Talent strategy for hypergrowth | with Peter Coulson

Foreign. Hello everybody and welcome to episode 73 of Social Talents, the shortlist. Again as you may have noticed, I am not the co founder of Social Talent. I am Holly Fawcett. I am the director of content at Social Talent and thank you very much for having me back. Actually as a, as a surprise for this episode this week we are going to be talking about talent in the talent strategy going through hyper growth when we are massively ramping up the number of people we're employing as we scale our organizations. And I am so excited to be bringing on Pete Colson who is going to be talking about hyper growth and his experience and leading lots of organizations. And Peter is working in Spotify as well which is a massively scaling organization. Basins.com and this week's broadcast is talking about that talent strategy and hypergrowth where that current landscape. As we all know when we're working in talent acquisition, we've never really seen such a talent landscape. Millions of workers have been leaving their jobs in a phenomenon we know all Noel, as the great resignations and lots of organizations are scrambling to both backfill open positions where people are leaving them but also deal with this period of massive growth. So that two scale of two steps back and one step forward that we're going through at the moment is really high. This is particularly affecting the tech industry as well as lots of other front facing retail industries etc. As the trend turns firmly favor talent where they really have the run of the market. The question now is how do companies differentiate themselves in such a competitive market. So to help us to answer this question, I'm excited, as I say, to have Pete Colson from Spotify is the global talent acquisition manager at Spotify on the show and he'll be chatting with us about how to build out that talent strategy for hyper growth organizations and what organizations need to do in this climate to attract candidates and to differentiate ourselves during this period of the great resignation, an opportunity maybe for the great retention instead. So welcome Pete to the show.

Thank you so much. It's very good to be here.

Can you introduce yourself better than I have? Please tell me what you do, where you're based and some insights that you felt as well.

Absolutely. So again, thank you so much for having me here today. It's a great pleasure to be speaking with you. So I've been in the recruitment space for approximately 15 years now and have predominantly worked in like the tech and creative industry. Many of these organizations that I've been a part of have been either in rapid or hyper Growth mode. So this is a subject I'm most certainly familiar with one aspect of it though that, you know, I don't think many of us are isolated, you know, coming into this great resignation that we're experiencing at the moment. So within the time that I've been in this field, I mean, I've gone through recessions, have seen massive changes and shifts within technology and capabilities and upskilling and just, you know, huge monumentous shifts in, you know, where the demand for talent is and even geographically speaking, where we're looking to obtain this talent from. So it's a very interesting subject to, to dive into here today and I'm quite exc to to be a part of that. And you asked the question where I'm located. So I'm in sunny Stockholm. I say that somewhat sarcastically because it's only just after five here and it's already pitch black. But I've been here in, in Stockholm for just a little over a year now. I relocated over here from Berlin, have spent the last roughly six and a half years in Europe and originally from Canada. So that's why you may not hear a Swedish accent coming from me.

I was going to say definitely North American. So thank you for clarifying. Canada. Whereabouts in Canada are you from, Pete?

Toronto.

Ah, good old Toronto. Good man. I absolutely love speaking with people who have worked in these rapidly scaling, hyper growth organizations because it is a totally different kettle of fish when you're talking about these. Like it's just everything is changing every single day, all the time and you're growing at a thousand percent. It's just I have heard it described as like, you know, a year is like dog years. You've got seven years experience in one year. Is that roughly right?

Yeah, that's, that's absolutely right. I don't think that you could have said it any better than that. And this is something I believe that like we as talent acquisition specialists, but also as our HR folks and our leaders across the organizations that we work with, really need to be conscious of that because people are growing and at such scale and at such pace. We really need to be conscious and cognizant of the fact that this could lead to burnout, to, you know, stretching people too thin and having unrealistic expectations on your employees at the same time. So you're absolutely right in the way that you phrase that of it. You know, one year could really feel like seven years. That's so true.

I'm sure you probably get the gray hairs of seven years of time.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, and a few wrinkles. You look wonderful. But yeah, a few wrinkles I'm sure. Get in there.

I hope you're not specific specifically speaking of me.

No, I'm actually more talking about me to be perfectly honest with you. What also I'd love to know is as well you're talking about like, you know, that the stretching people of too thin. And while individual contributors, you know, they come into a rapidly scaling organization and they're just, you know, they're given a pile of tasks, a pile of new things and you know, we're building new products, we're helping to shape customer expectations and gain more customers and things like that. It's the managers I think we don't like hypergrowth organizations often forget to invest in what's your experience around the manager's ability to hire talent in scaling organizations when perhaps they're only in the door two weeks, six months before they're hiring for their team straight away. And they're trying to scale through people at the moment.

Yeah, I mean that's a really tough question because we do see, and I mean we as in the industry do see that, that you know, you're bringing in senior leadership, you're bringing in new managers and the expectation on those individuals is to scale their teams. And many instances and cases that I've had conversations with recruiters where they are looking to add, you know, 250 people to 100 person companies. So really looking to over to double their current headcount. And then you've got these new managers that are coming in expecting to build those teams. They have no idea about the culture, they have no idea about the ways of working. And this could be, you know, exceptionally challenging for these individuals coming in. So I kind of look at it, you know, asking the right questions around why are we scaling to the degree that we are today if we could scale to the degree that you wish to do so in the next two to three years or even two to five years, could we potentially accomplish the things that we're looking to as an organization having more of a long term strategy? And typically what we see, and so often do we see is that when the trigger is pulled, the floodgates really open and it's hit the ground running and do things extremely fast and scale and an exorbitant speed. And I think that that could actually be a big disadvantage for the growth and the development of the business that they're looking to achieve the specific things that they're growing in. Reason being is if you don't necessarily have a long term goal and a long term strategy to get to where you want to be, you could be causing yourself a much bigger down the road. So thinking about, you know, having this extensive growth in a short period of time and doing it with new individuals in the positions that they're in, maybe not necessarily having the history or the experience doing that previously, because you'll start to look for a very, very, very small pool of talent and you could be creating, you know, challenges within your culture, you could be creating challenges within the distribution of your workforce in terms of their seniority, experience level, so on. And so. So it's really about, you know, understanding and considering and asking right questions about what you're looking to ultimately accomplish. And if you do what you had described there a moment ago, you know, having new managers come in and build huge teams almost right off the bat, I mean, is that potentially going to be more detrimental to your business than it is going to be beneficial? So it's important for us as talent acquisition leaders to ensure that we're also asking the right questions of what the potential implications are of the speed that they're looking to scale and, and can these managers actually focus in on the people aspect of things? We see, you know, many articles and discussions around, you know, growth and appreciation and things like that being of the utmost importance for talent these days. Can the scale and new management provide those opportunities to those individuals? I think what's important we ask those questions.

What do you feel then is, is the reception perhaps maybe a past reception versus the, the viewpoint of today of those C suite or senior leadership teams within those scaling organizations, their understanding or appreciation for going slow to go fast, I think is how you're describing it, right? Getting the foundation right, understanding that our culture, we need a footprint that we need to then, or a stamp rather, that we can then go forward with and replicate rather than just like unleash the floodgates and just let everybody do it really fast and figure out the problems later. Has that moved over time that, you know, talent acquisition is actually getting the attention of the C Suite, or has it always been there, do you think?

Oh, I think it's moved over time. And that ultimately depends on how receptive the organization is to the talent acquisition team. And that's going to be crucial to the success and being able to, you know, step into that more consultative position with the C Suite and with those senior leaders and the organizations that you're working with. And that takes time as well. So it's about the emphasis and the Attention that you put on hiring and on HR as a company, you need to see these individuals as the entryway into the company and the folks that are ultimately going to be making the hiring decisions on who's being brought in to the organization. So a big part of what I believe this discussion here is today about talking about hypergrowth strategies to the great resignation ultimately comes down to the relationship building aspect of how important it is for talent acquisition professionals to be those trusted partners with the business as well as with candidates. So if you have the position and the footprint within the company and that HR and talent acquisition has a seat at the table and in making the decisions on the growth of the business, then it should be well received and you should get the right reception that you're ideally hoping for is because you've built and established those relationships and you're seen as a trusted partner. It's like if we flip the switch and we go into putting our engineering hats on and we want to develop something in a certain period of time which is either unrealistic or unachievable and the individuals that are responsible for the build will push back to those that want to build it and really give a true defined overview of what's realistic. So we need to do the same thing as talent acquisition professionals. We understand that we'll have goals and objectives and specific headcount numbers that we need to reach, but can we be realistic at the same time and provide the data and the evidence as to how we're going to get there and why we need to do things the way that we truly believe need to be done?

That's actually, that's really great advice. I think you're, you're exactly on the money. An engineer would happily push back and go, that ain't got a bit built in two weeks, it's going to take two months. So you're absolutely right. Yes. Every function that is worth investing in will push back to make sure that they're delivering. Right. And talent acquisition is so fundamentally important, I think we forget just how pivotal it is. We know, I think we all know ourselves our job is important. But does the rest of the business know? And possibly not until we are, you know, until we get that seat at the table, or at least ask for the seat at the table and talk competently to the C suite as to why we need to go fast. As if we need to go slow to go fast and do the things right and then we can scale fast.

Yeah. And if we think about this, if you can provide the evidence and the data to back up what you're actually proposing in terms of going slow, to go fast. And I think that that could help a lot. At the end of the day. If you go slow at first and then it comes the speed in the short term or even in the near term, you'll see that they'll be able to accomplish what they were looking to accomplish roughly in the same period of time. It's about a mind shift and that mind shift is one of the biggest hurdles to jump over at first.

Yeah, absolutely. I am also conscious that there is a, there is an agenda to this particular show and some of it is with regards to news. So now we have our first news article, which is from the Insider. So this article, 7 and 10 tech workers say that they're considering quitting their job within the next year in a new survey. How detrimental do you feel that that is peak to tech organizations? Or is there an opportunity here for organizations to snap up 70% of people who are potentially looking at changing positions?

That's a good question. I mean this doesn't come necessarily as any surprise. The longevity of tech employees, especially within IT and software, hasn't historically been super long. In the last decade we've seen that people tend to stick around for anywhere from, you know, 1.2 to 1.7 years in the same job. So there has been quite a lot of turnover in this like specific area. So to see that 7 in 10 and I think what's the article stated, it's about 72% are actually considering quitting their job within the next year. I'm not super surprised about that, not necessarily shocked. It does also propose an opportunity if you are in a position of rapid growth and hyper growth and if those people are leaving, the probability of them actually switching careers as a profession is relatively low. So they're looking at new opportunities, new organizations to go into and so on. So you need to understand like where are the movements happening? If you can do deep dive research into what's happening within the industry, where do you potentially foresee that there's going to be fundamental shifts in certain organizations? You as a talent acquisition professional should be able to, to identify, you know, where are the right hunting grounds to go to look for this type of talent. Where do you foresee that there is going to be a shift in a specific market? And that's when you have the opportunity to go in and scoop up that talent and provide them great opportunities with the companies that you're working with.

Sure. So I think every recruiter though Right. Where we're externally focused, we are seeing this article going, yes, like there's a load of new opportunities and fresh, fresh availability there that we can, we can suddenly tap into and gain lots of experience within the organizations. And therefore it's a fluid market because we don't like static markets. Markets are difficult to work in. It's been a hard 10 years, I think, of static markets for that regard. But externally focused, we forget to look inwards and go, oh my gosh, that means seven in 10 of my existing employees within their talent space are also probably going to change jobs in the next year, possibly also change organizations. I now have to backfill all those roles as well. So my rec list goes from like 100 to 170 potentially. That's my bad. Maths don't do maths on air, Holly. So how do we, how do we overcome that? Because generally as recruiters we are always externally focused. We don't really look internally.

Well, actually on the contrary, many organizations are looking internally now to see where they could have fluidity within their workforce. You know, opening up more of that, how do you say, like a T shaped type of individuals that have worked across your organization, that have transitioned throughout your company depending on your size. That's not going to be the same for a startup or a smaller org. It could be for a larger company. But when we think about this and, and looking on the inside of, as to your point there, you know, are 70% of my tech employees going to leave or you know, what are we necessarily thinking about in terms of the retention? If you're in a position where now HR and TA and leadership are asking that question, what are we going to do about retention, then you're already a little bit too far gone. I mean, it's an inevitability after a situation that we've just experienced with the pandemic that they're going to, there's going to be a bit of a spike and people leaving because if they were thinking about leaving before the pandemic and then it hit and they had the job security, they're going to stay until the market and the industry bounces back and then the economy starts to get more healthy. But if you're looking at and asking those questions, to reiterate what I mentioned a moment ago, it's somewhat a bit too late when you think about it, that you're looking in say, well, what's our retention strategy going to be now that it's already too far gone? So if you're needing to pivot and you're looking to reevaluate what your internal workings are, what your culture is and things like that. Sure, it's a step in the right direction, but on the other hand, you should have been asking that question three years ago, five years ago. How can we ensure that we have a healthy culture? How can we ensure that we have an healthy retention strategy? Are we investing in the, the talent that we have internally? Are we ensuring that there are growth opportunities? Are we ensuring that there are lateral moves so people can stay fresh in different areas and still support the business? How can we keep them inside even if they are switching jobs within the company? So it's, it's a tough question to answer because we're only necessarily coming into a point now where many organizations are asking that question. What do we need to do to retain our people when they should have been thinking about it for years?

Isn't there a Confucius saying? Maybe it was. Maybe the question I'm asking is a bit more Confucius than anything else. Confucius, I think, said the best time to have done anything is yesterday. The second best time is today. So while, yes, we should have been talking about or thinking really deeply about retention and building a strategy for that five years ago, three years ago, last year, while everyone was staying put at home. However, our organizations are growing, right? If we're in this hyper growth state. So there is potential, there is opportunities within our organization and Claire Tanner has put in a comment there on our YouTube livestream. Thank you very much Clare and anybody else who wishes to add comments, please do so about internal talent marketplaces. So there's definitely opportunity, I think for us to look at retention and going, well, fine, you might want a new job, but look at all of the new jobs that we have within our organizations. We've just opened up all the, all of these requisitions. How does your organization or organizations that you've worked with in the past, Pete, do internal internal moves and market those opportunities to existing employees?

So I don't want to speak too specifically about the internal workings of Spotify, but thinking about more generally and what I've seen in an experienced throughout my career is actually creating and ensuring that you have internal career sites. No question about it. I think that's almost a no brainer for many of us observing here today, but for some it might be. Well, why don't we have an internal career site? Why are we not promoting this? Some organizations have been very hesitant about creating so much more awareness about internal opportunities as they don't want to have people poaching from their teams. And this can potentially happen. Right. If you're promoting more opportunities, you're looking more for talent, you're building internal marketplaces where talent might be visible. It could be that hiring managers are actually going into an internal system to potentially pick and pull people out of other teams and then that team then has a problem where they need to backfill and they might be looking at another team to pull those individuals from those areas. So again, it's about this mind shift because I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing. As long as people are doing it in a business ethical way and doing it for the right reasons to provide opportunities for individuals to stay and continue within the organization. I think that that's super important. And we also need to ensure that, you know, our hiring managers and managers are identifying talent that are lacking specific growth opportunities and know that there are open roles in other teams where that individual may flourish even further in their career and may have to bite the bullet, as they say, and sacrifice one of their great team members for their growth and development. And as talent acquisition professionals and thinking about some the relationship building side of things for you to understand the areas of the business that you work with, you can help identify where those gaps might be and where those growth and development opportunities might be available. And you can talk to your hiring managers about looking within, opposed to looking outside.

I, I couldn't agree more actually. And you mentioned in your introduction, Pete, that you worked for six years in Berlin. My rudimentary knowledge of German workers councils, for example, are usually heavy on the side of internal talent marketplaces and heavily marketing opportunities to existing employees because, you know, they are key stakeholders in the organization and should know about those opportunities in most open and transparent way. Can you speak to your experience with working with workers councils and that shift perhaps to a very internal talent marketplace mind shift that you might have experienced?

Yeah, so I was, sorry, two years in, in Berlin, about six and a half years in Europe. Nevertheless, I actually, I hadn't had much direct experience with the workers council in that regard, so I can't necessarily speak to it to a degree, but I was working at Zalando when I was in Germany and I think that they did, you know, a phenomenal job at being able to showcase and market internal opportunities that they did have available. And I think that as the time that I was there progressed, there was a stronger emphasis on the internal talent market mapping. And I think that that was something that they had done really well, maybe a little later than I don't want to say they should have because I don't know if there's necessarily a should or shouldn't. But I think that they had started to do a really good job and have understood now that it's continuing to evolve and it's becoming more prevalent in their every working.

Yeah, and again, I mean every organization should be doing this, but right. The best time to do it was yesterday. Like the best time is right now. So have you any advice on like, is it simple to set up a talent market, like an opportunity or a place, just a single page view of all the ops that are open for people to look at? Is that an easy thing for somebody in TA to do right now or is it convoluted? Is it difficult?

I think it really depends on the size of your company and like what inner workings you have in terms of your technology. So there could be something as easy as, you know, a weekly email that goes out to your employee base with your top like 10 hot jobs to showcase the opportunities that you do have. Depending on who manages your careers, website or what type of ATS you're working with. Do you have an ATS and a CRM? Where are your job postings going? What are the technical aspects, effects of all of this? So it all really depends on the inner workings. I think if you're working with a small to medium sized company, something as simple as an email going out with hot jobs with a link to be able to apply could be as easy as that. Or connecting with the specific recruiters that are responsible for those roles. As long as it's not going to be overwhelming. Again, it depends on the size of your company. But I think it is important that if you are a more large scale company and you can work with your tech team, your people analytics team, as well as potentially your external partner that might be managing your career site to be able to pull this information into a centralized location which gives you an internal careers and then you can work with your employer branding team to ensure that you have an employer branding strategy around your internal market mapping and your internal job opportunities. So it's not that complex. If you spend just a little bit of time on it, you could build it out Right. Pretty quickly.

Yeah. A minimum viable product is the best way to go. We think about again from an engineering perspective. Yeah. So then thinking about this then as an opportunity for retention rather than necessarily as like half my team are going to go and I need to backfill all of Their roles. We have another article as well about looking at. Sorry, it's a Forbes article. 14 recruiting tips for smaller tech companies seeking top STEM talent. There is loads and loads and loads of tips in this particular article that are really, really useful, I think obviously from an acquisition perspective. But I also think there's some tips in here that we can apply internally. Looking at, as you're saying, the motivators of, of your external. Sorry, of your, of your tech team moving on because of the pandemic. They're looking for the market to suddenly become buoyant again and now they're looking to move. But I think, you know, what the, what the important part of this article is really looking at is, is really easy, simple steps to. To. To grow your stem. STEM talent, your. Your technology in particular talent and to start moving. What am I trying to say? Sorry, I'm fluffing this entire question, but maybe let's talk about a specific, very specific question. Given how competitive that tech marketplace is right now, is there anything that you would suggest for smaller companies to. And startups to get in the mix of attracting talent using some of these tips, whether it's internal talent or external talent?

Yeah, I think like with startups and smaller organizations, they can have a very competitive advantage to larger companies. Many instances that there are individuals coming from, you know, the stem area of things and wanting to have a bigger impact on the work that they're doing. So when I look at this and I think about, you know, these size companies where you may be a bigger fish in a smaller pond could give you more impact on the wider organization that you're working with. Some people may feel that being in a much larger, huge, gigantic, you know, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of employees is that they're a very small fish in an extremely large pond and they may not necessarily have the impact that they're looking for in their career. So really like the way to differentiate themselves and, or to retain talent at the same time is provide those opportunities for those individuals to have ownership to have a larger impact on the work that they're doing, have something that they're working on, be more outward facing either to consumers, customers, if they're B2B to the clients that they're working with. It all depends on what your service offering is. But I think there's a huge opportunity for growth, impact and breach within smaller and startup organizations. So it can be a tough one to think about and wrap your head around. How am I, you know, a 10 to 100 person shop going to be competitive when we're looking for talent from the Googles, the Facebooks, the Spotify's and so on. If you're able to position yourself to provide those individuals what they truly want and need, which is impact, and to be technically challenged to a degree where they feel that they and are using like the full potential of their knowledge, that's going to be key. And circling back to the very beginning of what I had described and discussed around the relationship aspect of, you know, the importance of building that both on the business side as well as on the talent side, is when you build a relationship with somebody, you truly understand what their wants and needs are. How do you as the TA professional differentiate between the want and the needs? And how do you ensure that with what you're providing and the organization that you're representing has those opportunities to fulfill both the wants and needs for that person? So by differentiating yourself and your organization is truly being able to understand that person's desires and their needs and wants. If you can fulfill that, you've completely differentiated yourself and removed the competition. Out of the question.

So from hearing you write, the smaller the organization that you are, in other words, the more time, technically you have to work on individual requisitions and work with candidates, you can invest more of that time in getting to know that candidate more deeply, getting to know their deeper needs and wants so that you can then match them to opportunities inside your organization. Do I hear you right?

And that's one part of it, but actually also that works on the same side. If you are a recruiter or a source or TA professional inside of a very large organization at the same time. And you just need to hope that they've invested in ta, that you have a big enough team that you can create and ensure that you have those close relationships with your talent as well. I think it's imperative for everybody to build relationships. What I was focusing on in my point there, if you're a part of a smaller company, they may have a bigger impact on the business as a whole. And that's the individual contributor that I'm speaking of. So I think it's important for all recruiters to focus and ensure that they hone in on the wants and needs of every candidate that they're working with, yes, it might take a little bit more time, but you'll retain that talent a heck of a lot longer. So in the long run, it'll actually be a lot less time spent on the overall recruiting.

I can't agree enough, actually. And even speaking from personal experience, right. Having worked in very, very large organizations where you kind of feel as you say, like a, like a small, very small cog in a big wheel. Like you know, it's really, you're not, you could be lost very easily. Nobody would care to. Then working in a small organization where you know, you get that kind of dog ears type of experience, you get to see so much of the organization, you kind of get to put on so many different hats and, and use your skills and apply them in a very, very different way. Have you ever read the book the Range or sorry, not their range, just range by Dan, by David Epstein?

I haven't. Yeah.

So he essentially talks about where you're talking about like T shaped skills and individuals where you kind of a general broad experience a lot of different functions and then you go heavily deep on one specific core area. Range talks about kind of like a cone shaped individual where they're getting not very deep but reasonably deep inside lots of different functions. They're able to apply their skills and apply their knowledge across a broad range of functions and areas and that gives them an incredibly interesting perspective in how, you know, my skills are in finance, but I'm now applying that into forecasting in customer success in terms of revenue retention and that then leads into growth. And what is going to impact retention is more about our product development. So I'm going to apply that here in product development and from product development then that goes into engineering. What does engineering need to do? And you know, they can really see a very broad perspective of that. I feel you get that inside small organizations and as to this article as well about some of the recruiting tips you have, I think that's our, it's. That's selling the benefits of what you can achieve inside a large organization, sorry, inside a scaling organization. And that is, geez, it's not just the rocket ship, it's well you get to impact here, you get to impact there, you get to impact this other function and this other thing like whoa, that gets such a huge massive impact that you can have rather than like you're here to put in data into this spreadsheet and that's it.

Right, Right. I think when we think about that as well, an individual maybe start at a smaller scale company and then they want to grow into a larger scale company and think well maybe I won't have the like the depth of impact or the reach that I'm ultimately looking for now I'm going to be this small p. Small fish in a very big pond if we think about what we talked about a moment ago is promoting and ensuring that, you know, we can position the internal opportunities to our current talent network that's inside our larger businesses. You can see that as an opportunity to do something similar as you've described there. And I started out in this specific area, I mastered this. Now I'm going to move on to this area of the business and now I'm going to actually broaden my horizons throughout a much larger company, hit on all the different areas and then what does that mean when I scale up going into potentially an architect role or you know, a senior manager type of role or a principal type of role? I mean, we're talking very tech oriented, but it's the same if we look at marketing, if we look at finance, anything of that nature. It's like, how can I potentially grow across a much larger organization by hitting the different areas and hoping that the company that I'm working with is providing those internal opportunities and showcasing them to me so I can personally grow in my career?

Yeah, absolutely. So have you any tips in particular for organizations that are planning their headcount for next year? Right. You're probably well into 2022. If you're anything like me, you're probably writing 2022 on your date, on your to do list as like this year's date.

Yes.

So far into your planning. But if, if there's still a little bit of white space for talent acquisition professionals and managers who are trying to do their planning at this moment in time, thinking like, okay, next year we're receiving X amount of funding or next year when our new financial budgets begin, you know, loads of headcount is going to suddenly open up. What should we do now to start prepping for next year's growth? You know, getting the most amount of leeway or most amount of, of lead time as we can.

Yeah, I mean you're gonna, if you're gonna scale, you need to find balance in your team. And I think that that's gonna be absolutely like crucial and imperative to the success of your talent acquisition organization. So ensure that you're bringing in a mix of like permanent recruiters, ensure that you have a balance in leveling. So have junior, mid, senior level recruiters on your teams as well. And then also be thinking about, you know, what's realistic. We think a lot about a 12 month calendar year and Europe in particular. We have much longer holidays than what I ever experienced coming from Canada. We have anywhere. It's fantastic. Yeah, we have anywhere from, you know, 25 to 35 holidays and that's excluding any bank holidays or public holidays. So we have to take that into consideration. If we truly care and think about the, the mental health and the well being of our talent acquisition professionals, we need to ensure that when we do our planning is that we're thinking more along the lines of an 11 month month calendar year or 10 or even 10 because you've got half of December is usually a write off, you know, summer holidays plus all of the bank holidays. So we have to take that into consideration. You can say this is what I'm expecting each of my recruiters to hit for next year or what I'm expecting them to hit per month. If you calculate that at 12 months you actually need to add what roughly 10 to 15% on top of that because you need to take holidays, time off, things like, like that into consideration. If we don't plan for that, we're only potentially setting ourselves up for failure. We really need to think about what's realistic on the other part of that, Expect the unexpected. I mean, I think it's better to over plan than it is to underplan when we're thinking about being in a hypergrowth mode. Organizations that, you know, I've worked with that have been in that hypergrowth or in that riper growth period that the beginning or I should say at the end of the year, like at this time when the planning has taken place, we're expecting X percentage of growth for next year. You know, you plan from a TA perspective and then you get in to next year and you know, you've hit the ground running, the first quarter has gone by second quarter hits and then it's like, oh well, the industry is moving so fast. We're going to have a pretty big priority shift now. We've decided to take on an acquisition or we've decided to merge or we've decided that, you know, with the recent announcements of Meta, for example, we need to adapt and adopt to what that's what's happening there. If we don't do that, we're going to be left behind. So we need to pivot and we need to change our priorities. We're going to continue to scale at the same speed, but we're actually going to recruit for a whole bunch of different stuff. So you need to kind of plan for the unexpected because there's almost an inevitability that something's going to change next year and you need to somehow predict, predict or anticipate that something's going to change. So plan for that potential change one way or another.

So I'm going to ask a very silly question which is if I don't know what I don't know, and as in like the future hasn't happened yet, nobody could foreseen Meta apart from the most predictable dreams of all time. If any company was going to call themselves Meta, it would have been Facebook. But like, no, really and truly what it is that we, we can't actually really protect that. So what we don't know, well, we don't know what we don't know. How can you anticipate some of that? Is it just leaving quite space? Is it leaving additional time? Is it taking on more training? Is it developing your business acumen so that you have some semblance of an idea of what might be coming up in your space? How does one, how does one do that?

Yeah, I mean it's almost all of the above. So you could have like answer D on that one because like leaving a bit of light white space means that there's like room for growth and shifting and moving and opportunity at the same time is like put in your variance, you know, are we going to expect 250 headcount next year? Let's ensure that we put it at 310 and then factor in attrition and, and movement and internal movement. So just plan above and even be a bit more and a little bit more above just to, you know, if that doesn't happen, if those changes don't happen there in the recruitment world, there's always more than enough to do. It's a 24, 7 job. So there will always be things for people to do. And on the other part of it is like on the business acumen side, as you said, I think yes, we should always be upskilling ourselves to become more business oriented and understand, you know, what are the inner workings of our organization's growth and are we asking the right questions about the growth and are we ensuring that we have that seat at the table that we talked about earlier as well? And if we can upscale ourselves to be more consultative in our approach, that seat at the table will always be there for us. As long as we can ensure that we have the right understanding and knowledge and also backed up by data, data, data, data. That's always our best friend. So if we can ensure that we have those things that will help us, you know, plan for the unpredictable future, great.

I love that. And I'm actually going to ask you for one more piece of advice because I just clocked the time it is 42 minutes in. I can't believe that conversation has gone by so fast. It's been fascinating. Pete, thank you so much. We ask every one of our guests to leave us with a piece of advice. Either something maybe that was advised to you or that you would love to give to others to add to our shortest. This would be the 73rd piece. Piece on our shortest. What piece of advice have you to people about recruiting or recruiters about life?

Yeah, I think it's, it's all about relationships. I mean, I've said it a hundred times during this discussion and I've done a couple of presentations and spoke at a few conferences about, you know, ensuring that we stay human in a technically advanced world. You know, we're seeing a lot more change and development around artificial intelligence. We talked about Meta a moment ago. I mean, there's, there's a fundamental shift in the industry that we're seeing and it's only going to move faster and faster and faster. So the more that we can focus on relationships and not lose that human touch is going to be imperative to our success. And this is what's going to help differentiate our careers out of the robotic or technological side of things. I'm not anti tech by any means. I work in the tech industry. I love tech. But I think it's so important that we as TA professionals continue to work on and build and establish strong relationships because I strongly believe that we're not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. And if you can maintain and develop and grow relationships with people, that's going to be one of your strongest assets.

That's it. I love that. I love that. And yes, you have spoken about relationships extensively throughout this conversation, but no, it can't be reiterated enough, I think. But look, we all got into this industry because we love people ultimately, right? And we all are curious and really like, love to learn more about people. I don't know anybody who studied recruiting in college. I think we all fell into it somehow. But yeah, I think we all stay here because of those relationships and knowing you're right, they're so, so critical. Pete, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Thank you very, very, very much for sharing your insights and understanding of my fluffed or fluffy versions of questions about those two particular articles. We are going to put the links to both of those articles, the one from Insider and from Forbes, into the show Notes if you're listening back to this in the podcast or into the chat here now as well on Live on LinkedIn and on YouTube. Thank you so, so, so much for, for coming on today, Pete, and sharing your insights, as I said. And just to make you aware of our upcoming event on the 18th of November, we have a Social Talent Live event which is a much deeper dive into in terms of a live broadcast. It'll be a 90 minute discussion. We're talking about hiring at scale during the Great Resignation. So taking a little bit of what we spoke about today, but going much more in depth. Our online talent leadership event will be bringing the voices of Barbara Lee from Nielsen, from Kim Pope from Wilson hcg, Kevin Blair from Salonis, and Daniel Monaghan as well from Uber, all talking about how they're scaling inside those organizations. So you can Register now@SocialTown.com live. That's SocialTalent.com live. It could be live on November 18th. That'll be a Thursday, I believe, at 4pm London time. It'll be 11am New York time and 8am Los Angeles time. So thank you so much for joining us today. Please do sign up for Social Talent Live. It's a completely free event and it's always a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant conversation whether you're on live or you watch back of the recording. And please register there as well. Thank you so much for joining me this week. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you very much.

Bye.

You.