Reece Warren - Don't be afraid to ask stupid questions and learn your market.

Welcome to the Recruitment Rollercoaster podcast. My name is Hishem Azzouz, and today I'm in another WeWork, a brand new WeWork, and I'm joined by Rhys Warren, who is a team lead for Few and Far and heads up the software engineering team. How are you, Rhys?

I'm good, man.

Very nice. So, um, set the scene. As I said, we're in Waterloo. Their new WeWork. Um, they have a skate ramp downstairs, a fully functioning skate ramp. Yeah, they have a fully functioning skate ramp downstairs that Reece kindly told me that, um, you're not allowed to use.

No, no. So we were allowed to use it on the first week and we weren't allowed to use the basketball hoop, which everyone was really confused by. So rather than let us use a basketball hoop, they've now shut down the skate ramp, but it's still fully functioning. Yeah, but no one is allowed on it.

It's just a bit weird.

It's like, why? So stupid.

Yeah, it is really stupid, I think. And then it just looks a bit shit.

It's just awful. We could put so many different things there, but they're like, what can we do that's really cool and edgy? Yeah, hashtag London. It's crap.

Yeah, like, so true. Um, cool. So look, as I was saying, Reece, where I always like to start, how did Reece Warren enter the, uh, world of recruitment, my friend? How did that happen?

So I was, I studied at King's, I studied at King's, studied philosophy of all things, where there is no obvious career path into anything. And I was looking through Guardian Jobs and Indeed and all this stuff. And I don't remember applying for recruitment at all, actually. No, not, I don't remember whatsoever. And I applied for a rec to rec, like open day, essentially, where I did like a group interview. And I went in with 8 other interviewees and everyone was suited and booted and I was in this baggy Primark horrible shirt.

Oh nice.

And, uh, basically they just specced me outside the recruitment businesses and I was going to all these interviews and one of them was thrown out of actually. And I was thinking, this really isn't going well. Um, and then yeah, came across engineering. I did more research into it because my background is in esports.

Yeah.

And it looked really, really geeky and techie and I was like, damn, like this actually looks quite interesting. And the rest is history, as they say.

Okay. Cool. So, um, so how did you stumble across the engineering piece then? So that's under the tech industry, right? Yeah.

So, um, originally I was applying for lots of different types of recruitment. There was property recruitment, there was FMCG, um, there was— I can't even remember half of the stuff. And then when I eventually went into to interview with, uh, the current company, um, you know when you're like on the bus journey to the interview, like, oh, I should probably do some research. Um, I saw product and engineering. I was like, what the hell is that? Does that mean And then, yeah, looked into it and had a chat with the guys here. Like, yeah, we basically build apps. I was like, that's really cool.

Yeah, that got you excited.

Yeah, and that was it.

What was your perception of recruitment at this point?

Um, so when I went into my Rec2Rec interview, uh, they set out the scene of recruitment, of everything that it could be. And, uh, there was this dude who kept talking about how many Porsches he owned.

Oh my God.

And, um, he flashed his Rolex at me.

Oh my God.

And he said that he has 3 houses, one's on the south of France and two other ones. And I was sat there and I was thinking, this guy is such an absolute tosser. Like, this is unbelievable how arrogant this dude is. Um, I don't know if he listens. That'll be hilarious if he does. He'll know exactly who he is. Um, and, um, he was explaining, he was like, look, no, most recruiters are, are hated. And he was, he was quite honest about it as well. He was like, that's why we're paid so much. Oh wow. And I didn't really mind that. I don't mind the idea of being hated. I was like, well, that's fine. I don't care. And yeah, the more research I did into it, and again, when I interviewed with these guys, they set it out so clearly, like, you're going to hate this. But it kind of made me want to do it more. It was like, I'm not going to hate it.

Like, you're all—

yeah. So, and because I just didn't believe, because everyone was saying it's horrible, it's this, it's this. I was like, it can't be that bad. Like, there's no way it could be. And the more I looked into it, I saw negative reviews and stuff. I was like, well, I don't think I'm, uh, I'm gonna be that bad at it. Like, I should— maybe I can not make a change, that sounds really cringe, but maybe I can just do a slightly better job.

Yeah.

And carve out a bit of a niche and stuff.

And how that was— what's that? So then, just to, um, set the, um, sort of tone in, so you've been at Few and Far Now for 3 and a half years, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And that's been your only recruitment job?

Yeah, yeah.

So these types of conversations, um, on what recruitment is and these types of things, only sort of 3 and a bit years ago. Yeah. Which I think that— I just think that's just so lame. Like, but how, how— so if you like, now knowing what you know now, yeah, just out of interest before we sort of move into how things went and stuff, like, how, how would you sell recruitment now? Like, if, if we— if the, like, the next Reece was in front of you right now and he was sitting on the other side of the table and you know what you know now, how would you How would you sell it to him?

I would probably do what was done originally, but probably worse. I would say that it is really horrible at first, because I think when you first do this job, getting used to the hours and the amount of work you put in, the amount of rejections. For me personally, I'm terrified on a night out to approach a girl, right? In case she's like, no, you're ugly. It would break my— honestly, it would break me. And at first it's kind of like that when you're calling through job boards and you're like, look, I've actually got a really good role, and they're like, no, please don't call me again, or where did you get this number? Number. It was just— it was awful. But the longer you do it, the more you enjoy it. So I'd repeat what was said. Um, the only thing I would really change is more information about the market. Um, I think it's really, really important for everyone to understand the market they're getting to, because I think the type of recruitment that you do really depends on your— or really affects your experience of recruitment. Um, because I imagine recruiting for people in finance is very different from recruiting people in, in software engineering, right?

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And I would hate finance because— yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, okay, that's interesting. So you touched on it a bit there. I always like to speak to people about their sort of first year in recruitment because I had my own experience with that and how difficult it was.

Yeah.

How were your first 12 months then?

To be honest, they were really, really strange. So when I first joined the business, we were about 8 or 9 people, so it was much smaller than we are now. And we were in a position where the engineering team, there were 3 of us, not including mobile, and I was working for this guy who was hilarious, and we'd come into the office and we would just sit and chat and just basically not do much work. And it was pretty great, to be honest with you. There weren't as many pressures as there are now to pay the bills. I was in a WeWork now where the rent is ridiculous. And it was just, it was good at first. For the first 6 months or so, I came in and I was just so determined to make some money because I'd just moved into a flat where my rent was a grand a month on a 20K base. And I, I wanted to go somewhere cheaper, but I was going to places in like Mile End. Um, I looked in Clapham and they were like just holes in the bathroom. I was like, oh, I can't, I can't do that. So I got somewhere posh. So I was just constantly like on it trying to do as much as possible. And then after those, those 6 or 7 months, uh, the team left.

Okay.

And I was left on my own, which was quite bizarre because we went from this culture where we would really bounce off each other and, and rip into each other or whatever. And it was a really nice like balanced environment to essentially just me in the web engineering side. The guy in mobile thankfully stayed, which was nice, so there was 2 of us technically on the dev side. I had to take care of all the account management, all the 360 piece, everything after 7 months. After that, to be honest with you, it was a bit horrible because that's when it all falls onto you to deliver against everything.

[Speaker:JAKE ARCHIBALD] What was you doing before that point? Was you just focusing on sourcing?

[Speaker:THOMAS BURLESON] Yeah. Yeah, so it was literally just—

he was working on other people's clients, their relationships, other people's jobs.

Yeah, exactly. So we were working at Council of the World. So at that time we had a huge account, um, in Thailand.

Okay.

And we were just drilling CVs.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think we did like 20 placements.

So he was really focusing on delivery?

Yeah, definitely. And then to take over the wider responsibilities— I loved account management, it's great, really enjoyable— but to do across all of the remits. So that was every language you could basically think of, of, right, you're covering it. So I was like a generalist engineering recruiter. So to do all of that and the account management and then to take care of like qualification calls, etc. It was just a bit mad. And at the time, um, uh, we, we got our initial, uh, progression plan so, so wrong. So I got promoted from being a, a sourcer to, you know, like a senior sourcer, and then I had to go and start pulling my own clients. But pulling my own clients whilst doing all of this stuff as well was almost impossible because I'd also had no experience doing BD before. And like I said, I am a huge pussy, so the idea of being rejected by a client, I was just heartbroken by. Someone says, no, no, we're not using agencies. I was just like, oh, oh, oh, just so— yeah, um, so, so yeah, it was very, very bizarre after that.

But, uh, okay, so, so, um, up to the 12-month mark, were you still on your own?

Uh, yeah.

Did you— okay, cool. Yeah, let's break that down a bit. I think there's some interesting points there. So just, so, um, also just to help the people listening, so your market tech, very saturated. I mean, there's so many tech recruiters out there, right? Digital, whatever you want to call it, because it's a very, um, fruitful, yeah, um, financially rewarding from a recruitment perspective, yeah, market, right? So those first 6-7 months, um, how, how did you get to know and understand the market firstly? Just out of interest, like, how did you, um, get to know the tech market and get to understand these software engineers? How did you go about that?

Um, the, the first and most obvious technique is to ask your candidates. Um, when people come into my team now, they're so scared of seeming stupid.

Exactly.

Um, I find it really quite bizarre. Um, the, the best recruiters I've ever met are always the ones which pretend to be stupid. So they'll speak to the candidate and say, oh, so out of interest, like, how do REST APIs work? That doesn't make you stupid not knowing that. Yeah. We aren't supposed to know that. I don't have a degree in comp sci. I have no freaking idea, right? So going in with that mindset of saying, look, I saw this on your CV that, for example, you've done, um, uh, a migration over to a microservices architecture. What the hell is that? Yeah, that doesn't make me stupid because I don't know that. But if I get those answers that I need, you can essentially not repeat it to future candidates without processing it, but you have a starting point to then do your own additional research. And I think in this market specifically, if you don't know your stuff when it comes to technology— and this is more on the perm side, contractor thinks more about a process rather than the market— um, but if you don't know on the perm side, you're just going to look like an idiot. And you can't do client qualifications properly because you don't know what they're looking for, and you can't do candidate qualifications because you don't understand if they're any good, because you can't call them out and be like, well, you've just said that you did this 'How does that work? Because I didn't think that was possible.' And then you go, 'Um, um, um,' and you can just sift through the worst engineers, I guess.

Okay. So, um, so did it come quite natural to you then to not feel stupid when you was asking them?

No, like I said, in my degree, um, I studied the subject of tables for a year, right? Whether or not tables existed. I'm not even joking. I paid 9 grand to study tables.

That is mental.

So at that point, I'm not worried about asking questions which seem stupid because I've met someone who is on $45,000 a year to teach a module on whether or not tables exist. I'm not worried about that anymore. I'll ask anything.

All right, so the advice then for people that— that can be applied to any market, right? Yeah, definitely. When you're early on, I think I definitely had to— I mean, I worked in insurance and recruited in insurance, so that helped. But I think, yeah, it is a real common challenge for people because no one likes to feel stupid at the end of the day. Definitely not. So, um, I think, yeah, and what I'd also say from my own experience is that when you're actually asking questions and you get candidates speaking about themselves, they actually really enjoy it. I can imagine even more so from a technical background, they actually like talking about the tech element because there's an element of passing on that knowledge and sharing it, right? Um, so advice for people in that market then is, yeah, don't feel stupid, ask the question, um, and really listen. Yeah, obviously, right? Um, where was you sourcing these people?

I was caning LinkedIn.

Caning LinkedIn? What do you mean by caning LinkedIn?

Um, I was sending out, I'd say, 100 to 200 connect requests a day.

Wow.

Um, and this was before the LinkedIn update. So when I initially joined, the, the LinkedIn of the past was so glorious because you could put all the filters in, in terms of location and seniorities, etc. Without needing Recruiter. But now they've made Recruiter such a, a necessary entity that it becomes a bit stupid because there's all these other functionalities. Yeah, it makes it confusing. So initially it was just connect requests, but predominantly through Europe, European cities in engineering specifically, people want to relocate to London because it's the tech hub of Europe, arguably the world. People want to be here. So the idea of getting people to relocate because London is so saturated, these candidates are bombarded every single day mercilessly. Yeah, yeah. So how can I find people which aren't approached as much through LinkedIn? It was European cities. So that's what I spent most of my time doing.

Um, and was you going in straight for the kill here? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, and the other account we had, so the one in Thailand, again, we could approach any country in the world because they could sponsor. Really? So I was going through Brazil and Ecuador and, and the States and like New Zealand, every country you could think of. I literally had an alphabet of countries, what I was just going through one country per day.

Really?

I was not going home until I finished the country. Unless it was like US, then it would take me—

well, it was literally trying to connect and literally message them going, do you want a job?

Yeah, basically. Um, the Thailand one, it was like—

how effective was that?

Believe it or not, it was really— it was effective because of the numbers I was putting out.

Okay.

Um, at that point it was a real numbers game. Like I said, I was new to recruitment, I didn't understand my market too well. It was like the more messages I get out, the more chances I have of getting a response.

Yeah.

The more qualification I can do, the better I can understand my CV. So, okay, at that point it was like literally, do you want to go to Thailand? Um, and you would just find the people that did.

Um, yeah, that's fair enough.

And that was it.

Okay. And then, um, okay, so then let's just— before we move on to like the second year then, so that, that segment of you've been on your own.

Yeah.

Account management.

Yeah.

BD. Yeah. Um, like, how did that actually go then? Like, was it, was it tough?

Yeah, so, um, the, the guy which I was mentored by, um, amazing recruiter, um, he, he was burned out. He'd been doing it for quite a few years. Um, he said, uh, yeah, so he, he looked after me basically and gave me like roles to work, etc. Um, and he just got burned out and said, look, enough is enough. And rumor has it that the, uh, his resourcer, other resourcer, um, there was potentially relations going on there. So that person also decided to leave.

Okay.

So again, just rumors, just rumors. Um, and when I was on my own, I inherited all of their markets, which was a combination of, of everything because we were generalist at that point.

Okay.

So what happened was that the accounts you were supposedly delivering against, because he was coming to the end of his, his career, I guess, in agency recruitment, he's just the point where like he wasn't proactively engaging with them, I guess. So the relationships, there were some which were somewhat burned and a little bit like fragmented. So going in like healing, saying like, can you please give me a chance? At one point I was literally like begging clients, like, please like give me a chance to prove that I'm, I'm as good as him, or I can be better than him, or whatever. But at that point, for most companies, it was too late. Um, and that was also when the, the Thailand, um, company said they weren't recruiting anymore. So it just all came thick and fast. And I was like, oh my God, to the point where I was working email developer roles for, for $23K bases. I was like, I need to just put money on the board and fill something because we just didn't have much that was, that was going on. Um, and yeah, it was just really, really bizarre. And I was honestly relying on, um, my directors to find me roles because I'm terrible at BD. I'm awful at it. Even now I'm really not very good at it, really, because I'm scared that someone's gonna be like, oh no, you're you're— I've heard bad things, whatever, it would break my soul. So I'm the nicest recruiter in the world when it comes to my feelings because I take it personally, which probably implies I'm probably in the wrong job, but hey ho, story for a different time. But yeah, it was just difficult because I was always waiting for a role to come through from someone else because I was also trying to dual desk as well. So I was trying to do a bit of contract BD and do a bit of perm BD and a bit of this and a bit of that, and I was just so flustered and all over the place.

Sounds like chaos.

I, I just wasn't billing because I was just so scatty. My director was trying to help me and trying to give me direction, but it was— I was trapped in my own head to an extent. So how—

what did you build in your first year?

Uh, first year, um, including the initial 6 months, I think it was like 90 grand. Really?

90 to 100, something like that. Okay. Yeah. All right, so let's just talk about that for a second. Yeah, because particularly the BD part, even if it's now something you deal with and it's a challenge, right? Just because, um, the most common thing I get asked to ask guests on the show about is business development. Um, you had a similar path to me, so I, I sourced for, um, 3, 4 months.

Yeah.

Um, my director, yeah, passed over some accounts or slowly passed over some relationships.

Yeah.

Um, and then when he— when it went to Hishem Azzouz, like, let's get involved in the business development sessions with us, blah blah blah. Yeah, you all of a sudden have this really weird relationship with the phone, right? All of a sudden you're— yeah, as you said, like, you think you're going to be rejected and all these things, right? Yeah. So why, like, what— why are you so scared of it? Like, let's just— because you said you're in your head and these types of things. So like, let's just talk about that for a second because there'll be people listening that also have that challenge and these types of things and Yeah, what, why, why was it such a challenge for you?

I think it was honestly because I was stretched so thin, and I was also trying to prove that I deserved my job. Because I think when you're in your first year, most people are thrown into the deep end when it comes to BD, um, at least a lot of recruiters that I know. And you're under so many, so much pressure to send out X amount of specs and do X amount of calls and add X amount of contacts to CRM, and it's all just a bit much. And you're, you're not doing your job as well as you could because you're trying to do so many different things, and you're trying to tick so many boxes and hit so many KPIs that your brain just shuts down. Um, and, and that's why I was so terrible at it, because it's like, I'm trying to, to find people, I'm trying to build relationships, I'm trying to learn my market, let's do all of these different things, which meant that the BD piece was a thing I really, really struggled with because it was essentially a new skill set of how do you approach one of these, these like magical clients, right? How do you get through these guarded gates when you're doing these cold calls? How do you get past that sodding gatekeeper who's like, no, you know, don't want to talk? How do you do all these? It's just a completely different mindset, I guess. So I think the trick which I learned eventually, and thankfully the bosses were sweet with, it was like, can I please just not add all of these freaking contacts to a CRM? That was my thing. It's like every time I do a call, this or this, I have to log absolutely everything. And it was just, it was frustrating. It's like just let me just go. I'm just gonna go message loads of people. I'm not gonna track how many specs I've sent. I'm not gonna track everything on the CRM. I'm just gonna see what happens. Which, looking back, was quite brave to do that because you don't know who you've messaged and who you haven't. But it was like, I just need to be free a little bit to know.

Okay.

I don't know if that makes any sense though.

I think so. But, so, so you, so it just sounds like, it sounds like a bit, a mixture of, um, you've, you struggled to manage your day. Yeah. Yeah, in terms of like making sure that you're doing all the things you need to be doing.

Yeah.

And then it seems like because the business development part was something that you didn't enjoy, yeah, you sort of just tried to brush that under the, yeah, sort of daily tasks as much as possible.

Yeah.

And then when you did do that, there were certain processes that you needed to do which, yeah, you just didn't quite enjoy. No. Um, so when you say that, so okay, so when you said that you just then went freely, what do you mean by that?

As in like you just Just, yeah, I literally, if I sent a spec, I would not code the person that I sent the spec to, um, or what I said in it basically, because I found the admin side of it so incredibly monotonous and boring and soul-destroying that it just means you're not enjoying your job. And most importantly, you're not sending out as many specs or doing as many calls as you could do. If I'm having to stop for 2 hours into my day to code everything that I've done it's just a nightmare. So in those— for in that first year, my priority was bringing on accounts, seeing success, delivering against them, and rebuilding the team. So that's the sacrifice which I chose to make. And it depends on the business you work for as to whether or not you can—

that's difficult, that one, just because, yeah, long term, that's definitely not the right way.

No, it's not. But nowadays I do it very differently. But back then it was like, I need to choose something.

Yeah, you just tried to— yeah, that's fair enough. No, I totally get that. That, that's fair enough. Okay, so year 2 then. Um, how long, how long was it until you sort of had a few more people around you?

Uh, truth be told, we made some really bad hires. We made some really, really—

but was you involved in the hires?

Uh, admittedly, yes. So it's my bad.

Um, what, for your team?

Yeah, well, it wasn't, it wasn't my team back then because I wasn't senior enough, but I was taking like a mentoring role where like I would show them the ropes a little bit, like give them advice if they needed it, but I wouldn't do one-to-ones or direct line management. I wouldn't give them roles, so to speak. that would still be passed on by—

You just help them sort of, help them understand the path that you've sort of trodden on, right?

Basically, yeah. And we hired this one person, she was a moron. She was such an idiot. She'd just sit at her desk and she'd just like paint her nails and stuff and just do nothing. It was just ridiculous. So she didn't last very long. And then we had another dude who, still probably my funniest story today, we had an interview for, it was a Python role. And the interview was booked in for 4 PM. He doesn't check his diary. He calls up this candidate at 3:30. So how did your interview go? Candidate starts talking. Yeah, it went really well, blah, blah, blah. They're going back and forth and this dude starts closing him. He's like, okay, so could you see yourself there?

Like, yeah.

And they're like, yeah, I definitely could. It's like, okay, so like, will you cancel the interviews? He was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, right. So he puts the phone down, right? And I'm listening the whole time. I haven't said a word because I know what's coming, right? And I've checked my diary because I put it in mine as well. and this guy stands up all excited. Bear in mind, he had like 2 or 3 years experience. He's like, he's closed, he's ready to go. He's like really full of himself. Testosterone's pumping through his veins, chest's out. I was like, mate, great work, great work. I was like, but he hasn't had his interview yet, so how have you done that? He went, what?

He's like, he's closed him on someone else's.

Yeah. And then he cancelled the interview. So he emailed the CEO.

He cancelled the interview with your client. Oh my God, that's so German.

To you straight up. I was like, you are honestly one of the biggest idiots I've ever met in my life. But there were so many instances where he did that. It was— we were really struggling at one point in engineering, like really. Like, it was with losing the team, with me trying to rebuild it on my own, to then make two hires which ultimately just, just weren't right for the business.

What did you learn then? Let's, let's start talking about these guys. Yeah, what did you learn then?

It was, it was more about, um, we didn't really have seats for these people. In terms of like direct niches or an idea of how someone would fit in the business. For us, at that time, it was kind of like panic mode. It was, okay, how can we just get bums on seats, get people in engineering teams, so I'm not on my own, so I've got someone to talk to or whatever. We learned after we hired these two people that that was the wrong strategy to take. So, from my perspective, I was much more then focused on pulling like a volume of roles with my director saying, right, let's just get some roles through the door, let's get some accounts, and let's figure out a niche of where we can start carving this thing out. So I was like, okay, I'm going with JavaScript, I'm going with front end. So I'm going to take care of half of the engineering world, essentially. Front end, you've got back end. I'm going front end, that's my thing. My, uh, director was like, okay, I'm gonna be covering up back end. So in terms of like the BDP, yeah, I'm going back end. Weren't really too fussed on languages. We said we didn't want to work Ruby, really. We didn't want to work.NET, um, not really Python at that time. So like, we're going for like PHP roles, um, we're going to go for, um, I think it was, uh, there was another—

so you niche down?

Yeah, so it was like, and then what we're going to do is once we've got a few accounts on, we're going to go out and we're going to find a resourcer.

Okay, that makes sense.

We don't need people.

So basically, so basically you performed the strategy?

Exactly. And that's what we did.

And you actually then Tried to build a bit of a platform.

Exactly.

Okay, that makes sense.

So when someone comes in, rather than— so for example, the, the girl that I mentioned, she came in and she didn't know what she was doing.

Um, that was also part of your guys' fault, right?

Oh, 100%. Yeah, we made so many mistakes during that period.

That's what you learn from, right?

Exactly. Um, with, with the, the two girls previously, they just kind of came in and just were a bit scatty. Oh, what this or what that? Oh yeah, yeah, it didn't work. So after that, we changed tact. We hired, um, essentially a bulk of resources, right? So a few for the engineering team, the product team, um, at that time the data team. And we're like, right, let's, let's do this properly. And we focus on the strategy of getting in people with no experience to essentially build up that, that mid-level further. So right now we had the, the lead team, which was like the directors. We had the mid team, which was us guys who joined a year before, and now we wanted the juniors to then grow into the mid position. And after we did that, we, we haven't looked back and that's when we've started really expanding and, um, putting some money on the board.

Yeah. Nice. That's, Okay, that's really interesting. So, um, and that, that whole process then happened in year 2? Yeah, in year 2. Yeah, yeah. Um, okay, cool. How did you do— how did you get on year 2 then?

Yeah, year 2 was good. Um, so billings-wise, did just shy of £250,000, which I was really happy with.

Um, we did— what the fuck, that's fucking pretty decent.

Yeah, honestly, the second year, when we nailed down what we wanted to do it was honestly just taking a bit of a step back and saying, what do we want to do here? Like, what direction are we going in? And more importantly, how do we want to structure this business? So this meeting was across the whole team. Like, how do we want to grow out all of our teams?

That's great.

And that was the most valuable experience I think I've had to date, to say, okay, what do we want the long term of this business to look like? We've came up with like 3-year plans of how we're going to scale, blah, blah, blah, which is all well and good. But it was looking at the, the next 12 months.

He took a step back.

Yeah, he took a step back, and that was it. So we're like, right, we're going to hire, uh, a few resources in, in, uh, Jan. We're gonna hire a few resources in, in July because obviously that's when people graduate. And then we'll look again in Jan as well. So it was like coming up with dedicated hiring cycles rather than sporadically hiring throughout the year and being reactive.

Okay, okay, let's just very quickly— you've broken down that really well, but that's a, that's a quite big jump. Yeah, around circa 100K mark. Yeah, second year 250.

Yeah.

How, how did you achieve that then with clearly some failures along the way and these types of things? Like, how did you, like, talk to me a bit about how you, how, yeah, how you managed to increase those billings?

Yeah.

What'd you put that down to?

So besides from, from getting a hiring strategy right, um, it came down to, to a change in in my BD strategy.

Okay, talk to me.

Because in, in my first year, it was very much you do BD by calling through a list or by emailing through a list or using one of these tools to find jobs or leads or whatever, or dragging leads from your candidates. For me, I'm not very good at that. Uh, that's not my strong suit. My strong suit is talking to people, understanding my market um, and really just building long-term relationships.

Yeah.

When I have one of my candidates in process, I make sure that they are treated like a king or queen, right? As best as physically possible. It's not possible with everyone because some people are just a bit strange, but again, sorry for a different time. And rather than go through all these other ways of, of doing BD, I just went simple. And that was all of these people that I'm placing why wouldn't I just keep in contact with them? Why won't you say, hey, do you want to grab a beer? It was literally as simple as that, of just keeping those relationships going. And that meant that I was pulling roles through clients that they had joined, um, through clients that they knew were recruiting, through friends, through networks. It all came through referrals and recommendations. And I know that sounds a little bit cliché, like, oh, I get all of my roles through recommendations, but genuinely, in my second year So that's the strategy I took.

So the strategy is double down on your candidate relationship.

Yes.

Okay. And when you say that, you mean obviously building that relationship.

Yeah.

But, and then are you pretty much basically asking these people, saying, who's the hiring manager? Are they hiring? And then these people would then go, look, I know you're hiring.

Yeah.

Um, I know this guy Reece, really good, or whatever. Was that the It's literally, can you intro me via email?

And even if it leads to nothing, what you would find is if they didn't want to work with you initially, in 3-6 months if they still haven't seen any success or they've got a new route—

What about, just thinking, if you get intro'd and I'm a, I don't know, whatever, a front-end engineer, whatever, right? Yeah. And I intro my hiring manager to Rhys, aren't they gonna go, hang on a minute, this recruiter's speaking to my, um, talent. Do you know what I mean?

Well, this is where you have to be quite delicate with the— what the intro actually says.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

So, um, I always use a pretty structured format in terms of these intro emails. Talk to me.

Give me the format.

Pretty careful format was literally, I've worked with Rhys in the past before I joined this business.

Okay, nice.

First and foremost. Second of all, it would be, um, we still keep in contact. He's not trying to poach me. He's just a good guy. Speak to them to yourself and you'll see what I mean.

So, okay, cool, that's solid. That's what I mean. That's what I thought.

I was, I was quite worried about that at first, admittedly, um, but the, the more that you do it, the more recommendations you get, because it's such a small community, the recommendations just kind of— if they hear it from one person, they'll also check it with someone else.

Yeah.

So for me, again, the personal branding piece is so freaking important. So like my recommendations on LinkedIn, I try and get as many as physically possible. So that way if I've had an intro via email, you'll go on LinkedIn and say, oh, he's worked with so-and-so.

Yeah, yeah.

So it just had to be quite consistent in the way that, that we— when you switch to a strategy like this, you need to make sure your brand is on point and that your recommendations can come from a number of different places, essentially. So that way there's consistency across the market.

What's in it for the candidate?

Um, to be honest with you, just a lot of love and affection. Um, yeah, that's the way which, um, I always phrase it. It's a case of if, if you can intro me, I will take you out on a lovely evening of, of debauchery or whatever you want to do. Um, I've had some very weird requests of how we want to do it. Others, others are more set on taking like a percentage of the fee, which again, fine with if they want to really— they want to take a small percentage as a cut, more than happy.

You've done that?

Yeah, multiple times. Okay, so that's really interesting for, for me, like Luckily, bosses are happy to do it, which is awesome, because it's like, if I can say, for example, say, right, 10% of the fee we're going to give to you as a thank you. So let's say it's a grand. You get a grand, the business has made 11, right? It makes commercial sense. And if they do it again and then again and again— so the idea is, particularly with contract talent as well, is if you set up these relationships, they do your BD for you. They're like your little pigeons. They just fly off and they just, they get the, the word about few and far out there. And it's just doing something like that which is so small that can just be so powerful. So it just usually means that when we're negotiating in terms of businesses, we try and get an extra percent or two just to kind of accommodate what we're going to be losing.

Okay, that's, that's interesting. So for you, the big reason then for you to sort of leveling up your billings and stuff was getting the BD approach?

Yeah.

Right. So I'm assuming then this meant that, yeah, you had way more opportunity to make more money.

Yeah.

And these types of things. So would you say— and then you back yourself to deliver in terms of resourcing?

Definitely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I mean, everyone will say it's a candidate short market in your world, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it is.

But I think you mentioned it, you mentioned it briefly there. How have you— is there any on the sort of resourcing and delivering side anything that that you did really well that you feel, um, contributed to you hitting that sort of £250,000 mark? Because I've seen you guys online and you talk about building communities and all these types of things, right? Yeah. Was this happening in year 2? Did that, did that impact the, the sort of billings amount in terms of— because you spoke about the BD strategy, but then, okay, what, what did you do differently on the resourcing side that impacted that?

Um, resourcing side, not too much. I think it was more what I touched on earlier, that I would— I focus on a specific market.

Okay, so there's a niche and the focus.

Yeah, it was rather than me do all of these other types of different roles, like email developers and cloud engineers or whatever.

So, so it was because you was focusing on that, yeah, every job that you worked meant that there was then a backlog of people that maybe didn't fit that, that you could then use. Okay, cool, that makes sense. Okay, um, year 3.

So, so you've been here 3 and a, uh, about 3 and a half years.

3 and a half years. Okay, cool. Year 3 then.

Yeah.

What went on year 3?

Um, did you level up your billings? So yeah, I Technically, this is, I guess, still my third year until the end of December, I think, something like that.

Um, okay.

But from— because I joined in July, so it's a little bit awkward— but, but today, so, so this year there's not really too much difference between my third year and now, to be fair. So this year we've done, uh, 260 to date so far. So I'll, I want to do more ideally, but our target's 400 this year. So we're—

well, you're saying we there?

Yeah, so this is the team.

How many of you are there?

So there's now 4 of us.

And you manage that team?

Yeah.

And then when you're— it's interesting. So then your, your billings, and these people contribute to that figure?

Uh, it depends on the role that they fill. So, um, if when they initially join, if they join as a resource or experienced, that will solely go to my billings. If they get promoted, that's when we start doing, uh, dividing that essentially. So we'll do splits, for example. So we have 25% for, for each section of the process. So account management, um, pulling the role, um, finding the candidate, managing the candidate.

Okay, cool.

So it depends on, on what level you do as to what split you get. So there are, are deals where I'll get zero and it won't go towards that, that 260%, and there will be deals where I get 75%. Okay. Um, so yeah, it really depends.

When did you start managing people?

Uh, in my second year I took on my first person, um, which didn't work out. Which is a shame. Um, I wasn't supposed to manage that person, but my boss, um, who was supposed to manage this person broke his collarbone and was out of the office for, I think, about 2 months or something.

So yeah, the structure wasn't in place.

It was literally, look, Reese, can you look after her because she doesn't have anyone else to learn from? So rather than just mentor her, I had to directly lead everything. Um, and, and yeah, it didn't work out. She did, uh, 2 placements in I think 9 months or something, um, and she realized that she didn't want to do the job and she's now a primary school teacher.

So, oh nice.

Yeah, that's, uh, that was the first experience. And after that started really like kicking off on management from July last year. So took on the first person then, and since then added another, yeah, 3 people to the team.

What— okay, what— let's just focus on that for a second.

Yeah.

Clearly had a lot of failures. Yeah, with this sort of mentoring, managing, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. What have you got right this time? Structure. Yeah, you seem pretty chaotic, mate.

Yeah. Um, but how have you—

yeah, so structure. So how, how was structure enabled you to be a better manager and build this team?

So we, we reached out to, um, to an external guy to, to come in and, and help us again in leadership training, um, which at first I was really skeptical about. The idea of having an experienced recruiter come in and tell you how to do your job, I, I got my back up really badly. First time I met this guy, I was just like, oh yeah, whatever. And we started doing the training sessions with him. So we take out half a day, um, a month to go with him, and he would just talk us through the challenges he's faced, etc. And he introduced, um, a management framework to us, which, but very, very simply, was just a process we would follow in terms of, of sitting down with your team, the stuff you would cover, the targets you would set, and the conversations which you would have. And most importantly, is asking them what freaking motivates them. Because none of us had done that. None of us before, when we were mentoring, had said, so, so what motivates you? It's such a simple question, and none of us had thought about it. We'd never had a conversation with anyone we'd ever taken on, including other actors to us, saying, guys, what, what motivates you? Like, what gets you out of bed? Where do you want to be in 3 years or 5 years? And it was that shifting dynamic of adding in those processes, understanding wider motivations, that we could genuinely drill in on the structure and performance of the team, right? So nowadays with the guys I've got right now, every day we do the same thing. We sit down at the same times, we cover the same topics, and we see success from it because everyone knows what to expect. Whereas before, we would come in the morning— but honestly, we come in the morning, do you know what you're doing today? Yeah, I do. Cool. Done. That was my morning catch-up, and I would be done for the rest of the day.

Wow.

And it would get to Friday and they would have 2 CVs out, and I'd say, what the hell have you been doing all week? Yeah, okay, that's, that's a shitty manager.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, if I'm listening right now, haven't got much process, haven't got much structure, what, what should I like from, from that whole process that you've gone through now? Yeah, what should be the first thing that I should implement and do, um, that will probably have the biggest impact, do you think?

In terms of management? Yeah, in terms of management. Management, so that when you take on people in your team, the most frustrating thing I would say, and the easiest mistake to slip into, is answering questions. So if I'm sat at my desk and one of my resources has a question for me, I will instantly want to answer it. I will instantly want to help them. And I think it's the worst mistake that you can do.

Okay.

The reason why I say that is because you need to have dedicated times where you have conversations with your team. If you get questions thrown at you sporadically throughout the day, it screws up your day plan, it distracts you, and more importantly, it doesn't allow them to figure it out themselves. So we can slip down this rabbit hole of babying ever so slightly. So just giving that autonomy to just let them crack on and do their stuff. And the rule is like, can you find the answer by Googling it? If you can, We'll have a conversation in our catch-up, right? Unless it's life or death. Unless you're telling me the candidate has dropped out of the final interview, which is taking place in 30 minutes. Cool, that's fine. But if it's like, okay, is my Boolean correct? Do we need to have that conversation at 10:30 in the morning? No, because we had a catch-up at 8:30 or 9. We don't need to have another catch-up in an hour's time unless it's already been booked in. So just sticking to that, that solid structure makes so much difference because it means that you can do your job. And if you can do your job, you can pull roles for these guys. You can find candidates for—

so what's the structure then?

The structure, so, um, you have 3 catch-ups a day. You have one long one in the morning.

What would you mean by long?

Long one, um, usually 45 minutes. Okay, you sit there, you'll run through each of their day plans.

Yeah.

And you'll set SMART targets, right?

Okay, cool.

Not like core KPIs like, oh, you need to have, um, 20 pre-screens by the end of the day or something weird like that, but saying, if you're going through a recruiter, okay, how many people do you want to message? You want to message in that time? Okay, I want to message 30 people.

Cool.

So between 10 and 12, you want to message 30 people on LinkedIn Recruiter. Awesome. Cool. It's measurable. We can work with that. And we'll do that for the whole team. What do you guys want to do? What roles are you focusing on? Why do you think that's the right role to focus on? And we'll talk through it as a team. After that, we just set them off into the wilderness.

Yeah, they do their thing.

They crack on. Lunchtime, literally 10 minutes. Guys, how are you getting on? Do you need any help? What questions have you got, etc.? Having that just general touch point.

Nice.

Do you need anything? Most of the time it's a no or it's like a generic question. End of the day, again, 10-15 minutes. How did your day go? Do you need any help? If they said, yeah, I haven't had time to do this, cool, you're staying late, right? If you haven't finished what you need to do, yeah, stay late and crack on. But most of the time you don't need to.

Okay, and then just— and then like that. And then, um, if they try and grab you between that 10 and 12 when you've decided what they're focusing on or whatever, is it you saying no? Well, that— like, you deciding if that can wait or whatever?

Yeah, yeah. All I say is, is it life-threatening?

Oh, is that the question?

Is it life-threatening? No, it's not. Okay, let's have a catch-up.

Sure, I'll come forward to your strip with that.

Yeah. And you know what, at first you feel like a dick for doing it.

Yeah, no, but that's—

but honestly, the, the thing for me is like, you need to give people autonomy to crack on and do this.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you just constantly baby them and say, this is the answer, this is the answer, this— then they can't grow and progress.

So, and then the final point on that, yeah, if right now I'm a manager listening, I have a small team or whatever, or even as I guess it's beneficial as an individual because you said that, yeah, you haven't done it for yourself, um, what's like— how did you then cultivate, or what's the conversation to understand, yeah, why these— what these people are motivated by? Like, how does that go? And What can— how can people approach that?

Um, apart from asking the, the question of what motivates you, because everyone answered with, I don't know, that's what I mean. Yeah, some people will say money inevitably, some people have some sort of answer like progressing, which is a bit generic. Yeah. Um, the question which we were taught to ask is, um, you ask your team, when was the last time you felt motivated?

Oh nice.

And they'll say, um, so when my boss did this to me. I think it's— I knew what he was going to ask me because I was in the same training session. Yeah, I know what you're doing here, pal. I said to him, the last time I was motivated was when we had the Vegas incentive, because I've never been outside of Europe. Vegas, like, I've heard horrible, horrible things about this place. I want to go there. Yeah, yeah, that was a real time. And we dug into it, and one of my key motivations was making memories, which sounds really weird, right? Now, if my boss wants something from me, he'll try and spin something that it will be a memory. Like, yeah, even like they're stitching me up later by dressing me up because I've lost the bet with one of them, right? I was like, yeah, but it'd be a memory. Like, oh damn you.

Oh God, yeah. So that's a really good point you made there, is like once you then tapped into it, you really dug deeper, then yeah, I just want to progress. Yeah, I want to make money, right?

Yeah.

Then all of a sudden you have a real enabler and fuel to go, yeah, if I'm working for you and you know my motivator is making memories or whatever, yeah, you go, Rhys, yeah, honestly, are you like— remember what we said, are you serious about buying that property for your family or whatever? Like, is that— do you know what I mean? So then you can you use that? Yeah, okay, cool. That's interesting.

I think the, the easiest mistake to make though is, is relying on the money motivator. Because recruitment, right, it's not the best job in the world, as we all know. It can be really horrible. And we're all sold that money is the reason why we do this. But I think you need to dig into why money is important. So even if it is, uh, I really want to buy a house for my mum— why? It's getting that next level.

Next level. Yeah.

What most people stop there and be like, oh cool, so remember buy the house for your mom. But why do you want to buy the house for the mom? Like, what's going on underneath that? And that's when it gets really interesting, and that's when you can really work with your team. Because if you understand your team, you know how to get the best out of them. But again, when I first started managing, um, and I've only been doing it for a year, so I don't want to preach like I know everything because trust me, I don't.

Definitely.

But the, the first time, I was just like, do more deals. Like, yeah, you need money, you're, you're poor, you're on 20K, you're, you're you're struggling, like you need food. Yeah, it doesn't really work.

Yeah, okay, a bit of a segue then. Um, okay, cool. So what I wanted to ask you about then, which I think would be really interesting— so Few and Far, yes, I went to your, um, launch party the other week, which was good fun. Yeah. Um, and you've had some interesting experience, right? So in a nutshell, um, when did you you do the offering where you went on site for, uh, one of your clients? Was that in the third year?

Uh, towards the end of the— yeah, second year. And the second year.

So in the second year, yeah, beginning of the third year.

Uh, yeah, essentially a little bit before the third year. No, so it's more like the middle of second year to end of second year. So it's like a 6-month period.

Okay.

So, so this was really interesting because I, I think most people listening will understand that there's been a bit of a shift in recruitment recently in terms of the models that are being offered. There is the growth of this on-site model, which has been sold as the, the be-all, end-all. Every recruiter and every recruitment company is now exploring the possibility of going on-site with their clients, right? Which, you know, could be a great thing, it could be a bad thing depending on the business. But we're in a position where I think we were trying to be reactive. We were looking at other businesses and their success and the clients they were winning and their marketing. We're like, wow, we could do that. Better. So that's what we're gonna do. And that's when we, we tested it with, with Rush Partners. And at the time, we were planning on hiring someone permanently for us who we would essentially contract out, like a consultancy model. And we, we looked for, for a few months, and we just couldn't find anyone who, who we liked. So my boss turned around to me one day and said, hey, how would you feel about doing this? And at first I was like, I was like, "No, I'm all right, thanks, mate." The more he explained the reasons why we were doing it, and the fact that it was like a pilot scheme, he sold me completely. I'm really glad that he did, because it was probably one of my best experiences to date. We literally went on-site with these guys, and we looked at their whole offering. We reviewed their benefits package, we reviewed their specs, we reviewed their marketing strategy for them in terms of attracting talent. We reviewed, um, their hiring process, reviewed their sourcing strategies, their ATSs, everything down to the last, like, freaking point. Yeah, right. Honestly, it was amazing.

Okay, why was it amazing?

Because you have so much control over the, the process, and, and, and you know what to expect. So rather than send a CV and it just kind of goes off into to this other world, like this black hole, this chasm. With this, you would send the CV to yourself, and you would do the screening calls yourself. And when you're handing over the CVs, you can look at your hiring managers and say, right, this is what we've discussed, this is what this person has said that they're strong at, this is my concern about the candidate, do you want to call? And you have so much more control, not just over the client, but over the process, and over almost like your own screenings, because you know what the client wants because you're sat next to them.

[Speaker] Why is that beneficial?

Because that way you know exactly what you're looking for and you can actually get hires through the door. Whereas most of the time, uh, we as recruiters have like one qualification call. Yeah, give me 5 points that can get this person a first interview and then we'll just kind of go through the process and that's it.

Yeah.

And I, I don't know about anyone else, but I, I get a lot of rejections for culture fit. Um, technical skills, most people, you either have it or you don't.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, culture fit was the key thing. But when you're on site with these guys, how did I actually work?

It's like, where would you start? Who's you sat with?

Yeah, they gave me a desk.

Really?

Yeah, I sat next to the CTO. And yeah, that was it. But the scary thing about it is if you're not doing your job properly, you're not just answering to your boss, your agency.

Yeah, it's different.

You are directly answering to the CTO who sat right next to you. There's no running away here. Yeah, he will say to you, okay, so how many people you messaged today? Right? And it's not like agency was like, I haven't done as many as I should have, sorry boss. Yeah, if you haven't done as many, they're like, why are we paying you? Yeah, why are we using— back then, no, it— why are we doing that? So the added pressure of delivering was, was ridiculous.

But then I'm assuming you was like, um, the added element of you being on site, there was also a bigger driver of— to definitely to help, because like you, you'll see the, the real impact there. Yeah, in your face.

Yeah, honestly, it was, if I don't deliver here, we're going to get fired and our pilot run is a failure because of me. And all that pressure, I was like, that's awesome, let's do it.

And all you did all day was source?

Yeah, well, asides from all the initial research.

The strategy phase, yeah.

Yeah, well, that also took quite a lot of time.

Okay, fine.

Even when we'd set it up, we were always adjusting it and altering it.

That makes sense, so you're always catching up. I understand. Has anything changed? We need to review the technical— Exacto. Okay, cool. And just a quick one then, how would like that whole overall experience, like how did it then, what was the result?

We made 12 or 13 placements in, I think it was like a 4-month period. Okay. That was, everyone was an engineer apart from one, and that was a UX guy. And yeah, it was very, very successful, it was great.

And what would you say was the biggest benefit to the client for doing that?

They didn't have to do anything really. I would take care of everything for them. Like I said, the strategy piece, the benefits review, everything, I would give them recommendations. So rather than going out and doing their own research, we would present all the data to them saying, look, this is what your competitors are doing, this is how we can do it better. So we did all of the data piece for them, so all they had to do was just essentially press the green button to say go.

So, okay, and then how, how was your overall experience of that? Because I'm thinking, like, how often was you there?

Uh, I was there once a week, sometimes twice.

Just once a week?

Yeah.

And then the rest of the time you was in the Nowit office? In, in this office? Yeah. Okay, how was that experience?

Towards the end, it burned me out really badly. Um, predominantly because of the commute though, because I live, um, towards Stratford and the, the guys at Rush are based in Paddington.

Oh wow.

So I was doing about an hour and 10 on that one day where I would go in. Um, it was just commuting, it was just, it sucked. Um, but that was also because towards the end of the tenure, this is when we had sat down and done a hiring strategy and said this is what we want to recruit for, etc. So trying to do the recruitment on, on our side in terms of internally to find resources, etc., and manage against other clients and deliver against other clients It was so much to take on that after 4 months I spoke to my boss and said, look, as much as I'm loving it, we need to find a replacement. So we did find a replacement for me. Um, we just got a contract recruiter to go in there, um, and he did an awesome job as well.

Okay, that's really interesting. Um, okay, and then, um, what that— what the other thing I wanted to, to make sure that we covered, um, was because I think you guys really pushed this.

Yeah.

And I don't know if you've been involved in some of the events that I've seen or whatever. Yeah, that you guys really preach around building communities.

Yeah, definitely.

What does that actually mean?

Building communities is not just about sending one CV or making one placement or two placement or even three. It's about genuinely like building relationships for the long term. So, well, like I said earlier, it, um, my BD strategy was reaching out to previous candidates I'd worked with. For me, I have now my own engineering community of people that I can reach out to and have a great relationship with. On top of that, we are also really, really hot on the meetup side. So, actually going to events, hosting events, partnering with events, and mostly paying for pizza and booze because that's the way to everyone's heart, admittedly. So, we've been working with Mind the Product now for years and years and years. We work with UX Crunch and UX Live. We work with React Advanced, and we run our own hackathon. It's doing all these other things which are giving back to the wider community, I guess. So it's all about those long-term relationships and sustaining them. But in terms of the, the new model offering, which you're looking at, it's if you're saying, look, if you want to go and recruit 20 people at one time, we'll take care of it. That's not a problem. Or if you want to recruit one person at a time over a 3-year period, which is going to lead to 20 hires, we'll cover you. And it's just about coming up with different different service offerings where we can accommodate that. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, on the communities piece, because a lot of people, particularly in the, the tech market, to be fair, have spoke about events, right?

Yeah.

How does that make you more money?

So, um, from the most obvious one is from a BD piece. When you say I run my own hackathon, it makes you sound quite unique. Is this the obvious one? So you're more likely to pull clients. Yeah. If, if you say You know, I'm calling them about jobs. Not really, no. It's usually just saying, oh, asking them about what the hell's going on and just introducing yourself, saying, yeah, well, you know, we saw that, uh, there's, for example, a React meetup. Are you sending the guys down? Like, what's your thinking? Or with the hackathon, it's, do you guys want to compete? Do you want to come down, bring your team? Um, there's no like entry fee or like, um, like weird terms attached to it. It's just like, look, do you want to come down and just do some awesome shit for charity? Um, In terms of the Mind the Product piece, so going on stage and introducing yourself to, I think it's like 1,000 product managers.

Oh, wow.

Saying, hey, if you need a job, you need advice on your CV, if you ever want to talk about your career trajectory— career trajectory, that's a hard word— then come to us. If you're ever looking for product managers, again, come to us. It's being the official recruitment partner for these huge platforms where if someone gets made redundant, God forbid, then they think, okay, who do I know, who do I know, who do I know? It's like, oh, I went to that meetup and there was those guys that— okay, I'll reach out to them. And you'd be surprised at how many candidates we get from that.

Really?

So yeah, it's definitely very beneficial.

Okay, and then just to wrap that up, have you been involved at all in like the start of starting these events? I'm sure there'll be multiple people involved.

Yeah.

But if I'm listening right now, heard 3 or 4 people now talk about events or whatever, what's sort of your advice to start an event? Where does that come from and how do you approach it?

So I was one of the founding guys of the Hacker Games, so the hackathon that we run alongside the guy that used to work here and the marketing team. And we really had to do a lot of research into what was already on the market.

Okay, so look at what people already do.

What had already been done. and could it be done differently/better? So with the hack games, there are lots and lots of hackathons. Yeah, lots of hackathons, um, most of which are internal, or maybe there'll be one or two companies competing against each other, but there's never been one that's been done across multiple different companies, across different, um, like sectors and all this different stuff. So in our last hackathon, we had like ASOS versus Just Eat versus Moonpig. Versus the guys at Judopay, so an early-stage startup. We had 12 different types of businesses who, they have no business going against each other. They've got no reason to clash before a different hackathon. So putting our clients against each other to see who was the best was something which had never been done before.

Okay, that's interesting.

So it was just the thing I would always recommend avoiding, especially in our space, is everyone thinks the answer is to found their own meetup. I'm gonna host a Scala meetup. I'm gonna do a— it's been done time and time and time and time again. If you want to partner with one that's very successful, again, you have to ask yourself from a business perspective, what is my return on my investment? Yeah, how can we do things differently when we're actually at the meetup? Are we just gonna go and turn up with free pizzas, or can I have a stall where I do career coaching? Can I say, look guys, you don't have to be looking for a job, but if you want to come over and talk to me about your career, or how you should have a conversation with your boss about your salary review, whatever. Use us as those guys, right? That's it. So it's just about thinking from things from a different perspective.

How can I add value?

Genuinely, how can I add value but do it in a way that isn't done constantly? If you are one of these people that found your own meetup or partners with a meetup and you stand awkwardly on the side and you just occasionally just grunt at people like You're not going to get anything from that. Yeah, yeah.

So, okay, interesting. Um, okay, mate, a few last things before we finish, just because, um, uh, I'll be keen to get your thoughts. And also just thinking of the, the things that people have asked me quite a lot recently.

Yeah.

Um, 2 or 3 things. So the first thing, I think, just to round up your whole experience and journey with— yeah, this business development piece and all that, you've already spoke a bit about how you approach it differently.

Yeah.

But I've had quite a few messages recently as, um, how like, could you talk to people about how they've approached it in a really different and unique way? Yeah. So you've already mentioned about candidates, you've already mentioned about, um, the events.

Yeah.

Is there anything else? Just because I feel like you'd be quite open to it, like you've used, you've done creatively or out of the box to try and grab people's attention from a business development standpoint.

I, I have, and I still do one thing.

Yes, what is it?

Um, in my specs, I attach a meme.

A meme?

A meme.

Wow.

Okay, I'm telling you, dude, it works.

Really?

You send them it. You can't choose an offensive one. Yeah, I've made that mistake.

What do you mean by in your specs?

Um, so when I'm sending an email through of saying, hey, I saw you're recruiting for— oh, okay, okay, I've got this one person in mind, like a brief overview, whatever. Um, it's usually the structure. Um, I know you get all these emails all the time, so if you don't respond and here's a meme which will hopefully make you laugh.

Nice, I like, okay.

Done.

Great answer, I love that, okay, cool. Really like that answer, that's wicked. Next one, a few people have asked me about this recently, so I asked the last chap this. Counteroffers.

Yeah.

It's such a typical, it's such a typical, like, yeah, I know the answer to that, 60% of people when they accept a counteroffer don't last, whatever. Yeah, but like, had a few people recently message about, um, Hishem would love you to talk to people about counter offers or whatever. And like, what's like your— if one of your guys right now, um, their candidate's susceptible to a counter offer or whatever, what's your advice for these people? Uh, what's your like go-to advice?

It depends on what stage. The, the thing I would always say is you have to cover your counter offer in the very, very first call. And, um, if you don't do it there or you don't do it properly, you're always going to be susceptible Yeah, um, so I'll answer in a few different ways. First and foremost, in that conversation you have, the very first conversation, most people say, um, what if they gave you an extra 10K? Or, um, something like, have you made up your mind about leaving the business? Does your boss know? Something like that. The questions which we ask are, what can your company do to keep you? In that exact way, right? What can they do? They say nothing. No, that's not— that's not one of the answers you can give. What can they do? They can fire the CEO and the CTO and the CPO.

Cool.

That's probably not gonna happen, so I don't think you're susceptible to a counteroffer.

Okay, okay.

If they say, oh, they'd have to give me an extra 30 grand. Okay, why? What about that 30 grand would make you happy? I just feel valued in my job. Okay, so money is the only way you can feel valuable? Yeah. Okay, but the role that I've got in mind for you is only an extra 5K. 'Hey, so how does that work?' 'Oh, well, money isn't everything.' 'Okay, but you just said it's everything.' You really get under the bonnet.

Yeah, you have to.

Understanding from that very first call. And most of the time I say, 'Have you had a conversation with the manager?' But I think you need to make a decision as to whether or not it's realistic for something to happen, or this counteroffer to happen. So for example, I've had one counteroffer in my career. It was in my third month. It broke my heart because The guy had accepted the offer. He said, let's go and grab a beer. So I turn up, I'm buzzing. I'm like, I've just banged in a deal. This is for my promotion, I think, back in the day. And I was like, yes. And the office, like, we're all buzzing. Well done, Reece, you've done your promotion deal. It was like number 6 or something. And I turn up and this guy goes, look, I want to grab a beer with you because I've accepted a counter offer. I want to let you know that there was no hard feelings. And I sat there the whole meeting heartbroken. Oh my God. I said I said, but how? I was like, you told me they'd have to retrain you in a different technology and they'd have to give you at least $15K. There's no way they'd do both. He's like, they did. I was like, how? And he walked me through it. He's like, because their product essentially was still quite early stage, so they could take different technical decisions. So because he said he was leaving and they loved him so much, he sat down with the CTO and he was like, okay, Hey, let's change. So they switched from PHP to Node. I was like, how? How have you— like, it doesn't make sense. But that for me is because I should have realized in a small business that's possible. It's uncommon. So I will inevitably have a counteroffer at one stage in my career in the next, I don't know, 6 months, a year, 18 months, where I should have seen it coming but I didn't, right? Because counteroffers, as much as recruiters think they have control over everything Sometimes they don't. Most of the time on counteroffers we do.

Yeah, there's gonna be times when you can't, but yeah, no, I really like that.

You have to assess the realisticness of their answer of what can they do to keep you.

What can they do to keep you, yeah, that's really good.

And you need to get them to give you an answer. If they say nothing, nothing, okay, why is it nothing?

Yeah.

Because I hate it here, they're all assholes, I hate them. Then fair enough.

That's good advice, mate. Last two things. I think obviously you've been on a quite interesting journey. Clearly been plenty of chaos. Yeah. Failures. Yeah, um, clearly like done well. Um, what, what's, um, what's enabled you to, to get through some of the, that, that chaos and the, the sort of resilience piece, right? Yeah, I'd be keen to get your thoughts on this, like when you, when you thought about quitting, when you've had these really bad failures, like what, how have you sort of pulled through the other side and now clearly in a good spot?

And yeah, Obviously you can always improve and stuff, but yeah, there, there are two things. Um, the first one sounds like a bit of a, a weird cringe answer, but it's true. Um, and that's the trust which, which my bosses have given me. Um, the, the guys that run Few and Far, it's their very first business, they've never done it before, which means they make mistakes, but they also allow us to make mistakes as managers. Like, I've spoken on this podcast, like, I've made a few or even generally, and they've always just let all of us crack on. There's no one behind me threatening me with, you're gonna lose your job, or you haven't hit your core KPIs, or you haven't been on the phone long enough. It's none of that. It's, you are given full trust to crack on, which means if I'm going through a shit time, it's probably my fault because they've given me the autonomy to do what I think is best. So then I can sit there and go, okay, 'Can I change it? Can I do something different? What am I doing wrong?' So rather than blame someone else, because I think in some people that we've hired from other businesses, they fall out with the boss, or it's the type of environment, or whatever. In this business, it's genuinely not like that. So it means that if I walk away from, from recruitment, I have failed. It's on me. I have screwed up. That's the first one. More importantly though is the culture that that we operate within, and I think this is true of every single recruitment business. If you enjoy where you work and the people that you work with, recruitment becomes much, much easier. Yeah. Luckily, I work with some freaking animals.

Yeah.

Where we can go out, we can have a good time, we go go-karting together, or we're planning a trip to Butlins together at the moment, which is very bizarre.

Yeah.

But if you're friends with the people that you work with and you, you pull yourself up and you work in an environment where, for example, we have a quarterly night out, um, where we go to Wetherspoons, right? Sounds, sounds terrible, right? But one of my bosses hates it with a passion because he thinks Wetherspoons is just full of scum. Yeah, but it's, it's just weird and different. So having a team to pick you up when you're down, and also you being there to pick up other people and bouncing off each other and, and giving each other different ideas, and I'm really just finding a place where you have some friends. One of the, the things which someone said to me a long time ago was that you, you have your, your personal life and you have your professional life and you keep them separate. For me, we do not do that. If someone wanted to join this business and they wanted a clear distinction between work and personal, it wouldn't work realistically because we are friends. What did you do on the weekend? So, oh well, let's watch some Netflix. We will talk about all of our horror stories. Yeah, if, if one of the guys have been on a horrible date and been captured, sort of being in this tough environment has really helped you. Yeah, because you, like I said, the most important thing is that you can have friends around you.

Yes.

You're not working for people which are shouting at you saying you're a failure, you've not done KPIs, whatever. I go for beers constantly with my directors and we've, I've seen them both in horrible states, horrible states.

Yeah, I think what you're also saying there to sort of wrap that up is that even though, yeah, it was you that made the failure and found it really difficult, whatever. Being in that type of environment and building those types of relationships, it becomes like not just about you.

Definitely.

Do you know what I mean? It's all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, you're thinking about other people that can help you get through the tough time. It's not just you and these types of things, right?

Yeah. No, and we talk about like building communities for our clients and stuff, but you have to practice what you preach.

Yeah.

Um, if we can't do it internally and we can't set up, for example, um, the best ways of attracting our own talent ourselves, how the hell can we advise anyone else?

We'd be like, that's Right, last two questions. First one, what has been the best reason a candidate's given you for them not showing up to an interview?

I've had the my dad's died a lot. Really? A lot. Not. Like, I probably get it once every 6 weeks. Um, it's always the dad, always the dad. Um, there's sometimes my mum's in hospital. Um, but you know what, the— I have a better interview story, um, which was with, um, it was a Google Hangouts interview.

Yeah.

Um, where it was a video call. I made it really clear to the candidate, I was like, dude, it's a video call, make sure there's nothing weird behind you, make sure you're clothed most importantly. No one wants to see nipples on a Hangouts. This is a job paying like 80 grand at the time. And he's like, yeah, sure, I've got this, I've got this. And the interview starts, and I've got this client on Slack, and the client messages me whilst the interview's going on. He's like, um, can I show you something? And I was like, sure, what's going on? And, um, a guy sends me a screenshot of the video call, and the screenshot, swear to God, I'll show you after this, right, was there was someone asleep behind him, right? As in passed out. It looked like a dead body, right? So this time, the whole time, the, the candidate was facing forward looking at the, the, the screen, and there was a woman laid behind him not moving, just completely.

That's so weird.

Dead, just unconscious, like dead. Oh my God. And the client at the time goes, is she alright? He was like, ah, don't worry about her, she's my cleaner. He went, what? Why is your cleaner asleep behind you? What are you doing? So at that point he just said, look, I don't think you're gonna be right for the role, and hung up. And he messaged me, he was like, look, for future— he gave me such a bollocking for it, he was like, can you make sure the candidate's prepared? I was like, I I spoke to this guy, I said, make sure that there's nothing behind you or that you're clothed. And I spoke to the guy, I was like, why did you do that? He's like, well, technically nothing was behind me. I was like, there's a person behind you asleep. But anyway, that's the best one. Thank you for sharing, mate.

Before we finish then, what are you excited about, mate? What's going on at Few and Far?

Few and Far.

What's going on, mate?

That's a sexy name.

What's going on?

Honestly, man, um, I, I think recruitment is becoming more and more and more and more saturated. Um, and I think everyone you have on the podcast will say something similar. With, with us, I'm genuinely excited because now we're in a position where all of us are getting more experience. Um, Nick and Sam have been running the business now for, for quite a few years. They've kind of been there, done it. They've seen the, the good times and the bad times with us as managers. We've made some really horrible mistakes like we've discussed today with our clients as well, with BD We've had some, some very bad failures. We've had people asleep in interviews like we've just discussed, and we've been learning from those mistakes constantly. So we're now in a position where we can do something freaking awesome. And before, of having the brand that we did where our logo was a bullseye and our name was Know It, which is probably the most arrogant name I've ever heard ever from any recruitment business I've seen. And now we've, we've really looked at everything. We've learned from our internal staff as well as the research we've done from our clients. And when we did a research about our name, they said it was dogshit— was the words we use, which is not ideal. And because we've been taking those steps and doing the research we have, and like I said, um, making sure we're not repeating the mistakes from the past, we're now in a position where the team is growing, where we're putting money on the board, and we're all having fun. So we're in a position where honestly we can do so much here. And we can have a real impact in this market if we carry on with what we're doing now. So there are so many awesome other companies out there doing some great things, but for, for us, we just want our name to be included in that bracket. So when you think of the, the best it recruitment company or recruitment agencies, we want ours to be the number one or one of the first ones you think of.

Yeah.

And if we can do that with our market presence, with you know, the, the events that we run or the, the people we partner with or the experiences we give candidates. Um, honestly, we can do so much and genuinely stop being referred to as, as, as recruiters as tossers.

Yeah.

If I'm on a night out, I don't want to, to see people walk away from me when I say, oh, I'm a recruiter, because it happens all the time. Yeah. I think they're using excuse because my face needs some work, but at the same time I want— I'm never ever going to change the perception of recruitment. We're never ever going to do that. But if we can change perception of recruitment in our market, and even if we say there are a few good companies out there, because right now we have just such a, uh, it recruitment business have such a horrible reputation across the board. Yeah, if we can break from that niche and be like, damn, these guys are actually pretty good, even if it's with other businesses, like I've said, we're in a really good place. My ultimate goal is to shut down as many IT recruitment departments as possible, obviously.

Nice.

But are we ever going to do that? Maybe not. So can we just be known for being good at what we do? Yes. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff planned. We're doing some cool shit, but I guess we'll see what happens.

Exciting, man. Last question. If you could communicate to everyone listening right now, anyone in recruitment, they take on your advice. Yeah. Yeah, they'd implement Reece's advice tomorrow. Could be a word or phrase. Yeah, what would you, uh, say to these people?

Oh, um, learn your market. Learn your freaking market. Um, if you can— so what we touched on earlier is don't be afraid to ask stupid questions, and this applies to any industry. Don't feel like an idiot because your manager sat right next to you, or your boss is saying to you, or whatever it is, or that you think the candidate's gonna think that you don't know your market. It is fine to not know the answers to everything about your market, because if you did know all the answers, you would be recruiting yourself, right? If I knew everything about microservices architecture, I wouldn't be a recruiter. I'd be sat on 90 grand and I would be a backend developer, but I don't wanna do that. So don't be afraid to just learn a little bit it about what you do. It's that— that's the biggest thing. And that's when I first joined, I was scared at first, and then I realized I was being really, really dumb.

So it's been a pleasure, mate. Thank you.