Mastering Contract Recruitment: How to Scale From Ones & Twos to Big Project Wins with Jack Proctor

Jack, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me on.

Really looking forward to getting stuck into this. You're someone that has been in this contract game for over a decade at one organization, so there's a lot that we want to unpack. And the way that we've sort of structured this that we think would be really helpful for people is we're going to first talk about how to master— we got here fast-paced contract recruitment, getting to that 10K weekly GP milestone plus where we're doing like ones and twos with clients, and then more where you've really been, or where you've been developing and developing others, is then how can we go from there to then mastering and becoming excellent at client-led, project-led, statement of work, whatever you want to call it, but basically where we're then increasing the number on contractors, number of deals that we're doing per client. Sure. I know you've been on a journey on that, so I want to talk about that, and then You've been in this sort of billing leader leadership role, so we're going to get some lessons there because that's tough for people. So we're going to sort of hear how you've approached that, is the goal. So as we always like to do, I'm going to give people the highlight reel here. So let me know if I get anything wrong.

Sure.

So 10 years in recruitment at Opus, I think got here with more than 3 million posts you built yourself, over 10 million accounts that you brought in over that time. Yeah, you actually started out in permanent for 18 months, but then from then have been contracts through and through.

That's right, you stayed.

So got here, sort of built your reputation in JavaScript contract recruitment UK, yeah, right? Um, got that, I think, personal best of 12K weekly GP. Then you found yourself managing and leading a team of like 5 during lockdown.

Yeah.

Then you had to sort of be agile, transition with a few different bits because the market Uh, but in early 2020, I think you— I've got here— handed over more day-to-day team management and you just found yourself more in like a pure BD-focused role.

Yeah, correct.

Yeah, opening up doors, uh, creating opportunities for the wider team, the business. And then I got here, I don't know. Yeah, so 2021 achieved 17K weekly GP personally with an additional 25K per week delivered through like clients you brought on with other clients.

Yes.

And then 2023 Uh, became regional director for contract recruitment across London and EU. So currently you've got 11 consultants.

Yeah.

Uh, so you're leading by the front but also then managing. And we've got people in this team, 60% 360 niche recruiters.

Yeah.

And around 40% who are either entirely focused on account management, maximizing client relationships, maybe managing key accounts. Then you've got sort of delivery And maybe working across contract— we've got time and materials or outcome-based projects.

Yeah.

And then right now, final piece, I know it will fluctuate, but I always like to ask. Currently probably spending 60% outward-facing BD, 40% inward-facing leadership.

Yeah, that's— yeah, about right.

Yeah, I know, fluctuate week to week. Okay, so then what that looks like is you're setting the strategy, ensuring the team's hitting budget, you're coaching consultants, quarterly, monthly one-on-ones, all that sort of stuff, as well as opening up doors, creating opportunities for yourself and everyone. Yeah, awesome. So let's start with it, with this first part, because I think what, what's really interesting about the journey that you've been on, I think, and why I was— I'm glad that we're focused on this, is that because of the business that you work for has been a very, like, entry-level model historically.

Yeah.

You would have seen a lot of good, a lot of great, maybe a lot of bad as well. So, like, you've, you know, you've learned things yourself, but you've also been part of maybe other people's journeys. You've been around people that have gone on to do great things themselves. So I think there's a lot of different places that you can take the sort of principles really that we're going to talk about. But I've probably had this on the, on the phone over the last couple of weeks like multiple times. So I just want to hear your take on this first before we get onto this, because obviously you have done a lot in the UK and still do and have people that focus on the UK.

Yeah.

How would you, like, I think there's this sort of narrative at the moment of like UK's short or like it's really hard. We've got always hear people talking about the US.

Yeah.

Like how would you, how would you describe the UK typical contract tech niche market? I don't know, how would you describe it? If someone said to you like, Jack, what's the market like? How are you describing that to people?

Yeah, I think it's an easy excuse, right? It's like the one thing that is completely out of your control is what the market's like, what the economy's like. I think, to be honest, I think it's a bit of a cheap excuse. Like, I think, look, obviously certain economies are doing better than others. Certain technologies are growing more than others. But I had a director years ago tell me, it's not the market, it's the way you work the market. So you have to recognize the state that that market is in and then act accordingly, right? So I think, look, 100%, certain markets are not growing, right? And certain markets are growing, right? Like if you, you know, I don't know, found yourself placing Milkman, then yeah, probably you're in the wrong market, right? I don't think many people use Milkman anymore. But if you, you know, are in a relatively good business where the management have done relatively good due diligence into the markets they cover, whether or not that is massively growing or whether it's relatively stable, you can work that market appropriately. So take something like, you know, we do a lot sort of around software development lifecycle, right? So maybe take a technology that, isn't probably massively growing at the minute, but a lot of people focus on something like PHP, 100% you can do a good bit of damage in that market. You just need to recognize where it is, right? So if you say, say an amazing market, there's 1,000 jobs advertised in the UK for whatever it is, PHP developers, right? And that's a good market. And in a bad market, there's 500 jobs advertised, right? You don't need that many jobs in a week to do a good job on that market, right? If you're working it back from, say, I don't know, two— well, my team is an example, right? Our 360 function on our team, a good week, like what a good week that we know will deliver, say, 2 deals per head at the end of the month is 10 jobs a week, right? So we don't need 500 or 1,000, we just need 10. So you've got to figure out within that 500 of a poor market, go and sort of go and find your 10, um, if you see what I mean. And that's about I guess recognizing whether you're job-led or candidate-led, right? I think if you go back to say, you know, the heyday when the markets were unbelievable, that 2021, 2022 period, it was very much candidate-led, right? It was you have the product, you kind of have the market, right? You haven't got clients to you, but you put that product in front of a client and that's enough to get in the door. It's not that anymore, right? When an economy gets a bit tougher, it becomes a lot more sort of demand-led rather than supply-led. So rather than getting the commodity, getting the candidate with the niche skill set, it's about going to the market and going to those that are hiring, those are running big projects and doing it the flip way round, if that makes sense. So I don't mean to diminish, right, doing good due diligence into markets. That is such a bedrock of any recruitment business. Yeah, I do think it's a quick excuse, right? We interview a lot of people, you know, growing company, you interview a lot of people. And the amount you hear, like, yeah, I'm in this market, it's dead. I'm in this market, it's dead. You know, it's not dead. It's just tougher than it was a little while ago, right?

Do you think to be successful in the UK market, you have to be niche? Would you agree with that?

Yeah, currently 100%. So it's about, you know, you take your market and you go niche and niche and niche and niche until you know it all. I think I'm a big, like I said, I used to work with him, so I'm a big Ned Mann-Henniet fan. And he said on your podcast a few weeks ago about there being like only a certain amount of people in your market. I think he said 600, something like that. You kind of want to get your market to a point where it's about that size and you know all of it because then you are the go-to person. So as an example, it's a long, long time ago now, right? But when I first built my contract book in JavaScript, I didn't just do JavaScript, right? Because it's huge. I did at the time, like React.js was like unbelievably in demand. I think it had just come out in like 2015. 15 or whatever, I just did React.js and I only did it in e-commerce businesses, right?

So it's skill set and industry.

Exactly that. And only in London.

Oh, and location.

So then, you know, you know, and there's enough there. There was plenty there, right? And I, you know, I reckon I was probably, you know, big-headed enough to say I had a bigger market share than I probably did, right? But I had— I was, what, probably less than 1% of the market share, right? Um, so yeah, I think whatever market you have, you've got to get, you know, the tougher the market gets, the niche, the tighter you've got to get around it.

And is that because, just so we understand why that is, because we've all heard that before, but I just wanted to ask you how you thought about that. Is that because you need to really be in the game of information insights? And if every single day or every single week you're like starting from zero or 0.5 because you're on a different search for a different industry, Is it just going to be harder versus if I'm coming up against Jack who all he's doing is React.js for e-commerce businesses, he's going to know the people more quickly. And then every time a hiring manager goes, do you know someone that could do this or got experience that you're going to go, yeah, I know 4 people. Is that, is that the reason why? Just because then you're just, you're just compounding information and everything?

I think so. Yeah, I think it's twofold, right? You, if you look at it from a candidate-facing, um, viewpoint and, and also a client-led view, to your clients, you're unbelievably credible, right? And say, so that scenario I've just painted you there, you've 500 jobs rather than 1,000, with the same amount of recruitment consultants attacking those 500s, right? So you've got to set yourself apart. The credibility saying, I don't know why I'm still using PHP, it seems very outdated, but let's change it, right? Let's something trendy like AI, right? So say you're looking for a, you know, MLOps engineer, right? Without knowing your market inside out, you're kind of going to companies and, you know, saying, hello, you do MLOps and I do MLOps, so should we make it happen? And obviously the answer is going to be no, right? If you know that space inside out, if you sucked up enough information from your candidate network, you should be approaching that saying, I understand you're currently rolling out X MLOps program. I understand this is the budget behind it. I understand these are the third parties you're using. I think this is the budget for it. And these are the current challenges you're having. You've got X person, X person, X person running that program for you. I heard they're doing a really, really good job. I work with a really similar network of people that have worked with that person. That person faced really similar challenges with your competitor. Weird, kind of weird if they say no, right? It gives you a lot of credibility. But from a candidate perspective, it's not, you know, great if you can impress a client, but you actually have to really, really deliver. And you can't, it's impossible to deliver across, you know, the whole, let's take that the whole of machine learning, right? It's just impossible. You can't know the people off the top of your head. The whole value that you add to your client is your network. So you have to know it inside out. And if you don't, then, you know, you're actually, you're all talk really, aren't you?

And all of that compounds if you're having conversations with similar people about similar things versus you having new conversations with new people. Yeah, that's the piece, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, 100%.

So let's start with one of these first sort of principles, and we're sort of talking about it here. We've got market focus, adaptation to growing or shrinking markets. Talk to us a bit about this, like, because I'm sure you've seen this play out over the 10 years. Yeah, I guess, how do we get better at understanding what is a shrinking market versus maybe a market that's just having a dip? I don't know, like, how do you view that firstly? What may— what sort of signals do you now see and go, oh, actually, maybe we need to sort of consider, you know, looking at maybe a particular part of this market versus keep doing what we've always done? I don't know. How have you got better at that? What sort of signals have you looked at? Is it lack of job flow? Is it lack of interviews really dropping? Is it— I don't know. How have we got better at that? Because I think that might be helpful for people to hear.

That's a good point. I think perhaps from a holistic view, you can obviously, you know, you know, sort of hoover up as much market news and stuff, where investment's going and things like that. Um, you know, like we, we recently, you know, over the past 18 months started to have a real look into ServiceNow. We picked that, you know, from sort of a holistic level looking down at the ERP markets that we don't cover and what's got most investment, what is the fastest growing, what regions is it fastest growing in. Um, so there's obviously that, that view. Obviously, of course, you know, we, you know, so I'm sure every, every leader in any recruitment business is like absolutely neurotic around the ratios and the stats and things like that. So you're always going to sort of monitor, you know, Oh goodness, you know, X market is dipping. It's been dipping now for 3 months. Do we need to get tighter in that market? Do we need to back out and go into another? But I think fundamentally it's your conversations with candidates. They're on the front line. They know so much more than you do. So go and, you know, if that's your market, you're unsure about it, I think go and talk to your candidates and be honest about them. Be honest about it. You know, I'm seeing this from my perspective. I see that this is really popular, but this isn't so much. Like, what's your view on that? What are you getting approached by at the minute? What do you— what market news do you have? Because 100%, like, these, you know, where you can be a market specialist 100%, but you still work in, you know, staffing recruitment. So they work in like their actual profession, so they're going to know way more than you. I think you've got to come from your, from your candidate base, I think.

And I think what we, what we said and what you've already sort of spoken to is, and what you've seen time and time again, is regardless of what these signals might say and what information you may have, there will likely be someone out there that's doing good to great numbers. Would that be a $10K weekly GP? Whatever you deem to be good. So I think that's the other thing as well, isn't it? I think I've got here, we write down like a market. I know we've mentioned PHP, but it was part of this where it isn't growing fast, but still there'll be potential for good results. And you've seen that time and time again.

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Look, we don't cover— well, we have some clients that hire PHP, right? We don't have a consultant on PHP because we don't see it as a growing market. But yeah, like in big technology markets, which is the area we cover, then 100%, if a technology has a big backer, there's going to be people out there using it. And your job's to identify them.

And I think I asked you, didn't I? And you can tell me what you think on, is it more about reframing it where with the market piece versus like pointing a finger and saying, I'm only this good because of the market.

Yeah.

But actually I asked you, do you feel like there in certain markets there might be like a performance ceiling or like more of a ceiling potentially in terms of what might be—

Yeah, some more than others. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, definitely. Because you, like I said, you've got, you know, some are growing, some are not. And obviously there's more—

I think it's just being mindful of that. Because obviously if you're in a particular market, it's getting loads of investment, it's going and, you know, upward and right, of course things are maybe going to flow a bit more. Things you're going to find things a bit more easier and the numbers you might be able to do are going to be larger. Yeah, definitely. 100%. So talk to us. I want to make sure we understand this piece in terms of the job-led versus candidate-led market. So, you know, when you said 2021, referring to that period where a lot of people said it's a real boom period, it's, um, anomaly in terms of like literally you could put people out there, they'd get interviews, all of that sort of stuff. So like, how— when you say now it's changed and it's job-led, I just want to make sure we understand that. Like, what do you actually mean by that in, in today's market? Like, what does that actually look like?

Yeah, sure. So perhaps to put it in like practical terms, right? I think like when we pick our markets, right? We deliberately, we pick the most candidate-led ones we can, right? Where the candidate is the commodity. But you know, like I said, increasingly that is more and more difficult to do.

And so how come?

Because, well, like I said, right? So if you say, let's put it in practical terms. So if you go back, say maybe 2 years, maybe 3 years, right? When, you know, interest rates were a lot lower, right? Mortgages were a lot better, things like that. It's cheaper to borrow money, right? And we did a lot at the time in sort of scale-up, SME-sized businesses, VC-backed, PE-backed, right? And there's a lot of money flowing around in that world at that time because it's cheaper to borrow money, right? So a lot of investments up. So an unbelievable amount of clients are hiring in those areas you're looking at, right? So it's kind of enough there to have the people map the market and put the people in front of the market, whether or not you know they're hiring. And there's probably a good chance they will come back and say, we're hiring now, we do hire this, or we're hiring in the future. That the conversion rates we used to get on sort of outreach like that was a lot, was a lot better, right? Um, I think now it's not quite as like that, right? It's, it's not everyone is hiring quite as much, right? It is, it is, you know, more difficult to get investment and things like that. Acquisitions aren't happening as perhaps frequently as they were. So it's more about going deeper, not just attacking everyone who has ever hired someone in your space, digging in, trying to find the people that hire contractors in your space for contract recruitment for our purposes and are hiring right now or are running big programs that are going to need those people in the near future. So it's going to the requirement, not just everyone who operates in that market. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. And then how does that— so how does that look different in terms of actually, like, converse— like, just to put it in practical terms. So practical terms on the candidate side is, I've got these people, they've got this skill set, they've got these experiences, I can put them in front of these people and they're likely to go, yeah, yep, we actually don't need that person now, but absolutely next time let us know. We'll actually do need that person now. But what you're saying is, it sounds like then it's more information gathering, using that information, connecting the dots, then having conversations like that.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's not just about, you know, getting some really good, getting some really skilled people and throwing them at the market. That doesn't work, right? It's about using the people that you know, building your candidate network really, really, really well. And then, you know, discovering the people that are running big programs or whatever else. So I guess, look, if you're, you know, let's put it into context. I always think our job really, really fundamentally, when you really boil it down, all our job is, is building really good candidate networks, really good client networks. And then using those to throw them together, basically. So I guess in the past, whereas perhaps you're talking to a candidate about what sort of job they would like, what sort of company they would like, and perhaps matching it up to then the companies that you know that do that sort of stuff, it's more about, okay, and it's not just about, you know, when we talk about information gathering, it is not just about where are you interviewing, right? That's great. That's really good information. Of course it is. It's about who are the other really good engineers that you know, if it's an engineering role, who's the best manager you've ever worked with? Who's the best colleague you've ever worked with? What's the program you're most proud of? What's the program you're currently working on right now? Who are the suppliers into that? What's the budget for that? Who's in charge of that? Who else do your colleagues report into? Like all of this different information, right? And then taking that, giving you credibility to the market, following the ones that are running big programs, hiring right now, operating in your space, and going to the client knowing that, you know, they're in a good position. Do you see what I mean?

Yeah.

Rather than just approaching them because, you know, you know, you know they were once operating in your space.

We're talking about it now, but this is the other piece, right? And I always hear this when sitting down with people like you, which is really building those networks, really. And you're just talking about it.

Sure.

I wanted to, like, how— because I'm sure you've had to get better at this from the management side, but I'll always hear statements, sentences like, yeah, you have, like, yeah, like, know your— the 50 best contractors in that space or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

How would you define, like, what defines a great contractor versus like a below average one? Do you know what I mean? I know that might be—

that's a good question.

How do you think about that?

So I think, um, really obvious stuff, right? When you're looking at CV, how long have they been there, things like that. But actually there's two things there, right? So what, what makes a good contractor? So one of them is, are they really high quality? Are they excellent at what they do, right? That's one thing. And I guess talk about how you sort of look to attract those people, but for me They're the people who operate in your target clients, right? They're your target clients for a reason. They will hire good people. They should be target candidates as well as target clients, right? Until they become a client. But actually the other part of that is how committed are they and how committed are they to working with you and your client? A good candidate isn't just one that's really highly skilled. It's someone that will accept a job, start a job, and stay in a job, if you see what I mean. And it's just sort of down you to judge that commitment. But I think it's, look, of course there's so many skilled people out there. And for me, the best way to identify them is, like I said, when you get a good bit of information about a company, go and talk to all the people that work for that company or who have worked for that company because you know they'll be pretty high quality. But also it's who's kind of, you know, if you're saying I know 50 people in my network, but they're all really frosty and not really interested in talking to you, then well, they're not great then, are they?

Yeah.

So twofold, I think.

Yeah. Nice. What about— because I asked this question to someone else— what about, do you think, uh, if I was to say a great contractor can effectively communicate like the impact they personally had or the outcome of project that was part of a program that was part of— is that part of it? Or because sometimes I hear that.

Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Like when you're, you know, when you're— if you're selling someone's profile to a, to a client of yours, you want to be able to say it's not just about, you know, this person's got 10 years experience and, you know, it is, you know, it is about And a great contractor will be able to articulate that. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, definitely. And like I said, if they're not and they're frosty and they don't want to tell you about their project successes and what they've done really well and what impact they've had, then, you know, yeah, perhaps, perhaps they're not quite right.

Nice, love that. Should we talk about this? Because I really liked this. You were sort of talking about there, we've got this 6 and 5.

6 by 5.

Yeah, 6 by 5. And tell us about this, where this maybe came from.

Yeah, I think this is— look, I think when everyone talks about recruitment from a high level, it can sound quite simple, right? But then you get into the guts of it, it's actually really complicated, right? I've said, like, I've said the most simple thing in the world there, haven't I? Like, get really good candidate network, get really good client network, and throw it together. Fundamentally, that is what you're doing, right? You're getting good information from candidates and then going on acting on it. Then you layer lots and lots and lots of things on top, and it gets a lot more complicated and tricky. I think for people who are not even necessarily new to the industry, but, you know, are in a position where we kind of need to go back to basics. I find this really, really helpful. So 5x6, right? 5 times 6 is 30. So you get 30 points, right? So 5x6 is you finding 5 really good bits of information from candidates in your network. And then the 6 is the actions that you take around those. So the 6 actions for us, and I appreciate people work slightly different, but the 6 actions for us is you found out the relevant managers, stakeholders, they get added to your CRM, sales software, whatever, skill coded accurately. That's one. They get added to however you organize your sort of lead sheet. We call it job index, but a lead sheet, whatever else. They get a sales call from you, they get an email follow-up, a LinkedIn invitation and follow-up, and then you get hold of all the open-to-work candidates that work for that organization because they're then your candidates for your next day's work. Hopefully you get better candidates and you also get candid information on what's going on in those companies. So that to me is a really simple way of going and building out your market. Get 5 really good bits of information, do 6 actions around each of them.

And give us another example. Like, what would be another, like, classic good quality piece of information that would then, off the back of that, you could have those— is it always those 6 actions?

Well, obviously it gets— you've got to use a bit of emotional intelligence, right? If you think, yeah, actually, you know what, I know this client and an email to that person is going to land terribly, then no, obviously don't do that, right? Um, and you know, we can have, you know, we have a lot of marketing material that we can use, you know, one-page documents, testimonials, case studies, you know, all different sorts of market information, news, things like that. You can perhaps send over instead. But as a standard, they're kind of the, um, the basics.

I think what, what I really liked about that when you shared it with me, and I'm sure you've seen this on the, like, the leadership piece, what I'll often hear from leaders, founders, in terms of what can be a bit of a skill gap or frustration is Jack's really good at getting the information, but then he's not quite good at then connecting the dots of then what he should do with that information. So that's why I like, that's why I like this, because obviously you can tailor this to your market, how you work, but then we can just make it a bit more easier. Like, it's just almost giving people like a bit of a menu.

Yeah.

Of like, right, if you get this sort of information, these are really your options. Yeah. There might be other things that you could do depending on what you get, but for for the most part, if you find this out, one of these 6 things should be then one of your actions. Yeah.

Oh yeah, 100%.

I think that— so I really— I always like sort of frameworks like this because that's something that then people can apply.

Yeah.

Because I think that is something— I'm sure— I don't know if you've seen this, but I think sometimes that can be hard to like train, or sometimes people can take a little while to get that because you may just do it second nature now, whereas like, I've just heard this.

Yeah.

So I now know I'm gonna go do that. but you're sort of making that easier for people on what dots to connect.

Yeah. And I think it's nice to have, I think sometimes a really simple framework to boil something down to, because like, you know what this job is like, right? It's like, you know, it's interesting, right? When you talk about it in a podcast, you can kind of make it sound really simple and it's not, right? And it's not like, like, you know, I'd be really open and honest. We've had a really tough couple of weeks actually, right? Pretty good year, but a pretty tough couple of weeks. And you can see people getting really frustrated. And when you're down in the weeds of it and you can get, you know what I mean? Like, what does tough mean?

As in like, we've had a lot of things not play out, had a lot of dropouts or things not—

A couple of those weeks where you controlled all the controllables. But we sell people to people, a lot is subject to change. There's a lot you can't control, unfortunately. And sometimes those things don't go your way. And for some reason they all seem to happen at the same time. Right. But I think sometimes you can see when people are in a bit of a fuzz and they're a bit of a, I just don't know what to do. Or maybe I'll try this, or this isn't working. Maybe I'll run over here and try this. And maybe, but to just boil it down to something really simple. Be like, come on, this is your job. You're gonna ask really diligent questions, get 5 bits of info, go do those 6 actions around them. If you can do that in a day, really good day.

Um, yeah, I think that's why those types of things are helpful. Yeah, just because you just mentioned it, when I've sat down with contract recruiters and we've spoken about some of their toughest periods, how have you got better at helping people get out of the hole of their books taking a big hit or a like a big dip? And because I think that, that seems to be one of the biggest challenges, which is obviously very different to perm, is like contract recruiters absolutely work their socks off for 2 years, 3 years, always dreamed of getting to £12.5K, £15K, whatever the milestone is.

Yeah.

And then that key account that has always done you a solid just pulls the plug on something, or it doesn't— I'm sure you've seen this, because then You're talking about there, the knock-on impact of that is, oh my God, I'm back down to like 6K. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like that then goes on for another week, another week. How have you got better at helping people get out of that? Because that seems to be one of the biggest challenges, it seems, in terms of like performance-wise and maintaining it and coming back from those things.

Yeah, 100%. I think you've got to be— this is so much easier said than done, right? Like I I preach this, but I really struggle to stick to it. Um, but you can't just pride yourself on the outcome, right? So I think let's break our jobs down a little bit, right? We're all here for placements, right? And placing individuals, which increases your weekly GP, increases your earnings, promotions, whatever else, right? That's the top of the chain. One step down from that is interviews. One step down from that is vacancies. One step down from that is your attitudes and your inputs. And I think, I always think it's very, very important to give people clarity on where they are, right? And they're in one of three places: on track, behind, or ahead.

Okay.

And I think it's really important to not only celebrate when you're ahead, because the important thing is that no matter where you are in that life cycle, the important thing is that you are doing activity that is conducive to getting you to the next. Right? If you are doing loads and loads of placements and your weekly GP is on a high, then, you know, we want you to be absolutely— you want to be relentless, right? And get it higher and higher and higher. If you're on track but want to get better, then that's the same message. If you're behind, then as long as you're doing that activity, you're controlling your controllables, following and trusting your process, then there's celebrations to be had in that, right? So don't just, don't just celebrate every time you make a placement. If you're nowhere near that in the life cycle, then you need to be, you know, celebrating and make a fuss when you get a bite back from a really good company you've been targeting or a meeting with a client that you really— do you see what I mean? It's about, you know, I don't care. Like if people in our team aren't doing loads of deals, that's not a problem, right? If they're not getting any interviews, that's not a problem. Let's look at the jobs. They're not getting any jobs. That's not a problem. Let's look at the activity and the effort. That's the bit we care about because you, we, you know, if you do that, to a really high standard, a really high intensity, really high effort level every day, follow this process that we know works, it will— the rest will come. So I think it's sort of moving down the outcomes of what you're getting behind.

I think that also works in the inverse, doesn't it? Because I think then the other challenge on the flip side is Jack will— like everything in Jack's head and what he's driving for was he wanted to be the top performer, he wanted to reach X milestone, he gets there, And then he's like, oh shit, now I've got to maintain it. And it's almost getting back to these things again, isn't it? And because then we're avoiding the C word, complacency.

Yeah, 100%.

And it's then getting back to these bits that you just said, doing all those things that you— that helped you get there in the first place.

100%. Yeah, no, definitely. And look, there's a, there's a, there's a person in, um, in, um, in my team, and he's, um, he's brilliant, right? But he's had— his contract book has been great, right? He's, you know, I think he got to about £13,000 a week in, in a really— in a difficult market, right? And then it slipped and it got back down to like 2 in the space of like 4 or 5 months.

It must be so hard to take.

Really tough, right? And yeah, 100%, right? He's used to going out dining in these amazing places and then he's on the meal deals for lunch. But look, the process applies, right? High activity, high inputs, off you go. Go and do that to a really, really, really, really high level. Be really inquisitive with everyone in your market, everyone you speak to, then it— you'll get it back. And now you've got it back in 6 months.

Yeah, that's class. I think that really is— I think— would you agree that it— if you're a contract recruiter, it's really good to go through those?

Yeah, because you don't want to just like that, do you? It's also inevitable, right? Like, it's— yeah, it's always someone who's, you know— unless I don't— I've never met anyone who's gone through a really good billing career without ever having some sort of horrible drop because, uh, you know, they've lost X client or X, you know, whatever. Um, but I agree because you have to be— resilience isn't the right word. I know everyone says that, but you have to go through shit, don't you?

You have to go through these sort of things, I think, to actually learn stuff.

100%. I think resilience isn't the right word. It's relentlessness. It's like, doesn't matter if you're running 30 grand a week or 2 grand a week, you want to do the same you've got to, you've got to come at it with the same energy and enthusiasm.

I think that really is the— I'm glad you sort of shared those things just because I know this is— I think this is the sort of unique challenge that comes with the contract game. I think because perm is different, like, you know, when I was in permanent recruitment, it's like, right, new month, we go again. You can also have placements that maybe, you know, you're chalking up for 2 months' time, 3 months' time, but I think whenever I sat down with people in contract, you sort of have that build and then it just must be a real tough pill to swallow. Yeah, yeah, like that, that guy that you just said as an example, that must be really hard.

It takes time to build, right? It's tough. Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about— because we— because this always comes up and you've already spoken about in terms of speaking to people, using that information, and I'm always curious to hear how people talk about this in terms of we hear this word relationships a lot, right? And I think for you to do an effective job of using information, you have to be able to get the information. And correct me if I'm wrong here, but I just can't see it working if Jack the recruiter calls me and then it just feels like a one-way conversation interview, and like I'm, I'm just getting information out of you, do you know what I mean? So I think talk to us a bit about How can we— I don't know how you help your team with this, like how can they be effective at building relationships? How do you think about building relationships? And how would you define that? Like someone asked me that recently, I think it's how do you define, yeah, I've built a good relationship with that person. What does that mean? Like how do you do that?

I think— are you talking here from sort of like when, you know, people knew— if you've got— because you've got no relationships, like people new into the industry and where they've got no network?

Yeah, I think, yeah, if we're like— if, if we know an important part of The game is getting information and then using that information.

Yeah.

You have to be able to get to it.

Yeah, sure. Honestly, maybe I'm daft. I think people massively overthink this.

Really? Okay.

Yeah, 100%.

Right.

Because I think they just— well, how do you build relationships with friends and your family? You just— you know what I mean? You talk about—

Well, how do you just talk?

I don't know. You talk about things that are common interests and you— do you know what I mean? And you find things to talk to people about and things like that. I think, um, I think first of all, so first of all, it's all about give and take, right? And it's all about that. And I think you, if you just, if you just started working in a recruitment agency, right, you just set up on your own, wherever that situation might be, it's difficult because you've got, you know, you've, you've got no, you've not got much to offer, but you have to think of some sort of value add to give to that person. So if I'm starting a new recruitment agency, I'm probably, have I got any roles, vacancies that I'm working in my space? No. But I will 100% have clients that my business have worked with, right, that do hire in that space, right? So I think any value-add you can do, right, that might be a good bit of market information, that might be a client you're working with, like, Mr., Mrs. Candidate, really keen to get in touch with you. I, I specialize in this area. I'm not working on anything right now, but I'd love to put this client on your radar. I've got X meeting with them in a couple of weeks. This is what they're all about. These are the programs I've got going on. Should they have any contract vacancies coming up, I'd love to keep you in the loop on them. Can you tell me a bit about your own situation? Do you see what I mean? Like, you just added a little bit of value, right? Or it might not be that. It might be some market information you've seen. It might be a certain technology that they're working in or whatever else. But I also, I really don't think, I really don't think there's harm in saying, I'm new to this industry, but my job is to build a network of unbelievable people in this specific space. I've identified your profile because of this, this, this as being unbelievable in this space. And I'd love to just understand a little bit more about what you do. So when we have new roles coming in, I could talk to you about them. 100% people might hang up. They're probably not, you know, to your point earlier on, on what makes a good contractor. Well, if they hang up, that's probably not a good one, right?

And then there's another channel that we can use is that open to work piece. We can maybe be a bit tactical there.

Definitely. Yeah. Because I think, I honestly think that's so powerful. And I actually, I think it's something I picked up off someone that was on one of your podcasts was they— everything they do is a life cycle around a client. I can't for the life of me remember who it was, but yeah, 100%. If your, if your client outreach has been into the client you're targeting, then you're going to find out loads. You know, when you're vetting your candidates and telling you, getting them to tell you more about the programs they've worked on, more about the skills they're proud of, more about their achievements, you're also getting really good information on, you know, that particular business and, you know, which you can then later used to, you know, some— so some credibility, which is like valuable, right?

I know you said people can overthink it, that's probably fair, but I think this is also where, like, let me know if you feel like I'm going on the wrong track here, but I feel like that's also where things stem— like things like fake jobs or like all the reverse candidate flipping stem from. Because it's like, why am I thinking of doing that? Well, it's because then I've actually got something tangible to speak to them about versus I'm doing this market, or I'm building my network, you know what I mean? I think that's where that can stem from, right? Is like, because then I've actually got something to give you.

I agree with you. Yeah, it is tough, right? But I think, I think doing that, claiming you're doing something that you're not, sort of sets you up for failure.

Because we might get short-term wins, but in the long term, does that play out? We're not sure.

And you're also— look, say you're talking to a high volume of people in a day, it's a high volume of people you've got to get back to on something that's a little bit fabricated, right? And I don't think that's— because I don't— but I don't think you need to. I think you're making life difficult for yourself by doing that.

This is the fake job piece.

Yeah, 100%.

And when we say fake job, you tell me what you perceive that to be, because I know this, this can be quite common in contract recruiting.

100%. I know this, I know this goes on, right? But if you're talking to someone and saying, I'm calling you because I'm working with this client on this vacancy, and you're not, right? And you're doing it because you want to give them something to get something back, or you are sort of chasing that vacancy, right? And you want a shortlist of people ready for it or whatever else. I just think you're, you're creating a situation for yourself that you might not get anything from and you're gonna have to follow up on, right? Um, I think it is easier to talk about— like I said, talk to them about a client, talk to them about something you're excited about. Um, and as long— I just think as long as you go at it with enough energy and enthusiasm— like, I'm a massive, massive advocate: never expect someone to be enthusiastic about something that you're not enthusiastic about, right? So if you're on the phone to a client, a candidate, if you are beaming with enthusiasm for what you were talking about, difficult for them not to be. Um, or if they— do you know what I mean? If they operate in that space, then it's easy. So I think— I know, I know it happens, right? I'm not daft. I know, you know, that that is an easy way to start speaking to people and build a relationship. But it is an easy way, but I don't really— don't think it's the best way. Um, what about the—

is one of your channels the classic, like, flip call? Like, because that— is that an effective strategy?

I think that's a little bit more Um, you know, the way I would go about that is perhaps a little bit different, right? Unless we are, of course, generally working on whatever it is, head of, director roles, VP roles. But I actually think, and I actually think this is slightly true, right? I think a lot of those type of roles actually, or in my experience, maybe type of client I work with, I don't know. But in my experience, a lot of those roles don't always come about by, especially on a contract basis. Here's a vacancy. Can you fill that vacancy for us? I think a lot of the time for us, it's a case of Mr. and Mrs. Client, we've got a really good senior person that we've worked with for a little while in this space. They do this, this, this. They've achieved this, this, and this. They operate in a really similar space to you. Would you, you know, is it a skill set you think you'd be interested in? So then that, do you see what I mean? So rather than then saying to her, I rarely say to a senior candidate, I've got this vacancy. It's this, it's this, it's this, it's this. Because Rarely do I. I'd much rather have the conversation of, look, I'm actually speaking to you because I work really, really heavily in this space. I find that when I find someone with your sort of skill set, I can often put them in front of quite a lot of our clients and kind of do it on the flip, right? It's kind of like a football agent and say, I think I can put you in front of these businesses, businesses like this, businesses like this, businesses like this. If you are, you know, if you have niche down and you are operating that, they're going to be familiar names. And I think that's just not the right— there's no right answer here, right? But I think that's— and that's how I'd prefer to do it. But doing that, doing that, um, so open to work piece, um, I think you naturally fall into those types of calls with those more senior people. Yeah, yeah.

And you're speaking to them about their career and then, yeah, we'll go, what, what's going on in your team? Using all that?

100%. Yeah. Um, usually if people are open to work on LinkedIn, they've often got a CV on their LinkedIn page, right? Um, so that's okay. You know, they used to be pretty open to talking to you if they've got their CV on LinkedIn and are, you know, clearly looking for something.

And then the final piece on this sort of like fast-paced ones and twos in, in, um, clients is like organization. Like, that's going to be key, isn't it? Do you want to talk to us a bit about, uh, something that someone brought in recently or shared with you that works in a different organization around the sort of contractor categories. I thought that was quite a good tip, wasn't it?

Of course, you were talking about this.

Because then we've got, we've got in this game, we've got to be really good at prioritising the right information, the right tasks, keeping on top of all the other stuff.

100%.

So talk to us a bit about these different categories.

Yeah, I thought this was really good. It's important, right, when you have sort of senior people in that whilst they adapt to your process, you can't take something from, from their experience as well. Yeah, we had someone start recently, never even something that occurred to me. To me, like you say, you know, have 50 candidates that know who you are. But he kind of started with us, and he breaks down his candidate work into sort of 3 quite distinct areas. So he has A candidates that are his current contractors, B contractors that are contractors that are in the market looking for work right now, and he has C contractors that are those open-to-work people, not necessarily looking right now, possibly working within a target client, good source of sort of market information, good relationships with those people. And then he breaks his day down into when you speak to those people. So obviously your A people are in work, you're probably going to talk to them and your B— sorry, and your A people, I think, and your C people are in work. So you're likely to talk to them sort of pre-half 9, post-half 4, probably busy during the day. Your B people are the active people on the market looking for work. They are people to go and talk to during the day. So yeah, I thought that was quite a good thing he's brought in.

Again, it's just good to have these things when there's just a lot going on.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's easy to be able to simplify it, isn't it?

And yeah, let's just round this out with— because then we can sort of compare it. Like, how— if I'm a contract recruiter and I've got my book up to whatever, I'm in a particular niche industry, I've maybe got max 2 contractors and 1 client. Yeah, I've maybe got a spread of 10 to 12 different clients that have 1 to 2 contractors in, that might take me to over £10K weekly GP depending on what my margin is. What is my like client engagement strategy going to look like? Because then I want to hear the difference, because I know you've been mapping this out. What might my client engagement strategy look like that's different when we then got on average nearly 6 contractors in per client? I mean, so what— because you, you would have seen this, you've been in this game, and then you've got recruiters in it now. Yeah, like what does this look like? Is it mainly chasing leads, acting quick? Is it— I don't know, like, what does this engagement strategy look like?

Yeah, so, so you— so question basically being, how do you get from sort of sporadic contractors all over the place?

Let's just spell out what— what— how would you describe the client engagement strategy for someone that's in that position?

Yeah, got it. So yeah, okay, so I think that's really interesting, and it needs really dedicated time, I think. So I think when you're I always compare some contractor books to like cars, right? So if you can imagine someone's running 10, 15, 20 grand a week and they're doing it solely off reactive market information, lead and chase, 6x5, right? If they're doing it solely off that, it's relentless, right? Because it relies on you constantly, constantly going and going and going. And I always say it's like, it's like you buying like a shit Ford Fiesta like putting all the mods on it possible, like, and like bombing it down the motorway at 200 miles an hour. But everything's shaking, right? You've got the wing mirrors rattling, like your wheels are coming off, like you're— everything, right? That's how I always see it. Because it's, it's a lot of clients to look after. It's a lot of contractors to look after, right? When it's purely that just reactive stuff, because you've got, you know, say you've got, you know, 1 point something contractors per client. That's a lot of people to look after. It's a lot of terms to sort out. It's a lot of clients to keep happy. It's difficult. And I think there's a transition to be made on stepping back and sort of saying, right, how do I get— now let's look at my clients, look at my strategy. How do I get more people in each? Because I think, I think there is a bit of a ceiling.

So there's a shelf life, do you think?

I think so, yeah. I think in two ways, right? I think there's a bit of a ceiling in that, like, physically, have you got the time? Like, have you actually got the time, right? Like, I've seen someone run 30 grand a week doing that, right? And I've never seen someone so time poor and work all the hours in the world, right? And like, I got to— didn't get anywhere near that. I got like 17, but I was time poor. Like, it was tough, right? And I think there comes a time where you need to sort of set a real strategy on like, actually, right, how am I now retaining these clients? How am I doing more in these clients? Um, and when you're new to the industry, right, I remember like when I was like 3, 4 years in, I had like 4 contractors in a client and I was naively like, yeah, I've got them. Like, I've got them.

They're putting all their recruitment spending on me.

100%. It was mad. And like, I won't tell you who the client was. They're big, right? They've got 4 runners there. Um, and I remember speaking to one of my contractors and I was like, how many contractors do you work with? He was like, 200. And I was like, oh God.

So that's such a good lesson. I've heard a few people share that. Like, that's a really good lesson.

You need to— yeah, 100%. So 2 ways of looking at this, right? I think you look at it from client backwards, or you look from— you look at it from kind of your activity outwards. So recently, so you put me in touch with, um, Elliot Jones, right? And he, and you spoke on his podcast on here about how he kind of reviews his client base. I found that really interesting and it's a really sensible thing to do, right? So look at your client base, look at the clients you've currently got, run as that and assess them one by one and look at, right, how many contractors do I think I can get in each of those places? Okay, I can get another 4 in there, 5 in there. Okay, that's going to get me to X weekly GP. Well, actually I want to be at X weekly GP. So I need more clients. Do you see what I mean? So your strategy is go and max those clients out and then go and find these new ones. But I think it also— looking at it sort of, that's client inwards. Look at it activity outward, which is kind of more how I look at it. It's what time you're dedicating to it. So, so for me, I always advocate everybody spends at least 20% of their week— so that's one day, two mornings, two afternoons, however you want to split that up— looking at their existing clients and target clients, and I categorize those in the same place. I think an existing client should always be categorized as a target client because otherwise you can get complacent with that existing client, and that's like me with my 4 contracts in a 200-contract company, right?

Um, yeah, because I wrote this down. You said something to me around never stop treating your existing clients as targets even after the placement is made. I think that's— everyone can relate to that. I think that's a good sort of way of putting it because you can get complacent.

Yeah, no, definitely. So Yeah, so we've built a bit of a structure around it recently where, yeah, you spend a minimum of 20% of your week doing the correct outreach, the correct targeted activity to go and expand that client, right? And there's really obvious things in there, right? There's asking for referrals, doing your contractor, sort of, we call it contractor BD calls. I'm sure other people have different terminology for that, but speaking to contractors, getting lots of information about what's going on in there, you know, mapping out the rest of the business, using borrowed authority to go and sort of build credibility with the rest of businesses, things like that. But we've built sort of a system recently, and I actually sought a bit of advice from, I think a lot of people in our industry, we're very insular, right? If you want advice, you kind of go to someone else who works in our industry. I know a couple of people who don't, they work in like, you know, really good, huge software as a sales businesses or consultancies. And a lot of our clients are consultancies too. So I've spoken to their sales teams and growth people and things like that, how they do it. And we've kind of built like a sort of a quarterly sort of sequencing of outreach, right, that isn't just, you know, hammering people with, you know, appropriate candidates and calls basically, right? It's a different type of outreach.

Yeah, let's go through it. I guess just, just before we do, because we're getting into how we go from like that to then— yeah, averaging, because I think the stat that you gave me like before, 1.7 deals per client per year, now we're over the last 12 months 5.6 deals per client, right? So we're on this journey. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, so it's 2023 was like, it was 1.6, 1.7 deals a client. And on the last rolling 12 months, as of last month, it was, we were on 5.

But what I just wanted to ask you, just popped into my head as you're talking about, I love that analogy with the car. Hopefully conversations like this help, but if I'm in that position right now and I'm like, Jack is literally describing me, do we feel that sound, that's on the company's, that's the company's responsibility to go, Jack, I don't know how sustainable this is, let's figure out what our strategy is. To make sure we're not a Fiesta going 200 miles an hour, we're a better car that's maybe cruising a bit more, it's a bit more predictable, we're not worried about breaking down? Or is that entirely on the responsibility of the person? Do you know what I mean? I find that quite interesting because what if I'm surrounded by people that that's how they operate, like they're all just Fiestas going 200 miles an hour and they don't know any different?

Yeah, well, yeah, I think only you know your clients, right? Like, only you know your clients, your contractors, what's, you know, you're in your market. Um, the chances are your manager isn't. Um, do you see what I mean? So I think, look, we, you know, hopefully you can tell that we try and put up guardrails to nudge people in the right direction. We very set out processes of how you do this. But yeah, I do think there's a bit of, you know, a bit of autonomy, a bit of accountability to, to get it sorted. Because yeah, yeah, you don't want to be, you want to be that, you want to be the Ford Fiesta, you want to be a Bentley, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah.

I, yeah, I just thought I'd ask that just because I guess, yeah, I guess it is. Well, if you take responsibility and just be willing to take accountability and go, you know what, I don't know how sustainable this is, I don't know how much I want to do this this way anymore.

Yeah.

If you've got that drive, then I guess you're going to be curious about, right, how can I make things more predictable? How can I make things feel a bit more controlled versus so reactive? Yeah. I guess if you've got that drive, then you're going to come up with solutions.

Yeah.

Around it.

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. No, I agree with you.

So let's— so where— so In terms of, would you say the main difference is then on getting to the point where, yeah, we are averaging 5 to 6 deals per client versus like less than half? And that is a lot of it around having more of a systemised approach on how we take a client from that to this. Is that?

100%. Because it's not easy, right? And I always think, and you can say, you know, it's really easy to sit and say, oh yeah, I'll just speak to my clients more. I'll just speak to my contractors more. I'll just add some more managers around my clients. It's too complicated, right? You, like my old director used to say to me, you fall to the level of your systems. So you've got to build a system that works, that catches everything so you're not missing anything, right? So obviously that starts, right, with, it starts with speaking to the people you know that, starts with speaking to the stakeholders that you know that, starts with speaking to your workers that know that, you're building a picture of kind of the organigram of the business, constantly asking for referrals, getting a picture of what programs are going on. Doing outreach into those various areas as much as you possibly can, right? But we— so the way we've kind of set the structure up is you— we have— we've developed like 12 different types of outreach, right? Some of that is, you know, LinkedIn, kind of like social media interaction. Some of that is, you know, marketing work, right? Around, I don't know, case studies, events, testimonials, you know, all of that sort of good stuff as well. Um, and it's structured week on week, right? So every week during your 20% dedicated to this, this is the outreach you do to those people, right? You've then got a week to do a follow-up call into those people. The following week, they get the next piece of outreach. It's, there's 12 pieces of outreach. So you get to the end, that's very conveniently fills a quarter. So you have, you know, a small amount of targets per quarter, get to the end of that quarter. And the last kind of outreach to them is, look, clearly, you know, this isn't the right time, you know, hopefully you can tell we're enthusiastic about working with you, but this is a new client.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, hopefully our, um, you know, our paths will cross in the future sort of thing. Let us know if you'd also like to talk to us about your own career and things like that, and then perhaps come across them in the future. So, so that's that, that last message obviously to new clients, but the, the rest of the stuff kind of applies to, to new and old.

And then if it's existing clients, we've got a similar process, right? Yeah, I've got a thank you note, post-placement meeting.

Yeah.

How impactful are they, by the way?

Which one?

I sat down with a guy called James who was like big on this. He's just big on meetings in general, face-to-face. And he was like, what's been really powerful for him is like having like feedback and review meetings. Like, we've got some contractors in there, let's get a meeting and I'll come down to your office and let's talk about what was good about the process, what isn't. And then like, so you've got post-placement meeting there, getting a review.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's, that's super important because it's Like, look, it's a great reason to get in front of your client because you need to take feedback, and it's a good service, right? But, you know, they're also not silly. You're going to go there with your little sack of open questions about, you know, tell us more about your program, say more about who else we can work with, and, and all that sort of stuff as well.

And it's all about asking referrals, these types of things, just doing all those good quality basics.

100%, yeah.

And then if you have done another placement with them, ask them for testimonial.

Yep.

Client entertainment or GIF.

Yep, create a case study, 100%. And if nothing's reacting off those things and you're— you're— so we've sort of got like a flowchart, right, for sort of new, uh, existing clients. If that stuff isn't working, they go into your flowchart for treat— start treating them as a new client again. Um, so I think it is—

is what this solves. If, if I'm, if I'm someone in your team and we've— you're my manager and we're like, right, yeah, let's take strides to sort of turn my desk more into like a Bentley.

Yeah.

And we're like, yeah, we just need to do more of our existing clients. It's like, what does that mean? So we've tried to really systemize that. That's the problem that we've solved. I think so. Just let's just speak to the people that you do a lot of work with more. Yeah, it's like, let's do these things. And then I'm assuming because we've got this organized, you can start noticing what's working, what isn't, what's more impactful, and then you can keep iterating.

100%. Because we've had— I'm sure other businesses will resonate with this, right? Like, like We've had so many different people in our business stand up and say, and not even just in our business like that, we've had, you know, we've had to say external training or something like that. Like, oh, you know what your problem is? You should do more deals with less clients. And like, it's like, yeah, well thanks. Like obviously that's the dream, but it's really, it's so, so much easier said than done. You have to have a system, you have to have a process. And if you don't have a system, you don't have a process. Like I said, you fall to the levels of your systems. If you don't have a system, it's not going to happen. So you see what I mean? So I think the other important thing to note on this is, and this will differ to person to person, right? I recommend that everybody with a contractor dedicates 20% of their time to this, right?

Okay.

This more long-term view, because I know, I know how a lot of recruitment agencies work. You will always have someone breathing down your neck, what's coming in this today, this afternoon, this week, this month. You can't just, you know, you can't just abandon your, you know, your reactive, reacting, sucking up market information, obviously, right? Because you're, you you won't place anyone for months, right? I recommend that people do it for 20% of the week. But I think as you get more and more senior, it should eat up more of your time. So this is all my time as far as business development goes, right? Or perhaps managing consultants at Opus, I'd probably expect that it's 50%, 60% of their time. Do you see what I mean? As you move up, as you build your network out a little bit more thoroughly, it becomes more of your—

yeah, because if you've done a good job, then you should be able to get more out of less in terms of you've got the relationships, you've got the introductions, there's people that you can call on.

I think so, yeah. And like, because as you do that, like, you're, you know, the more time you focus on that, the more time— like, you asked about how do you build relationships, right? Like, you just, you repeat this and repeat this and repeat this and repeat this, and that's how you build relationships. You have the best relationships with the people you talk to the most, right? 100%. I've done this for, you know, kind of unsystemised and unprocessed, and it's taken me this year to really define a process around it. But I've kind of done it for a while and it works, right? And yeah, there's two of our clients that are coming to my wedding. Like, it works, right? I think, yeah, that's the main bit to focus on though, is like the transition of how much of your time should it— and recognising how much of your time it should should take up. But it— look, I think it's really good, and I think from a company-wide perspective it's also really helpful because you get a lot of people in our industry, right, who have very short billing careers because they're knackered, right? Or one or two things, that they're knackered because they're the Ford Fiesta, or they kind of get to the end of the road on 360 recruitment. When you use this to build out bigger clients, it opens up more opportunity, right? So in our team now, we have 360 people, we have 180 delivery people, we have, um, 180 BD function, we have account management. So it kind of opens up for people who are, you know, if people are doing unbelievable job at 360 recruitment, that's absolutely awesome. You want to keep doing that, keep doing that. But for people who are, you know, more, you know, I'm going to the end of my, my tether on this, I think I'd like to do a more BD-focused role. I think I like it. Lends itself much more to that if you can get it right, I think.

And then talk to me about how then— obviously spoken about the approach, but I think I was asking you, wasn't I, when we were prepared for this, like, how would you describe the difference of like statement of work to then time and materials? Because you were just like, I don't know, you just explained it to me in a way where it's like, I think it's just more about how people, um, procure this stuff, and it's more about that versus— because when I hear contract recruiters talk about Yes, about statement of work. Then I hear like, I think projects, and like, I don't know, I'm sure I might be being stupid here, but like, how would you—

No, not at all. No, that's, that's completely valid. I think, I think it lends itself to more project-led work. Okay, right, because you're working—

Statement of work stuff.

Yeah, yeah, it does, because it's— you're working to an outcome and that's not necessarily about individuals. Um, so it does, it lends itself to more volume, volume-led recruitment, which is—

if we're talking about you might help me with, and we'll do it in a statement of work way, I might be saying, Jack, yeah, in order to do that, yeah, we're going to need 4 contractors. Versus if we do it the other way, it might be only this particular individual with this skill set and experience.

Yeah, yeah, it could be anything, right? You can draw a statement of work up for one person for one day work, right? But I don't think it does. It lends itself to larger scale things, I think. Um, but it's—

how come?

Because people are, you know, if you're a stakeholder in a business and you need to deliver a program you could recruit. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to recruit, I need 20 people to recruit that. And I've got 3 recruitment agencies. So they may be going to get, you know, I'll throw it to them. They get 6 each. The statement of work, you're wrapping it up and giving it to one.

Right.

If you see what I mean. So you're pitching sort of for those 20. To be honest though, I don't think, and I'm sure there'll be people that disagree with me on this. I'm sure there will be because there's definitely, look, we're quite new on this statement of work, sort of outcome-led journey. We really, really are. Um, but it's been very good to us. Um, for me, the, all the statement of work is, is the nature of the procurement you're drawing up. It's not about, that's not the defining feature of what you're doing. Your service is not all that dissimilar, right? There's definitely another sort of, um, governance and compliance layer on top. It's not the defining feature of what you're pitching. You're pitching your service as you normally would. The statement of work is just meeting your client where they're at in terms of procurement. It just means that if a client, you know, a client says I need to procure this as a statement of work, then you can do that. Other people might disagree. I'm sure there's other people out there pitching it very, very differently. But for us, it's about, it's not necessarily about opening more doors. It's about not closing them on ourselves by saying, oh, sorry, we can't, we can't contract like that.

And what's the main, if you said you're early on in the journey, what's been the main benefit then? Has it been the increase of people that you've then—

I think so. The ability to do it means that the types of clients we can go and engage with is better because we know that's how they want to procure, if you see what I mean. And it's kind of allowed us to— look, we do an awful lot of work in UK public sector in my team and specifically roles with, you know, like really high levels of clearances and like tough stuff like that. It is a litany of consultancies involved in that. We've got brilliant relationships with some of them. Um, but it's always a really convoluted supply chain. Do you know what I mean? There could be loads of people in that supply chain. Being able to procure in that way means you can kind of go up the supply chain a little bit, cut out, you know, get sort of cut out margins that are in between you and where your contract is actually ending up.

Right.

Um, so it has 100%, it's kind of freed us up to explore bigger organizations and sign terms with, you know, some much bigger businesses. Um, but that's not, I don't think the determining factor is that we can do statement of work, right? I think we're meeting them where they're at.

Do you think by doing more of that, the main net benefit to Opus, to you, to your team, has been the 5.6 per client versus 1.7, or is it more the process and the system?

Um, sorry, what?

Sorry, you know, you know, you said you're like fairly early on this journey.

Yeah.

Do you think the main— besides the thing, the experiences you're just talking about—

sure—

would you say the, the main net benefit you've experienced so far is Do you think that's been a big factor as to why you've now got 5.6 deals per client versus 1.7?

I think so, yeah. Yeah. The time allocation, like, we— the systemisation of it is kind of like new, you know, we kind of really put an emphasis on that this year. But that whole 20% on clients, we've been, you know, sort of gunning out for quite 20% on sort of target clients and existing clients. We've gunned that for a little while. I guess I see my role in that as if you're spending 20— if our team is spending 20% of time on their target clients, I'm spending 20% of my time on the top 20% of their target clients as well. So yeah. Yeah.

Okay, nice. Let's sort of round this out then with— you've been doing, you know, a good chunk of this journey whilst also then like leading, managing. So I think I just wanted to get some non-negotiables for you. Something that just popped into my head, I'm just curious to get your take. I speak to a lot of founders who want to launch Contract or start Contract I'm not going to ask you about that, but you've seen a lot of people now and data. So what I want to hear from you is, if— what have you seen to be a fair window on, like, we hired Jack, he hasn't got experience, what's like a fair runway for him to get to like a good level? I don't know what your typical performance milestones are, but you've probably seen this play out a lot. So I'm just curious, like, if I get into your team I'm excited, I'm doing the Will stuff, I'm, I'm doing what I'm meant to. How does that play out? Is 3 months a fair amount of time to like really get my contract book going? Because I'm sure you sort of work to a budget and you, you've seen a lot of data, you've seen a lot of people now. I'm just, I want to hear non-experienced and then experienced and we've made a good hire, they tick all those boxes, they're doing what they're saying. I know it might vary, but I'm just curious to hear your take on that.

Yeah, yeah. I guess, yeah, look, do we have minimum expectations of NFI from people joining the business? Yes. I don't really— this could sound so uncondusive to running a good business unit. I don't really care.

Okay.

What I said to you earlier on, I think one of the most important things is giving people clarity. So the reason that those expectations are there is to give people clarity. Are you ahead, on track, behind? What I care about is, is that person doing all of the things that are conducive to getting them to where they need to be or getting them to the next bit? Because I think, and if they're not, that's a problem, right? That is a problem. If someone is underperforming and not showing the right activity in order to perform, then yeah, of course, in any industry in the world, that's an issue, right? But it's not the defining bit for me is are they doing the right things? That's the most important bit. We've had people that have come in, hit their straps, right, and got to £10,000 a week in just over a year. Unbelievable. The most successful person in terms of Weekly GP I've ever managed, 2 years. 2 years to actually really hit their straps. Right. But they were the best at the activity, they were the hardest working. Do you see what I mean?

Super varied.

100%. It is, it's really—

I get what you're saying, it's— I understand that. I think I was just curious because I, again, I know there isn't like a perfect answer for it, but you, you know, you've been in this position, you've seen a lot. Yeah, yeah. So what about— okay, let me ask you this then, just final point on it. So if I'm— because I think a lot of people, there's joint responsibility, but I think a lot of people probably hired a contract recruiter who's experienced and then it just hasn't worked out. Yeah, sure. So if we're just talking not layman's terms, but like, if I join your business, I've got like 3 years contract recruitment experience.

Yes.

What are you saying? Like, if I'm— and I've got, you know, I've got non-competes— in 3 months, should I be getting that to a very good point? What would you work to?

I think so. Yeah, we'd like to see, you know, from sort of trainees, trainees, consultants, we'd like to be seeing a deal a month from sort of senior consultants, that sort of category, sort of 2+, and then we eke it up from there, right?

Okay.

But like I said, the emphasis— I really mean it. I know it sounds like a really, like, modern way to speak, right? About like, oh, we're not about outputs. 100%, we're about outputs, 100%. But we're really about the effort and the attitude that's going into—

because you know that plays out.

Because I know that plays out 100%. Like, we've seen it. So I'm a really good example of that, right? I was 18 months, right? I've worked for 10 years. For my first 18 months, we had, so Neil, who's now my director, started after I'd been in the business about 18 months. And I was average at best, honestly, when I was doing the permanent recruitment. And culture is a lot different then, right? It's a completely different organisation. But it was in at 8 o'clock, doors locked behind you. That morning meeting starts then. It was suits, ties. And it was very different business and I wasn't performing at the level I needed to perform, but I was first in and I was last out and I was on the phone all day and I was outdoing anyone on activity. Right. And when my director Neil started, I was like, God, this guy's going to look at my stats and be like, this guy's got to go. But no, the emphasis was on, no, actually of the people here, right? And from that era, there's me and one other person in the business in the London office that were there from that, whatever it is, 8 and a half years ago. Um, and that's, that stayed. Like, it's, you know, if you are doing the right things that are conducive to getting you to that next bit, that's the, that's the important bit.

Yeah, love that. Let's just, uh, you tell me, we, I asked you for like 1 to 3 non-negotiables on the leadership management side. I think you've spoken in detail about clarity. Yeah, performance.

Yeah, sure.

We put, don't lower your standards and expectations, bring people up to them. What do you mean by that?

Yeah, so that's, I think usually people who are in leadership positions in businesses have got there because they're pretty good at it, usually, right? That suggests that they have good expectations of themselves. They have really, really good standards. When you have people joining your team, new hires and whatever else, they come from an area where the standards might not be the same as yours. And I think it's very easy, very easy to placate people a little bit and kind of be like, oh, you don't want to work like that? That's okay.

Right.

You know, you want to come in a bit later? That's not a good example. We've never done that. But do you know what I mean? Like, if just like pandering to people, yeah, 100%, right? Like, yeah, a little bit. And I think I've learned my lesson on it. But it's my— again, one of my old directors, Rory, He always used to say, never ever lower your standards and expectations, you bring people up to yours.

Um, I think people learned that the hard way with the 2022 piece.

100%. Yeah, it's a slippery slope. As soon as, as soon as, do you know what I mean? Like, one thing's— I've definitely learned the hard way. But yeah.

And is that even— that also applies when you've got someone that outcome-wise is like killing it? It's still holding true to that in terms of Yeah, because I think that's the other thing as well where people struggle is like, yeah, but they're doing all these deals, like let's not worry about—

Yeah, but how are they in that place? How does that play out? So if you've got someone who is not playing up to— you've got one person here, right, who's doing unbelievably well, running a really good really GP, really good whatever, but their standards are through the floor, right? They, you know, whatever, don't turn up to meetings, they don't, you know, they're in late all the time or whatever else. And you've got 4 people who you're trying to show those standards to. And your example is of a top biller is, yeah, well, yeah, well, he doesn't need to do it because he bills loads. She bills loads. That's just— you're going to ruin those 4 people. So yeah, 100%. They just can't slip. And I actually think the more senior people that I work with, I'm probably more on top of.

Interesting.

On that sort of stuff, if you know what I mean.

Because you know that how quickly that travels downstream.

I think so, yeah, I think so.

I don't like— I've been doing a few different— I've been on a few different podcasts recently, different talks, and the position that I'm in, I can sort of try and draw similarities, golden threads, and this is one of them. It's like the people that I sit down with that have built high-performing teams or are able to attract good people or doing a good job of that, yeah, I think one they've got clarity on what you're talking about, performance standards. A lot of people don't have clarity on that. They can't sit down and go, if you join my team, this is what we're about, this is what I'm going to expect of you, and if we do that, this is, this is where we can take you, this is the journey that you're being part of. Yeah, that's like number one, just being able to clearly articulate, if you join, this is what you're part of. Yeah, where we can go. And then the second part to it, and this is of course easier said than done, is then protect at all costs, which is what we're talking about here now.

100%.

As soon as people like you just said, you've got a really good person generating loads of good revenue, hitting numbers, but their standards of food is the floor. You've got to be willing to have those hard conversations, even though when that person can go, yeah, but Jack, I'm killing it, mate, what are you on about? Like, relax, chill.

Yeah, yeah.

But like you've just said, it's probably even more important with those people because the knock-on effect and how quickly that can spread.

100%, I completely agree with you. Yeah. And yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm not surprised. Like, I'm sure there's, you know, more people— I'm sure there's loads of more senior people than me that you spoke to that probably I mean, learned that lesson ages ago and whatever else. But I think that also applies to performance as well though, right? Like when I say don't let the standards slip, don't let the expectations slip. Look, we're month on month doing all right. For the number of people we have in the team, the productivity per head is pretty good. But the best ever month we ever had, we're way off that, right? And I think it's really easy to drop your things and be like, 'Well done, everyone. Really great month. This is absolutely amazing. We've had a really good month with this productivity per head, and that's what we care about.' Well, yeah, of course, if people have done well, people have improved, if people have performed really well, 100%, that needs praise, that needs incentive, reward, whatever else. But it also needs the reminder of, 'But just to let you know, that's the bar. That was the bar that we set in that month then.' So did you see what I mean? That's where we're going back to. So it's kind of the standards, but it's also the, you know, if someone's done a, you know, and that goes to an individual level, if someone's had an unbelievable month, the message to them is like, well done, but that's your bar now.

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, that's fast.

And then like, just curious then, as, as we finish here, like, I don't know if you've had people ask this to you before, but how have you found, like, you personally, 10 years doing this, building your career, how have you consistently kept yourself engaged? Is it now you get a real buzz out of helping and growing individuals and seeing what they're going to do? It sounds like you're not getting complacent. There's like new things that you're, you're doing and implementing, like the systems, you've seen the result of that. Like, how have you maintained that own personal engagement for your career, keep moving forward? Because yeah, if you're doing that, then that's going to be easy to then create that for other people, I feel like.

Yeah. Yeah, sure. I think I've been very fortunate, to be honest. Literally my entire career, I've only worked at Office since university, right? Moved from Stoke to London. I've been here since. I've been really fortunate to have some wicked people around me who are very, very good at a lot of the stuff I'm crap at, which kind of means that I've been afforded to go and do the stuff I'm good at. Right. And I've done I've kind of, and again, perhaps it's a product of the business that I work in where, you know, it's kind of, it's always growing. So it's like, when I look up, there's not a ceiling. Yeah, there's not a, you know, when you get to a certain level, it's not a case of like, oh, I've got to hit that number to get that promotion. It's kind of like, right, like, what can I build? Like, what do I go and build now?

Nice.

And I think like, look, I think my career at Opus has been a bit like, a bit of a utility player, a bit of a John O'Shea. Like, it's, you know what I mean? Like, I've done 360 recruitment, I've done 180 BD, I've now managed, you know, look after one of the contract teams. It's all just— so that sort of, I guess, kept me on my toes. But I guess never really felt in my comfort zone. Yeah, which is—

I think that's the insight. You're always willing to go into that conscious incompetence stage.

Yeah, definitely. But I think it's also really important that you, you know, I really, I absolutely properly get a kick out of seeing people, the individuals in my team do well, because I know what, I know what it means. I know what it outside of work. I know what it changes when you hit those big numbers, and I know what the impact is. It's amazing. Um, but I also, I get a massive kick out of the, the client-led stuff. And I always think if you're in a management position, it's very like a lot of recruitment businesses, right? You kind of, you do this, you do this, you do this, now you're a team manager and that's how you manage people. This is the, the model. Whereas I think what I've been quite fortunate is that I've kind of been able to, you kind of create that yourself. Like, what am I good at? Well, I'm actually really good at that client bit, so I'm gonna do that. And really fortunately, I'm surrounded by people who are good at the other bits. Do you see what I mean? So been afforded the ability to sort of play to my own strengths a little bit, um, which I think is important. I also think, you know, if you're not doing the stuff that engages you, then it's gonna be hard. Yeah, it's tough.

Love it. Well, look, absolutely. I just love— I think, like you just said that, I think that it is one of the coolest things about our industry where what's in an organization straight out of uni And like you just said there, loads of skills that you've gained, loads of different experiences. I think that is one of the coolest things about our industry, and I can tell ever since meeting you, like, just how passionate you are about this game that you're playing, that you're in, which I think is pretty cool, but I just love it. So, um, yeah, loads of great things there that people can take. So I really appreciate you joining me.

No, honestly, thank you so much for having me on, like, I'm a big listener. Pretty much everyone on my team is as well, so honestly, yeah, thank you so much.