Action During a Downturn with John Wilson

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Good morning, good afternoon or good evening wherever you are in the world today. It's Wednesday, 20th of May. I'm Johnny Campbell, CEO and co founder of Social Talent and welcome to this week's the Shortlist. Don't forget, if you're watching this live, we would love to hear your comments. Please join in the chat on LinkedIn or YouTube. We're going to take your comments, your questions throughout the show and hopefully have our guests guests interact and respond to those. I'm sure you've tons of things to ask our guests will introduce in just a second. Before I do that, just in case you need to drop off or you want to try and recap on this, all of our shortlist episodes are available on the on the social talent site socialtown.com forward/the shortlist where you can see a list of the speakers and previous episodes as well. And also you can put in your suggestions for future guests as well. So I'm going to basically get stuck in and introduce our guest today, our first guest, our only guest, because we don't need a second guest when we have John Wilson in the house. John is the CEO and founder of Wilson hcg. I'm going to let John explain who Wilson HCG is if you don't know them already. But if you don't and you're working in recruiting, you will soon. I'm pretty sure of that. And John's been a good friend over the last years, a good partner and one of the smartest guys I know. And it's a rare opportunity to get John on a broadcast like this. So I really hope we're going to have some great questions. John, tell us about yourself. Tell the audience about Wilton Hay CG and your roots as a business.

Sure, Johnny. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to, excited to participate. We are a global outsourcing talent outsourcing firm. Really cut our teeth in RPO in the beginning days going through the recession of 2001 isH2 and kind of grew up and saw 2008 and what that did to the economy and how companies came out of that. And so as we have grown globally and start seeing these micro recessions all over the globe or different factors that are influencing how companies interact and make decisions. And so that's, that's what really excites me is not the recession part, but really assisting companies on their strategy and how they're making decisions in different and ever changing markets as it relates to talent.

And I think what most people may not appreciate, although your Headquarters in Tampa, Florida. You have a truly global footprint. I think probably more employees outside North America and more business outside North America these days than, than even in North America. And I was, I was pleasantly surprised this morning. I was doing a webinar here in Ireland for the National Recruitment Federation. I saw one of your employees from Galway pop up because I know you guys have always had a very strong virtual workforce which probably has really helped you through, through this last storm.

Yeah, I think especially a people business that really every company's in at some level. Culture is so important and having that virtual nature before this pandemic has really helped us be able to navigate it without interruption. There's been certain markets that have been tougher for us than others to move everyone virtual. But for the most part, people want to work, want to do well and are going to adapt to the situations around them. And so we found that across the globe.

John, I'm going to get into our new segment, which is our first segment of the day. We've picked three articles that we'd love to hear your opinion on. I hope you've done your homework and had a chance to read through them. I'm going to ask Niall in the back room to bring up our first article for the news. We're going to tire that jingle. So, John, I don't know if you saw this one. This is in the Guardian in the UK in the last few days and the area they've zoned in on is early career or graduate hiring. And the data that they present in this article suggests that. Or the argument they're trying to make is that young people, those coming out of school, coming out of college, may be the hardest hit by the recession that's going to follow this pandemic. What are your thoughts on this article? What are you hearing? What are you seeing with customers in the market around graduate intern, early career type hiring and. And it's possible the possible outcome of those activities over the next year.

Yeah, I think there's two things that we forget or the media doesn't remember when they write stories. The globe stopped and so that happened. The second thing is companies don't hire just to hire. They hire because they have a need. And so when I see articles that are saying, well, graduate hire and early careers is going to slow to a crawl, I don't see that to be how it really will play out. I think right now it is at a crawl or a dead stop, but so is most hiring right now, regardless of role and seniority. So, yeah, I believe that companies will see a shift in how they hire. And right now we're at a spot where companies are built for a 3 to 4% increase in headcount overall, just as how they hire. And this is obviously macro data, but now with all the people who are without jobs, including the people who are coming out of, of the university, now it's going to put a challenge on organizations to hire as fast as they can because the gap is too big. But overall it will come back and it might be regional, but I don't think there's going to be one segment that's left out, specifically early careers or new grads.

Yeah, I think it's a really good point. You know, early career hiring is typically cyclical. It comes in certain periods of the year. And I know the article mentioned a few companies who have apparently announced changes or cancellations in their early career hiring for this year. But I haven't spoke to a talent leader in a larger enterprise yet in the last eight, nine weeks who told me that they have cancelled their graduate hiring or apprenticeship positions. They've honored all of those. They're just dealing with how do you do it virtually? Right. That's probably the biggest challenge which, which is fine. Like I think somebody coming out of a university or in their early career would, would be up for that experience. One thing that has struck me is I hadn't thought about this until yesterday when somebody brought it up on a call. It was a talent leader who's sharing that. You know, she went back, she went, she took her. She took maternity leave during the last recession as it just started. And she came back to work at the end of maternity leave expecting, as it happened before when she came back from, from periods out of work that, you know, everyone would change, the team will be different, there'd be loads of new people, people will be gone. And she said nobody was gone, it was all the same. That may be something that might drive that pattern, which is that attrition is way down, probably in every company, as in unforced attrition, because people are scared. So that might maybe play into what you think. So again, back to the point, it's not just early career hiring, it's every hiring. But there's less people vacating the roles. The natural attrition that companies plan for probably won't be there this year.

Agreed. And I think if you look at the process of hiring from executive all the way to early careers, especially in the university setting, the one that has probably been the most impacted is early careers in University hiring, career fairs did not happen. They can't right now. There can't be university visits. All the face to face or mass viewing of people and evaluating through that process that's been done for years can't happen right now. So it's just an adjustment and I think the companies that get ahead of it and find ways to do that are going to get a higher quality candidate than the ones that are waiting. Again, I mean back to, back to your point is that there is a gap and they going to have to hire. It's just a matter of how and when.

I'm going to move on to our next story, John, and I want to bring up our next article there. So this is down to, you know, how the crisis affects other segments of the workforce. And this is a Harvard Business Review article on why the crisis is putting companies at risk of losing female talent. I'm not going to comment on this one because I thought there's a rather controversial argument. There's the article. There's several layers to this article. It's worth reading for anyone who hasn't seen it. Did you get a chance to read this and what was your thoughts on this article?

Yeah, I did. And I think this is maybe more geared towards what priorities are of people not gender specific. Is that if you have children that are at home and they need to have care or young children, they will be a priority over a job at times. There isn't school, there isn't camps for people to go to. And I think if anything this may be this awakening for males to see how much work goes into raising children and having a household as well as is working. So we're a company of 70% plus women and we built our company in a lot of ways on the strength and intellect of women. And so I think companies that aren't understanding that there are different priorities outside of just work for their, for their employees and their spouses and their families are making a big mistake. And I think if our biggest risk to a long, long recession is if we really did start losing females in the workplace, because that would be, that would be disastrous.

Yeah, I think it's, you know, the article starts with a piece of, a piece of scientific research that says suggest that there might be more opportunities for women in the workplace. And then they go on to take the opposite point of view without presenting actually any scientific evidence, just opinion. And I read it and what struck me was they were describing lockdown, not post lockdown. I think this is unique to your point. The world stopped this isn't normal working from home. You don't have children in the month of May, at home all day long, Monday to Friday. This is a really unusual time. When we get back to normality. Not normality, but when we get back to systems working again, like schooling, etc. They're going to be gone, out of the home. You know, you're going to have other resources in Ireland as of Monday. You can go further, you can meet other people. That takes other people out of the home. It could be, you know, you could be minding parents in your home or whatever, but all of those things will loosen up or else other options will appear. I think the article didn't consider that, that what we've had for the last 10 weeks isn't what we're going to have the next year. It's going to be different for the next year, but I ain't going to look identical to the way it does today. It's naive to think that you're. You're going to have kids running in on zoom calls for the next 10 years. Like, no, they'll be at school. That's what's going to happen. Maybe the summer months, but they'll be at school. That's how the normal world will work. When, when we. A lot of markets are coming out of that. You'd mentioned to me already, John, that obviously you guys have teams everywhere, but there are markets that you serve and you have staff in that have already come out of that serious lockdown, are back to work. So maybe what's happening in those markets, what is the reality of perhaps what's going to be my reality in two months, potentially, when you look at kind of maybe the market I'm in being two months behind some of the Asian markets that were hit earlier.

Yeah, it's a great point. And we've seen Hong Kong and then our two locations in China go back to almost a place of normalcy. Being on conference calls and zooms with people in the region who have gone back, I think there is definitely a morale boost. And I think anyone who's leading people right now has looked at what the potential mental health impacts are of this for their staff. And the biggest feeling that I got from being on call, especially over the last week and a half, two weeks since things have been open in Hong Kong specifically, there's definitely a uplifting feel of, we got through this, we did this, and we're stronger for it. So I think everybody's really excited to get back. It's just a matter of when and how and the responsibility that we all have to each other to make sure that it's safe.

Let me take our final article in the news this week, Niall, if you wouldn't mind sharing it here. I think it's a good direction to go. So this article that was in Forbes talks about how the private sector stepping up amid the pandemic and talks about that, you know, what are big organizations doing? What is government doing here? And this, I read this and you know, whilst it summarized some of the things that we've had on the show before, we're talking about how good, how organizations are doing good things or some organizations are doing really good things. It kind of speaks to the need for government to be flexible and to adjust as well, you know. Did this article bring to mind to you any stories that you've heard or any examples you can share with us of either governments or organizations that are stepping up in your opinion, in the pandemic?

Yeah, I think the something that's came out of this that is going to be a long term positive is that everyone wanted to help and that may be from an individual standpoint that starts going up and building inside of a company. And I know for us it was how do we, at the time healthcare hospital systems were overwhelmed, how do we offer them free support, how do we make sure that they're getting the nurses and the people in there? We've seen in the UK where so many people volunteered for the NHS to support in all these different ways. And I think with this, this is, this has become a. Where it has risen from individuals inside companies making the culture be one of giving. Right now, I think everybody, everybody's going through this. This is unlike any other recession or any other period that we've, we've experienced in our lifetimes where every single person on this planet has experienced something as it relates to coronavirus. So we've seen that and then is our relationships with our clients, where we're involved with the C suite and having conversations relates to talent all the time. It varies so much from what one organization is doing versus another and then how that relates to sectors. So it really runs the gamut. But I think there is a overall feeling of how do I help, whether that internally in the organization or externally.

The, the attitude of an organization and the decision makers and leaders in those organizations is really important. And in our industry, John, I like focusing on the recruiting industry and particularly the outsourced recruiting industry, rpo, msp, the different kind of flavors that exist there. Organizations have reacted very Differently, without naming, we know lots of companies who just who've done very different have taken different approaches to this crisis.

Right.

Which I guess is predicated on their belief as to what's going to happen next. You've seen organizations that have cut back cull staff, laid off hundreds of workers, in some cases recruiters furloughed hundreds with no real intention of returning them. You know, who really just retreated if you like, which is understandable with the massive change in employment figures etc. Right. But as markets are about to reopen, you know, you mentioned Asia reopening. There's lots of other markets. Europe is beginning to open up as of mid May and into June as well. You know, there's got to be opportunity. And you know when you go from 28 unemployment that Ireland's in it in today, right. We were at 4% I think before this. 28. We ain't staying at 28% for the rest of the year, no way. And I think we'll go down from 28% to low teens in about a month. You know, I just. It strikes me that surely there's a need for hiring. Hiring has to happen there. Like what, what is your philosophy, your opinion on what leaders like yourself should be thinking of or maybe just not, not to say what they should do. But what are you thinking as a leader in the recruiting industry as to the decisions you got to make around your own team and your resources and the unknown future? What kind of things have gone through your head? What's been your approach?

Everything has gone through my head. To be really honest. This was the hardest part about I think leading in crisis is not to react too quickly, is to make sure that you're making the right decisions because those decisions affect many people and those decisions have long lasting outcomes. So number one, I think companies are going to be judged quite a bit when this is all said and done on how they acted, how they treated people and to what level they cut or invested. And so we have looked at this is an opportunity and I think many companies have, you know, we have, I don't know, 50 to 100 people who aren't revenue generating now that we're generating revenue three months ago. And we have all these projects that we as an organization and many companies do that are need to get done and have to get done and then they take time and it's, it takes, it doesn't happen. We have this opportunity right now to shape our organization and companies do to get better. And so the investment we're making right now is Taking the people who aren't generating revenue right now, have them build what our company is going to look like in the next wave. So I think when we all look back at this, we will see this as a, an opportunity and a time that companies invested in their organizations got better and many are going to be much stronger when this, this turns.

I have a great question here from a friend of mine, Milan Novak, who's the CEO of Good Call. Now we know the guys in Good Call in Czechia, but Milan is in Prague and he's asking you, John, what do you think is the next big thing for the RPO industry and how should RPO evolve?

That's a fantastic question. I think overall talent is, it's going to be looked at as talent, not rpo, not contingent, not executive search. It's really a focus on looking at the global workforce and then bring it down to your company. And how do you get better? I think it's especially over the last three or four years, I think we've been in an extremely unhealthy employment market. The other way around, you had people who were going somewhere, leaving six months later. We talked a lot about ghosting. Remember when that was the topic, people not showing up. So I think the need to innovate, which I think has been not just RPO but overall talent providers, has been lacking for the last five to 10 years. This is a point of innovation. And how are we going to handle as a global economy, as talent providers, how are we going to handle these millions and millions and millions of people who are going to come back to work if we're going to hit a point of hyper competitiveness once this people start going back. So I think what we saw with that ghosting and how quick people were leaving jobs, you're going to see the challenge now. How do I hire so fast, faster than I've ever hired? Because these needs that these 50 million people plus that we're doing around the world were not jobs that their companies didn't need or they wouldn't have been there in the first place. So now when things open back up, it's going to be a period of where everybody's going to have to innovate to get to a point where the organizations are at a good spot.

From a hiring perspective, I've seen several providers in the RPO or outsourced space come up with new products in the last month that seem to loosely all kind of solve the project hiring demand that's expected in the market out there. What are your thoughts on the industry's readiness for project hiring before this and it's, you know, how attractive was project based hiring and where does that fit in now do you think for the next year?

Yeah, I think that industry wise project hiring has its challenges because you want to be able to set the proper expectations for an organization on what they're going to achieve. We've always loved project hiring because it's our opportunity to build the relationship and move that relationship forward. However, in this environment, I think we might see companies come in at a very, very low price point trying to win business but not understanding that they actually have to perform. This is going to be a critical time to shape organizations for the next five to 10 years. How they handle hiring over the next three to nine months.

I've got another question here from Apoorv Kalia who's asking do you feel the attrition rate will soar up post rebrand? Will people start leaving their jobs? I guess considering right now candidates will grab whatever they can crack and I guess the question there being you'll take anything right now but then once their stability returns you'll immediately jump to something else.

I would like to think that it won't purely because the people who have remained employed during this time, you understand that there's a level of two way street loyalty where those people stayed when they probably could have left because everybody had options up until this and that companies retained those people because they believed in them and what it's going to look like going forward. So to directly answer the question, I think not so much in the next three to six months post opening but I would imagine we'll start seeing a spike nine months to a year after.

Tell me your thoughts John, on outsourcing as a concept. Do you think outsourcing, recruiting, outsourcing, talent as a concept is going to be a bigger or smaller thing post Covid.

Well, if, if every other recession is a indicator it would, it will definitely grow. And, and I think it's a decision that companies make when they outsource and I don't mean this directly for talent or anything, anything you were to outsource, the question needs to be my outsourcing to get better or am I outsourcing to save money? And those are two, two completely different mindsets that companies go into when they, when they outsource. So I think in the short term you may see companies that are looking for how do I outsource to save costs and then those who do that are going to be the ones that come in a year and say, okay, we made a mistake. We need to outsource to get better.

I think that's an excellent point. I talked to several people about, you know, the, the, the environment of fear that a pandemic creates and that, you know, I'm, you know, as somebody, I've had to lay people off in the past. I know what it's like. It's a horrible thing to do. And you've done the same in the past. Nobody wants to have to put themselves in that position again, certainly not in six months or a year. And there might be a second wave. There might be another pandemic. And, you know, I get the sense that, that, you know, given, given the choice, you'll look for a flexible solution. That's a provider that can not only give you quality, but flexibility. And that project hiring, for example, which is going to be big in the next few months, perhaps may be thing that comes and goes more frequently than others. Like when you look at the products that an outsourced provider has to offer, there's lots that I think will develop. Are there products or offerings in the RPO or even the wider staffing business you think are just gonna be done after this? There's parts of the outsourced recruiting industry, the wider recruiting industry, including staffing, that you think will just not survive this latest shock.

I think there's going to be diminished interest and in certain functions. I think when you. Right now, if we look at the last few months that we've all been involved in, you've seen the importance of culture, you've seen the importance of cultural alignment between partners. And looking at this as a go forward, were they, again, how companies are judged, whether that be your provider that held you to some rigorous contract in the midst of this, or being flexible and being able to scale, or the organization that just as soon as this happened, they saw their stock price drop and they said, I'm going to cut $20 million of cost out next week. This is a long game. That's what this is, making sure that you're doing right by your people and by your clients. And so when that changes, that's when you see organizations pull away. So I don't know if it's really specific towards service level, because it wouldn't be there if it wasn't needed. But I think it's going to be. You're going to see some providers go away, not just rpo, but overall talent market.

I have a good business question for you, and it comes from our good friend Jason Kennedy. If anyone's going to ask a good business question, it's going to be Jason. Jason wants to know how do outsource providers avoid the race to the bottom on margin when the demand to supply dynamic for talent shifts? Post Covid I think it's a really fair question.

It is. I think there's a balance there that organizations outsourced providers need to understand that there may be new deals, may be more cost sensitive than they were six months ago. However, it's not a technology company, whether it be HR or talent outsourcing or call center outsourcing or any other form, it's not a high margin business, it's not a technology company. So when you start eating into that margin, your service quality decreases. And I think as we have for as long as we've been around, not, not sacrificing quality under, under any circumstance, if we don't feel like we can do the deal, we're just not going to do it because there are companies out there that are going to see the ones that take that low margin, the value is low and they're the companies that will lose.

Yeah, it's hard. We've had to probably make the same decisions ourselves. Where you're looking at, you know, certainly you've got to be maybe more reasonable, more flexible around certain conditions but fundamentally you have to deliver a service and we've been asked by some suppliers to, you know, consider ridiculous prices and we're just looking at that going, we can't deliver a service to the quality level that we want. And how do you maintain that customer? How do you grow that customer? How do you please that customer if you can't afford to do all the things you know you need to do to deliver high quality service. And I think it's brave, it takes bravery probably to walk away from a deal that's horrible margin but it's a deal to be had and maybe keeps your team busy, put some people back to work. It's tough to walk away from that.

Yeah, it is at times, but it also is a brand killer when you can't deliver at a high level. Talent acquisition world is small and if you're doing something and it's not at the level in which that you promised when you said I looking at the person, I will do this for you at this amount, your reputation is over and it takes a few people to start saying that and then people don't want to do business with you. So I would rather say no at the front end than ever be in a situation where I looked and said, wow, we told the client one thing and now we're doing something else.

Yeah, I think there's other elements that you can be flexible on and I've heard from other RPO providers that in the last two months the flexibility they've given have been more around things like contract duration where you might do a three year deal. Normally they're saying let's go month to month. So the margin's still there, but we're kind of going, we get that you can commit for three years or two years or four years, but we're okay with that. Considering everything else is going along, we can protect our margin, we'll be flexible about the commitment, we'll do a good service and we'll kind of back ourselves, so to speak, to keep that contract up. I think maybe that's where people are going to be thinking about different ways to add value and be considerate and be competitive without actually eroding your margin which you need to protect to try and deliver a good service.

Yeah, because the first thing that happens when you bring margin down and you company wants the lowest cost resource, the people who are going to be working on their account in order for that company even to be break even are going to be lower cost, probably lower skilled, lower talented individuals. And that is not what you, not what an organization wants, especially when it relates to talent, which I still believe is every company's most important asset.

I have another great question here from another good friend, Shane Gray. Shane wants to know, John, do you feel this will shift more employment to contingent? As in this being the crisis, the pandemic, the recession?

If you were to ask me that question a month ago, I would have said yes. And the more people who I've spoken with, I think it will actually do the opposite. There has been a few legal articles that I've read where companies are nervous about contingent workers coming into the office and what liability they have if a contingent worker somehow brings an, you know, coronavirus and spreads it throughout. What kind of credentialing is going to be done on the front end when anyone's coming into your office? So I think it remains to be seen, but in the short term I wouldn't expect that contingent is going to see this big increase for that reason. And I think second, when you look at the short term, contingent is more, it's more expensive to hire a contingent worker than it is a full time worker in the short term. In the long run, if you were to be somebody who's separating from an employee etc. That's where there's quite a bit of cost. And in certain markets where the benefits are required for contingent versus full time. So I think we might see it regionally. But again, I think a year or a month ago I would have said for sure. Now I would say probably not.

Interesting. I would have agreed with you a month ago. And you're making me think now because I think there is what. Of all the sectors that are going to do well, we've talked about it before, the legal sector is going to do really well. I think the amount of litigation that's going to exist in the corporate world is going to be insane. And the governmental organizations as well to good time to be a lawyer. I'd say in terms of, well, not, not in terms of the amount of time you'll have to spend with your, your family, but in terms of maybe the fees you'll make and the work you'll have. There's just so much to litigate against. And that's a really good point. It's a, it's a, you know, if you look at cost savings versus the risk, I think, you know, most organizations right now are going to just not take any risks and maybe they'll eat the cost to, to continue with FTEs and not go with a contingent worker. It's a very interesting argument. I was going to take a couple of comments here, John, if you don't mind. Jim Stroud. Hey, Jimmy. Great to hear you on the show, Jim. Jim's saying, imagine the increase in competition amongst job seekers when people in another country working from home want the same job in your country. And this, I guess, relates to a conversation I've had many times in the last few weeks with people around, you know, you know, the job that was based in Boston, Massachusetts. Now, that person can come from anywhere, anywhere you have a legal jurisdiction if you're going to employ them directly. Do you think this will have an impact on salaries? Like when you don't have to pay a San Francisco salary for a job working with a team that used to be based in San Francisco. Are you really going to pay the same San Francisco salary to somebody based in Argentina?

Yeah, I think this is the great equalizer with talent, tech talent, specifically, where somebody who's making 65, $70,000 living in the Midwestern United States versus doing the same job as someone making $200,000 in San Francisco, if the talent pool is there, whether you'll see that shift, because it's been proven that people don't need to be in the office all the time. And I think that has been a misconception that we've heard for forever. And it relates to certain functions, people, traders, programmers need to be in an office. I mean, whether it's Microsoft or Facebook. I mean Mark Zuckerberg built it in a garage. He was a great programmer. He wasn't sitting in an office to get his job done. So I think there's just a lot of misconceptions. And to Jim's point, I think without a doubt we'll see a jobs. Whether that's a migration into different parts of the country here and then I think as you look at Europe, I think things start moving a little further east from, from a cost perspective.

It's funny, I don't think there's still fundamental challenges we have in the recruiting industry of approaching this. I never thought about it, but somebody yesterday on a call who uses workday as their enterprise recruiting system pointed out that in workday you need to specify a location. You can't leave it open. You know, it's kind of like I doubt workday are the only ones who have this issue. So if it is truly virtual or flexible, like virtual needs to be a location are open and those small things can be really important in transitioning us to this new world. Have you seen yet though, in markets that have reopened or even with customers that you have that are continuing to hire, have you seen examples of this where they've flipped from being location specific around most of their roles to opening up new roles to be more virtual or open on location?

I think it's too early to tell for companies to plan to move, move headcount to a virtual nature because everybody is right now. And this is, this is this test that I think companies will see and that's going to guide their decision making process going forward. But I personally have not had clients say, okay this, all these jobs are in the office now. We don't care where they are, let's just get them done. There were companies prior to this that had that mentality and embrace virtual working. And so they have seemed to have an easier time navigating through this pandemic than the companies that were so used to brick and mortar, come into the office every day.

And considering you have had clients like that, I have a question here from Miriam Kafk who's asking what are the implications for the employer of hiring staff from a different country? She's asking, aren't there payroll or tax implications? I think people think I can just hire somebody anywhere, but that's not technically true, is it John? It's not that easy to just, you know, decide you're going to hire somebody from any country in the world.

I think if our general counsel from Wilson was on this call, she would be shaking her head right now because this is probably the biggest frustration that we have at times is that you will have an opportunity that's in a country that we don't have operations. And it's like, okay, well we need to set that up and we need to do it and it takes a while. It's not something you can just do overnight. And then if you really are doing it from a, I think from a cost perspective, when you start putting talent in places where, where you don't have licensing and operations and you are working through a third party provider or payroll provider, employer, record company, your costs start to creep up. But if it's solely for the talent in those places, EOR providers are out there and do really good work. We as an organization focus on how do we build in that market and if we're going to go in there, we need to have a brand, we need to participate and this needs to be part of our long term vision rather than a reactionary move because of a specific need.

So I'm going to move to a close in a second, John, but before I do, I just want to get your thoughts on the US economy in particular where you're based for those perhaps not in the US market right now. You know, what does opening up likely look like over the next couple of months? What are some of the key dates that you're seeing? I know it's state by state, so it's not necessarily the same across every, every state. But generally what are you seeing? What will the pace be, what roles, what industries will return?

Yep, I, I, we're hearing multiple different dates from our clients in the way we're looking at when we actually will bring people back into the offices. There's a lot of June 1, a lot of July 1 and a lot of September 1. It really, it differs from region and I think you'll start seeing companies open up in different parts of the United States versus just saying, okay, everybody go back to work. Now economically, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of pent up demand. I think across the globe there's a lot of pent up demand. And so it'll be interesting when things really actually open back up. What the consumer will do as well as how businesses will make long term investments and how they will be able to execute on the investments they made during this pandemic.

John, I'm going to first of all want to thank you for, for sharing your honesty, transparency point of view. It's, as I said, rare to, to get it in a public forum and we've had lots of engagement, tons of questions. I thank all the audience for the fantastic questions. Sorry we didn't get to all of them genuinely, but I wonder if you could close, John, by contributing to our shortlist. And we ask every guest to contribute their one piece of advice they give to somebody working in talent, working in talent acquisition and recruiting. Whether it's current advice that you have, you'd give or you've been given in the past in your career, what sticks out to you as the kind of big thing that you'd like to leave our audience with. In terms of advice.

Two things I think being somebody who is new to the industry or really any, any industry. We talked and started this off talking about new grads and entry level workers and best piece of advice I've ever received and I would share is that you find a leader, not a job. Find somebody you can learn from, find somebody who's going to believe in you and as it relates to talent, treat people right. That's it. I mean, it's a long. We're in a people business and that needs to be at the forefront of people's minds when they are dealing with people. Because reputation last forever.

Yeah. I think if this is your first recession, it won't be your last. For those of us, you know, for me, number three, you number three, it's a different one every time. They, they don't, I've found, is that they don't look the same and you'll find yourself in a different place. You may not be in the, in the role of a leader right now, but the next time it comes around you will be and remember how you were treated and treat others the same way. It's great advice, John. It's quite typical of you and Wilson hcg. The we ask you for one piece of advice and you go the extra mile and give us even better service. Two pieces. So much appreciated for that, John. It's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for everyone for listening. We're back again, same time next week, Wednesday at 4pm UK time. It's 5pm Central European time, 11am on the east coast of the US, 8am for a morning chat on the west coast, about 11pm in Singapore. For anyone still in lockdown who wants a good chat and to hear some great guests. You'll find our complete lineup on our website, SocialTalent.com the shortlist, along with recordings of this show. Until next week, it's been a pleasure. I'll see you next week, and thanks for listening.