious about going the distance in the current climate? What's your sort of parting message for the people that have very kindly given us their time?

Mine would simply be, it's very, very tempting right now to second-guess all of the things that are happening, you know, there's rumors, there's scaremongering, there's a huge amount of fear that's just everywhere. You know, God, the school chats, the WhatsApp groups, it's just frightening. And, you know, if we allow ourselves to sort of be affected by this, if we jump on that in terms of our thought process, it's just not going to take us in a good space. And mine would simply be You know, really think about what you know to be fact, what you can control, and then choose your response. You know, it's dead time at the moment. You can plan to a certain degree. I think having the plan definitely helps with the resilience piece, but very, very simply, it's just don't be impacted and affected by the rumors that you hear.

Yeah.

You know, sanity check it a little bit.

It's definitely hard to do that sometimes. Andrew, what, what are you thinking about?

I'm, I'm thinking about people need to avoid a scarcity short-term mindset, which is fear-driven, building on what Rhonda was eloquently talking about there. But I think we need to avoid scarcity-based mindsets in the same way that businesses need to make sure that you know, history will judge them well, individuals need to as well. And I think you need to conduct yourself in a way that you're happy with. I think you need to be super proactive, focus on the controllables, and just try and fight against the short-term thinking. I'm a big believer in reciprocity, and I think the more you can serve people in this time of need and pay into the ecosystem, the better off you'll be. And I think it's a unique opportunity to reframe the industry and build relationships that will serve you for the next decade if you get it right. So look to pay in rather than extract. And the other thing, the other bit of advice I would give recruitment consultants internally is to have empathy for their leaders. Yeah, it's so easy to criticize until you've sat in it. It's a little bit like parenting, like we all We all moan about our mum and dad and then we turn into them once we have kids, right, Roger? That's a good story. Yeah, it is. It's tragic. It's true. But leadership's like that. So like, my big, uh, thing would say would be to say back your boss. I can promise you they've got a lot on their shoulders.

Um, yeah, I love that.

Um, go and ask them how you can help.

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's great. Do that.

Yeah, I love that.

Ollie, what would be your sort of parting thoughts, words?

Both Rhonda and Andrew there talked about the controllables, and I think the blurred lines between the controllables and the uncontrollables now are more defined. So it gives you the chance to really understand what you can control and it gives you the chance to really focus on it before—

Ollie, the internet was a bit slow there, mate, unfortunately.

Oh no, I love it, the closing speed now.

I think the closing speed The internet slows right down. Sorry, Ollie. I think you're back.

Where did you get to?

Start again, mate. You need to start from the top.

It was amazing, mate.

Yeah.

Nailed it.

It was brilliant. Slow go.

Slow go.

No, no, you need to start that from the top, mate. That was very good.

I was just saying the definition and the blurred lines between what you can control and what you can't control now is probably more defined than ever, which means on the positive side that you know what you can control now and really gives you the focus on being able to control it. Um, that's my one, my one thought. My other thought is resilience in German is always been, it's always been, it's always been a team game.

No, no, sorry. Yeah, no, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to butt in then. It just lagged a little bit.

I'll tell you, I've got an amazing, an amazing book for what Ollie's talking about is Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. It is unbelievable about resilience and control Yeah, unbelievable. Great book, highly recommended right now.

Well, um, look, well, that was the, the first live podcast.

I don't know how far I got then.

Ollie, Ollie, you gave it a good old go, mate. No, we got it. Thank you. But, um, look, honestly, all right.

Leave it, lads, leave it.

Um, yeah, Ollie, someone just said they look like— it looks like you've been to, uh, that virtual pub in some of those scenes there when it was just— yeah, the internet wasn't very good. Um, but look, I just wanted to say, uh, thank you, Ollie, Rhonda, Andrew. I thought you were great, uh, some great answers. Thank you everyone that— that's obviously you've given our— your time this evening. Really, really appreciate it. It means a lot. Hannah just put a quick message on, plan on doing any more webinars? Definitely plan on doing more webinars. And if you have enjoyed it, please do let me know. Feedback's really welcome. Feel free to share all over the socials. Let everyone know that you tuned into the podcast webinar. Help it get in front of more people. But look, thank you everyone. And Thank you to the panelists. Cheers, guys.

Cheers.

Thank you. Thanks, Hishem Azzouz.