Why We Only Hire Entry-Level Talent and How It Got Us to £8 Million with Matthew Sullivan

Matt, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Known you for a little while. So when I learned more and more about the actual particulars of this journey that you've been on with your business, I have been more and more excited to sit down with you. I think there's a lot that people can learn from your journey. And I also know how much you love recruitment, how much you geeked out on how to succeed in recruitment. So there's a lot here that we're going to cover. I think there's 3 key areas that we've sort of dialled it down to, which you view as fundamental in growing this business and this journey that you're on, which is people, opportunity, and systems. So I think in this conversation, we're going to really delve into that, particularly around hiring, retaining young, driven people, which is at the core of your strategy. Then the opportunity piece in terms of you have to have a bigger opportunity for people that fits in their opportunity, or the way that I'll get you to explain it. And then systems. You have to have how you do everything in your business documented. 90, 180-day plans. Success needs to be broken down. So there's a lot that we're going to cover. I think just to give everyone a bit of context, the highlight reel, the important bits. So you've been on this journey as an entrepreneur for about 8 years.

Yeah.

The sort of, the way that we timestamped it is end of 2020, where the business was and what you typically did was UK experienced entry-level direct-to-direct business, essentially. So end of 2020, there was around 9 of you, I think going into 2021, there's slightly less of you, but you did £600 grand net fee income. And then last year, there's 66 people now in the business, 11 people in operations. You achieved just over £8 million in the NFI as a group, because there's now different brands, which I'll let you explain and we'll go through. So real, I know you said that it was intentional and we wanted to get here, but a real transformation. I'm sure you feel like you're just getting started still, and there's still loads of things to do. But where I wanted us to start is, I think it's safe to say that you have probably interviewed thousands and thousands of young people.

Yeah.

And you'll talk to them about a career in recruitment and your business and the group and the different brands within the business is really built on young people, young driven people, and you, you backing them and providing an opportunity for them, for them to thrive. So we wanted to start here because I think I was saying to you before we started, I'm having more and more conversations with people saying we're slightly changing our strategy. We're maybe not doubling down as much on the entry-level market. We're going to be hiring more senior people. So we want to talk about what has been or what is your interview process around getting better at understanding entry-level talent. Are they a good fit or not? Are they going to work out? Let's just get into it there. So where, where, where does the interview process start? Let's just sort of break this down to start.

Yeah. Okay. So Thanks for the intro, by the way. Super kind. I think, look, before we talk about the interview process, I'd probably say what's the hiring process? Like, what are the things that happen before the interview? So obviously we're fortunate in the sense that we have a couple of rec-to-rec businesses within our group. So there's Hire Group and Mara. And so I think our breadth is pretty important. The amount of candidates that the guys will interview in a given given day or given week across both businesses is really high. So I think when you're looking at your hiring process, you've got to make sure that you're getting enough coverage. And what I'm not saying is work with every single supplier under the sun. But if you're serious about it, you probably need to have an internal recruitment function. You probably need to have one or two trusted suppliers where you might even be paying a little bit over market to get first dibs on candidates. But I suppose the first thing I'd say is, it's really important if hiring is your number one priority as a business that you, I think as an MD, are on the front line. So what I mean by that is literally sitting all of the first stage interviews. So after internal or after your rec-to-rec partner has passed somebody over to you, don't kind of let it go to team leads or anybody else in the organisation first. I think you need to accept that you need to do probably 20 first-round interviews a week for 4 weeks in order to drive the headcount that you want to hit. So obviously that might not work if you're in a much larger business like a Faden, but I think a business of our size, which is, as you said, 66 people, I still think that hiring is our most important kind of business function. And I kind of see that as my primary responsibility, making sure that we only We only engage the very best people in the market, really.

And did you make that decision after having managers and team leads do the first round?

Honestly, no.

Okay, so you've always been that way?

Yeah, I mean, I think when you have, so, and just to be really clear, it's not to say that we don't have our managers and team leads involved in the process, obviously we do, But I think the hiring process, if you will, needs to be run kind of like a military operation. Like you need to have total visibility over all of the candidates that are coming through the door, which teams they're best for, you know, what opportunities you've got internally for those people. And if you've got, let's say you've got team leads or associate directors interviewing first, they will probably try to grab the best talent for themselves, which is understandable, but really you've got to be making the right decisions for the business. And I think a business of our size, and I can only speak for what works for us, I think that that's primarily going to be a me job. So, 21st round interviews a week with 21-year-olds, fantastic.

[Speaker] So let's get into it then. What are, and it might vary, you might tell me it might vary on the different brands that you have in the group, or it may not. What are the core elements that you assess for? What are the non-negotiables that you look for in these people then? What have you sort of landed on?

Yeah, okay, so we've got a really clear, I suppose, person type. So we've looked at the people who've been successful in our business, and there's a background that's pretty prevalent, and In a nutshell, it's somebody that has very likely not grown up with money, but has grown up probably surrounded by it. So potentially family had it, or like members of the family outside of their immediate family had it, or friends from school had it, or they went to university and met a load of rich kids from London, which is my experience personally. And money plays quite an interesting role in their lives and in their psyches. And so there's a, there's some combination of they want to earn to provide for people. In some cases, they want to earn to prove to people from, you know, their family or their kind of like, you know, their hometown that it's, you know, something's possible. And, you know, you've got the usual drivers, like they want to buy nice shit, like nice watches and cars and all that sort of stuff. But I think really nailing the person that you're that you're looking for is so, so, so important. So drive is, yes, that's a huge thing. But I think a big thing for us as well is it kind of comes down to, I probably call it like an obsessive streak. So somebody who is incredibly focused on being the best person and professional that they can be. And when they talk about their future achievements, because bear in mind, we're talking primarily about, you know, early 20s, you know, men and women, they look at the future with a sense of, I suppose it's like a sense of their own kind of destiny, which is a pretty strange word to use, to be honest. But they kind of really wanna prove something to themselves or prove something to other people. And they're kind of on a path, I suppose. And so we really kind of dig around motives, drivers, background, all that sort of stuff. And then you've got the normal things like communication skills and all, And yeah, coachability and all of those things. But really, I think if I was to summarize it, it's about the person. It's really about understanding the sort of person that works in our environment and then trying to identify those people in 25-minute conversations, which can be tricky.

[Speaker] So I want to go into that with you, but just to take a step back for a second, would you say if I'm trying to get better at hiring entry-level talent and I haven't really got a good understanding of like what makes a good hire, that's the first thing I need to do in terms of looking at my own business, look at my own people. It sounds like that sort of helped you really form an idea of like this is the type of person that succeeds in our environment. I think that's something maybe that can be overlooked.

Yeah.

And they sometimes people don't actually do that initial work of like actually let's actually look around us. What is it that actually has resulted in XYZ person succeeding here and actually really thinking about that, speaking to them, understanding it. It sounds like you did quite a bit of that work to really understand that. And then you've, from that, drawn like these are the parts that matter.

Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, people talk a lot about like company values, business values, all this sort of stuff. And it can be, you know, corporate gobbledygook, can't it? You know, like how seriously do companies, some companies take their values? I think We take ours very seriously, and that's not to say that we've got them plastered on the wall or anything. But certainly amongst, I suppose, the senior leadership team, and when it comes to our hiring profile, we're really, really clear on the sorts of people that we want. But I think fundamentally that comes from you as a leader and the people in your leadership team. And you've got to know what you're about. And what I mean by that is, you know, our business is totally I suppose, optimised for opportunity and excellence, really. They're the two things that we— so we want people who are going to come into our business and shoot for the stars, like that, just in a very simple way. But we also want people who are going to come in and be the best or try to be the best. And what that means is that I suppose the environment is pretty uncompromising. So, you know, there's a lot of work from home in recruitment. There's a lot of— not to get into that as a topic necessarily, but recruitment as an industry, and maybe we can talk about this, seems to be softening a little bit. And I understand why, you know, it's pretty punishing. And certainly if you're in your, you know, late 20s, 30s, 40s, being in the office 5 days a week, working 10, 11-hour days, it's not for the faint-hearted and it doesn't, you know, work so well with certain commitments outside of, you know, outside of work. But I think for the sort of person that we hire and the opportunity that we put on the table, there's a kind of, there's an expectation that whoever joins the business goes all in on the opportunity. And so I guess the advice would be, if that's what we're looking for, be really, really clear about what you're about and what the offer is. So if your business is effectively offering somebody something, What is that offer? And then, you know, what is the upside? But then be honest about the downside. You know, I do say to people in interview processes, like, it's not easy to work here. And I'm, yeah, candid about it. More often than not, it's kind of a selling point though, because I think, you know, you know this, but certainly when we got into recruitment, you would get the sunshine and rainbows, 100 grand a year, you know, Ferrari by the time you're 25. And, you know, that's not what we say. But I think just being very forthright with people is actually, yeah, a big sell.

Did you learn this by going too soft yourself and then reverting back, or have you always been this way? Because I've seen this a lot over the last, I'm sure you've seen it even more in the different brands, but a good example of this would be, there's a lot of founders that I spoke to over the last 6-12 months who, you would have seen them maybe saying, come work here, we're not a KPI-heavy environment, these types of bits.

Yeah.

And then they've had to go back on that because it just hasn't worked out, and they maybe lent too much into what they thought they should be versus what they wanted to be. And I'm in that.

And, and you know what, mate, that's so important. And what I mean, so it's so important, there's too many people trying to placate or please the crowd. That, you know, they think that candidates, whether they're trainees or experienced, young, old, or whatever, don't want KPIs anymore. So we're going to drop KPIs. They want work from home. So we're going to do loads of work from home. And there's a kind of, there's what's so unappealing, I think, in an organization or a leader is like somebody that has a sense of identity. Like this is what we're about. This is why we're here. And this is what you're going to get if you join our business. Having clarity around those things is so important. And to your point, flip-flopping between different setups and policies and all this sort of stuff, it's a road to nowhere. It doesn't work. Yes, you have to adapt and evolve, but you've really got to have a strong sense of what is the business at its core. And unless you can articulate that to people at interview, unless you can stand by that through, let's be honest, good times and bad, because the industry has been you know, kicked in the balls a couple of times over the last few years, then, you know, what are you actually offering? And, you know, if you have attrition, if you have issues hiring and retaining, but you don't have that sense of identity, then that could well be a core reason, you know?

Yeah, I think that's what I take from that. And I think founders would relate to that. I think some founders have been through that in terms of maybe, yeah, getting caught up with doing things that they think people would want versus the advice I'm hearing here is have clarity in what you want to be and own that and stick to that. And then the hard work is then, like you said, not compromising to that, not compromising the standards, and then protecting those standards at all costs. And some of the things that you may stand for and what you are may be against what people say that you should be doing versus not, but the most important thing is you know what you are. And then, like you said, you're then communicating that. Let's get into the particulars of this interview then, I'm curious, 'cause you said you've got to view it, you've got to be sort of fairly militant. You said normally you're sitting down with people 20 to 30 minutes. What are the most important questions you ask in that?

Honestly, I do not have a script.

Really? No.

The first question I'll ask is, you know, why are you looking to get into recruitment? If it's a trainee or if it's a recruiter, you know, tell me about your journey in recruitment, what are you looking for? So I keep the first question really simple and really open. And the reason I don't have a script, there will be things that I kind of, you know, typically go to. The most important thing from my perspective, 'cause we use a psychometric test and we do role plays and we have, you know, a process that really tests things like communication, coachability. The psych test is useful for a couple of things, but—

Pre the meeting with you?

No, that's all post. So the meeting, yeah, yeah, yeah. So my interview's the first after the interview with our internal or interview with, anyone at High Group Amara, the most important thing that I'm trying to do or the thing that I'm trying to accomplish is I want to understand who the person is. I want to understand their motives, their background. So I will ask things about their family life. I will ask things about where they're from. I'll ask them how they relate to the people that they grew up with. I will ask them all sorts of questions that, as you joked earlier, from an HR point of view perspective might be a little bit tricky. But I really want to understand who the person is and what drives them, what motivates them, what What scares them, you know, what excites them, that's really the key things for me.

As well as painting a real clear picture of expectations, what to expect.

Yeah.

And almost, I think you said to me when we prepared for this, almost selling them against the idea of working in this environment or working in recruitment and how hard it is, is sort of what I took from it.

Yeah, yeah. I'll say it, but when we're doing a big round of interviews, I could genuinely spend pretty much all day just doing first round interview after first round interview. So I do say, you know, if there's a founder listening to this and thinking like, how the fuck do you interview so many people? I say like, I've probably got 15, you know, 20 minutes for the call. It's in my diary for half an hour, but I say 15, 20 minutes. Because I know if it's particularly bad—

And this isn't face to face?

No, no, this is all, no, no, no, all over, Zoom.

Oh really?

Yeah, Teams.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can just about work Teams.

Right, okay, fair.

Yeah. And if it's really bad, I might send somebody a message and say like, come in and tell me that the fire alarm's gone off or come in and tell me that it's an emergency. Because being honest, there can be some absolute car crashes. Nothing against the individual, but if you're going to dedicate so much time to doing interviews, Sometimes you need to think about how can I, you know.

Okay, let me ask you this then. Most common reason you would end up messaging someone saying like, can you come and say that I've got a meeting? What's, 'cause there will be common bits there that you hear and it might be instantly a red flag for you. What is it that you're like, nah, that's not right for us?

Ah, you know, you get the clangers, like somebody who's getting into recruitment 'cause they just want a job or they just want, you know, a 9 to 5, or they just, or when you get into a conversation and there's a real clear kind of sense of a lacking of accountability where you talk through somebody's, you know, school history or work history and it's always the boss's fault or they talk terribly about an ex-employer or whatever. It's not common, by the way, you know, it's probably like once a fortnight or something like that if we're doing a, you know, because I usually will give the 15 minutes, but Yes, sometimes you've got to press the eject button and get out.

And then from that point, the process is, what did you say? So what after that, you'd always put then someone for a psychometric test?

Psych test and then in for a face-to-face final, which is meet multiple managers. So I'll probably line up at least 2 managers, could be 3, could be across a couple of different businesses in group. And then there will, if it's a trainee, there'll always be a work sample.

So talk us through that.

So that is, I mean, that's not a part of the process that I wish Chas was here. He could probably do a better job, but it's basically a role play call where one of our team will be a candidate and the interviewee will be qualifying them for a job at Hire Group. And then Chas or Chas is our head of L&D or one of the managers will give them feedback and then they'll do the call again. So We're obviously testing for—

Is that in person?

Yeah, yeah, that's in person, yeah. And we're testing for communication, but also testing for coachability and calm under pressure and all those sorts of things. And you can, sometimes you'd be shocked at how good they can be, but sometimes they can be like, yeah, really quite bad, so.

And yeah, okay, that work sample is key. I think that's something that, when I interviewed Oliver over at Faden, that's something that they do those work samples in, like they'd batch do them in terms of get groups of people to do them and that's been, again, there'll probably be a lot of people that don't do something like that, particularly on the entry-level side.

Yeah, well, as I said, I worked at Faden and I did a work sample and Lawrence, who ended up hiring me, I was so bad on the work sample that he cancelled it 'cause he knew he wanted to hire me but he cancelled it and got me out of the building before anybody else saw how bad it was. Because when you're a fresh grad, if you've never picked up the phone before, that first phone call is terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.

How long have you done the psych test stuff?

Oh, the last 4 or 5 years.

Really? Yeah. That question come up last night at a dinner that I hosted. How, I'm assuming you'd let me know here, but is that more aiding your decision process versus if this happens on this psych test, it's a flat no?

There are things that can come up on the psych test that we'd probably rule a candidate out for, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, but then I think you've always got to take them with a little bit of a pinch of salt. So if we've got a really good sense of someone and the psych test isn't perfect, then we'll kind of, you know, we'll put our doubts aside. The tricky thing, to be honest, is when we overrule the test, Good test. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Computer says no a little bit. And yeah, it's just not a good test.

And then people are going to want to know, so like maybe you can set up an affiliate link or something, but like what do you use?

Elentius. There's a guy called Alan Glover who's in his late 70s who every time I get a test, I give him a call and we bet a gin and tonic on whether the candidate's going to work out or not.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's it called? Elentius.

Elentius.

And what are the main I guess this— would this be specific to the company? Do you sort of figure out what it is that you're looking for, or does it always look for the similar?

Yes. So ours, our psych profile is based off of all of our top performers, right? Um, so the orientations around, um, goal— there's a goal orientation or drive, um, sociability. There's a, there's a, there's a top 5 rankings, um, or top 5, um, criteria that we evaluate against. And that, like I said, is based off our top performers.

And if you don't mind me asking, go on, what are we like roughly? What are we saying like cost per test roughly?

I think Alan doubled his prices recently.

Really?

Yeah, I think it's about £250 a test at the moment.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. I know people would be interested in that. So let's talk about, I think it's very easy to talk about this front end part, the getting people in, hiring. So we've definitely spoke about that in detail. What have been the most consistent lessons in retaining young, ambitious, driven people? The people that fit a lot of these things that you're looking for. I think it's also fair to say that these people also very prone to going, recruitment's not for me, in 2 years' time maybe. Yeah. That's a risk, I guess, part of what you take on. Might also be like, I've done recruitment for 2.5, 3 years, I can do it on my own. I don't need to be in this environment, I don't want to be employed. How, yeah, what are the main lessons? What are the main things you think about that you think are most influential to retaining the entry-level talent?

Yeah, I think retaining entry-level talent is important, but I think the first job is getting them to perform. So Sounds obvious, but the hiring process is super important. But like what happens when they get through the door? Like unless you've got that onboarding process and upskilling process properly mapped out and it works like a system where you know what markets to put people in, what sales processes they need to follow, how you track their execution of the sales process, how you teach each of the individual skills or activities. So we've got a bit of a language for how we talk about and think about recruitment, which you're probably getting a bit of now. So I think that's massive.

So let's go into that then before we get into, because if you were saying that that is probably, that's probably the, are you saying that that's probably been the, that's probably the most impactful thing that would result in more people being with us in 3, 4 years' time and actually succeeding and doing well?

Yeah, well, I think to your point, so we'll chat about that, but I do think there's something to be said on retention.

Okay, got it.

No, no, no, which one do you want to do?

No, yeah, let's, you can talk about that if, Talk about the retention piece, and then we can get into the system side of things.

Cool. So I think job one is getting people from knowing nothing about recruitment to being competent. We think $20K a month per month as a biller is like a— that's like a— it's not a golden standard, but it's a very respectable standard where the consultant's earning good money, business is earning good money, and you can see how that person can really kick on. To your point about retention, so I think we said this on our prep call, but ultimately, really, unless the opportunity for somebody in your business is such that they can make a lot of money, they can experience the things that they want to experience, they can achieve the things that they want to achieve, unless you can put that in front of somebody in a way that's really tangible and really clear, then why would they stay? So for us, we've talked about this a lot, but our insiders model is really, if you look at our group, so there's 7 companies within the group. This is taking Haier Group out. So of the 6 companies outside of Haier Group, 3 of them were started by ex-Haier Group employees. In the group, I think there were 13 or 14 shareholders. So we've got different shareholding classes, but everybody, you know, we pay a profit share scheme, which is really important to us. And all of this is to say, when you're hiring somebody and when you hope to retain this person for the long term, when they look at the future in your business, and I think there's probably something to be said there as well. The future doesn't need to be in your business as it is today. I think the flexibility that we all have as founders is we can create new things. You can start a new business, a new brand. I mean, S3 did it for years. They had about 5 or 6 different Brands that all did the same bloody thing. It's probably not the model you'd want to follow these days, but you've got so much flexibility to create new things and include your top performers in those things as a shareholder or however you want to do it. There's no right or wrong, but ultimately, if you're looking at retention, if you're looking at the retention question, you need to be able to answer the opportunity question. What do great people want? Well, they want to typically achieve big things and make a lot of money. So can they do that in your business? If they can't do that in your business, then Well, you'll probably have a problem retaining them.

Yeah, because I think you said something, I tried to say at the beginning but fumbled it, on our prep call you said that their sort of vision has to fit within, like you have to have a grander vision that they can see there's—

Yeah, you've got to out-vision them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where did, so let's, we'll get on to systems, but you've mentioned this in Sardo and Mordo and that was the next bit around the opportunity. So let's talk about this because you can tell me, but that seems quite fundamental in this transformation that you've been on.

Yeah.

Where did this like first start happening? Where did this first idea come from? Had you always had it? Was maybe you didn't quite have the people or—

Yeah.

Like, where did this sort of come from, this insider model? And then we'll just get into it because I do think I'll get your perspective, but I do think this is interesting around, could this be something that other recruitment businesses can potentially consider? Yeah, because how many recruitment businesses lose great people because of the— what you're just talking about there? They're— they've out— their vision has outgrown the business. Uh, I've heard plenty of horror stories, like too many, where then recruitment founders just try and do people dirty, um, as well. And that goes both ways. But like, where did this insider model start happening? Where was the idea for this? Where did that come from?

So I was probably kind of radical when I first started the business. I kind of thought that everybody that would work for a recruitment business, because I did when I worked at Faden, and I was always amazed actually when I was there. Most of the people there were plotting to go out and start their own thing. Not many of them did it, but most people were talking about it openly in the pub. And I kind of thought, This is madness. Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, if you own this business, like you're, I mean, Fame's a phenomenal company, but that's so risky. And so I thought when I started Hygro, I was like, you need to embrace that. Like you need to accept the fact that people, entrepreneurial people, if you want to hire, you know, smart, driven, entrepreneurial young people, they're going to start conspiring to start their own thing at some point. So unless you lean into it, you're going to end up on the wrong side of it. So, it was a practical decision as much as a, I suppose, opportunity-led decision. But yeah, so I suppose the genesis of it was always in the initial plan, if you will. But I think as we grew a little bit, what we started to see, so Emily Stoker, hope she listens. Em and I have a wonderful relationship, but we are quite different people. And she'd built a really cool team within Hire Group that had a very distinct identity that was different to probably the team that I had grown. And so it was a business. Don't get me wrong, we got on super well, but you could feel that there was just a little bit of a split. There was no animosity. There was just a little bit of a, yeah, you might say a division. And so at that point it made sense. And Em was being, Em's incredibly good at what she does. And she was being approached by lots of people asking her to start up on her own. And she kind of came to me in tears one day and was just like, one of my clients, won't name the client, has just offered me this and this to go and start up on my own. And I feel awful because I want to start up on my own, but I don't want to do it with him. I want to do it with you. And I was like, well, I was going to speak to you about this, but you know, it feels like my hand's been forced a little bit. And that was, I suppose, the beginning. So that was, it was Hire Talent, which we then And a few more which sadly didn't pan out, but yeah.

And then, don't need to get into, 'cause I don't think it's fair, don't need to get into the particulars of exactly how each one is structured, but let me know if you'll find me saying this, but typically each brand, the way that you've done it is, is this unlimited company, and these people will have Class A shares, and they'll be shareholders of that company. Yeah.

And 50/50 splits.

Yeah, okay, cool, just because, that isn't always the case. Like, interviewed someone recently who was brought on, built a brand, but was an employee. Yeah, yeah, never owned. And then tried to buy it off them, was unsuccessful. And then after that, after 5 years, then actually launched his own business. So I think it's important to share that. Okay, that, that makes complete sense. Let's just go into this a bit then, in terms of that happened, I guess, organically. Maybe, but now you've, I'm assuming, got a bit more intentional about it.

Yeah.

What is it that we sort of think about that makes you go, I want to speak to that person about potentially the opportunity that we have for them? What's the makeup there? Are you waiting for them to succeed in a higher group environment for however long? I don't know, what are some of the things that you're like that person could be absolutely unbelievable and want to give them this opportunity and see if they align with that.

Yeah. So I think the first thing is I have a lot of dialogue with everybody in the business about their personal vision, their career goals, what they actually want to achieve. I'm very, very honest and very transparent about what the business can do to facilitate those goals and ambitions. Fortunate in the sense that there's a lot of living proof around me. So it's not, smoke and mirrors. It's, you know, they know the people that we've gone into business with, they can see the success and all of that stuff. Um, but how do you— some people, I think, they just, you know, for lack of a better word, they just blow up, you know. You just— performance. You can have somebody— Matt Ealey, uh, you know, again, hope he listens, but he runs a business called Elite Search, which is, uh, um, he was somebody that worked at Hire Group and now we're business partners. Um, In his second year, he was starting to do $100K, $150K, $200K months, you know, which is pretty outrageous for a 23, 24-year-old. And sometimes I think it just becomes obvious. And then I think in other cases, it's an ongoing dialogue between you and the person. And, you know, I've got a couple of these at the minute. But what we have found is that not everyone really wants to, you know, like I think the opportunities kind of pick themselves a little bit sometimes. You know, the person can be a little bit, typically the people that we backed have been a little bit disagreeable, to be honest. They're rule breakers, not rule followers. Ely is incredibly talented, but he's a huge pain in the ass. I hope he won't mind me saying that. Yeah, so you kind of— yeah. I wish I had a clearer answer. No, that's fair.

I'm not surprised to hear that. I think if we were being— not all the time, but if we were to sit down with a room full of recruitment leaders and say, looking at your team now, who do you think could go out? Who do you think might leave in the next 2 years, next year, to go out and start on their own? I think people would have a fairly good idea, potentially. Do you know what I mean? So I do, I understand that actually, yeah, it probably will end up staring you in the face. But at the same time, sometimes people say it, but then we have an ongoing dialogue of like, actually, is this right? Is that actually what you want? Is it what you think you want? And a variety things. Yeah, I'm gonna ask you a direct question.

Sure.

What do we say, and you can tell me how you frame this, what do we say to people that might think, well, Matt, I'm like, I'm gonna take the risk and do it on my own, why would I give you 50% of my company?

Cool, good luck.

But what's, what is it that I guess, no, no, employed them, but like, what is it? No, I get that, but like, what is it that you would say you're providing these people? I guess it might be a bit different for the people that are internal because they started on that journey. But like that is often what people say is like, okay, what is it that you're bringing to the table here? Because a lot of people have bad experiences. I get that.

I think there's a huge advantage to incubating a business in an already successful environment where you are surrounded by people who are successful people who've been there and done it before. You've got an operations team, you've got an L&D team. If you want to grow a business and grow a business quickly, it's debatable, but I think finding a strong investment partner is probably the way that you would go. So when I started Hire Group, there was 2 years of basically nothing. You know, I was, I mean, I almost lost the business twice for 2 different reasons. I was totally clueless. I just didn't know what the hell I was doing. And I I think the conversation we were having earlier just around how many business owners are in the red and they don't quite talk about it and all that sort of stuff. Running a business well is really hard. Like it is really hard. And we are very prudent with our finances. We build large cash reserves so that we can weather downturns because we've been through at least two over the last four years. Might be one coming this year, mate, I'm not sure, but different conversation. To your question, why would somebody go into business with us? For me, I would just say, well, that's for you to decide at the end of the day. This is what we can bring to the table, this is our track record, and if that's something that you want to get involved with and if it's a good fit, then great, but like I said, if it's not, then that's fine.

Yeah, fair. I do get that. I just think there's a lot of people have bad experiences.

Sure.

And I do think a lot of this also comes down to, it is quite personal in terms of when you think about your business, what is it that you want? Do you want to go on a growth journey? Do you not? I think that helps your, for me, is how I sit from my conversations. If you've got clarity on that, and that might change, that helps your decision around this sort of stuff. Because if you haven't got clarity on that, and then me and you end up part, I don't know, you probably helped me understand what I want. But I think sometimes people can make poor decisions around this because they haven't actually got a clear idea on the type of business that they want.

Yeah. Yeah.

But what about, so you've also got, because there's different brands, so you've got Elite, I don't know the names, but you've got a company that focuses in what, hedge funds? Yeah. M&A advisory to the rec industry, US manufacturing, and then automotive. So there's 3 that weren't incubated, or like weren't maybe employees of Higher Group and then spun out, okay. What if I spoke to them then, and I was like, why did you partner with Matt? What do you think they'd say? Like what were the main bits that—

You would obviously have to ask them. I think, look, I'll probably speak for Marcus Vulcan. That's the business that focuses on hedge funds and HFT firms. So I think we met Marcus when he was leaving Storm2. So he'd been on the kind of Levin bandwagon. And I think you've had some of those guys on. I know Shaun has. And he'd been caught up in some of the stuff that you just sort of referenced, where there's a lot of equity, but it's not real. And the business is, I don't want to speak badly of them, but probably not being managed as prudently as it perhaps could be. And I think what Marcus probably saw in us was somebody that was, or a group of people, it's not just me, you know, I think that's really important, a group of people that was willing to invest in him and in his vision, given the fact that he was only 23, 24. And do everything that we possibly could to help him grow his business in the way that he wanted to. And, you know, that business is a year and a half old. It's really starting to get going now. I think it will be a pretty dominant force in that space over the next 5 years. It's going to take a little bit of time. But I also think there's something to be said for the connection between the people. Same as when you go for a job interview. Do you really buy into the person at the other end of the table? If you do, then a business partnership, you've probably got to flesh it out a little bit more than just the one meeting. But so, yeah.

Fair. I know I put you on the spot there.

Yeah. You wanted me to say a lot of nice things about myself.

No, the final point on this, because I just think it's Interesting. I think it's a— like, people will be able to learn a lot from this because I think sometimes where people in these environments or can end up in these positions, the typical narrative that I hear is that, man, you won't have to worry about anything than billing and doing the job. We'll take care of the rest. Like you said, running a business is hard and you've learned the hard way around that. And you obviously have become more and more of a slick operator and you've got things in place. I just think there is something to be said also where you can be sold that, and that'll work for a lot of people. But I speak to a lot of founders who have to learn the hard way around not actually being illiterate around running the business. And I think sometimes, like, people can protect that. And I, I'm a big advocate of, like, if you're in an environment where they're selling you the carrot, they're selling you the dream, we're going to back you, we're going to support you, all this, then really lean into, like, asking how things work. How do we get paid on time? Like, all those things. I think sometimes that people can sort of protect that. So I just think that's something to be mindful of because I know it's very easy to be like, oh yeah, all I've got to worry about is billing, but then you don't also potentially then get exposed to the things that you should get exposed to when learning how to run a business.

100%. So just for us, just for clarity, but for all of the businesses that are of the kind of appropriate size, we sit down with the founders every quarter and we go through the management accounts and we put everything on the table. But to your point, like there are some things that, You know, when it comes to things like credit control or, you know, how to file a tax return or all of that sort of like, I don't know how to do that. Like, you know, I've got no idea. And I just see that as time-saving, but I can read management accounts and I can understand, you know, the levers and I suppose the push-pull mechanisms to drive profitability and these sorts of things, which I think an MD really needs to know, particularly in an environment like the one today. But do I think you need to be exposed to all of the intricacies of bloody contract law and all that sort of stuff? Like, you need to know a bit, but you don't need to geek out on that stuff. Some people might choose to, but yeah, maybe I say that, maybe I sound a bit naive, but.

No, yeah, fair. So let's move this on a bit. Let's get into the system side of things. Should we start with, 'Cause I know this is something that I feel like when we prepared for this, that you and your team have really, one, continued to geek out on, take really seriously. Why don't we start with, we spoke earlier about getting better at hiring and getting the most out of entry-level talent. Why don't we first talk about this sort of onboarding piece? How do you think about onboarding in terms of, have you got like, is it the first 90 days that are absolutely crucial? And what sort of metrics do you work to in terms of when we make the right hire and they do everything that we need them to do on the onboarding side, normally it should take X amount of time for them to reach X milestone. I don't know how you sort of measure. You said a good solid standard that we're aiming to get everyone up to is the £20,000 a month. So it'd be interesting just to hear like how you thought about that journey and how you've got better at making that more predictable, more consistent?

Yeah. I think the first thing to say on L&D is for us, we have a dedicated L&D person who focuses solely on one business. That's not for every business in the group because not all the businesses are big enough. But certainly for Hygge Group and Ace and Elite soon, we have a single L&D person who knows that company's processes inside and out. When it comes to onboarding, I think my onboarding probably, yeah, I can speak for a lot of people here, was, you know, it was very classroom-based and there were, you know, some role plays and all this sort of stuff, but you kind of learn from doing, you know, you do your, the bits in the boardroom, whatever, but really you just get out on the sales floor and just make as many calls as you possibly could and try and figure it out. We kind of take the opposite approach. So there's loads of classroom work, but our L&D person or people will sit directly with consultants or trainees in their first 90 days. And they will literally sit next to them and coach them through pretty much everything that they're doing, particularly in the first 30 to 60 days. You know, it's kind of invasive in some respects, because, you know, the person hasn't got tons of room to breathe. But we know that the quicker you get somebody in line with the core processes and executing those core processes, or what we call skills, to the highest standard, the better the outcomes for them and for us. So I suppose our L&D is extremely high touch. I think we spoke about this earlier, but L&D in some businesses is kind of seen as like, ah, failed recruiters, or, you know, they're not taken seriously. In our business, our L&D guys are really respected and they have a lot of, I suppose they have a lot of say, a lot of clout, but they're, you know, they're incredibly impactful in the work that they do. So I think there's another thing in there just about empowering the L&D people that you work with. I think in my role, I spend a lot of time with Paige and with Chas, who are, that's our L&D team, me, Paige, and Chas. And we're always trying to improve one aspect or multiple aspects of the processes that we follow. And to your point about geeking out, it's like, we're always surprised, right? So we always do like a 12 months in review thing. And we always look at, you know, where were we 12 months ago and compare then to to now. And the thing that's always shocking, and we say this, is just like how shit we were back then and today how much better we are. But that happens every year. So if it happens every year, it also means that next year, well, we're going to have the same reflection and we're going to think whatever we're doing right now is pretty shit too. And I'm using some coarse language there, but really, it's about having the humility to know that like you've just got to keep getting better. Like, you know, whatever you're doing today can very likely be improved considerably. And it's about having that, you know, growth mindset, you might call it, but just that appetite for continuous improvement. So I think that's a core part of L&D as well.

Let's just go into some particulars, if that's all right. I'm curious. Obviously, this is what I speak to a lot of companies about. What has been Like again, it might change, but right now, if I'm in the first 30 days with you guys, how have you typically approached, like who am I mainly targeting at speaking at? Am I speaking to candidates? Am I speaking to hiring managers? Am I speaking to lapsed clients? How do we think about that?

Yeah, depends on the business.

Okay, fair.

Some of the businesses have different setups. So Elite setup is you will be speaking to candidates and definitely probably, well, not speaking to clients in your first 90 days. Higher Group and Ace actually, they're 360 models, so we're not too shy about it. I think, you know, we always try to bring people into warm desks so managers can facilitate initial client introductions. More often than not, they'll give the client the heads up, you know, he or she's a newbie, so kind of, you know, either put them under a little bit, which we don't really do, or, you know, be nice. So I think we expose people to as much of the job as quickly as possible. I think you've got to break people in. You've got to teach things thoroughly before you kind of try and teach everything. If you try to go full 360 from day one, that's not going to work. So to give you some specifics, actually, candidate qualification is probably the first thing that we focus on. Just get that bit nailed and then lead generation. So candidate lead generation, which is really important in rec-to-rec. And then it's about introducing the business development process, which you probably do around week 3, week 4. And then probably by the end of the 8th week, 9th week, that's when, to use Chas's language, the message changes from L&D from, right, you know, you've got a bit of time, I'm here to support, to we expect results now. And just letting the trainee who's in the seat know that actually, you know, you've kind of, you've been introduced to the core skills, we're not expecting perfect, but we are expecting you to get out into the market and try really hard and and get some results. So yeah, I think that's probably a bit of a tipping point for us.

And what are the most important metrics that you and the guys would look at in that period? Because I'm sure there's some north star metrics you're looking at. I don't know. Like what sort of things are you really looking at?

Hire group, if they're doing candidate generation, are they booking in 3 calls a day? That's important. We'll look at conversions between candidate, candidate calls and candidates to market. So we want to see about 30, 40% thereabouts, depending on the sort of candidates that they're engaging with. But yeah, the two big ones for certainly a high group of candidates to market and interview. So they're the stats we're monitoring. And then I think at Ace, it's more of a job-led market. So we call it nibbles, but it's basically leads. So client responses, client calls. We'll obviously track things like like call time. But I think the golden stat in perm recruitment is interviews. If somebody's driving the interview number, then typically you're going to get deal flow out of the back end so long as everything's accurate.

And then in terms of, it might vary per brand, but like what does good look like in terms of what are you really aiming for in terms of Hishem joins the business and he should be here by this point? Are you trying to really get them to doing that first placement as quickly as possible? I don't know, what is it that you're sort of aiming for and how long have you found? Again, there's a lot of factors, but if we get everything right, we've got the hire right, they're doing the doing, they've listened, they're coachable, all of that, we've typically found that they should reach that point by when?

Yeah, we get this thing where people seem to fluke their first deal. Like, you know, they'll just bet they're doing practice calls, they'll bail somebody on CV Library and all of a sudden they've caught a live one and it's like, right, oh, okay, we can actually do a deal here. So that happens, you know, pretty regularly, not every single hire, but, you know, in terms of somebody self-generating the lead or the candidate and making the placement, we probably want to see that in the first 8 weeks, 9 weeks. Yeah, 8, 9 weeks, there or about. So we've got 2 newbies that started in January. I think both will be on the board this month. So yeah, as a rough lead time. It's probably similar at Ace. And then I think, It depends. I think the 6 to 12 month mark, certainly by the end of 12 months, you want to see people starting to hit that 20K mark consistently, not every single month, but pretty consistently you want to see them getting close to or above that number. And then, yes, between that 6 and 12 month mark, I'd say is where you really see if somebody's got potential to be a super high performer. I think you'll see for some people, they really, really click with the job and they kind of, they get obsessed and they go all in and they, you know, they come to you and they want to build out their own market and you get this kind of sense of passion. And then, you know, that's not always the case with some, you know, some people are quite happy just kind of plodding along a little bit.

Okay. And then we're talking about metrics. I'm just curious, because you've got a few different brands here. And again, I know it might vary. Obviously you're very, you're Basically entirely perm, almost 100%. What's like on Matt's dashboard? Like, what are the— you've mentioned interviews is like a really just important number that you're looking at. But if you— yeah, if I was to walk in your office and you're looking at like the comp, the brands performing, what is it that I'm going to see in your dashboard? Is it number of first stage interviews that's happening this month? Is there anything else? I know what are the sort of numbers that you really care about that you're always looking at?

Yeah, okay. So it depends on the brand because the different businesses have different stat prints that are relevant to their markets or are optimized for their markets. The high group stuff, as I said, is pretty simple. It's qual calls, candidates to market, interviews, second round interviews, placements. That's the flow of activity. A-sits, nibbles, client calls, jobs pulled, submissions, interviews, deals. So we kind of just have a, and then you've got call times and dials. And I suppose the way that we set our stat print up, and I'd imagine most people do this, but it's to show the flow of activities. It's to show that the consultants are moving their pipeline closer towards a deal. So they're the things that we look at. And to your point, we do actually have two people who do contracts. So it's probably 95%. If Dambi and Yanni listen. Okay.

And then just because You might have really maybe got a bit more of a science around this. I'm just curious as we're talking about this. I often hear founders really unsure and trying to figure out what are the important triggers or what are the things that should be in place for me to then be confident that I should be hiring. I don't know how you thought. I know that could be quite personal in terms of like what my risk level is. I might be happy with 3 months, like everything's covered for 3 months and I've also got 3 months salary covered. This might have evolved over time. You've probably had to get more scientific with this potentially as you've grown. But how have you, how do you think about that in terms of like, this is what I look at and go, we're in a good position to hire. I don't know how you think about that.

We're not so scientific around it. There's probably, there's a couple of occasions in the past. I think 2019, we hired Emily, Chris and Finn. And Chas, 2018, 2019. And that was a bit of a throw the kitchen sink moment. We probably had about 40, 50 grand in the bank and we made quite a few hires. And that was just backing ourselves to really get out of just me and Jennifer in our kitchen.

Because sometimes you've got to have those moments depending on where you are on the journey.

Yeah, yeah, damn right. And then I think in 2020 we did a similar thing. So as most businesses did, you know, no shame in it, but we got a very modest Sibyls loan. Because there was the whole COVID thing. And we then hired a lot of people back end of 2020 into the beginning of 2021. Probably went from about 7 people going into COVID to midway through 2021, probably about 15, 16 people. And the market was starting to come back then. But again, we effectively took a loan. We had a decent cash buffer, not massive. But again, there was a bit of a bet the company moment. Like, if this doesn't work off, It was a workout, you know, we're probably screwed. And now I think we're probably fortunate in the sense that we do have large cash reserves because that's always been something that we've been very intentional over. I think cash is kind of the equivalent of oxygen in a business. You know, if something bad happens, it is your oxygen mask. It's the thing that will kind of get you through whatever, you know, interruption or downturn or whatever issues in front of you. That's how you know that you can get your business through the next 6 months, 12 months, you know, whatever it is. So I would probably look more at something like future business. So you look at your invoicing over the last couple of months, but also look at your invoicing for the next 3, 6 months, you know, what, and then look at your, your sales pipeline. Because I think times where it's got dicey for us is where we've hired a lot of people, where actually our future business, i.e., our invoicing for the next 3 months has probably been not where it needs to be. And so you're putting in a load of cost into your business just while your cash flow is tightening up, right? And then the sensation is you look at your, you know, your bank account every day and you're like, oh shit.

Okay, that— I appreciate you being honest there. So anything maybe just to add on that in terms of what you like, the things that you would see on someone's market or desk? I don't know if it'd be that granular, but like, what would be some of the things that you'd be— you'd see in one of these brands or, yeah, in a desk where you'd be like, I think they're in a really good position to potentially bring someone on? Is it just back to the pipeline stuff and like, do you know what I mean? What are sort of the things that you'd see there?

Yeah, yeah. I think there's— the question there is really when is somebody ready to manage?

Okay.

Or when is somebody ready to add, you know, a head to their team? And I think certainly when you're dealing with new managers, you always need to expect some disruption. So when you bring somebody onto their team, even if that person's doing 50K a month or whatever, or they're absolutely belting it, when you add somebody next to them, they go from having just a very clear focus on just themselves, which is just their revenue target, and they come in and they belt it every day, to being a manager. And then that starts to play on the psyche as well. So there's definitely an ego thing there, but there's also just like a time and emotional investment thing. You start investing more in the person that you've hired versus in what you used to do, which is in just invest in your own pipeline and your own performance. So readiness to hire, I think, comes down to a couple of things. I think it's the performance on the desk, but it's also the person who you are adding somebody to, if you will. So our experienced managers can kind of take people pretty routinely without any disruption to their own personal performance, whereas a junior manager Typically, you've got to be more careful and you've got to kind of provide a lot more, a lot more support.

Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I just think I've interviewed a lot of people where I think one of the common things where people, I'm sure there's challenges, but where people have done it well is that they've tried to grow a team when they're actually really confident that market and that person has really established it. It's like healthy and it's strong. I think a lot of people can do that early. It might be, you might have 3 good months, it's like, right, let's get another person in there. And actually how established is their market, how good quality are their relationships, how repeatable is the business that they've got. I think that's where sometimes you can set people up to fail.

100%. Yeah, 100%. And so always add to your most buoyant markets, right? Principally just add to your most buoyant markets because the easiest way to make more money is to add something, add another good person to something that already works. Where you've got a system that works really well and you've got a leader that understands the market and all that stuff. But then sometimes if you're going to break new ground, the best way to do it is, as we've talked about, with an insider. So somebody that's proven that they can perform in your business, that's going to take on a new challenge. That new challenge could be myriad things, but they want to take something on. And you can, you know, get that person set up. But really, you know, just one person in a market can be a little bit lonely. And sometimes you've got to be a little bit bold and say, okay, we're going to move people internally or we're going to hire externally and get somebody alongside this person. Even if it is a little bit early in the journey, because we're going to back the build because we want to take that market for whatever strategic reason or whatever it might be. So I think hiring, there's a couple of different dimensions to, I think, when you should and shouldn't hire is probably the truth of it.

I want to geek out a bit more on systems. I know we spoke about onboarding. Yeah. How, if I was to, because I feel like, let me know what you think about this. I don't know. Have you met Alex Elliott?

I've not, but I'd like to.

Okay, nice. Yeah, so yeah, I think he's done a really great job of just cutting through the BS really online. I think he shares really good content. I know you don't really use LinkedIn, but if you were to log in, I'd be confident you go, you know what, Alex actually shares some good stuff.

Well, I did log in. I did.

Okay, yeah. So he has his I think he, I don't know how you feel about this, but the recruitment entrepreneurs that I've met who have scaled a recruitment business, they might end up becoming an advisor. Well, some, I'd say quite consistently will say, not, they wouldn't always say like it's easy, but they would say getting to a 15-person recruitment business, yeah, like respect, but I think most people can do that. Alex sort of phrased it in terms of like at that sort of level, and as you know, a lot of UK, a lot of recruitment firms in the UK are around that, right, in terms of that size. Would say that to get to that point, it's very people orientated. Like if you've got good people, they figure it out, you can wing it to that point, and you could end up with a pretty profitable business earning good money. But where a lot of people would struggle to get to this journey that you're on now is the business then needs to be completely, uh, system orientated. And I think that from my conversation with a lot of recruitment leaders, I think that's where this— it comes back to my point earlier where you have a lot of great recruiters who start a recruitment business and their experience has been oftentimes great recruiters, not great operators. So you have to sort of really commit to this learning journey on like, how do we create a repeatable sales system? How do we create a repeatable pipeline generation system? Whatever, insert system. But how can we make things more predictable? And how can we be more confident in our projections versus let's just do more deals, let's just make more dials? Do you know what I mean? And you've probably really gone on, on this journey. So that's why I think it's important to talk about it, because I think if you haven't really thought about these, put real intention into them and try to figure it out. One, you're going to maybe find yourself getting to 20 heads and you're very people-oriented and you haven't got good systems. You haven't got an onboarding process, insert whatever system. You might find yourself going, shit, this is absolute chaos. And then you're back at 12 people or whatever. There might be a multitude of reasons, but I think this could be the core reason. And then you might end up finding yourself saying, oh, like, I just need my people to get on the phone more. I need people to do more this and more this. And there isn't a real clear approach or system really that gives you confidence that if we keep doing this, this should be the result. So I don't know where you want to start with this, but like if I was to look inside your business, I know you said to me when we prepared for this, like you've really geeked out on this stuff and you're always trying to get better. As you said, like look at the last 12 months. Wow, we used to have these ratios. Now they're this, whatever. Like maybe we can start on like the sales side because that's always often where I feel like we see the biggest skill gaps. There's the least amount of confidence in people's teams. You hear things like, I just need my people to pick up the phone more. Like, how do you think about systems in this and how important has it been having these things in place for you to get to where you are now and still on that journey on breaking through that 30, 40, 50 person headcount mark?

Yeah, yeah. I think there's a couple of ingredients, mate. I think the first is you've got to have a defined market strategy. And what I mean by that is, I'll talk about how I grew. If you play in the rec-to-rec space, if you hire a load of people and you let them, or your plan is for them to do rec-to-rec everywhere, irrespective of what market or discipline or what location, it's just not going to work. You're going to get chaos. And so I think all businesses have to, in order to scale, have some form of, you might call it a niche market strategy, but then every consultant, and this does seem pretty obvious, but every consultant needs a clearly defined market that they go after and they're responsible for developing. You need to figure out what the dynamics are in that market. So broadly, is it job-led or is it candidate-led? And really need to figure out what the bottleneck is. So if it's candidates, then really your main challenge is going to be candidate lead generation and candidate conversion. If it's jobs, it's going to be job lead generation and conversion from calls to jobs. So I think there's one thing, just like I said, being—

You have to have that as a starting point.

As a starting point, unless you've broken your business down into markets that you can have a responsible consultant, or you can make a consultant responsible for, I think you're going to struggle. I think that's kind of like 101. And then I think the next thing is breaking the business or breaking the activity, right? So I'll tell you a very quick story. So end of 2022, '23, '23, we were having a terrible quarter, really bad quarter. I'd just come back from pat leave. I was walking around the sales floor. And I was looking at people and I was thinking, what are you doing? What are you doing? You're scrolling LinkedIn Recruiter a lot. You're not picking up the phone very much. You haven't done a deal in 2 months. What are you doing? And then it really hit me that recruitment as a conceptually is time in, money out, as in you pay somebody a wage for 10 hours, 11 hours, 8 hours, whatever of time in a given day. And so the the job is, what do they do with that time? As a recruitment business, you've, you've got to be really clear on how they can optimize and maximize the time that they invest in, in the role. And I think a lot of that comes down to making it really, really clear what the core processes are. So when I say a core process, really going down a nerdy route here, but when I say a core process, what, what I mean is business development is a process and Typically that's two processes. It's generate the lead, convert the lead. And there's other things that are involved in that, like market mapping, which is kind of a, you know, sits before lead generation per se. But you've got to break down. So, you know, if somebody's saying we've got a BD problem, that's far too big. You don't know if you've got a BD problem. You might have a market mapping problem. You might have a strategy problem. You might have an outreach problem. You might be contacting the wrong people. You might be hitting them with the wrong content. When your consultant gets on the phone, they might be saying the wrong thing. When they get a lead, they might be handling that lead really, really, really badly. And so there's all of these micro— recruitment is just like an accumulation of little micro activities that if done well, you get the end result. And even if you just do one or two of the things really badly along the way, you won't get the result that you want. And so for us, it was about really geeking out on like, you know, what do people actually do? Like, you know, in a really granular, like, I suppose, tactical sense, like what are people doing with their time? And so we broke our business down into two core processes. Because I think if you got 10 processes, it's too much. People aren't really going to be able to comprehend that stuff. So two core processes that we've broken down into skills, and then we systematically teach the skills to our consultants. And what I mean by that is we teach it to the junior consultants, but also the senior consultants. And we're always, I suppose, revising and updating what we consider to be the core skills. So something that we've realized over the last couple of months is our best recruiters aren't necessarily superior salespeople. They usually are, but not necessarily. They're more often than not the best decision makers. They know which opportunities to focus on and why. So they're able to go, that job or that candidate is a really high likelihood of a placement opportunity. And they've got a criteria, you know, A jobs, B jobs, C jobs. Again, that's a little bit woolly. Like, you know, you've really got to break that down. Like, what does that actually mean? And then teach your, particularly your junior consultants, this is how you evaluate an opportunity. This is how you choose where or where not to invest your time. And this whole kind of geeky journey that we're on, which is, you know, it's obsessive. It's kind of obsessive compulsive. Like Chaz and I would go to the gym. We train, every morning and, you know, there's a quick hello and then all of a sudden we're talking about processes or, you know, we're talking about call times or we're talking about in-mails. And yeah, you know, it's probably not for everyone, you know, like that level of—

But how important do you think it's been to have that approach in you growing, having more headcount, having more people?

It is the single reason I have so much faith in the business.

Okay.

So put it this way. Everybody can say, you know, big things like we want to be the most valuable recruitment company in the world. Anybody can say that shit. But it's like, okay, how are you going to get there? And I say, okay, yeah, we've got to build a, you know, a perm, high average order value, candidate short recruitment organisation that focuses on these markets. Cool. But the roadmap for getting there is actually just about loads and loads and loads of incremental improvements. Like you've got to get some big things right. But the journey, the actual doing of it, is not really about strategy. Like, yes, you need good strategy, but it's really about all of the day-to-day shit you and the people in the organization are doing or not doing. As I talk about it, I'm actually getting tired. I feel like I'm getting excited, but I'm getting— yeah, I feel like I'm giving myself a training session.

But then in terms of— and then just so we're clear, so what are the two processes that you boiled it down to? Sorry.

Candidate generation, candidate to market.

So then like you said, underneath that, is like all these micro things like market mapping, like lead generation.

Yeah, skill, skill, skill, skill, skill, skill.

Yeah, I love that. And then in terms of like, how have you got better? I'm sure it's again continuous journey of making it really obvious and easy for people to follow what the current process is for that. What's the best practice? Have you got like an internal intranet that all of these things are documented? Is it more actually consistent reminders because you're really big on the L&D side? Yeah, because that's another thing as well in terms 'Cause as you get, have more people, you're then more prone to people just doing things their own way and, do you know what I mean? So how have you got better at that?

Yeah. Well, if somebody's doing something in a way that's better than the way that we're doing it, we'll adapt, right? So we model backwards off our top performers. So it's not like we've cast the way and everyone must follow it. It's organic and evolving. I suppose method and process that we update when we learn. To your point about how do you get everyone to follow it, I think—

Well, at least just make it more visible. Like how, so your current best market mapping process.

Yeah.

How do I know how to do that? Like, do you know what I mean? And how can I be reminded on a daily basis? Or how do I access that? Because I think, I don't know, have you documented loads of stuff? I don't know.

Oh, the documentation is crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, There are, so I, when I was trying to figure out how we get, where does performance come from? I call it a pyramid and I actually call it Sullivan's Pyramid, which is really obnoxious. And Chas made a PowerPoint, 'cause I wrote like a, probably like a 2,500-word email, which Chas was like, no one's gonna read this, mate. And I put it into a PowerPoint. And the first page is me atop of a camel next to a pyramid. And, you know, this is the introduction to Sullivan's Pyramid and you go through it and there's all these different kind of concepts or whatever. That document is now in the bin.

Okay.

Yeah, it's dreadful. We've revised it 5 times since. So, but the, so documentation, yes. So we document the processes. We also document how we teach the processes. We kind of try to document everything, but I would say documentation is difficult. Because when you're on the front lines of something, you've got to pull yourself out of that stuff and actually, you know, find the time to sit down with a PowerPoint and, you know, spend 2.5 hours writing the thing, which is, yeah, it's tough.

But you've still, regardless of it being perfect or not, like you've built an asset, like there's somewhere that I can go that— because I think a lot of people— this is the thing, I think a lot of those things that you've just spoken about can remain in your head.

Yeah.

And you're just always then relying on just communicating it to people or people seeing it in action. And then again, I think that's being in a people-oriented environment versus a system-oriented environment.

If I'm entirely honest with you, mate, we're on that journey. And what I mean by that is we are somewhere between a people-oriented environment and a systems-oriented environment. I actually did a podcast like 3, 4 years ago. And at the end of it, I remember saying recruitment is a people system. I can't remember the point that I'd made. I think we'd had a couple of beers, but the— The evolution in thinking from that point has really been no recruitment about building systems and people, not people exist within the systems, but people are enhanced by the systems. You know, you can hire wonderful people, but unless you've got really clear things to teach them that they can understand and then implement, you're not necessarily going to get the best results. So to your point, where are we on this journey? I'd say we're in the middle. And really, do we need like an intranet or something like that? Could we use Hector or, you know?

No, it's just helpful for people to think about. So like just to round this out then in this bit, because I think it'd be helpful for people. If I'm listening right now and I'm in the trenches of, I might have some things documented. I'm in the trenches of, I've got ambitions to grow my business, whatever that means. Part of that might mean that I do want to grow more headcount. I do want to grow my business. But I'm also thinking about getting them, making sure I get the most out of my existing team along the way. And that remains in a good place. I might be around 15 people, something like that. And if we're being honest, I haven't got a lot of these things documented or clarity around the things that you've mentioned across my team. So for example, If I was to speak to 5 of my team, they might say how they do business development, how they get leads, how they're going to hit their target this month, this quarter, might sound very different to the next person. Or actually, when they tell me how confident am I going to do it, I'm not sure. Where, like, there's a lot obviously, but like, where do you feel like would be the— again, back to prioritising the right things— where do you think would be a really good place for me as a business owner to start? Is it take a step back and let's be really honest with ourselves and think about Well, have we even got a strategy? Have we even got a clear strategy that everyone's on board with around our markets? Are these things like, where do you think is the best place to start? Downstream from that, we can maybe end up in a position where we're like, this is how we maximise leads, this is how we do that. Where's the place that I should start?

Yeah, I think where you started is the best place. I think you've got to look, are we in an attractive market where there's good long-term fundamentals, where the dynamics in the industry are favourable to recruitment? So I find truly job-short markets, pretty difficult to get my head around. BD is a challenge in all recruitment businesses to a point, probably not so much in rec-to-rec if we're entirely honest. But I think ultimately you need to be playing in a market that is lucrative. I think the fee sizes need to be of a certain level. That's for people to kind of make their own decisions around. But, you know, without getting into it, I think if you look at Hayes, Robert Walters, Page, you know, profit dips of like 90% last year for Hayes, 50% for Michael Page. It's like, that's dangerous. Like, you know, there's reasons for that. But ultimately, if your business is predominantly, you know, 4K or 5K fees, accountants, you know, junior accounts, all that sort of stuff. I don't know if that business works now. I think it worked 5 years ago, 6 years ago. But I think that's kind of, those days might, I don't want to say that they're over, but I think it's difficult to run a large organization in a low-fee market. So to your point, get in a good market. Like, get in a good market that you can plant your flag in and say, you know, we're going to be the number one in this market. We're going to dominate it. We're going to kind of, we're going to build a brand around it. And, you know, we believe it and we want to be a part of this sector or this industry. So I think market selection is the first. I think the second thing is, you know, if you're the founder, presumably you're a good recruiter. But, you know, if you've got 15 people in your business, I'm sure there are other people in your business who are are better at certain things than you are. So I was very good, I suppose, at the client side, what you call candidate to market, but pretty poor at candidate generation. So all of our candidate generation stuff is modeled off of a couple of the guys who are superb at that. So the principle is to map out your processes, look for the people in your organization who are the best at the individual kind of aspects, if you will. You know, there's only going to be a couple of things that people need to do, i.e., win candidates, book interviews, make placements, whatever that may be. But try and break the recruitment cycle down to constituent parts, processes, and then probably embark on the, you know, how do we make the sales calls perfect? But yeah, I'd go get in the right market first of all, then start to outline your core processes, model backwards off your top performers. And then you can get super nerdy with the, you know, how do we write this email? Can we kind of optimize our response rates, you know, here or here? So I think you would get big things right first and then kind of tinkering afterwards, I would say.

And then what, to round this out then, like what are you going in, obviously I know we're sort of in Q1 here of this year, but what's like top of mind for you now? There's probably a lot of things that you could be doing that you feel like is going to continue to take the group, the businesses in the right direction, but what would we say you're really doubling down on really focusing on that you feel like will result in more progress, going in the right direction, more success, whatever that means to you? Like, what are you really doubling down on that you think is going to get you closer to your goals?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's the continuation of what we call the flywheel, which is more great people, um, looking for, for, for better market opportunities where we can find them, um, creating more exciting, lucrative, attractive opportunities for the people internally. So great opportunities for great people. And then continuing to build systems. So, you know, I suppose when you kind of settle on a concept, you kind of view your business through, right, okay, these are the things that we have to get right. And so, yeah, that's kind of the focus. But Probably what I'd say to that, mate, is there are lots of people who've now been with the business for sort of 4, 5, 6 years. We've been going 8 years as of, I think, earlier this month. But we've got people who now have tenure. And the really, really, really fun thing is the journey. That is the fun thing. And seeing the success that people are having and seeing the lives that they're leading. And, you know, just the relationships that we've got, meaningful work, meaningful relationships, you know, that's really the kind of, you know, we turn up to work every day and we're just a bunch of, you know, really, really great mates that just have a hell of a time together. And so it's continuing that as well, you know, not getting too kind of bogged down in the, we've got to be 100 people this time next year, we've got to hit 4 million EBITDA, whatever. You know, that stuff is a little bit sterile. It's, you know, do I actually, when I pitch up to work every day, I'm excited to kind of solve the problems that I've got to solve today. Are we all getting after it? I think there's—

Yeah, so I think that's such a better thing to optimise for, I think, for tenure as an entrepreneur. Do you know what I mean? Which is a big part of the game, like staying in the game. Like you said earlier that there's maybe two rocky moments that could have ended up taken things in a very different path, but you've remained in the game, you've stayed in the game, and then look now where the business is. And I'm sure you're always gonna feel like we're just getting started, we've got so much opportunity. But that's what I really respect about this journey and what I've learned is that, and I said to you, didn't I, before I started, I just think it's, I love interviewing people like you and uncovering stories like that you've been on, because it gives me inspiration around, okay, my business is here today, but if I have a clear vision, some clear goals around where I want it to be, I can completely transform it to where I want it to be. And just because where you are today and you might not be happy with how things are, like, you can absolutely turn it around. And I think that's always— it's hard, but I think that's, I guess, what we're all— obviously as entrepreneurs, we're optimistic, aren't we? Even more so in recruitment.

Yeah.

But I think that this is like— I just like— I love this sort of transformation that you've been on. And love sort of such a core of it being backing young, driven people. And also, again, I guess I'm sure a lot of growing up as an entrepreneur, owning what you are, the systems that we've spoken about, and I'm sure there's just going to be plenty more and more learnings along the way and a lot of wins along the way. But I think a lot of people can kind of learn a lot from this. So just a massive thank you for joining me on the pod.

Mate, thanks for having me.