Unlocking Talent: Hiring Insights from Africa with Doug Haines

You know, when people say what is it like recruiting in South Africa? I say, look, you're going to get high agency people, they're hard to find anywhere. And I'm not saying that everyone in South Africa is high agency, but you've got a high proportion of that population is and that's why it's such a good region.

Hi and welcome to the show. I'm Johnny Campbell, CEO and co founder of Social Talent and this week on the podcast we're talking with Doug Haynes who is the co founder of Marketing Primary Pros about hiring untapped talent in the continent of Africa. Doug, you're very welcome to the show. Wonder if you could perhaps introduce yourself to our audience, tell us a little about your background and the organizations you work with today.

Thanks Johnny. Really, really glad to be here. Yeah. So Marketing Pros and Kalium, two organizations that I'm involved with background is, started recruiting in South Africa about five years ago, had a marketing agency in the uk just really struggling to get good people like was trying everything upwork, recruiters, different regions, tried the Philippines, that sort of stuff. And I've had a friend whose sister was doing a little bit of recruitment in South Africa for some companies in the uk, chatted to her and it kind of took off from there. We, over the last four or five years we've built an agency team. Like 90% of our team is in Cape Town now. We've got an office there, we've got 15 people full time. And then about two and a half years ago we launched Marketing Pros which is helping other companies access some of that talent in South Africa. And we help companies, us, uk, Australia hire marketing talent to embed within their, within their companies.

Doug, I remember several years ago having a conversation with a friend of mine at Microsoft in the recruiting team and he was sharing with me the then Microsoft philosophy of hiring engineers, which was for every engineer you could hire in the us, you could hire two in Ireland, you could hire three in Poland and you could hire four to five in Africa. And this was kind of the logic that drove the Microsoft Team to heavily invest in for them Kenya and Nigeria at the time where they kind of saw a long term strategy of building up engineering resources over the last 10 years which they think they've become the biggest employer of engineers, software engineers in both Kenya and Nigeria. So an organization like that really realizing the benefits for certainly initially from a cost perspective of Africa. But tell me about your focus on Africa. What was it that attracted you to the market? I know you've told briefly your story so far of how you came across the market, why you decided to look at it, but what's been your experience of the market? Is it just a cheaper place to find talent and therefore you make the investment because you're getting it at one fifth of what it will cost in the US or one of your learnings being what is your story about hiring in that market?

Yes, so I mean there is a cost advantage, there's like a labor arbitrage advantage of Africa and specifically South Africa. But I think what people don't talk about enough like that example, is a really good one about engineer prices across the world, is about kind of region, role fit. So for certain roles I think just work brilliantly in certain regions and South Africa specifically, what you get there is, you know, with the US and the uk, you've got cultural alignment. You know, there's hundreds of thousands of South Africans in the UK and loads in the US as well. So you've got cultural alignment, you've got really good education, you've got native English and you've also just got a cohort of workers that are just used to dealing with those horrible business people relationship kind of problems. And for marketing roles, for account management roles, for strategic roles, they work brilliantly. Now for other more very, very hard technical roles, you know, maybe a region where you don't need some of those skills might make a little bit more sense. So maybe in India, maybe a Philippines where you don't have native English but you've got extremely good technical skills. So I think one thing is region and role fit. And so South Africa, marketing is a great region for that. So that's the, that's the first thing that I would say in terms of my experience. It was we started off very, very small. So we took on some part time freelancers, new graduates that just came in, did a few small things in the business. But very quickly I was like, these people are not what I expected. They are considerably more talented and consider they have considerably higher agency. They're just much better at solving problems than I'd experienced elsewhere or often actually in the uk. So one example, someone had been working for us, someone called Amber, she just finished a Master's, you know, fairly junior at the time, 22, 23 years old. I had to go into hospital for a week, like very hectic, serious operation. And the business didn't stop. It was, you know, there were five of us in the business at the time. And I just remember we had these big issues with one of our Clients, their website was down due to something we had done. There's a lot of different stakeholders to deal with. And I just remember just being on like morphine or whatever in bed 48 hours, post the operation and hand was telling me this stuff on WhatsApp and I was just like, you just need to solve this. I'm not in a good space. 48 hours later she just sends me WhatsApp dog. This problem is sorted. I didn't have to tell her what to do, how to do it, how to think about it. And you know, when people say, what is it like recruiting in South Africa? I say, look, you're gonna get high agency people, they're hard to find anywhere. And I'm not saying that everyone in South Africa's high agency, but you've got a high proportion of that population is and that, that's why it's such a good region.

The other benefit that just comes to mind as we have colleagues in South Africa here in Social Talent and again doing more creat in our instructional design team as well and had had a fantastic experience is time zones. Right. From a practical perspective. You know, when I, when I first was thinking about hiring someone South Africa, I just forgot the fact that the time zone difference is negligible. It's like hiring in mainland Europe, right. You know, because you kind of think, well, India, five and a half hour difference or in parts of Asia, maybe eight hour difference. And it just becomes really difficult to communicate with teams. But just to remind folks, it's people that are pretty much in the same time zone as the rest of Europe, isn't that true?

Yeah, it's one hour in the summer for the UK and two hours in the winter. So yeah, as you say, pretty much the same time zone. And an unexpected benefit of that is if you need to go there, like it's a long flight, it's like 12 hours from London, but I'll go and I'll spend like four nights there and then fly back. And no jet lag, it's just an overnight flight. So I know we maybe touch on kind of visiting later in the call, but yeah, that's a big, big benefit I think. We do have a lot of clients in the US as well where the times is obviously not as, not as good. But again it's just region role fit like for the us it's like, well maybe it's a slightly, a slightly different profile of role versus the uk. Like if you need somebody all business hours, every business hour on the phone to clients in The UK then the UK works in the US we do do a lot of these client facing roles, but there has to be a bit of flexibility. But then the US is good for like, you know, a video editor because they can just, you know, dump off a project and then they come in the next day and it's done. So it's just fitting the right role to the, to the client.

Tell me about the kind of legalities of hiring in the market and maybe some of the complications are what's easy because I know, you know, when folks come to, particularly if they're looking to hire in Europe, there's some obvious dos and don'ts. Like we all know it's almost impossible to hire in France or not, it's impossible to hire, but you, maybe you're, you're recommended not to. Germany can be difficult work councils and the Netherlands can be difficult with some of their employment laws. Talk to me about the kind of legal framework from an employment perspective in South Africa. How easy or difficult is that?

I mean, South Africa is extraordinary in terms of their legal framework. It is set up, it is weighted completely in the favor of the employee. So they have something there called the ccma, which is essentially like an employment tribunal. And any employee can for no cost take their employer to this employment tribunal. And there's a laundry list of things that you have to have kind of ticked off. So for us who actually hire these people on contracts, you know, we have to know how to navigate that system. And that system can be, you know, one wrong step and it's like a 12 month salary you have to pay that person. So you've got to be very careful. We know how to navigate that. It's still, you can never mitigate the risk of it entirely. But I would say that's the main thing with South Africa. Now a lot of companies, they'll mitigate that by having the, the person on a, on a contract, an international contract. So they're not, they're not hiring in that region which can work. But often, you know, the best people in the region do want a contract. Like it helps them a lot just for things like getting a mortgage, getting a car loan, all of that sort of stuff. It's not that they're thinking, oh, we want to take you to court, but you know, it just gives them that little bit of security for those logistical things. But also just psychologically to be like, I'm on a contract, I'm working for this company. Rather than just being on a kind of international, they know that they could get rid of you at the drop of a hat kind of thing.

And again, that scenario, are you finding that employers, you know, would have to have a legal presence and an entity set up there or would they use organizations like yourselves or others as an EOR would. What's the kind of general common practice maybe when you're getting started versus maybe when you're more established?

Yeah, there's few options as you said, you know, using company like us who have the entity there companies will use like a deal or something like that. One of these kind of platforms that have legal entities there as well. Most companies in practice, what we have seen is that they, they don't address that and they just kind of hire people on these kind of international contracts, which feels like the easy and obvious option. And it, it can work. I certainly wouldn't. But we know from being on the ground that the people in the region, they always feel uneasy on those, they generally feel a little bit uneasy on those contracts. They don't get all of the advantages. And if they can get a full time contract, that's going to be, that's going to be preferable.

If you're looking to try and find talent. If you're okay and comfortable with the idea that you could employ someone in South Africa or want to employ someone in South Africa. Talk to me about recruiting. You know, is it advertise your jobs on some, on indeed South Africa. Is it an equivalent? Is it about LinkedIn and headhunting and messaging? Is it go through staffing agencies? You know, each market is different cultures. Japan is still a very much a staffing agency culture. The US is more LinkedIn job boards are massive in continental Europe. What does it look like in South Africa for different, different types of talent?

I don't think it's dramatically different to like a US or UK in terms of the dynamics. You know, LinkedIn is used a lot. You know, there's a ton of, you know, Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups, you know, making relationships with universities for junior staff, that kind of thing. All of those dynamics exist. The way that, that we tackle it is we're a little bit more kind of supply driven so we kind of actively go out and find the best people. What we have found doing this for four or five years now is that most of the really good people are not looking on LinkedIn for jobs. Most of the really good people and, and aren't going to reply to your advert. Most of the really good people are in a role generally happy and you know, we spend a Lot of time headhunting them and explain to them the benefit of kind of coming to us and being on our books because we have exposure and we can get them opportunities overseas, that kind of thing. So if you are a company looking to do this from day zero, what I did is I had somebody in the region helping me. So I never quite experienced the pain in South Africa of just trying to do it on my own. But what I would say, what most I get two examples recently, like we had a company that they took a member of staff from our agency and they are paying probably double market for that. And that's because without knowing the region, it's very hard to make those decisions. So that's, that's a real risk. And then the other risk is just just kind of quality. That's the kind of same in any region. But South Africans are actually very good at selling themselves, as I'm sure you know. So that makes it even a little bit harder to kind of cut through. Cut through the noise.

In terms of like on the ground, like, is how is remote working considered? Is it popular? Most people do it. Are there challenges in terms of, you know, we hear about, you know, blackouts and power cuts and so on, so forth. You know, what's the reality of trying to have a remote worker in South Africa? Is it as reliable? Do you have to set them up in an office? Will people work remotely at home? Can they do that or your experience there? Doug?

Yeah, from a logistics perspective, it's absolutely fine. Yes. You know, they do have things like power outages, but people have kind of tech technology to work around that. I think that my experience with remote working, not, you know, through marketing pros, and we've placed over 100 people now, some more successfully than others, is just, I suppose this is the same in any region. Just how hard it is to get remote working. Actually working like people sort of, particularly if you're dealing with a different country, a slightly different culture, you know, we spend a lot of time, you know, really working with the people in South Africa to like be good at remote, because I think a lot of people are not. And so we kind of focus a lot on that. From a company's perspective, I think the most important thing working with remote workers is, is really just kind of clarity and really like, look, this is what you need to you're going to achieve in this period of time. These are short term goals, these are long term goals. I think when that clarity is there, the remote side kind of flows a lot better.

Anything else you need to know about the market in terms of, for example, notice period, folks leaving their jobs expectations, you know, like for example, folks who try and hire in India from the US find it amazing that everyone's on a three month notice period versus the typical two weeks in the US and they're not ready for that or that culturally in India, most people, well, they've got their first job offer is when they start looking for their next job offer. So only 50% of people actually show up after they've accepted an offer. Any nuances like that that you've experienced in the South African market?

I would say one of the good things about the market is just the degree of ambition and people for the most part are fairly loyal to the companies that they go in and work for. Like they, they want to find a company that they can be in, build their career in and kind of align their goals. So I would say that is something that's really positive in terms of the logistics, like notice periods and that kind of thing. It's definitely, you know, if you were to have an entity there and hire people there, if you were to take all of those steps, then those notice periods are going to be way harsher than they are in the UK or the us. If you use an EOR company or company like us, then you're kind of protected from that side of things a little bit.

You mentioned the salary differences and there is an opportunity for arbitrage there like, like, for like taking any typical role, let's say in marketing where you know, you, I know you have personal expertise. What is the arbitrage difference? When you build in all the costs that you're going to have to probably include to payroll somebody work with an organization, what does it end up looking like?

Normally we say for the UK it's about a half, so it's generally about half price. For the US it's normally less than half. It might be sort of nearer 30 to 35%. It looks, sometimes it doesn't look that way because, you know, someone will ask us for, you know, let's say an SEO manager and we're like, okay, cool. That person's £30,000 a year and they're like, okay, but I could get an SEO manager in the UK for like 35,000. That doesn't sound a lot cheaper. But the UK SEO manager, 35,000 versus the SA SEO manager at 30,000 are kind of incompatible. Like the quality you're getting for that amount is so much higher. Like it is going to be a 60, 70,000 pound SEO manager in the UK. So it just takes a little bit of feeling around to kind of get a sense of the value.

So it's not necessarily in your recommendation, just about saving money. This can be about spending the same money, but getting a lot better talent for your. A lot better bang for your book, essentially.

Yeah. I think there are some roles that are just ridiculous in terms of value in South Africa. I think one of them is anything that is project management, account management, kind of make content strategy, that kind of thing. Those roles, you're getting such a good person for such a good, good rate. And as you say, it's about just getting a really, really good person rather than just sort of saving money. Now you can. Like in our agency, we did approach here about saving money and we've just been out to push so many extra net profit through the business in the last four years because of being based in Cape Town. So I don't want to say it isn't about savings entirely, but if, if this team in South Africa that I have suddenly cost the same as a team in the uk, the uk, I would still keep that team. Like I wouldn't then look to swap them out for the uk. So it is about quality. It's certainly not the cheapest region. Like you can find this talent for lower cost if you go searching for it. But in terms of kind of quality price Delta, I do think it's probably the best in the world.

I had a conversation with a bunch of heads of recruitment last week. We're in the States talking about hiring internationally and many of the employers around the table were hiring in India and they complained. And this is a generalism. I don't know whether it's true or not. It's probably five people's opinion. But they were talking about how, you know, we're trying to use AI more in terms of productivity and tools. But they're saying that their challenge with India was that they, the teams like to throw people at the problem. So it's. Everything's always about, well, we need another headcount, another headcount and that U.S. corps are okay with that because the price is so low. It's like, well, another headcount and is not the end of the world. But it doesn't have that culture of productivity and using better processes and bringing in innovations like AI. Maybe it's too early to say, but, you know, have you experienced that in South Africa? Is there a culture of productivity, of using technology, using tools, or is there a preference towards throwing bodies to the problem.

Yeah, it's, it's going to be much more aligned like a UK US mentality of, you know, here's a, here's a problem. Can you solve the problem rather than, you know, issuing a task and getting someone to do the task? And I think that is the critical difference of, you know, the people that we hire in, in South Africa. It's just very much solve the problem rather than this kind of coin operated list of tasks model. And I think a lot of people, until they really experience that and, and you know, it took us a while to find that. I'm not saying that everyone in South Africa is like that, but once you find those people, as I'm sure you know, you know, with your business, you know, everything just flows so much better. And that's what we're trying to do with the, the companies that we work with. We're like, we're really trying to align the right kind of person that's got the right kind of profile and skills to just solve that problem. So yeah, South Africa's way more that way than just, you know, people and just kind of work within processes that exist beautifully.

You wore, you wear both hats, you provide this service to organizations, Doug, but you also have your own team and a business running there. What have you learned about running a team? Assuming someone listening to this podcast is sold, they want to give it a go, they want to start hiring folks in South Africa. What are your tips about? You know, a year later when you have your first few employees up and running or even as you build that team, what did you learn? What are your tips and recommendations for somebody who might be trying to employ a team for the first time? What, what should they expect in the future?

I think it's assumed that somebody is, is looking to kind of build in the region beyond just kind of one or two people, and they're looking to actually kind of build a team there. I think the two things that I would say, number one is you, you know, you've got to have one at least one exceptional person on the ground in terms of, as a, as a point person, you know, we have more than one, but you've got to have at least one that can, you know, because South Africa is culturally similar, but there was, even with something, a country so similar, there are still a lot of nuances that are different and somebody that knows all of that, but that can also just deal with the issues on the ground. The second thing that I've sometimes do a good job, sometimes do a bad job of Kind of doing is just really kind of over delivering on all of the kind of culture stuff locally. So being in South Africa, the great thing is that you can do a lot of stuff and the cost of it is way less than doing it in London or Ireland or whatever. So just really trying to, trying to create a company that people really want to work for in terms of the culture stuff is good, the career stuff is good, the salary is good. Like we have very low churn in, in the agency and that kind of just helps us, helps us a lot. Because if you've got good people, they are going to have options. I think a mistake that people make in these regions is they go there and they think that everyone's going to be really grateful that you're offering these jobs and if that's the case, you're hiring the wrong people. Like, if you're hiring good people, they're not going to be grateful that you're offering them a job. So yes, there are advantages. You can have a cost advantage, that's fine, you can have an amazing person for a better rate. You haven't got to necessarily pay the same as the uk, but they're not going to be grateful. They can go and get this job elsewhere if they're good. So, you know, really try and focus on that cultural side of things would be my advice.

In terms of geography, you mentioned, Cape Town is where your team came from and are based, I believe. But do you have recommendations around other cities or locations around South Africa or is it largely all about Cape Town?

So definitely, I mean, Johannesburg is, you know, the capital, the economic capital of the country and I think the whole, the whole continent, really a lot of really good people in Johannesburg. And so that's definitely viable in terms of, like, it depends if you're planning to visit. Cape Town is beautiful. It's very, it's. If you haven't been, it's probably not what you expect. It's incredibly great destination to go to in terms of weather, in terms of, you know, quality of restaurants, just in terms of infrastructure. Like it's really, really good. You know, you don't. Yes, there are a ton of social and political issues in the country, but you don't really feel like you're, you certainly don't feel like you're in Africa when you're in Cape Town. So if you're planning to visit Cape Town's great. Cape Town has a very different vibe to Johannesburg. Cape Town is a little bit more chilled. People go to the beach. It's a Bit more of a creative place. You know, people want two weeks off Christmas and that kind of stuff. Johannesburg is way more hardcore or way more like business. Go, go, go, go go get things done. So a little bit if you were going to set up a call center like you know, that was going to take tickets for, you know, an online like Groupon thing or something and you just needed people to come in and just pump out 12 hour shifts probably. I mean Cape Town, yes, you could do that probably. But like that feels like Johannesburg if you've got like a nice B2B marketing agency or you know, you need a creative person or a good account manager. You know, Cape Town's, Cape Town's really strong for that kind of thing.

I think for those listening maybe who work for larger organizations might be recommending this as a strategy. A piece of advice that was given to me again by good friend who was in Microsoft at the time was talking about how Nigeria versus Kenya, for example. They found that there was more talent coming out of universities in Nigeria by volume than there was in Kenya. But the Microsoft execs tended to put the roles in Kenya because when they got off the plane, when they did visit, they did turn up. They were just totally taken aback by the culture in Nigeria. You know, it's, you landed Lagos and it's people shouting at you and it's very in your face and it's craziness on the, on the streets. Whereas Kenya is very western oriented, very nice, very civilized, you know, in a comparison. And so the, the on paper would be, you know, Nigeria every day. But I think Microsoft found that they significantly more investment in Kenya because at the end of the day the execs who needed to show up tended to put their dollars in the place they wanted to go to. So I think it's something to never underestimate the value of that. You might be thinking what makes no difference. Go where the talent is, go where the, go where the, the price is right. But those cultural differences do, do come to the fore. They make a difference when you're hiring on scale, I'd imagine Doug, 100%.

I mean if you were, if you were planning to go. I mean, I don't want to slate Johannesburg. I've never been to Johannesburg beyond the airport. So this is all while other people have told me. But what I can say is that Cape Town is, is phenomenal. It's got to be one of the best tourist destinations anywhere in the world. So yeah, so I go like three or four times a year and that is just a huge. Yeah, a huge bonus. Big reason that, yeah, big reason that it's worked, I think.

Doug, for anyone listening who wants to put their toe in the water, find out more, find out more about your services are your example of what you've done with your marketing business. How can they get in touch and what kind of queries can you field and what type of people do you think should reach out to you?

So we, the way that we work is that we have an initial call with somebody and we just spend that time really just trying to understand what it is that they're looking to achieve. Um, and then the second question is, do we have the, do we have the talent to kind of fulfill that? We probably work on about a quarter of the live roles that that kind of come to us so we can properly kind of work on those. Because for us it's a very intricate matching process. We really drill into what the company is looking to achieve. We have quite an extensive database of talent that have a very different set of skills, have a very different set of motivations, have a very different set of circumstances. We, you know, some of them are, you know, they really want to kick their career on in the next five years. Like we really intimately understand those people and, and so we spend time just trying to work out exactly who the right person would be for the company. I would say anyone that's, anyone that is running a company has a marketing department that is struggling to get things done, is micromanaging a lot, has got some gaps in there org chart across marketing. It would be well worth just having a conversation and, and we could just give you the context of this is the talent that we have and like we don't always have the talent they need but if we do, this is what it's going to cost. This is how long it's going to take to recruit them. So we work with companies of all sizes from like one or two person operated businesses right through to kind of much, much bigger agencies and tech businesses. So actual type of business matters less. It's more the pain. And if that pain is, I really, I'm tick, I'm sick of coin operated people. I want to get some talent into the business that can solve problems. Then I really think South Africa is the, the best region at the moment to come to and, and we can help you kind of navigate that.

So remind folks, is that reaching out to you on LinkedIn or what's the best way of getting in touch with yourself and marketing pros?

Yeah, LinkedIn works or just drop me an email at dougarketingpros co also. I'll get back to you that way.

Doug, I really appreciate you joining us today to kind of share some insight. Maybe a market that I think most of us haven't considered, haven't looked at, perhaps unfairly and kind of laying out the pros and cons of that market and sharing your insight in terms of what you've learned over the last few years certainly has convinced me that it's an area that should be looking more at. And I think for anyone who's responsible for major hiring decisions and trying to solve problems for an organization, you got the best of both worlds. Super talent, amazing communication skills, cultural alignment, time zone if you're looking at placing someone in Europe anyway and huge cost benefits.

Awesome. Nice one, Johnny. Really appreciate you having me on. It's been, it's been awesome.

Thanks for listening this week, folks. We'll be back with another episode next week. Until then, stay tuned.