Uncovering what candidates really want | with Andrew MacAskill

You're very welcome to the shortlist. It's episode 85. I'm Johnny Campbell, your host for the Shortlist and CEO and co founder of Social Talent. Well, we've got a great show for you today. We're going to be talking today about what candidates want, what they really, really want. Because most of you out there who are hiring for your teams, working, recruiting and talent, it turns out you don't really know what they want. Just like if you remember the movie with Mel Gibson, what women want From Gosh, late 90s where we contrasted, you know, what women men think and then what women actually think and put that together. It's not quite as funny because in talent is a real issue here in that we are not connected, we are not connecting with what the employees really want, our future employees. And how do we know this? Well, I'm going to reveal to you if you want to know more about by the way, the Shortlist and our future shows, upcoming shows, our previous shows, you can do so@socialtalent.com the shortlist. And if you're listening live, because we do broadcast live every week on a Wednesday afternoon, European time and morning US time, you can join us on YouTube and LinkedIn any week. And if you're listening live right now, you can ask us a question jump in a comment on LinkedIn or YouTube. If you're listening to the podcast, any references to links or notes that we make during the show, we'll put in the show notes as well. And you can find them on Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. But let's get into today's topic. So understanding what your audience wants is crucial in anything, no matter what industry you're in. But when it comes to hiring, a lot of focus is often given to what the organization wants, our mindset and values, the things we need to assess for to make sure that they fit in our organization's. But if you look behind the veil of what candidates themselves are really searching for in jobs and careers, the two don't align. Joining us today to give a unique view on the other side of the hiring spectrum is Andrew McGaskill. Andrew's an author, LinkedIn Changemaker, and founder of an organization called Executive Career Jump, a company that specializes in job search and career progression coaching, which is where Andrew gets a lot of his insights. He's here to give us the inside track on what job seekers are looking for right now and diving into importance of personal brands, leadership, marketing, authenticity. Andrew, you're very welcome to the show. I Wonder if you wouldn't mind opening with a bit of background as to how did you end up doing this and what is this that you do?

No, I'd love to. It's awesome to be here. I've really enjoyed our previous conversations, Jonny, so thanks for inviting me on. My background was I initially started off as an accountant, but got bored and then spent 15 years in executive recruitment like most people who don't really know what they want to do. But during that period started to spot a bit of an opportunity to help folks who are in transition. Because I think we can all agree the world of work and the world of job searching has changed probably more in the last 10 years than the previous 50. Right. So we set up as initially a side hustle called Executive Career Jump just to help folks understand what they want, but most importantly how to go and get it. And yeah, fast forward a couple of years. That's now a full time thing for us. We're scaling out, we're building a team and we're helping hundreds of people really navigate a job search and land somewhere that's going to make them more fulfilled and happy. So that's what it's all about. It's great fun.

So in the last 12 months, Andrew, how many job seekers have you spoken to, do you think? As in where does your opinion come from? The data and the insights you're hopefully going to share with us today, where does that come from? What kind of conversations with who?

Yeah, so we've had 500 paying clients in the last 12 months via various channels and we're a big LinkedIn user. So we were appointed the LinkedIn change maker for careers in unemployment. And today actually we're announced as in the LinkedIn Top Voice list for careers as well. So we've been very lucky with exposure there, which means we're getting about a million views a month on our content. Hundreds and hundreds of comments on LinkedIn as well. So we've got kind of a qualitative element which is from our own clients. But also I feel like we've been lucky enough to find ourselves at the center of this conversation on scale as well.

Well, Andrew, I want to jump in and go through a couple of news articles with you. I'm really keen to get your opinion on some of these. So the first we're going to go with comes from recruiting Davy, and it was authored by Jahanzeb and Zari just before Christmas and the article is entitled Gen Z and the Candidate Experience. And this I thought was actually quite fascinating. Because you get a lot of articles, you've read them, we've all read them. Gen Z this, Gen Y that, Gen X this, Gen Alpha are going to do this. I actually found that Jhanzeeb has really kind of nailed some good stuff here. You know, first of all, giving an introduction as to why Gen Z are perhaps a little bit different in the context of hiring and recruiting and their perceptions, you know, mentioning that this is the generation that in most parts of the world grew up kind of with the, with the, with the Internet all their lives, first of all. So they're technology driven, which is maybe a little bit obvious. That's by the way, Those born between 1997 and 2012, but also they kind of grew up with a big recession, right, and climate change. So when you look at, you know, purpose and their approach to money and frugality, etc. And those general topics, understanding that, yeah, oh yeah, these are the kids that grew up with technology, but also that huge big recession we had that started in 08 and oh yeah, climate change became a massive big thing whilst these, these professionals were growing up. Perhaps that gives you an insight. Or does it? What are your thoughts having read this article and the author's kind of background as to perhaps the reasons why? Connecting that to perhaps some of the observations are the observations that you have seen as well, Andrew?

Yeah, I think they are observations and I think whilst this article is a really good commentary on Gen Z in particular, I think more experienced professionals are learning a lot from the new generation that's coming in. We've kind of gone from saying, oh, these folks are a bit entitled to saying, well actually I think they might be onto something here with this idea of being a bit more discerning around where we place our bet in terms of our next career move. So I thought it was interesting and my key takeaway was this. I think in the past we always tried to incentivize via package and then we moved more to incentivizing by environment. And then I think we moved more to incentivizing via mission and purpose. And I think what's clear from Gen Z is they want all of that and if we're going to be successful in attracting Gen Z, we need to hit their heads, their heart and their wallet and to be hitting all three of those boxes in order to get them to apply. What did you think?

I love that head, heart and wallet. Because there's a good line in this that talks about again, some of the research saying that, you know, it's A, you know, you got to, you got, you got to cover the, the basic wages. And we'll cover this in another news article in just a second. But that, you know, this generation have different backgrounds. That purpose is more important to them. But I really thought one of the unique things about the article was how it got into the differences in hiring them right now, which I hadn't thought about. So, for example, saying only 58% of Gen Z is employed between the ages of 18 to 21, which compares to 72% of millennials or the previous Gen Ys during the same age range, which is not surprising considering there was a pandemic for the last two years and employment opportunities weren't quite there for graduates. Right, Those, those things haven't been there. And it goes on to then say, so, you know, CVs or resumes may not be as valid a tool to assess the background of a Gen Z candidate, which I thought was a great insight. It makes sense, right? I know you work with a lot of experienced professionals in the organization as well, but, you know, through your own organization. But on LinkedIn you're probably getting everyone, all types of generations and backgrounds, you know, commenting on all that content and giving that insight. So I thought that was really interesting to just to apply it to the world we're in today. And again, looking at the skills that a lot of this generation are probably going to be using, like there's an example of Python skills and saying that, you know, do you want somebody who's got a degree with three years experience, or do you want someone who's got proficiency with Python and can work with others? Your assessment model you have in an organization is probably not well suited for the latter. You built it for the former, where somebody would, you know, go to school, go to college, do a degree, get experience, get trained up and then you'd hire them. That's not necessarily the world we're living in. Or is it, do you think?

Well, no, I think all levels, we're more and more having to hire on future predictors, aren't we, rather than the past. And I think at the pace of transformation that we're seeing in the world of work, I'm not sure the past is any longer a very accurate predictor of success for the future. So I'm not, I wasn't surprised to see that part of the article and I think again, I think it's kind of permeating into all areas of hiring.

I'm going to move on to kind of a couple of other pieces of advice that the, that the article gives you mentioned. Obviously the, the heart piece being important. It talks about. I think there was a quote in here saying something like 69% of. Of Gen Zs would apply for a job if they, sorry, 69% of Gen Zers will be more likely to apply to a company that emphasized DEI in its recruitment materials. So really going for that purpose piece and particularly DEI being a focus, but saying it's not just the high level, oh, we support this. They want to dig in, they want to see the examples. And then there's a line about the fact that don't forget this generation are particularly adept at jumping on social and telling the world all about it if you don't give them a good experience or don't reply to their application or don't let them know they've been rejected if they've been for interview and all these different channels. Again, I not saying that they aren't issues for all candidates, but just honing in on the fact that this generation, perhaps more than others, have the ability to tell the world about it and perhaps are going to feel it a little bit more, you know. Is that your sense as well that both the kind of experience is going to be shared more widely, good and bad, and that issues such as dei, issues such as the environment are pushing up as a priority not just for Gen Z, perhaps for everybody.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the level of due diligence that particularly young digital natives are doing prior to choosing to go to interview is unprecedented. Right. So they're really looking out for what you're talking about. I think DNI in some areas has become the new greenwashing. So, you know, people change their logo into the pride collars once a year and then go back to business as usual. And it's more of a gesture than a culture. So I think they're doing a lot of digging and due diligence before going to interview to make sure that you're walking the talk and that it's more than just marketing. So I think they're very cynical, rightly so, about marketing messages and they're more savvy than ever in being able to unpick that and look under the bonnet a little bit.

Speaking of due diligence, the article points to another surprise for me which said that the number one source of, you know, that Gen Z candidates go to, to research companies is YouTube. Does that surprise you?

No, no, it didn't surprise me at all actually because we've seen that as well in our career coaching practice. And it's because again, what they're looking for is information on the leaders and they're trying to catch them in a non curated way. So they're looking for interviews, they're looking for them appearing on industry panels, they're looking for them appearing on podcasts like this one and trying to get into the authenticity and the values of the leadership, which is why I think YouTube's playing such a big part. And yeah, we spoke about leadership marketing in the past and I'm sure we'll get onto that later today. But our own clients go to YouTube to review CEO messages and to look in depth at videos before going to meet people. And they're going there first before the company website because they see it as slightly less filters.

Well, surely, you know, you see a lot of executives, leaders posting on LinkedIn, posting articles, writing up stuff, sharing stuff there. Would that not be, you know, a bigger source for research with. I would have thought maybe that would have been the place to go to find that kind of information. Or what's different about YouTube versus that?

Well, I think YouTube is, has got a higher level of trust because of the video component. So I think the video component plays a major part and people trust it further. And also a lot of executives aren't managing their own LinkedIn profiles. Now what we do know from the heat map is when they do go on the LinkedIn profiles, they're clicking into your activity, so they're looking at your comments as well as your posts. And again, that's that same reason they're looking at the comments, because they believe that your comments will be less curated than the content you put out in your posts. And I find that very interesting as well. But they're also looking at the recommendations. So again, Glassdoor, you know, some people see that as accurate data, others don't. But one thing we know for sure is that when they're landing on leadership profiles, people, all the heat maps show that people go straight down to the recommendations. That kind of makes sense too, right? Because I don't know about you, but we don't even book a restaurant table without reading reviews now or go on holiday without reading reviews. So it makes sense that they're looking for some kind of testimonial or review type mechanism to help them make their decision.

Yeah, I love that insight that, you know, there's more authenticity in the comments on other people's posts by executives than there is in the carefully curated post that they put out there that maybe they didn't even put out There that somebody on their team did actually reminds me of a conversation I had with a large recruiting team earlier this week where one of their team shared how they had a few years ago rolled out a platform that enabled their staff to reshare the kind of employer branding content and messaging out to their social networks. But the challenge of that was that when people did that it was the same message, the same you know, generic article that was written by corporate being shared out by a thousand people and it just didn't ring true. And I contrasted that against a friend of mine, Ed Nathanson out of Boston who's gone to work for a new pharma company there that are blowing up where instead of giving them the technology to repost the same old corporate crap, what they're doing is on the first day you do an induction program on how to be, how to be an ambassador. And it basically says you can go write whatever the hell you want. Here's some guidelines. But do it in your own voice in this way and you need help. Come to us largely is what they train people on. And that is the authentic piece. It's what you're saying that candidates are looking for. They want to know what you're really not what you say you're like. I guess as an example there I'm going to jump to a second article just while we're on those news articles. Andrew and this comes from Harvard Business Review. It's a sponsored post don't get me wrong. So it's not a peer reviewed piece of science per se but I still thought was interesting. Comes from a few months ago and it's entitled what your candidates say about your hiring process and how to fix it. That's by Jennifer Revalli and it's a sponsored post by Pando Logic. But I thought this was interesting again a few months back. Talks about into US context, great resignation etc. But it calls out something there I think is pertinent to our our topic today. The first thing is job seekers are not speaking the same language as employers. And it goes straight into I thought which was a great insight. You know it talks about, you know, employers talk about funnel with lots of different stages and steps and it says in their analysis of conversations with job seekers there's the, there's the job ads, there's the application, there's the tons and tons of interviews and then do you get rejected or get a job? They're the only four stages. Candidates actually recognize that we get obsessed with the seven or nine or 12 stages of a candid process and I think it encourages employers to get back to basics. Would you give similar advice or what are your thoughts on this article?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, what we know for sure and I guess one of the benefits that I found in helping people with career coaching is they just open up to a whole nother level than they did when I was a headhunter. Because when I was a headhunter we were getting paid by the client. And so whilst we built meaningful relationships, my candidates always knew that ultimately I was financially incentivized to get the deal done. Whereas on this scenario they're opening up to us more openly because they're paying us and we're on their team. So that's been a really interesting switch to really get under the mind of how they're feeling about the process. My genuine feel around what candidates want from the hiring process and how that differs to what organizations are implementing is this. First of all, they want transparency. And this comes back to our employer brand conversation we've had as well. Like the number one thing they want is transparency. They definitely want pace as well. The anxiety builds up between stages. That's very, very clear. And they also want an assessment process that is close as possible to what will be required in the job. So when you think about your typical competency interview, I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of roles are not reflected in the skills required to give a good competency interview. Like you and I, who've been in the industry for a while, could probably blag our way through the majority of non technical behavioral interviews, even if we weren't even suited to the job because we know the right format, we know what they're looking for, we know how to, you know, reverse engineer the scorecard on the other side. And so candidates feel this as well. And I think what they're looking for more than anything is something that reflects more. A working session where both parties can get a chemistry check, can see how they might work together. Could be like putting a problem up on the whiteboard and working through it together or going through an exercise and something that's more two way mutual, adult to adult and peer to peer, rather than a traditional parent child interrogation or purely just, you know, getting people to tell stories about the past. So there's definitely a disconnect there. And I think this article makes some really, really good points.

So typically, you know, my experience, maybe it's a bit like yours, Andrew, in recruiting was that, you know, if you take say a three step process in recruiting, which Is, you know, we grill the candidate in the first stage. Do you have all the things we're looking for? Second stage, we'll make it a bit of a mix and the third stage will start selling to you. Is that still the right way to do? Is that still what I'm two future employees want from an interview process?

Well, definitely not. And we talk a lot about this in our speaking in presentations because there's, there's been a reversal of that, of that sequence. And I think, I think the tech ecosystem's actually done a good job of this and been there for a while because the talent crunch that the broader market's currently feeling, you'll know this as a tech founder, the tech market's been there for 10 years. So there's already been an more demand than there is supply in the tech ecosystem for qualified people for some time. So what we're finding is actually it's a better idea to sell first then after 50, 50 exchange. And then if you've done your job right, the candidate will be selling back to you in the final stage rather than you going in to try and close the deal. And the idea around selling first as well, I think which is super important is even if you don't take that candidate forward based on the chemistry or the questions they were asking or the skill set, they're going to leave as an advocate. They're going to leave knowing your vision, your mission, your values, what you're trying to achieve, how you're trying to disrupt your category, what you're trying to do differently. And I think that's a fantastic advocacy piece that you should make sure that everybody who leaves your recruitment process would be able to sell your company to someone like them in their network. And that's a pretty simple goal to have.

I love that it points to one of the quotes in this article because they were examining online chats from. This one came from Reddit. Why do you want this job? You know why I want this job because I need to feed my family and have health insurance and, you know, why do you want this job? Has been one of those questions for a long time. And it's 10, 15 years since I first started talking to recruiters about how frustrated they were. The hiring managers would still ask candidates that in the first, why should we hire you?

Why?

Why do you want this job? You know, and back then it was because, well, you know, they were frustrated because we went after the candidates because, you know, it just didn't make sense if you're a source in them but these days I just don't think it makes sense to ask anybody that question. To your point, sell first, make sure they can understand that so that they're selling to you by the end because you've done such a great job. I made that so powerful. Andrew, I want to talk about the pandemic in all of this, right? You can't really ignore the last two years in terms of what candidates want, what you've described so far, all those insights. Is that what they've always wanted or has it changed in any way in the last two years?

It's definitely changed, hasn't it? And I think we were already moving towards this shift, but there's no doubt that the pandemic provided a circuit breaker that has accelerated some of these trends we're sealing. So I think the way people view work has changed. I think their expectations of work has changed. And the hiring process plays a major part in being the first touch point in that we're also seeing things like fractional careers becoming very popular, which I think is a fascinating trend. People working in an on demand way or a freelance way or whatever it might be far earlier in their careers. We're seeing people choose to take portfolio careers, which used to be something that you'd kind of traditionally do towards the end of your career way, way earlier. So yeah, there's been a huge, a huge mix up. And I think people have re evaluated their life holistically and then worked out the role that they want work and careers to play within all of that.

Talk me, talk to me about portfolio careers and fractional careers. Explain that for our audience and for me, if you don't mind.

Well, the fractional thing's just been super interesting, Johnny. Right. So the idea behind the fractional career is that rather than be an FD for a large company, what you say is, well, I love being an fd, but I want more variation and less politics. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be an FD for SMEs. But SMEs can't afford 150k on an FD, but they can afford maybe a third share, so maybe they can afford 50 grand and to have a third of an FD so that they get all the strategic advice they're looking for and are able to raise money easier because of the credibility on the board and all of that kind of thing. So we're seeing FD, CMOs, various other directors, rather than being employed by one organization at a director level, being fractionally Employed, almost like a timeshare. Right. Via three or four different employers. Typically SMEs who are in growth phase, they're loving the variation and the lack of politics. And the SMEs are getting great bang for their buck in terms of the expertise. They're accessing a lower salary investment.

I love that. I really like that.

It's really cool.

It makes sense. And yeah, we are seeing it. It's. You would say it's self employed. But you know, putting in that context of it's not being self employed, it's being a fractional employee to three different employers is interesting. And then the second example you were.

Using the portfolio careers. Yeah. So portfolio careers is more in the traditional kind of NED and board advisor space whereby you have a portfolio of things that you're involved with. But it tends to be more advisory in ned, as I say, so it tends to be more at a strategic level, whereas a fractional career is you're doing the job, but almost in a part time capacity for a number of organizations.

It was said to me this morning, I was asked a question, are people looking for shorter jobs? As in, can we expect faster attrition? Is it a generational thing that people are, you know, not looking for permanent jobs anymore? What's your sense of that?

Yes, I think, I think the idea of a permanent job is probably an outdated one actually. Like I'm not, I'm not so sure there is such thing as a permanent job. And I think what's happened as well, I think a lot of people were burnt during the pandemic and what they thought was true and solid turned out not to be true and solid. And so now they're going to market in a far more pragmatic way. And I think in many ways this is good. Right. So it's predicted that the average tenure in the UK is going to drop to around about 2.6 years pretty soon over the next year or two, which is an incredibly short period of time. But I think we'll get to a point whereby, you know, how you're paid for that time varies. That's just a mechanism. Could be contracting freelance fraction or whatever. But I think we'll get to a point whereby companies get really pragmatic about that and they view it as a life cycle and they say, right, how do we get these people in, in an efficient way, then get them up in the organization and adding value in a speed to effectiveness that works and then how do we off board them in a pragmatic way that they Leave as advocates could come back as a boomerang in the future and, and feel like they're leaving better than when they joined. And we know it's going to be 2.6 years on average. We're not going to let our egos flare up when people leave. We understand it's that our paths are crossing for a period of time and we're going to help each other in our own journeys during that period. And then pragmatically kind of part when it comes to the point of parting. So just a lot more pragmatism coming in, egos and emotion coming out and people viewing it in a slightly different way.

We talked a lot about job seeking, job seekers looking for jobs. We've mentioned jobs several times over the last half an hour. But is that what people are actually looking for? Is it the job or is it perhaps the leader that's going to influence them to join a company? What are your thoughts?

Yeah, so we have a five piece scorecard that's weighted, that helps people navigate all of this. But ultimately the most important thing in all our work seems to be the leader. So people are told in early career sessions, in uni sessions, by mentors, by society to pick a leader, not a job now. And, and that makes sense because if you're only going to be there for 2.6 years, really your fulfillment and your enjoyment is going to be based on the person you work for, not necessarily the brand or the product that you work for. That's going to be the biggest impact. So definitely people are looking for the leader as the number one thing that they're, that they're choosing. And that goes at all levels. Experienced people have worked for good and bad leaders and know the difference that makes to their well being and fulfillment. So more and more people need to be thinking about how can we use leadership, marketing and personal branding to amplify some of the great people and leaders that we've got in our organization because that's what's going to attract in talent in a more strategic way.

Most people, when they think about the job of a leader, they're probably thinking I've got to basically get things done with my team. And then when it comes to hiring, I got to work with recruiting and maybe progressive leader, be more of an advisor, work with my recruiting team. I think what you're saying is to take all this in is that the modern leader needs to make sure that she constantly is out there nurturing and developing her brand so that she can eventually hire talent because she has A presence that's organic, that's natural, that's authentic out there, whether it's podcasts, articles, or just comments on other people's posts. Because that's what job seekers are looking for. And this isn't about just the head of department or the exec team. This is anyone who needs to hire in the business. This is kind of almost just part of what you need to do. Everyone needs to do. Is that kind of what you're saying, Andrew?

Yeah, and we. Absolutely, that's what we're saying. We stumbled across this, some data on this by accident because we had that hypothesis. But we went and did some work, some LinkedIn training, effectively personal branding training with the board of a FTSE organization. And the main reason for doing this LinkedIn training was around customer acquisition. So can you teach us to build personal brands in order that we can attract in more customers? So we went through a program of explaining how to get your voice out there, how to create some simple thought leadership, how to post on LinkedIn to get better engagement, all of that stuff using our own data. What we didn't expect though, was yes, there were some customer leads that came in and, you know, the marketing funnel side of it worked, but what we didn't Expect was a 300% increase on hits on the career page. So there was a 300% increase on hits on the career page over the first four weeks that the leaders in the organization started posting on LinkedIn without posting a single job. And the reason for that was that the people putting their thoughts out there and people were observing this and going, hey, this lady's really interesting. Let me find out a bit more about her. And that was indirectly, in a very soft branding way, attracting people into the, the careers funnel. So very. That's, yeah, the data was stand out. What they've now done is they're now training all of their hiring managers on how to get their personal brand out in an authentic way via LinkedIn. With the undertone being this is part of a collective employee advocacy, employer branding, personal branding, exercise size, that's going to do tenant acquisition as well as customer acquisition.

Because it's amazing, you know, talking about this and the data, data supporting it is fantastic, Andrew. Because I think when most people look at employer branding and driving more quality applications top of funnel, they think about how can we, you know, work with a better creative agency, create more content, better content, more expensive content, have a bigger budget to promote it. And everything that we've seen in those two articles, we've looked at everything You've shared so far on the show today would indicate that that's not what job seekers want. They're not going to work for the company that has the most creative employer branding agency working on the most beautiful videos that they've made. For example, YouTube videos. You're saying YouTube is a source. It's not official, professional, you know, created content that they're looking at. It's, it's organic, employee driven content is all they care about. It's the only thing that seems to be authentic and they want to see that in loads of places by, you know, lots of different people involved in the hiring process. It would seem to be that employer branding and recruiting marketing just have it wrong. They're gone back. They're still living a few years ago where budgets, better creative agencies, better design will get you the candidates. That's not what candidates want though, is it?

It's definitely not what candidates want and how we make those decisions. That head, heart and pocket thing we spoke about earlier isn't the same either. I think what's happened is as well is we've got this idea that we need to project all of the best bits of our environment out there and almost make out the, you know, our organization some kind of hedonistic, amazing place to come and spend your time when you can't fail. And it's win, win, win from the moment you arrive. And that's an error in two parts. One, because obviously we're over promising and you're going to have some kind of 90 day diploma when people on board because they're going to realize that actually it's not what they thought, they might feel duped, you might have a lack of trust from day one if you're not careful. But two, the other reason that I think is a complete misconception is actually a lot of us quite enjoy a mess like we, we can deal with dysfunction. Like we see that as an opportunity for impact. So actually to be a bit more open with, look, we're great at this stuff but I'll tell you what, we've made a right mess of our CRM. It's an absolute state, it's a disaster. We need someone to come in, unpick this, join it up, fulfill the potential. Like people will see that as an opportunity for impact and we know from our career coaching work that impact. So feeling like we're doing work that's having a meaningful impact is a huge driver. So it actually be more effective to go out and wash your dirty laundry in public and tell them Everything that's broken than it would be to try and sugarcoat it with this, you know, kind of unrealistic, almost movie trailer selling a dream that doesn't exist.

I'll go back to what's often quoted as the first job ad. I don't think it was. But when Ernest Shackleton was looking for perfect for folks, which was the men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return, doubtful honor and recognition in case of success. It's beautiful, warts and all. Brilliant. Worked really well for Shackleton to get his crew for that South Pole expedition. But you know, I think that's what your point is. Like it worked 100 years ago, works today. People want the honesty, they want the authentic stuff. They want the challenge. Challenge is a good thing for folks. They don't want the, as you're, you're pointing out hedonistic kind of falseness. You know, we, we, we drink and party all night, we do yoga and plates all morning. And then your lunches is from served by chefs who are from all over the world. An important element, maybe from the last two years, is a lot of that's contingent on you being in an office together. And most people aren't in professional careers these days. You're in your own house, in your living room, in your kitchen, in your bedroom and our co working space, not surrounded by your own workers. So in the absence of all those traditional things that made up VVPs and your employer brand message, it comes down to. What did you say? Your head, your heart and your wallet.

Yeah, that's the hat trick. That's the hat trick. And you know, another, another thing that I think is a real misconception from an employer branding point of view, but also from a leadership point of view that's worth talking about is this idea of empowerment. And I think we'd all agree empowerment's a good thing, right? So before anybody listening worries about where I'm going with this, I agree empowerment's a good thing, but it's like at one end of the scale, we used to have micromanagement. We all agreed that was bad, right? It was constraining, it was suffocating and actually led to a drop in productivity. But what I feel is an even bigger challenge in the modern workplace is just a lack of any management or leadership at all. So there's almost a trend right now for people to go, yeah, we just let you do what you want. And it's, I'm, what are you doing today, Mr. And Mrs. Leader. Oh, we're empowering everyone. So we're just leaving them to it. People don't want that either. Okay. People. Otherwise they'd just be doing their own thing. So I think it's really important in our employer branding, in our messaging and everything that we're doing that we make it clear that the right blend is kind of freedom within a framework. We need a framework. People want a playbook. They want certainty, they want resources, they want structure, they want measurement. But also they want freedom to express themselves, to be empowered within that framework, to go off and be the best they can be. And that blend is getting missed as well. Do you think that's. That's my own view. I feel like we're. We're overcompensating for micromanagement with this empowerment, which basically means we leave people to get on with it and potentially drown.

I agree. And it's, you know, you pay them well, you can pay them really well, and you think, well, you can just choose what to work on. It's nonsense. You need to have a clear strategy, a clear measurement of what success will look like in a time frame, a clear structure on how to do that, and constant, regular feedback. Not micromanagement orders, but feedback to adjust. Am I doing a good job? Is it going well? Someone to say well done. And it tends to be. As you skew down into the younger generations, the need for that seems to increase. Right, because that's more what you're used to from a workforce. But everyone still wants that. It puts the focus on leadership. All goes back to this. What we're learning coming out of the crisis is that to hire well, to recruit well, attract great talent, and you just have decent bloody leadership in your business, you know, don't try with the gimmicks of, you know, better creative agencies. And yes, you can fix your canned experience process and all that kind of stuff, and that's not bad. But fundamentally, if you have strong leaders, modern leaders, right, they need to be leaders for the modern world, which can be perhaps a mixture of in person and virtual or whatever it might be. And all the different things that are there, you know, need really good leaders because that, that's what people are looking for. It's how they're vetting your organization. It's how they're ranking you. It's. It's why they'll stay. It's why they do good work, and it's also how you basically, you know, in a world of, of folks who can go online and digitally say anything, they want about an organization. The organization isn't the thing. It's a made up construct. The people are extremely real and when someone talks about X company being crap, what they really mean is the people and largely the leadership are crap.

So it's getting back to those basics 100%. Yep. You join a company and leave a leader is the old adage. I, I believe that's absolutely the case. So people are saying right, okay, I'm going to join a leader and, and see where we go from there. So they're kind of flipping that old adage I think.

So top things, if someone's listening to this and they're a recruiter, are there a leader slash hiring manager in a position to hire hire people or ahead of a talent or talent acquisition organization, what will be your top couple of tips that you'd give them in terms of going listen if you really want to, you know, leverage what you're saying about what candidates really want? Andrew, what's the advice you give to organizations, other people in the organizations, whether it's the recruiters or the leaders looking to hire, what are your top tips to go connect the dots and really start speaking the candidates language?

Yeah. So overall it's about getting the human element into every stage. So and with a view to building trust and I think that's what's missing if we were to surmise it in a word it's about trust. So trust around employer branding we've spoken about already and getting out the real situation people are coming into proudly rather than a manufactured situation. Trust in the hiring process by getting that assessment to being as close to a working session as possible. Trust in your employees so they can authentically be advocates for what you're doing and trusting them to give them freedom within that framework that we spoke about. To go and express themselves socially. Yeah, train them on how to express themselves socially. There's no doubt in my mind that the biggest kicker for everybody is getting a little bit more comfortable allowing people to express themselves openly and trusting people to express themselves openly via social media. I still see lots of organizations layering on really heavy handed social media policies or tying down HR and talent acquisition teams with heavy handed brand guidelines in terms of what they can and can't post. And I think that does way more harm than good. So I think we need to let the talent acquisition teams and the leaders within the organization free up their arms a little bit, be more open and I think that's exactly what the candidates are going to look for. So yeah, the other, the other way you can really differentiate yourself in a very, very simple way is feedback. So trust and transparency as well. The final bit on that by the way, is about salary. So there's a huge movement at the moment from the candidate world for there's like a hashtag, show the salary. What does competitive salary mean? If it's competitive, why don't you share it? Tell us the banding. So the transparency around salary and trying to avoid the messiness of heavy handed salary negotiations, I think is, is one way. But feedback is a huge opportunity in the hiring process. So the majority of feedback that I now see my job search clients getting is you were great, but you were just picked at the post or you didn't have the industry experience or whatever it might be. It's or you'd get bored. That's one we had. You'd get bored.

Yeah.

What does that mean? So you generally most organizations give feedback that's pretty useless. The terrible ones ghost you completely and never give you feedback. But most organizations give feedback that's useless. So say okay, well how can you differentiate from a feedback point of view to create advocacy with candidates that don't make it? Well, the thing to do is to give them stuff that's what we call abc. So actionable, balanced and compassionate. So something they can go off and work on. So what I would say is I would commit that every person that came through your hiring process that you sent them a note with three things to work on that they could do better next time and three things they did really, really well just to give them that reassurance and that confidence boost and just committing to a simple three plus three feedback policy, that kind of marginal gain is going to compound over time and build such good sentiment and an applicant advocacy within that candidate community. Because people can take a no when they understand why, but when they're getting a no and then they're fed some BS as to why it's a no, they don't really like that and they tell lots of people about it.

I love that 3 and 3 before. So simple Andrew. But you know we put into your interview process, you know, in your wash up you got to give the three and three and then you can just communicate that back through your recruiting organization or whatever to each candidate. Makes sense. I love your point on the transparency on social media. I think we have social media policies that says don't post on Facebook or it should be don't do because people will post it on Facebook. Should be your policy. People are going to post this and they're allowed to. So just don't be an don't manage poorly. Don't be rude to your colleagues, because we're okay with people posting whatever they want. Just don't do bad things. Like it's, you know, I We spend too much time focusing on the bad things happen, but don't talk about it as opposed to going, well, let's not stop. Let's stop doing the bad things. Great advice in there, Andrew. Really appreciate it. Which means we get to the point in the show where I feel a bit greedy asking my next question, Andrew. But as we get to that point in the show where we're wrapping up, I wonder if you could do me a favor and give us one last piece of advice, a general piece of advice you think will be good to leave our audience with. Whether it's a piece of advice that you've garnered from your own experience or has been passed on to you from somebody else during your career. What would that piece of advice for our shortlist be?

Yeah, well, with regards to this mission specifically, my piece of advice for the shortlist audience is to never forget what it feels like to be on the job market. So what we see is what I call the Etch A Sketch effect, whereby somebody will be a candidate on the job market for a while and they'll be really in tune with what it feels like to not get good feedback or to be ghosted or to be applying all day or to turn up at an interview and have someone checking their phone or late or whatever it might be on the hiring side and they'll be really aggrieved at this and it will be hurting them and it really demoralizing. But what happens is that when they land in role, this Etch A Sketch thing happens where they almost wipe clean that experience from their mind and they start falling back into the exact same habits that they were complaining about when they're on the job market. So what all the shortlist crew can do is commit to never forgetting the person behind that cv, the human sat in front of them at interview, and what it feels like to go through the ambiguity, the anxiety and the grieving process of a redundancy or a job search and make sure that you're paying it forward and that you're taking ownership of your role in looking after that person sat in front of you.

Excellent advice. Actually spoke to a good friend of mine this week and she was telling me stories about 10 years ago in her career when again she wanted to try and make that make that point with hiring managers. And she'd have meetings with, set up with the hiring managers and she deliberately wait until everyone was in there. And she'd arrived late, a couple of minutes late. She barge in late. Oh, really, really sorry. She, she gather a laptop, notes, oh, sorry, what's the agenda again here? What are we here to talk about? And she do this for about three or four minutes and see everyone seething. Then she pause and go, you see what I did there? That's what you do to candidates all the time. It's crap, isn't it? And people go, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. And you know, I think, you know, your point is so well made. You got to experience what it's like to be a candidate. But even how do you create ways like that where people can actually make it more visceral. Visceral. And they see this is something I need to change to have that empathy. Andrew, tons of great advice and insight. I really, really loved having on the show. Hopefully we're going to get you on the social talent platform to give more insights to our users as well over the next coming months. But thanks for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Final comment though is if folks want to know more about the work you do with executives in terms of balancing their careers, what kind of people do you work with? How should they reach out?

Yep. So we work with meter senior professionals. We've helped people in 15 countries so far. So we've helped people in all sorts of markets. And the website's www.execexeccareerjump.com or by all means, please do follow and hit us up on LinkedIn as well. And thanks for having me on, Johnny. I really enjoyed it.

A real pleasure and thank you, Andrew. Execareerjump.com is your place to go if you want to anywhere in the world. World medium to senior careers. And you want help from Andrew. He has a lot to help to offer. Thanks for listening today to the show. Thanks for joining us live. If you're live here today and come back next week. We've got more next week. I'm looking forward to our next show, welcoming our next guest, which is the fantastic Paul Phillips. Paul is the global head of talent acquisition and total reward at the Avanade, the consulting firm that was spun off between Microsoft and Accenture several years ago now. Big, huge business around the world. I'm very sophisticated in their approach to talent, always trying to go one step better and Paul is one of those individuals leading that change. He'll be joining me on next week's show to talk about tackling the skills shortage and improving opportunity with learning and development. Absolutely the critical number one way to try and tackle the skills shortage around the moment. A topic close to my heart and Paul's great insight. Paul's had a great career, an Englishman living in the US working for a huge consulting and tech firm around the world, driving a large team through that change. You cannot afford to miss his insights. That's going to be the first episode of February 2nd of February, Wednesday live at 4pm UK Ireland time. That's 11am in the east coast of the US, 8am on the west coast and it'll be dropping in your podcast apps, Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts by Wednesday evening. Join us next week for that. Until then, I really hope you enjoyed the show, hope you enjoyed Andrew's advice and you can step into a candid shoes and see what it's like for her to apply to your jobs and try and make it better and be more empathetic and more real. We'll talk to you next week.