The Commercial Director Edge: Discovery, Sticky Revenue & Solution Selling with Viki Dowthwaite

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Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Our goal with this conversation is— I think you're in a position and part of a growing team at Trenovo Group that I think is going to become like really common, really typical in a lot of growing recruitment companies. So since August 2024, you've been a commercial director. So our goal here is to sort of help everyone understand the impact of having someone in that role in terms of how it can help the recruitment business, what does that look like, and also some really good hopefully insights around how can we get recruiters to be way better at the stuff that you're doing, which is discovery, selling solutions, connecting the dots. Because I know a lot of recruitment leaders would love more of their team to be able to do that, and I know that's your world and what you become great at, and we're going to keep becoming better at. So where we wanted to start is very much this commercial director role, like where does it sort of fit in into a recruitment business, how do we describe it, these types of things. But probably just worth mentioning been in recruitment for like 15 years.

Yep.

And particularly in, um, the Trenovo Group, where like I've spoke to a few people at that business and I know that you are extremely respected, have a lot of credibility in the business. But I think you shared with me sort of where you really built that internally was Trust and Soda contract desk. You took that from 2 people to 15 people, got it to 70K weekly GP. And I know there's been all sorts that you've been helping the, the business with, but we've really been focused on this commercial director piece since 2024, and that's what we want to focus on. So I guess, why don't you just share with us overall, like, how would you define the purpose of, like, a commercial director? Like, why don't we start then, and we'll get into how it breaks down in the Trinova Group context.

I think the purpose of the commercial director has probably really changed over the course of the last kind of 18 months, from, from when we started out to what the position is now. But at the core of it, to me, commercial director, if you were Summit Office, sales enablement is supporting everybody in the operations functions, in the sales functions, to be the best at their role and to make the most money they can.

Yeah, and that's because I've definitely used that language before, sales enablement. Do you want to like just share how else we— how else for someone that may not know, that might be the first time they've heard it, how would you like explain that, sales enablement?

It's everything from— if you're a sales consultant, it could be joining you on pitches, it could be supporting your collateral, helping you put events on, um, organizing your desk, your database, um, anything that enables you to make that placement and to connect with that client in a quicker, more efficient way.

Yeah, nice. That's really— that's really well put. Okay, and then in your world, we've— because I know this is— there's been iterations, but I feel like when we prepared for this we've done a lot of work to get to this point where we've got a lot of like really good clarity on like purpose of your role, where you're making the impact, what you're focusing on. But we've got 4— you sort of view your role as like 4 pillars in this sort of Trenova Group context, right? So we've got broken it down where we've got probably around 40% of your time, and I know this might fluctuate, but there or thereabouts, 40% of your time we've got DAX, so growing and being actively involved in that part of the business. So growing the Germany, Switzerland expansion and being part of that. Then we've got 40% of your time actively involved in pitching, setting up, and managing, delivering, upselling your embedded hiring solutions in the business. Then we've got a consultancy part, so 20%, where you're actively involved in actually, you know, delivering project work. We're just talking before this where you've recently won SOW projects, so actively involved in winning those and helping deliver those, manage those. And then across all of this, whilst it's happening, you're also going to be recognizing and cross-selling opportunities for all of these things, right? So we've got those 4 Four Pillars, which I think really just sets the scene. Um, why, like, from— so I, like, when we prepared for this, I did a post about basically me saying, like, I think this will be a, like, really important role, and there'll be a lot of people already—

never had so many people connect with me on LinkedIn.

So I know, I know, like, this role would have has been around for a good amount of time. I think when I shared that, I had a few people drop me a note saying this has definitely maybe been more the case in like large organizations, but I think for more like, um, companies that are on that like scaling journey are really like building out this team or opening up positions for someone in that seat. And it really resonated with a lot of people where they're sort of seeing the same. Why, why do you think that would resonate with people? Like, why do you think this commercial director piece where you have to connect the dots. Like, we've just mentioned the pillars there. Why, why is it that we, from a recruitment leader standpoint, why is it that that resonates? Why is it that people can see like, yeah, that, that makes sense to have someone that in that seat in a growing recruitment business? From your perspective, like, why is it an important position or an important team?

Because I think it's really hard to do. I think that when you are a recruiter, when you're a manager looking after a team, you get really bogged down in your own day-to-day on that client, on process and getting that placement over the line or making that hire for the team. And everything is very kind of like sequential with it, and it's sometimes hard to zoom out and kind of take that big picture away. And I always refer to it as the— well, it's more than how many Java developers do they need at the moment. It's, okay, zooming out further and looking at why is that client working with us, why are they working with us over anybody else, never mind just why are they working with an agency, how do they want to engage with us, what would make us different from everybody else. And I think just sometimes that's really hard to do if you're just stuck in the weeds.

Yeah, and I think— do you think that would put you on the spot here, but like, do you think having someone like, like doing what you do, do you think it doesn't really matter what company size you're at? Like, do you think there could be a case for someone focusing on just that regardless of your size? Like, how do you feel about that? Because I'll probably see it most common in growing recruitment businesses, but I wouldn't be surprised I guess depending on how you work with your customers and clients, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this in like 10-person companies or like maybe even smaller, just that dedicated person that, like you said, can zoom out.

I think it's probably easier to do in a smaller recruitment company because I think you've got an easier bird's eye view over the top and there's less kind of layers in between maybe you and the consultants. I think when you're looking at quite a complicated business model like Trenova Group where you've got 3 different recruitment agencies and a consultancy spread across 4 different offices, trying to get a bird's-eye view and trying to get everybody to buy into the vision of a commercial director and what it is you do, it can be quite hard. So I think if it's just a smaller team in one office, your job's probably easier.

And just, just on this as well, because I think this would be really helpful for people, and I know we'll get into this more when we get into the sort of tactical elements of when you do join a pitch call with a consultant, what are some of the things that you do really well? But I know there'll be so many managers, recruitment leaders, and you maybe even was this person as well, where you, you really try and encourage your team to have this mindset of like connecting the dots, seeing the bigger picture. What is it that's so hard about having like a recruiter doing that effectively? Is it the fact that, like you said, they just end up staying in the weeds, focusing on their desk, their market? Is, is that the main, like, blocker? Like, overall, how— what, what is the challenge here? Because I know so many recruitment leaders would want their team to do more of this stuff that you're actually doing in this position.

Recruiters are selfish. Yeah, I think that, and to be fair, they should be. And I think the best recruiters that I work with are, are the people that are single-mindedly focused on their desk. They know their vertical inside and out. They know what clients are hiring, what triggers in the market might be there for hiring, be it kind of regulatory changes. They know which candidates are looking for work or projects are coming to an end, and they're really, really good at piecing together all the dots within their individual market. But it's very difficult to piece all of those dots together in your market and then be able to zoom out and think, right, how can I do this for somebody else's market? How is that going to benefit the company? They think they're successful because they're single-minded and they're selfish on their desk.

Yeah, that is—

why would you change that as well, to be fair? Why would you want to change what's making your consultant successful? As long as you've got somebody there to kind of work with them and almost sweep up after them, i.e., me, what's the harm?

I think that's why the, like, having someone like you and having this growing commercial team is so important, because it is almost like you saying to someone, keep being great at what you're doing, and then whilst you're there, can you also do this other thing?

Yeah.

So is that what have you found to be— that'd be— is that like the main challenge with it? It's just that people, for them to be good, they end up being so laser, laser focused. So it does, no matter how hard we try, they're not going to be consistent. I think that bigger picture—

my dad always refers to it as a little anecdote. My dad refers to it as like a tabletop, your brain, and there's only so much you can put on that tabletop before something pops off on the other end. So if you're asking a cat— if you're asking a consultant to map out their candidate market, pull leads in that market, chase those leads every day, make sure they're followed up on, book the client meetings, attend the client meetings, follow up on those, know all of these different sectors inside and out within their vertical. And then you're asking them, okay, push this as well, and I want you to do this, and I want you to do customer scorecard reviews. Something's going to fall off the back end. There's only so much one person can do and have the brain space for.

Do you— we're gonna, we're gonna go through this, but do you think the only way that I could get my recruiters to do more of that but being mindful of not putting too much on their plate— I love that analogy, by the way, it's a good visual. Would it— would the only way, if we were to improve that, would be making sure the incentives match up? That surely got to be the only way. So you're going to be incentivized like you normally are, but if you also make space and see the opportunities for the bigger picture which impacts the business or impacts the wider team, you're going to be rewarded for that by this. I don't know, like, I feel like that would be the only way to maybe move the needle a bit.

Incentives isn't the only way. It's about making sure that someone's desk is being run efficiently. The amount of good recruiters that could bill an extra 20-30% if they were just more organised. Like, absolutely kills me. Anyone that works with me will tell you, like, how OCD organised I am about inbox zero and calendar management. But to me, that's one of the things that's made me successful. So I think being organised, having a good desk will really help. But yeah, the incentives are obviously going to help, but you're never going to— well, companies might do. I don't believe companies are ever going to incentivise people to the same levels that they would do for building their own desk. Yeah, they're just gonna end up paying too much NFI, aren't they?

Should we, should we talk a bit about how this like role evolved? Because I know, like I said at the start, over time that you've just got more and more clarity on this like particular position. Because I know when we first started, I don't know the exact— might be maybe for the first, first 12 months. Yeah, yeah, just tell us a bit because I think that that would be interesting for people. So Talk us through how version 1 of this role was like, right, Vicky, you're going in the seat, this is what you're going to be focusing on, and then how that evolved and like why.

Yeah, so we set commercial director up as it is in most businesses where it is focused across sales and operations. So the sales piece is what we've just covered around kind of like the sales enablement, but the company operations was things like our internal recruitment function, our L&D and kind of performance management, our HR and people function, and Obviously those teams and areas are so important to a business, and I think how a company feels is more important than anything else because as a recruiter, you can go and do this job anywhere. The hours are going to be the same, the tools are going to be pretty similar. It's the people that you work with that pulls you to a business and that keeps you in a business like Trenovo for kind of 5, 6 years or so. So, the kind of environment we create is really important to me. And that's why initially I was like, I really want to have that operations part underneath me as well, because it's always something I've really enjoyed.

The fact you could directly influence that.

Exactly, yeah. I've always been that person that like organises the socials and the lunch clubs and the lunches and the pub trips and all of that kind of thing, and I love it. And culture's always been like the number one thing in any of the contract teams that I've run that's been important. But on reflection, I think coming from, um, a contract recruitment background, and like you said, 15, 16 years of just doing contract recruitment, that was always going to be the thing that kind of pulled my focus. And I don't think we appreciated the breadth of kind of what this role could be. So the first 12 months, I just ended up being anything and everything to everyone. And when you do that, stuff's going to get neglected. It's that tabletop again. You can't fit absolutely everything else on there. And like I say, while culture has always been my number one priority, I've just got to be honest and say that operations and that maybe more kind of corporate function side of things didn't really kind of get me going the same way as sales.

Yeah.

So it did just kind of fall off a little bit. So after 12, 12, 18 months of doing that, we just said we just need to drill down, focus on what I enjoy and what I'm good at. And then we split out that kind of operations part of the role and passed that over to a newly kind of created COO and just really allowed me to kind of focus on the sales and commercial element.

Nice.

Which is much funner.

Yeah. So for anyone listening who maybe has really thought about having someone in a seat, I guess the lesson there then is decide like where you want them to have an impact versus trying to have that person impact loads of different areas. Maybe actually if you really want to have a great commercial director or someone in the seat, focus them on the sales side of things, the sales enablement, and the things that we spoke about.

It might— you might be able to do both in a smaller business if there is only 5 to 10 sales consultants that you're working with, the breadth of clients is going to be a lot smaller, your geographical coverage is going to be smaller, the markets are going to be less. So I think that would be easier to manage. But like I said, with the, the complexity of 4 brands operating across 5 different geographies, like, it was just too much to then think about HR on top of it.

Should we talk about— we mentioned incentives.

Yeah.

One of the things that you shared with me which I thought was really interesting because That sort of— I think the next thing that maybe someone would think about is like, okay, I can really understand why having someone in the position you're in is really important, particularly if we have different products, different services, different teams, different niches, and all of the reasons that you said around great recruiters got there by being really focused and laser focused. So I do then think, okay, well, that means that we're gonna maybe have to think about the incentives a bit differently for this person, as in how the commercial director— commercial.

Yeah.

So that's what I wanted to ask you, because you shared with me— I don't know if, if version 1 was— you can tell me, but I don't know if version 1 of this was like splits and then it changed. But you sort of shared with me quite confidently, don't believe in splits for this type of role. I think if we have splits in there it ends up being a bit of a, a blocker. So talk us, talk us a bit around that, because I think that would be really interesting for people, because they will think about, okay, well, how do I— like, what, what does the incentive structure look like for this person?

I, yeah, I just have seen splits not work so many times in this kind of position, um, not just at Trenovo but at the other kind of couple of businesses I've worked at where we've had what you'd refer to as kind of like your business development teams or your client engagement teams. That's where if they get involved in your client, they then take a split of the revenue that comes out of that. And what that creates is the consultant not wanting to include client engagement because in their head they're thinking, right, well, I could get Vic to come and join this client meeting with me, and yeah, we might pull some different roles for the company, but I could probably pull them on my own anyway, and I wouldn't have to give her 20-30% for the pleasure of it. So they cut you out of the process because they think, oh, I can do it on my own. But then, as we've just said, recruiters are selfish, they're single-minded, so they don't end up doing it on their own and that opportunity is lost. So to me, it was really important that the consultants didn't have like this fear of loss from engaging with me, that all they thought from engaging with me is Vic's going to benefit me, she's going to benefit my desk, and I'm going to earn more money with having her on this call.

And out of interest then, obviously you really believed that. Was that whenever you formalized what that incentive structure is? And we'll share some ideas on how you might be able to do it. But did you, like, was that, like, communicated to the team? Was—

100%, yeah, from day one. I sat down with, um, my CEO and one of the MDs who were— who we kind of explored this position with. And from day one, it was, I don't want to take splits, and I want to be really clearly communicated with the business because I don't want to fall into the same traps as what we've done before.

Yeah. And then that would have been shared with everyone, like, everyone would have been aware if Vicky, like, recognizes an opportunity, she wants to be involved, collaborate, that doesn't mean you're going to be quote-unquote worse off.

Yeah, exactly. I'd stand up at kind of like our end of months and end of quarters that we do, and I'd have like my little slide of client logos saying, this is what I've got involved in in this month, this is what I've done this quarter, with the consultant's name and picture next to that client logo so that you can actually see the benefits that have been brought. I think when they see, okay, she's had a part in something that's happened at Trust in Soda Contracts or at Deep Rec Perm or at Broadgate Perm, and all of these people have benefited in some way from partnering with me. I think that kind of good news story really helps as well.

And then how do we— so talk us through, I don't know if there's been iterations of this, but like incentive structure for you then, how's that set up? So you shared that with me, is it like, so you, you've got like, have you got like a North Star target where it's like you need to impact this, that's like a big signal of like Vicky really performing in her role and seeing the direct impact? Just talk us through that because I think that'll be really interesting for people to learn from and maybe get ideas of how they can better incentivise or structure things for someone in this sort of seat now, or maybe future people?

Yeah, I think because the role is so wide-spanning, it's really easy for your focus to be pulled from kind of pillar to post, and I definitely made that mistake, like I say, in the first kind of 3 to 6 months. And by having like this clear remuneration structure that says X is the area that you focus on and you are paid Y, you know where to spend your time. My only advice would be to anyone, any C-suite that are setting up this kind of position, is agree it ahead of time so that your commercial director knows exactly kind of what they're meant to be doing, and don't change it all the time. Like, we could review it like each H based on kind of like what the business priority is, but keep it consistent. There's a massive part of commercial director is sales, and sales takes time to build those relationships, to build the trust up. And if you're getting 3 months into an objective and then your focus flips, you're back to dos cero again.

Yeah, it's really good insight. Yeah, nothing more frustrating than people changing goalposts around targets and stuff. Yeah, but like for you then, again, like it may evolve, but for you then it was the recurring revenue, right?

Yes, so my main targets were around the kind of like the DAC expansion, so taking us from X NFI to Y NFI and recurring revenue, the percentages that were kind of assigned to that as well.

Yeah, perfect. But well, hopefully, uh, that didn't get changed too much.

No, no, to be fair, once since we've kind of really nailed down, okay, this is what commercial director means, my targets have now stayed the same for the last kind of like 9 months or so, which is brilliant for me because it means now we're starting to kind of see the, the fruits of the labor from stuff that happened months ago.

I think that is, that is a really good insight because like being a commercial director, being in that commercial seat, you could be focused in a lot of different areas, that could just completely widely depend on what's going on in that business. So I think that's a really good point around making sure that if you do have someone in this position currently, or planning to, have real clarity on like what does success look like in that role.

Yeah.

And that can change and it might look a bit different, but I think you're completely right, have that clarity. And if you really want to, yeah, I guess lose that person quickly, then keep changing the goalposts.

Exactly. Yeah, I think there's obviously different schools of thought on, on how you pay out against those kind of goals as well. You've got the one where you get like a different percentage for existing business development and new client development. So if Company X spent zero last year and £200K this year, you're remunerated on the £200K, let's say 5% because it's classed as new business. And then if another company, A, spent £100K last year but spent £200K this year, you're remunerated on the £100K but maybe a lower percentage because it's existing business that you've developed. So you get a higher percentage for new business, a lower percentage for existing business. The second school of thought is you just get paid the same percentage whether it is new or existing. And personally, I believe in the second one. I think most recruitment agencies are probably really good at signing terms, um, and then making one or two placements in a business. But to me, the real value in recruitment is what we refer to as like sticky relationships and sticky revenue. So the companies that come back to you time and time again, where you don't just make one placement, you make 10, 20, 30 placements. And those are the relationships that were kind of, to me, is what an agency is built upon. So why would you not want to incentivize someone the same for doing that with an existing business as bringing on a new business?

Yeah, I think you're bang on. I, I'm sure you've seen this across your career, but I would say the percentage of really high-performing recruiters, recruitment desks If we were to like double-click into their desk makeup, I'd say the bigger percentage will be people having like a number of key accounts.

Yeah.

Versus having to every single year do, you know, new business with 20, 30 different clients. It will vary, but that's— I'd say if it, you know, using the 80/20 rule, I'd say 8% high-performing recruiters, recruitment desks, they'll have— depends on market, but but 4 to 5 really good key accounts that stay sticky, do multiple placements with. So I think you're completely right. I think that's such a great insight and maybe a trap that people could easily fall into, where again, we're incentivizing the new business and new business. But I'd almost— I definitely agree, like, if you were to speak to a room full of like commercial directors or people in that seat and we said like, what do we think would if we were to all meet again in 12 months' time and say you've been really successful in that position, what do we think would be the, the big factors towards that? I think it would be—

it's not going to be signing 20 new clients. It could be turning 10 clients in from being C customers into A customers for you.

I think you're bang on that. That's a really good insight. How about as well then, because I know you have ambitions to grow this team, how would you— would you have the same school of thought for incent— like incentivizing someone who joins your team, or would it depend on the priorities? Like, how would you then think about someone joins your team, obviously gonna have a basic salary, but we've having the same school of thought, would it just be exactly the same?

I think it should be the same. Yeah, I don't see why a team should be remunerated differently to its manager, because then otherwise you're gonna have different goals and you're gonna be pulling in different directions. One of me least favorite things when you see like management bonuses is around like team size and teams like growing the team and headcount and that kind of thing, because to me that means focusing on the people that you've got on your team and making them successful. It's just focused about bums on seats.

Yeah, fair. Okay, love that. Should we get into some of the, the tactical bits then?

Go on.

I think we've really— I think we've done a pretty good job of how impactful having someone like you in this business and like what you focus on, where you spending your time. So when we prepared for this, and this has come up in a lot of my conversations, I have felt like really great recruiters that I've met will be doing some of this stuff in, in the sense of recognizing opportunities to like sell different solutions. Once you come across this phrase quite a lot, solution selling, and I think a lot of the recruiters that I've met, a lot of it comes down to this ability to, like you said earlier, go beyond I can help you get 5 Java developers. So we put here discovery. So let's just get a bit tactical for a second. Why don't we— I'd love to get your take first. So if I was in one of the— let's say I'm in Trust and Soda and you joined, um, a call with me and it was like a— I don't know how you'd frame it, maybe we'd call it internally, it was, it was a discovery meeting with a and you gave me feedback after that call saying, Hishem, I think you could have done this way better.

Yeah.

And the particular part that you was identifying where I could get better was like the discovery side and going a bit deeper. Where is it that a lot of people like have challenges, or like where a lot of the improvement areas— where are there a lot of stumbling blocks if a recruiter just isn't quite going that extra level on the discovery side from your perspective?

I think if I was going into any meeting, I would want to have done so much research into it. I would want to know where the person that I'm meeting has worked before. Have I worked with any of those businesses? Are there any commonalities there? Do I know anyone from their school? Do I know anyone from like their local area? Do we have anything in common? And I would have researched that company as well. So looking at things like LinkedIn Talent Insights to have a look at like their fastest growing skills, their different locations that they're hiring people. Google News is fantastic. I don't know why people wouldn't use that. ChatGPT and things like Claude have made our life so much easier. If you just pop into there, I'm meeting company X today, tell me 5 things about them in the news in the last 3 months. Like, putting that little bit of extra knowledge into your pitch and into your prep or into your discovery meeting will just make you come across with so much more credibility than just a, hi, I'm Dave and I do recruitment, you got any jobs?

Like, it's not very engaging. So you might have said to me, Hishem, I think you could have prepared better for that.

So I think knowing the person and knowing the company is really important. I think having a clear agenda is really important as well. Like, I am a bit of a control freak. I'm not afraid to admit that. But before I go into any meeting, I know what I need to get out of that. I know what role that person's in, what they're able to kind of do for me, what I'm able to do for those guys. And I've got a really clear agenda that the client or the customer is aware of as well.

So we've got— so again, so the other thing, I completely agree with you. I think anyone that is doing a better job at discovery, they're probably setting out, these are the things, this is like the plan of action for the call, this is what I really want to go through, anything that you'd really like to go through, like just doing that.

So it sounds really basic when you say it, doesn't it? But the amount of people that again get stuck in the weeds and in the day-to-day, and they'll bowl from meeting to meeting on autopilot with the same script, and it just doesn't work, it don't land.

The reason why I really like having that approach as well is, I don't know if this resonates with you, but it also helps me like control and stay organized as well. Because I know if in the first couple of minutes after, hopefully I've dropped in there, saw that you did this, or like, you know, that building rapport piece, helping people feel like, okay, this person has actually come prepared, they've come with intentions. Before I've then said said, this is the goal of our conversation, where I want to get to at the end, all of that. That then just stays in my brain of like, when I'm 50 minutes into the chat, right, okay, we've sort of done that bit, now I need to move it on. Yeah, that's what— it also helps the person doing it as well as the person.

You're holding yourself accountable almost, aren't you, to your end goals?

Yeah. So, okay, agenda. So something that you shared as well, which I thought was really interesting, was adopt mirroring. Yeah, talk about that.

Yeah, I think I— you always hear about it when you're doing your recruitment training, and because I'd only worked in the UK and Irish markets for the first kind of 10 years of my career, everyone that I've met was from a fairly similar culture. From then going to working in the DAX markets and across kind of Germany and Switzerland, very, very different personalities, very different ways of working, very different business cultures. And I really quickly learned that the person that I can be on a pitch or a discovery with a UK customer within e-commerce or retail is a very different person than the one that I'm going to sent to somebody from a German financial services business.

What the main difference is? Well, just like, because I think that's interesting, what they typical— like, it would be what, they really direct?

They just like very direct, not a huge amount of fluff. A lot of credibility needs to kind of be built on that call very quickly, and trust as well. Um, recruitment is, is old hat in the UK, isn't it? I heard a horrible stat the other day that was there are 38,000 recruitment agencies in the UK, and there's more agencies in the UK than there actually is in the whole of America. It's horrible. So when we're meeting people in the UK and talking to them about recruitment or workforce solutions and solution selling to them, they kind of know what we're on about. But when you go into maybe more of an untapped market, maybe like, like the Swiss market, that have got really, really high barriers to entry. Like, just to operate in Switzerland compliantly, you have to hold both kind of a cantonal and federal SECO license. And I think there's only maybe 10, 15 companies in the UK that hold that license.

There's a lot of bar— like you said, barriers to entry.

Yeah, so those high barriers to entry mean that the people that you're pitching aren't getting pitched by recruiters every single day. So you need to kind of of have a bit more credibility, lay the foundations, tell them what you're here for, and do it in a really clear and succinct way because they don't suffer fools very well.

Have you had to— is like really the only way that you can really learn that is by like doing the meetings and being like, right, I could have done that better, or that—

yeah, baptism by fire, just jump into it.

Yeah, which we can be aware of it, be mindful of how you maybe communicate, operate in certain, you know, countries might differ, but I think it's then doing and going, okay, right, I need to do that a bit differently, or that didn't really resonate.

Yes.

Okay, what about— I think the other thing that you said that you have a bit of a reputation around is, is following up, being politely persistent.

You said it's politely relentless.

So why is then strong follow-up important in, in this piece in terms of we've had the meeting? Yeah. Are you saying that you've seen a lot of people then maybe not do the follow-on. Like, just talk to us a bit about why strong follow-up is really important.

Because everyone's heard that really old recruitment stat of it takes 7 times of speaking from someone to get them to buy from you. And so many consultants are just terrible at it. Like, they'll meet someone twice, they don't get anything from either of those meetings, and go like, oh, fine, bored, I'm gonna move on to the next one, something newer, something sexier that's going to like get my attention instead. And like, again, we have to remember we speak to people every single day about recruitment. These people don't. So it's a big deal for them meeting us for the first time. They've given up as well their precious time to kind of speak to us. Make it worthwhile for them. So consistently add value, add insights, keep in touch with them, invite them to events. I think that piece is really important, like I say, to build that trust and credibility. And that's not going to be done across the stage of 2 phone calls in 3 months.

Yeah, it takes time.

A lot of, particularly a lot of our Swiss and DACH, sorry, Swiss and German relationships have taken 6 to 12 months to develop. And I can count on one hand sometimes the amount of touch points that consultants have with people.

And then out of interest, then, this— like, I— you can tell me what you think about this, but I feel like part of the challenge with that from a, like, consultant lens would be, Vicki, I know that's important, but I don't know how I can add value to them over that long sustained period of time if I haven't got great people to talk to them about every time, or do you know what I mean? Like how I think sometimes people just need help understanding these are the— because we hear that a lot, add value, right? Yeah. So I think it's always helpful to try and break it down for people. I think that would be one of the challenges. Like I think most people, particularly if you listen to this podcast, they'd understand that that's something that they should be striving for and doing. But what might be a bit of a challenge is, okay, well, like how, how can I make sure that they feel like it's worth their time? Then what's in it for them? So how do you think about that? Because there's a lot of things, right, that could be of value beyond, I've got someone to talk to you about. How do you think about that?

We definitely have it easier at Trenova Group, I'll be honest, because we have got so many different levers or golf clubs that we can kind of pull to speak about. So we're not just going to market with amazing product or like amazing candidate, we're going with a whole kind of value proposition. So, if you think we've got our communities, which are huge for us, we've got Women in DevOps, we've got Ex-Military Careers, Broadgate Social, Deep Rec Social, the Leadership Labs, there's all of these different events that are consistently being hosted every single quarter. So, if you're able to invite people to network with their peers, meet new businesses, hear new ideas, that's really good. A thing we've also got the benefit of, like I say, of having these different levers such that can benefit a customer. Customer. So one being, say, okay, we are, we're B Corp certified. Now on the face of that, that's just, that's just a feature, but it's not just about the feature. It's okay, what's the benefits your customer of using kind of a B Corp supplier? I.e., it helps them hit their sustainability goals by having a credible supply chain. Um, it's not just about the communities, again, which is a feature of the events. The benefit to the customer is introducing them to a diverse candidate pipeline. We've got Trenovo Consulting, which again is a brilliant feature, but the benefit to that is, okay, do managers within your business need kind of interview and non-bias training. There's always something new that we can speak about that's Trenovo-led. And then you've got everything that's market-led as well, like I said about Google News and ChatGPT. So much stuff that you can speak to people about that's not just, are you hiring?

Yeah, that's really good. I think that— and I'm sure a lot of those initiatives have all stemmed from like, how else can we deliver value to our industries, to our ecosystems? So I think that like, if you're in like a really strong business, they'll have different golf clubs, as you said. Yes, I think it would be harder. I think of course we will have, like you said, the, the news, the insights. There's still plenty if you don't have those golf clubs that you could still, yeah, use. I think one of the consistent things I think great recruiters do well is like reuse the market intel and information that they get as well. I think really smart recruiters will use that for those types of meetings to say Hey, spoke to these competitors, this is going on, wanted to share that with you. Like, I think if you don't have all the types of things that you've mentioned, smart people will be using the information they're getting. And if you're doing your job properly, you should be finding out information that won't be on Google, that won't be on ChatGPT, do you know what I mean?

There's so much— I sound like me nan when I say this now, but there's so much smart tech out there that you can use as well. Like, we're looking internally to build something where essentially all of this information that we're talking around is recorded already off every call that you make. So, we have kind of like note-takers that sit kind of in front of meetings or phone calls if you pop them there. They then record this information, it's relayed onto our database, and then we're trying to build kind of almost this interface where we can pop into there. I'm speaking to a client within financial services, can you tell me a few things I've spoken to candidates about previously that'd be really interesting to them? So, then this tool will then go and scrape all of this information away from the database, relay it back to you in a really succinct form, and I think that is magical.

People.

Yeah, because it's not just one recruiter's knowledge, it's an entire business of recruiters.

Isn't it mad though that in order for you to do that, and like in however many years ago, you'd have to either like rely on like putting the notes in the system yourself, which recruiters are terrible at. Yeah, exactly. Or your notepad. Yeah, like mad, innit? So yeah, I think you're, you're bang on with that. That makes a lot of sense as to why you're spending time and resources on that, because I, I don't know if this is something that maybe, maybe is something that you think about. Maybe it was more so on the operation side of thing, but I do think with where things are going, the CRM, it has always been important, obviously, but I think now it's going to become even more important because I do think with all the different tools coming out, they're already out, like access to data isn't going to be like having the LinkedIn Talent Insights, like having those types of isn't going to be— yeah, it's not a competitive advantage at all. The main thing is going to be when Vicky in another business comes up against you and you're, I don't know, maybe mapping out, um, a potential target company and there's people that you want to speak to. Like, how many people have you actually spoken to already that you have information on that they don't? And that's your IP that's in the CRM that you're then chatting with to say, speaking with this company, and I spoke to like 5 people at their direct competitor, their competitors, this— can you tell me some interesting insights that I can maybe bring to that meeting? And it's, it's capturing all of that and using all of that that isn't on LinkedIn, that isn't in your LinkedIn projects. That's the— you think about that stuff?

Absolutely, yeah. And I'm, I'm really lucky in the sense that there are people far more intelligent than me at Tranova Group that there's jobs it is to think about this kind of thing. As mentioned, we've got our COO, we've got, um, a gentleman whose role it is to focus purely kind of on automations and on database tech. We've got a fantastic marketing team as well, and they're constantly kind of getting feedback from the sales consultant, what would make your life easier? What do you want to see on the database? What would make your life, like, say, easier, harder, that kind of thing? And they're taking away all of that feedback and then coming to us with new features, which is brilliant. Yeah, we're not having to go to market and buy everything. We can build it ourselves, which is awesome.

So how, how can we— I've got here, like, the pitch and, like, proposal piece we wanted to focus on.

Yeah, how How—

because we've got it on here somewhere, but like, how, how can we get recruiters to move beyond you need this skill set, I can help with that? Because that, that's how we get anywhere closer to the types of things that you're working on, SOWs or embedded hiring solutions. I feel like if we get anywhere near there, we have to understand the bigger picture of what's happening in this organization if they don't hire this? Like, how they even got to this point of needing this hire? I don't know. Like, how, how do we get even— like, how do we get closer to understanding that because of what I've learned today, I'm going to talk to you about our embedded hiring solution? Because we need to get beyond that, like, live vacancy chat, don't we?

Yes, absolutely.

So how do we, how do we get there?

To me, two, two elements of it. The first one being around kind of L&D. Okay. Whenever you start into a business, you are I did, particularly if you join at like academy or graduate level, you normally get a really good program, don't you, that's kind of like 6 to 8 weeks long that teaches you the ins and outs of recruitment. When you then join a business as an experienced recruiter, you maybe get a couple of weeks of kind of on-the-job training with whoever you sat next to. Companies don't invest in training for people that have been there 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years, and people get stale and people get stuck into bad habits. So I think we constantly need to be upskilling the people that work for the business. So helping them become more inquisitive and develop their pitches a little bit better. I think to me, the best recruiters are always the ones that know everything about the friendship group. Like, I know where this person works, what they had for lunch, what the mom's called, like that kind of thing. So I think we should be training people to think about why do they need us? Where is the need coming from? What are the business imperatives this year? What is this hiring manager or what is this team kind of being targeted on? What do they expect from their partners? Like, what do they hate seeing from their partners? What really turns them off. How are teams outside of this function getting on? I think people just assume that your senior recruiters are doing this, and I think assuming is dangerous.

Yeah, a lot of time they're not.

Yeah.

So a lot of it is curiosity.

Yeah. So I think, like I said, that L&D and that constant kind of upskilling of your workforce is really important. And the second bit for me is like proactive account management. I think you said so many recruiters assume that, yeah, I've got this account on lock, and then they come away and they're like, oh, I've got 10% of the budget and someone else is killing it. So to me, that proactive account management is something, without blowing my own horn, it's something I've always been really good at, is thinking about how to go above and beyond. How do I make myself indispensable to this person? How do I make their life easier? And it's really little things like don't give them 20 points of contact for every single vertical. Like, go speak to Shannon for testing, Dave for development, someone else for design, someone else for AI. It's annoying for customers. Like they just want one point of contact. So be their go-to, route that information throughout the business. Like I said, be proactive, take an interest beyond just recruitment. Like, no one wakes up wanting a recruiter, same way no one grows up dreaming of becoming a recruiter. But I think companies want outcomes. So just remember that talent is only one lever that we've got to pull. There's so much else. Like I said, talent's not just the lever and the solution. There's a lot that sits around it.

Okay, I love that. So a lot of, yeah, way more curiosity.

Yeah, Ash always says like recruiters who understand client strategy will always outperform those that only understand job descriptions.

Yeah, it's a simple way of putting it, isn't it?

Yeah, it's much better than the waffle I came out with.

Do you think that, so do you think that can be trained?

Absolutely, yeah. What we do is not rocket science.

No, but the client, like being interested in the client strategy piece, that can be trained.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, what we do is not difficult as recruiters. Like I say, no one grows up dreaming of becoming a recruiter. I was, I was a really sad kid and I grew up dreaming of becoming an accountant. Nonsense. Shows a real lack of imagination. Um, but I didn't grow up dreaming of becoming a recruiter, and I didn't naturally become good at recruiter. It took a lot of work, it took a lot of hours of failure and a lot of hours of training and listening to people that were better than me. And I think you can train anybody to kind of do this job if they've got the right mindset to do it, for sure. Yeah, so it's not rocket science, it's not brain surgery, it's just really difficult to motivate yourself to do the same thing day in, day out, improve on it, repeat it, and need again.

What's been— this might really vary, but I'm just curious to sort of get your take on this— what's been your experience so far of if the end outcome of working with a customer is an embedded hiring solution? Yeah, I should say, how often with that customer have you started that relationship with in like a contingency capacity, which is then move to whatever timeline to an embedded hiring solution versus we start embedded hiring solution.

It really, really depends on the discovery and that client's goals. If a client is looking to hire one or two positions really urgently right now, um, that's what their focus is going to be on. They're sometimes not thinking about that big picture future. So it's your job at that point to show the immediate value that you can bring to fill that role and to show them, hey, look, this is what I can do. And then— excuse me— later down the line, that's when you can flip it into a more of a solution seller, more of a consultative approach. Whereas if a client's coming to you and saying, hey, I need to hire 10 engineers over the course of the next 3 months, or anything greater than that, immediately you should have that ding, ding, ding going off in your head that's like, okay, I know that there's going to be a more cost-effective, efficient solution to to this client than just contingent recruitment.

Yeah, okay, fair. But if you like, so no trends there. I was just curious because, for example, I'm meeting someone this week who went from like high street recruitment, it's like being in like a proper like contingency shop, to now mainly selling like embedded solutions. But a lot of the clients that they've won started at contingency relationship. So no trends there, it does really vary.

I think it varies on client drivers.

Yeah, um, on, on the embedded piece, just, just out of interest, if I was to— again, this might really vary, but I'm just curious. So if I was to speak to a mixture of your customers that work in that way with you guys, do you think most would say we work with Trust Insider in this way because of the cost element or because the efficiency element? What is it that they perceive to be more valuable?

I think what brings them to you isn't what keeps them with you. So it might be that they decide an embedded solution is more of a cost-effective way to hire those 10 engineers for that 3 months, but then they extend that embedded hiring solution because of the efficiency and because of the value. It's that constant battle in recruitment, isn't it, of kind of like product versus price. So I think sometimes you can use the price point to maybe land them, but we're by no way the cheapest agency that you could use for one of these solutions. So a lot of what we do is based off kind of reputation, having really good success stories that we can talk about, having a really good database, having those, and like good recruiters that we can rely on. So although, like I say, price might bring them in, price ain't going to make them stay.

That's a really good way to put it, actually, because sometimes I like see that and I sort of feel like surely positioning your like embedded hiring solution as like the cheaper solution, which is why it's better for you, isn't like the old isn't, isn't what you want long term. I don't know, but I think you said it in a good way. It might be, it might be a big part of the decision criteria to bring you in and work in that way, but actually the stickiness again is then the efficiency.

Yeah, agreed.

But like, like you said, to be fair, I think it does make sense to offer that type of solution if we've learned and understood that there's multiple hires that need to happen. Why would you not be creative in like, why would we you say, yep, so that's going to be 25% per hire and it's going to cost this much. Like, that's just you being creative with like how we can work together, right?

Not competitive either. There's going to be somebody else that will offer a more competitive solution than that. And if cost is a driver of theirs in the first place, you're not going to win. And if you don't win, you've not got the chance to prove yourself, have you, to then drive yourself even further at the value chain? Because yeah, you've got your kind of contingent hiring and your embedded hiring stations, but towards— that's, that's not the peak of kind of the value chain. There's so much more that you could be doing with customers, whether that is kind of like payroll employer record solutions, whether it is moving into kind of more project statements of work and outcome-based solutions as well. Yeah, like the perfect customer to us would be someone that works within kind of all three of our recruitment brands, so within kind of technology, advanced technology, and regulation, and that we're then able to convert from being a contingent customer of ours into working with us on permanent hires through an embedded solution. Someone that we're able to support on kind of day rate contract, on project-based work as well.

Yeah, that's a really, really good breakdown. And then the other thing that I've sort of— you can tell me what you think about this— the other thing that I've sort of noticed as well, if we want to be a recruiter that is more actively working this different way, selling different solutions, is it does require you to sort of slow down to speed up almost, in terms of for you to really understand what's required, or like to go for that journey. It isn't always going to be like quick deals, things move quickly. Like, it can take a bit of time in terms of from having that initial meeting to then the point where they're signing the contracts and they're working with you. It might really vary, I don't know, you might tell me. But I feel like, again, that is a bit of an adoption that people may have to adapt to, is that in order for you to really actually provide them the best solution, you do have to take a bit of a step back, understand what's going on, versus jumping straight in with like, yeah, we can get you those people, just crack on. Is that fair?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, because I think that can sometimes be— sometimes people just would rather just crack on and be like, yeah, I can get your CVs, and then like just chase that deal versus like go on this journey.

That's that big picture element of it, isn't it? You've got that recruiter thinking selfishly around that 1 or 2 25% fee they can make because they're thinking, yeah, that sounds brilliant, and they're not thinking about, okay, maybe if that cost per hire was a little bit lower, maybe if I didn't have to compete against every other agency because I was embedded did. Sometimes again, taking that step back, oh, it's helpful.

And then does it, does it really vary, but like on average, how many, like how many steps would you say is in your like sales process if we were to end up working with a client in a statement of work capacity or an embedded hiring solution capacity or one of those like further down the line, like different of the value chain, as you said? Like it might really vary, but like if we were to say like what could that typically look like sales process-wise, how many steps I'm really sorry, it varies massively.

Yeah, so with embedded hiring solutions, we've had them where we have met a customer for the very first time, we've done a very brief discovery, understood their needs, gone away, put together a proposal, spoke to that customer on a second meeting, and they've gone, yeah, cool, done. Okay, so we've sold it in that sense. And then we've had others where we've been contingent partners with them for 6 to 12 months showing the value. And then sometimes it really depends on the size of organization. If you're working with a 10 to 100 person size business, things are a lot easier and quicker to sign off than they are if you're working with a 500 size kind of enterprise customer. And with the kind of statements of work, I personally think those are a little bit harder to get signed off sometimes than the embedded hiring solutions. I think there's more steps that's involved in that because you are responsible. You're not just responsible for the people, you're responsible for the outcomes and the success of that project. Sits with you. And there's a phrase that's always banded around our company, like, no one ever gets fired for hiring IBM. Like, if that company was to go to IBM instead of Trenovo Consulting and IBM messed up the project, it's not going to be, oh, we've got the best. Exactly. It's like, well, we tried, we hired IBM, nobody else could do it. Whereas if they came to Trenovo Consulting and it didn't go to plan, it would be on us because we're a smaller venture, wouldn't it? So we have to be able to prove in discovery that we are the partner for this, and we do that by making sure that personally, the consultants that are working on it are incredibly vertically aligned. This is where being true specialists is so, so important. And that we've got a really, really strong bench of like subject matter experts. So, we have two different benches that we use. We've got an internal one, which is made up of kind of fractional CTOs, CMOs, heads of engineering, heads of AI, all of the different verticals that we cover as brands. We have subject matter experts that essentially work with Trenovo Group on these kind of proposals, and then we've also got our external bench of SMEs that we use as well. Yeah, so between kind of your really specialized consultant, myself, an internal SME, and an external SME, typically that is how we kind of look to win a statement of work. But that can take normally the opportunity being identified by the specialist consultant to then doing the discovery with yourself, to then us engaging an internal SME, to then if we need to going to find the external SME, then doing another discovery, then putting together a proposal for them. It just takes longer.

Yeah, I appreciate— I know, I know it's not black and white, but I think just you sharing those things is what I was after because that just gives people a bit of an insight. Because if— because I do genuinely believe from my conversations, I do think there will be a lot of great recruiters, high-performing recruiters that are interested in working these different ways of their customers, right? So I think just learning and hearing the differences, because it is different, on what that journey might look like is, is really helpful. Um, what I wanted to, to then ask you, because I think this is an important part of, like we said, on, on the commercial side, and you said earlier that it's often like small things, but can we just talk a bit about what can we do that's really smart, that might be small, might be big, that can really impact perhaps that like customer journey from when we actually start working together, because I think that can be really overlooked. So what I mean by that is I think oftentimes, particularly if we're in that typical contingent environment, it's like one the client, done the deal, on to the next.

Yes.

But like we said earlier, I think a lot of really high-performing recruiters, if we were to look at their desks, they have those like, you know, 3 to 8, 3 to 5 really key accounts These might be some things that you just naturally do now or do without thinking, but if I'm a recruiter that really wants to have more of the wallet share and make sure that, oh, like, my best client only spends 10% with me, like, what are some of the things that recruiters can do when they've won a client, they've proved that they can deliver, and rather than going straight into, I'm gonna find the next client I can do that with, what are some of the things that you we maybe like always do now in store, like after that journey? Because when I've interviewed people that are in this, like doing statement of work, these things, their real methodology it sounds like is like we want to make sure the actual journey starts when you make that placement with that customer. So how do you think about that if we were to look at maybe, I don't know, the first like 30 to 90 days of like we've just done the placement with this client, we feel like they hit a lot of the markers around they could be a customer that goes up the value chain in terms of how we could work with them. What are the intentional things that we're doing post-placement?

One thing for me, and it's really basic, is just consistently asking for feedback. Yeah, like most people assume they're doing a fantastic job and they don't ask the customer for anything that's kind of constructive for them. So, a really good example is we won kind of this professional services embedded hiring solution, and we initially started out just working with them kind of on the exec hiring piece that they were working on. By asking for feedback, by being curious, by understanding, okay, this is what else is going on in the business, we were then able to identify a gap elsewhere. So, okay, actually, they've got to make— sorry, they've got to make 130 hires in 2026 in mid to senior level that we knew nothing about. Out because we were just so blinkered on the exact search piece. So ask for feedback, be inquisitive. And I don't see the harm either in just being honest with your customers and saying like, I've really enjoyed working with you on this project, I'd love to expand further. We also offer employer record solutions and project-based solutions. Would I be able to speak to you about this? Is there anyone else in the business you think I should be speaking to? I think just be a human.

Yeah, I think the feedback thing is a good insight. I I do think good recruiters will actively seek that.

Yeah.

And that can be on all sorts, isn't it? Like feedback, like feedback on the process, like just loads of different things you could ask for feedback on, I guess.

Yes. And the constructive feedback is way more useful than the, yeah, you did great.

Okay, so feedback, and then, um, like you said, just actually just being direct and saying like, what else can we do?

Yeah.

Outlining again that there's different levers that we can do, what's going on there.

Okay, but that ability to be able to ask directly comes from building up that trust with them. If you've just placed one person with a client and you haven't managed to build up much rapport with them and you haven't met them face to face and you don't know their wife's name, their husband's name, their kids, what they're up to, and this kind of thing, it's very difficult to do that.

You just mentioned, because I think this could go in with this, but I guess it can also be a lot on the new business side, but from your, from what you've seen so far, you know, you've been in recruitment a good amount of time now.

How—

I almost feel like meeting people, like doing what we're doing now face to face, has become like back in fashion almost. Or like, maybe not, maybe like a competitive edge maybe is a better way to put it. Because I know that's something that we put on here, because if you joined our industry, yeah, you know, COVID, post-COVID, I think we all got so used to jumping on Teams, like doing all the video recalls. But is that something that you like? If again, it might not be black and white, but if I was to say to you, Vicky, the more accounts and customers that you meet this year, the more business you'll likely do with them next year, do we feel like that's a fair statement?

Yes, 100%. And what you said about COVID is really accurate as well, because I think in recruitment most people don't have a very long tenure. You tend to find most people cap out at about 3 to 5 years before maybe they go and look at internal positions, or they move into HR, or they just go and do something completely different because they've decided recruitment isn't the one for them. So, when we look at the workforce that we have now, post-COVID, which is probably, what, 6 years old if people joined at that time, they went through the first 3 years of their career never having to meet someone face to face. And those skills that we spoke around, around mirroring and body language and how you present yourself and like it just wasn't needed. So I think that's a big part that we've had to kind of upskill our consultants on anyway, the newer ones for sure. But yeah, I think meeting people is always going to be the most important thing you can do. I think if you look someone kind of in the whites of their eyes, they just trust you. They buy into you a little bit more. You're not this, this floating head on a screen to them or this voice on the end of the telephone. You're a real person. Person. Don't be afraid to be personal with them as well. Like, you don't have to be this super professional robot. Like, feel free to like make yourself a bit more human.

Yeah, I think whenever— because sometimes it's like, okay, well, what is that? Why is it like the in-person thing that can really help? I think it's what you said in terms of like what me and you're doing now. We've actually properly met each other, looked each other in the whites of their eyes, that, that typical saying. But I think in like the work context as well, I think it gives you opportunities to actually like find out about who these people are as like people.

Yeah.

And it is those little things that it's quite hard to like quantify. It doesn't necessarily mean now I know this stuff about Vicky's life, that's going to like mean we're going to do loads of business together. But it just helps, doesn't it? Like it just helps you.

Makes you harder to say no to.

Yeah, true. But it just, it just like helps you like connect to that person. In a different way. And I think it is like, you know, meeting them in their office, walking to the meeting room. It's like all those little interactions where you can just pick up different things that then result in just having an edge, or at least having an opportunity to build that trust, or like just go beyond, like you said, being a float head on the screen.

You can make it really fun as well. You don't have to just go to their offices and that kind of thing. I've done some amazing stuff with clients where we've gone to like a Ladies Day at Aintree, we've gone to— got to go to see like Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran in concert, like Golden Circles boxes and stuff like that. Got to go see like football games and like, like, it's just, there's fun stuff that you can do with them. So again, that means that you need to know your client, know what they like and what makes them tick. Because if I was to take some of my clients to, to a Beyoncé concert, they'd probably never work with me again. Sorry.

And then as we're talking about like meetings, meeting different people, I just wanted to, to ask again, it might not be like really black and white, but it's interesting to get your thoughts because I think this would be another interesting insight for people. So if we were to look at like embedded hiring solutions versus like statement of work, it probably depends on company size. But does the like stakeholders involved and who needs to get involved in decision-making process, does that really change?

Yeah, massively.

Yeah, yeah.

You can go from in smaller companies dealing directly with the CTO that holds the budget responsibility, so then in other businesses having to go via procurement and having to go through onboarding processes that take 3, 4 months. So again, I think that goes back to initial discovery and that question of who's responsible for the budget, who needs to be involved in this process, and asking those questions early.

And then that, that can take like different skills as well, can't it? Like if you're like procure— again, we're talking about mirroring, and when you may be preparing for a meeting procurement, I'm assuming what you might include in what you're covering might be a bit different to the—

definitely, yeah. And I think that's one an area that I don't know, I really enjoy it.

Really?

Yeah, I'm the odd recruiter that loves paperwork and loves a portal and loves an RFI or an RFP or something like that, because to me it really, it really appeals to that analytical kind of like accounting side of my brain. Um, so I guess that's another area where consultants like to work with me, like, yeah, she'll go and do the hard work for me.

Because I just thought of that, because that, that is also again just a different dynamic, isn't it? But like you said, that's what I wanted to ask because it, like, from what I've heard, that can normally be the case. Should we talk a bit about then, so something you shared with me around like your own journey, which I thought you put it in like a really interesting way. So you, you said, like, you mentioned to me like a lot of women's experience in recruitment, like you was on the floor of like 50 recruiters. Yes, alone. Career where I think there was like, what, less than like 5 women or something like that. I don't know. But the way that you said it to me, I found it really interesting. You said that the thing that really matters with like helping women in recruitment is sponsorship. Yeah, just, just share like what you meant with me with that, because I think you shared with me like a particular story about when you, when you sort of had this like sponsorship from this person, it like had a real impact or really helped in your career. Yeah, like, how would you— like, what do you mean by that sponsorship piece? Because I thought that was an interesting way that you, like, shared that with me.

To me, sponsorship versus advice— advice is saying to someone, well, this is what I would do, whereas sponsorship is giving that person the floor and saying, okay, how can I help you? What do you want to talk about? Letting them set the agenda and really kind of working with them to build confidence and kind of creating that environment where we're asking for support and asking questions does feel safe and And I think, yeah, to me that's the really important element of it. And like I said, that's what I experienced really early on in my career. I think I joined an agency, I was only, I think I was just before my 19th birthday. Yeah, because I did an internship while I was at university at a recruitment company. Really? Yeah.

What, in the accounting team?

Well, it was meant to be in the accounting team, and I ended up being a bit of a dog's body. I was there to end up like format CVs and book meeting rooms, but I absolutely loved it, really. And I loved the environment that this company created. It was really like hungry, it was very young, and it just opened my eyes up because I'd done like work experience in accountancy businesses before, which is a very like white, stale, male environment. And I'd gone into this recruitment company and I was like, this is so cool. Everyone was so boisterous and loud and talking about how much money they were earning. And I was like, I want a bit of this. This Brilliant. So whilst I was at university, after I did my kind of 6-week internship, I then continued to work for the business part-time for the next kind of 2, 3 years while I finished my degree. So I'd do kind of like 3 days a week at uni and 2 days a week doing recruitment, and I'd do anything and everything that they told me to. It was anything from kind of like database admin and candidate database building and screening through to they give me a list of 500 people and be like, right, call this, call these people and sell that to them today. And I'm like, all right, and off I toddled, and I loved it. But I did that, and then when I I joined that business kind of full-time, it was, it was a big transition to go from being like the fun intern to being like, oh God, this is my career now and I've got to make it work. And there was one lady, um, in particular, one of the directors who was on maternity leave for, um, my internship. And then when I joined full-time, it's a lady called Lisa Forrester, if she's listening. When, um, I joined full-time, she really took an interest in me. She— I hadn't worked with her before she left, so she was a bit of like a bit of a myth and a bit of a legend because she was always at the very top of the contractor runner book. Yeah, she was brilliant. And when she came back and I saw her and I was like, wow, okay, like, this is how you do recruitment. I can see why she's still top of the contractor runner book after a year away on maternity leave. But she took a real interest in me and she supported me in the market. She coached me, and I ended up really, really looking up to her, and she made such an impact on me. So, like I said, this day, like, 16 years later, I still kind of think about her, talk about her, and I just have the utmost respect for her. So I think if I can be half the recruiter, half the manager, the inspiration that Lisa was to me, to another woman, I'd be so chuffed. Yeah, so chuffed. So I do try to kind of, like, practice what I preach, practice what I preach as well. So there's a couple of women within kind of Trenovo Group at the moment that I do kind of bi-weekly one-to-ones with that maybe don't sit in kind of contract recruitment, don't sit in the market that I do, but I've just got the sit down half an hour with them. Cool, what do you want to talk about? Where can I help you? Where are you struggling? And give them the floor and try— because they try to offer that sponsorship and that advice and support on the execution rather just do this, do this.

Yeah, right. Okay, so that, that's like— okay, that, that makes sense. So it's very much like if you really want to try and help, uh, people in that way, then try and like, yeah, do more of that. Like you said, sponsorship, actually, like actually get involved, coach, these things, versus this is what I would do, this would be my advice. Fair. So that's what really had an impact on you. Like you said, it felt like this person was like really rooting for you, had a active, like, interest in wanting to see you succeed and all that, versus maybe just always saying, Vicky, I would do this, or Vicky, do that.

Yeah, she was an absolute superwoman. Um, like I say, she headed up kind of multiple kind of contract and permanent teams. She had twins at the same time. I just thought she was absolutely brilliant, and she really taught me that not being the loudest person in the room is okay. Like, it's very hard to be the loudest person in the room in recruitment treatment. And sometimes if you're not, you can be overlooked, you can be spoken over a huge amount as well. And but to me, kind of this sponsorship or leadership doesn't require being kind of louder, tougher, or more like a man. I think women are exceptional at this job because we have different traits and qualities, but our confidence is sometimes judged differently to that of a man. So it's just something that unfortunately you have to be cognizant of. So we can sometimes be called bossy, overconfident, and that kind of thing. So Lisa just kind of gave me that, that sponsorship and that kind of awareness.

And I'm sure, I'm sure there'll be stories of Vicky having an impact on people like that in their career.

I hope so.

I'm sure there will be. But I think to, to round this out then, I think you can tell me what you think about this, but it's almost most, maybe the advice here is like, if you're listening to this and there isn't someone like yourself in the, in their business, or the person that really impacted you, then I do feel like in today's world, like, be proactive and, and like get that. Like, even if you're, if you're in a company where maybe that isn't intentionally happening right now, but it could, like, you like be proactive with it would be like the advice. Maybe like if you're sitting and there are a handful of women in your business that you feel like you'd love to get a bit more sponsorship, a bit more involved versus just getting the advice, like ask for that and be proactive with it. And if it isn't in your organization, then look outside your organization.

Yeah, this sponsorship or this mentorship doesn't have to come from someone that's in the same business of you at all. But I do think it's really important to choose a business that aligns with your values. Like I say, you can, you can go and do recruitment anywhere, it's the same job. So find an environment where you don't have to choose between ambition and authenticity.

Love that. Well, Vicki, it's been a pleasure. I think it's been really cool to go into the detail of this commercial director position. I do really believe it's something that we're going to see more and more of. Obviously going to see your team grow as well, and I think there's just like a really important place for someone like you in a lot of recruitment companies because of all the reasons that we've said. So I appreciate you sharing all of that, and thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you very much.