Recruiter - September 2018

Business intelligence for recruitment and resourcing professionals

September 2018

INCORPORATING Recruitment Matters

www.recruiter.co.uk

Amazon’s amazing Katie George recruits tech grads

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C R ONT ENT S

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INCORPORATING Recruitment Matters

COV ER IMAG E | JO N ENOCH

A

NEWS

05 Staffing needs clash with

06

07

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longer-term strategies The FIRM finds resourcing professionals are caught between competing requirements PodTalent’s Bertin brings client insight to new role Building strong relationships with agencies maximises added value PeopleScout’s Affinix aids integration TMP Holdings’ new parent company offers AI-driven technology for RPO Start-up of the Month: The Ability People Founder Liz Johnson on her new venture This was the month that was...

Contracts & Deals

D

FEATURES

18 THE BIG STORY

Pitching for culture Amazon’s Katie George on hunting prime tech talent

24 Finding the finance

Clarify what funding is for before going to investors

15

29 Strength to strength

TMP Worldwide’s acquisition by PeopleScout brings opportunities

E COMMUNITY 33 Social Network 34 The Workplace: Guy Hayward

35 Community Careers: Tara Lescott

36 Business Advice: Louise Weinstein

38 My brilliant recruitment career: Natasha Woodford

B

TRENDS

12 Insight

15

C 16

17

Latest REC Industry Trends report reveals hotspots for contractor activity Tech & Tools Programmatic advertising – the next level

40 Movers & Shakers 41 Recruiter contacts 42 The Last Word: Rhys Maddocks

42

INTERACTION Viewpoint Simon Fanshawe, Diversity

by Design Soundbites

I M AG E S | I KO N / ISTO C K

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CONNECTING YOUR RECRUITMENT BUSINESS

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UPDATE

WE LCO M E

LEADER

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018 may be remembered for its dazzlingly hot summer – not only weather-wise but for a few big

Staffing needs clash with longer-term strategies

BY COLIN COTTELL

recruitment industry deals for Harvey Nash and, of course, for the UK’s TMP Worldwide.

When it comes to the latter, Recruiter

was pleased to have the chance to meet TMP’s Andrew Wilkinson, a well-known figure in UK recruitment, and Taryn Owen, president of PeopleScout, TMP’s new parent company, to talk about their future together in EMEA. We hope that this will be a

Graduates are assessed in part on how well they’re aligned with some of Amazon’s 14 leadership principles

marriage made in recruitment heaven – and why not?

Another treat of a meeting for this issue was with Katie George of Amazon. Katie tells us that graduates

seeking jobs with Amazon are assessed in part on how well they’re aligned with some of the company’s 14 leadership principles. The one most relevant to graduates, and most demonstrable potentially at this early point in their career, is ‘Learn and be curious.’

RESOURCING PROFESSIONALS are caught between competing requirements to fill current vacancies and to focus on strategic initiatives such as developing talent pipelines – to ensure they meet the longer-term talent needs of their organisations.

This is according to the FIRM’s (Forum for In-House Recruitment Managers) second Strategic Talent Acquisition Report.

Based on the results of a survey of 274 of the FIRM’s members, the report said constant demands on resourcing professionals to fill vacancies means that there is insufficient time and resources “to devote to creating relationships with talent communities, who may join the business in the longer term”. And it noted “the lack of specialist market data and intelligence for most employers”.

The report found when it came to building a talent pipeline, there had been little progress since the last report in 2013, with almost half (46%) describing their organisation’s approach as “only basic activity banking and recycling candidates from live recruitment activity”.

“A shift in focus is something that needs to be resolved before the skills shortage becomes even more pressing with the ageing population,” concluded the report.

Let me leave you with that thought this month. Learn and be curious in September, and always.

DeeDee Doke, Editor

Among other key findings were: • Only 9% say recruitment is seen as a source of competitive advantage; • Only 7% of companies have deep insight of the external market; • Resourcing professionals’ top three recruitment priorities – enhancing employer brand, building talent pipelines/communities and improving candidate experience – were the same as in 2013; • The most common metric used within organisations is time-to-hire, used by 78%; • Just over half (51%) of respondents said that line manager competency was an issue standing in the way of reaching their goals.

IM AGE | GETTY

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37,100 FOLLOWERS

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UPDATE

AS OF 9 AUGUST 2018

Pod Talent’s Bertin uses lessons learnt in new role

BY GRAHAM SIMONS

BUILDING STRONG RELATIONSHIPS with agencies has helped Danone to maximise added value from the agencies it has worked with.

This is according to Alice Bertin, who spent two decades at the French multinational food-products corporation, and who has subsequently moved to one of Danone’s partner agencies – Pod Talent – as its head of talent.

Bertin told Recruiter that in 2007 the company conducted research into its target market of candidates, and found that often this group was using recruitment agencies to find roles rather than directly applying to Danone.

She said that she followed this process up with further research of her own about how well the agencies Danone worked with were representing the company, and found there were massive gaps in their understanding of the firm. It was at this point that Danone sought better ways of working with these agencies, and of getting added value from them.

Partner agencies would hear about the firm’s strategy, gaining an inside knowledge of its future direction, so they could become an extension of the Danone team 6 RECRUITER

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To do this, Bertin explained, Danone engaged in a tender process D to cut down the number of agencies it used, as it would take a lot of effort upskilling these agencies on what was expected of them.

Partner agencies would hear about the firm’s strategy, gaining an inside knowledge of its future direction, so that these agencies could become an extension of the Danone team. Danone would also work with these agencies every time they took on a new consultant, ensuring these consultants were up to speed on what Danone expected and required from its partner agencies.

One of these consultants was Jon Dweck. Bertin said Dweck really understood what Danone was looking for in terms of quality of candidate. He went on to set up his own agency, launching Pod Talent in 2012, and Bertin’s team exclusively used Pod Talent for all its supply chain recruitment.

The partnership approach delivered results, said Bertin, but it also had a bearing on her next career move when she decided to take redundancy from Danone at the end of 2016.

She took on some consultancy projects with Pod Talent, one of which was a graduate recruitment project – which then led to her being offered the role of head of talent at the agency.

IMAG E | G ET T Y

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THOUGHTS FROM…

UPDATE

BRENDAN FLOOD C E O AND CHAIRMAN, STAFFING 360 SOLU TIO N S

“It’s incredibly easy to look at a spreadsheet and say ‘Hey, we are going to rule the world in the next three years’.”

DOLLY PARTON SINGER SONGWRITER AND AC TRESS

IM AG E | ISTO C K / SHU TTE R STOCK

“Above everything else I’ve done, I’ve always said I’ve had more guts than I’ve got talent.”

MATT CHARNEY C HIEF CONTENT OFFICER AT ALLEGIS GLOBAL SOLUTIONS INTRODUCES TODAY’S SU PERCO NNEC TED RECRUITERS TO THE PHONE AT RECFEST 20 18

“How many of you know what this is?

You get a better response than email.”

PeopleScout’s Affinix aids recruitment technology integration

BY DEEDEE DOKE

TMP HOLDINGS’ NEW PARENT COMPANY, PeopleScout, will offer its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven Affinix systems integrator technology as part of its recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solutions in the UK and beyond as the company moves to exert a stronger presence in the EMEA region.

PeopleScout president Taryn Owen told Recruiter: “We’re working through the implementation dates and so on.”

With the number of new recruitment technologies being released each week in double-digit figures, she said that Affinix was designed to “help navigate” the overwhelming variety on offer.

“Our customers are saying, ‘Help me understand this; help me field the 30 calls I am getting on a weekly basis’,” Owen said. “’Which technology is ‘best in breed for chatbot, CRM, AI, machine learning, video interview technology? When do I use it, how do I use it, what makes sense?’ Affinix was designed to help us navigate that.

“It’s become our job, our responsibility to make sense of that for them and bring them the right tools in a system that makes sense for their brand and for their candidate.”

The availability of Affinix will also benefit TMP, said Andrew Wilkinson, who is both TMP CEO and now PeopleScout’s group managing director for EMEA. He said that as a small business, TMP “would never have been able to have the resources to invest in that kind of technology”. Now, he added, this new technology platform would “allow us to have different conversations in the market”.

• For more, see feature on p29.

STA RT-UP OF THE MONTH THE ABILITY PEOPLE Former Paralympic swimmer Liz Johnson and her business partner, experienced recruiter Dave Carter, are launching The Ability People (TAP), an agency focused on reducing the employment gap among disabled people.

Johnson told Recruiter that while the Newportbased agency will help both non-disabled and disabled candidates, a consultant at TAP will focus on helping disabled or impaired candidates into work.

Johnson, who has cerebral palsy, said the agency’s launch was inspired by a statistic showing more than 30% of disabled people are unemployed.

“If it was that high for any other minority group, then there would be uproar,” she told Recruiter.

“I was an athlete, and got to do something I loved for 20 years. Now I’m not swimming any more, I’m becoming more aware of the barriers to disabled people doing what they want to

do or capable of doing rather than just taking a job because that’s the one’s that offered to them.

“I wanted to create an opportunity for people to have a work-balanced lifestyle but doing something they are good at it, to be the best version of themselves and, I hope, reducing the employment gap for disabled people.”

Johnson added that TAP has already won its first client – recruitment outsourcing specialist Guidant.

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THIS WAS THE MONTH THAT WAS… Here is a round-up of some of the most popular news stories we have brought you on recruiter.co.uk since the August issue of Recruiter was published J U L Y •‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒→

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APPRENTICE WINNER’S AGENCY MOVES INTO CONSTRUCTION… The Apprentice winner James White’s agency Right Time Recruitment has expanded into construction following an approach from an experienced recruiter in the sector.

Specialist Lakhvir Kumar has been brought on board to lead a new property and construction division, which will focus on quantity surveying, eventually recruiting into project management and site management.

And speaking to Recruiter, White explained that while he regards construction – particularly in the Midlands – as a hot sector right now, the agency’s latest move followed an approach by experienced construction recruiter Kumar.

The Apprentice winner’s links with fellow contestant Michaela Wain, who runs a construction magazine, is also a bonus in terms of marketing the new division, he explained.

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… AND FORMER APPRENTICE CONTESTANT SHAH EXPANDS AGENCY The Apprentice 2017 contestant and recruiter Sajan Shah’s agency Talent 4 Tomorrow has already moved to larger premises and expanded beyond its initial remit of graduate recruitment.

Shah spoke to Recruiter as the agency celebrated its first anniversary after launching in the wake of his appearance

on the BBC reality TV programme.

While it was Shah’s fellow recruiter James White that would go on to win the show, Shah reveals his agency has already outgrown its initial home in Moorgate in the City of London.

Shah told Recruiter the Moorgate office has been retained but is only home to one employee, while the rest are housed in larger premises in Harrow.

According to Shah, the agency has also grown its client base to 50, half of which are dealt with on an exclusive basis, while the agency has expanded beyond graduate recruitment to recruit for senior hires, in response to client demand.

More: https://bit.ly/2KlMFgx

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RECRUITERS, HAVE DRESS DOWN CODES BUT DON’T DISCRIMINATE Employment lawyers have revealed to Recruiter how agencies can develop dress codes that don’t flout discrimination rules. This comes as MPs call on Public Health England to issue formal guidance to employers on dress codes in hot weather.

A report by the Environmental Audit Committee recommends that Public Health England – an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care – issues formal guidance to employers on relaxing dress codes and allowing flexible working whenever heatwave alerts are issued.

According to Chris Tutton, partner at law Constantine Law, what is deemed a “reasonable” dress code depends on the workplace; so the dress code in a hospital will differ significantly from that on a building site, Tutton explained.

Elaborating on this point, Stephen Jennings, partner at law firm Tozers Solicitors, told Recruiter to guard against discrimination claims being 8 RECRUITER

brought, dress codes should not contain anything that differentiates between men and women.

“So, for example, men are expected to wear shirts and ties or suits and women can wear sleeveless dresses – that would be a clear example of potential discrimination. So the solution to that would be to allow members of both sexes to wear, perhaps, short sleeves. There’s obviously parity between the sexes but it is also a sensible compromise. It also preserves some level of formality in a customer-facing role.”

More: https://bit.ly/2Ko6gww

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MON, 6 AUGUST 2018

NUTELLA OFFERS DREAM TASTING JOB FOR CHOCOLATE AND NUT LOVERS Are you a chocoholic? Do you want to get paid to eat Nutella? Then we have the perfect job for you. The Italian firm Ferrero is seeking 60 ‘sensorial judges’, to give feedback on its products. You’ll need to travel to the firm’s lab in Alba, a town in Italy’s Piedmont region, not have any allergies and must be comfortable using a computer. The role offers a ‘competitive salary’ and a three-month training course, starting on 30 September.

Form an orderly queue…

More: https://bit.ly/2Mxd3Gs

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DAYS

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FIRM’S RIGOROUS TESTING CONCLUDES HMRC’S CEST CLAIMS ‘WOEFULLY INCORRECT’ HMRC’s Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool has been slammed as “hopelessly unreliable” and “biased” following testing of the tool by online contractor portal ContractorCalculator.

Following weeks of analysis of all the court cases with its own employment status lawyer, using 557 pages of the court judgements available in the public domain, ContractorCalculator has concluded that not only were HMRC’s testing claims “woefully incorrect”, but that the CEST tool is “heavily biased” towards pushing people into being incorrectly taxed as a “deemed employee”.

HMRC told Recruiter CEST had been “rigorously” tested throughout its development.

More: https://bit.ly/2ASjC4T

MON, 6 AUGUST 2018

I M AG E | I STO CK

NO-DEAL BREXIT A DISASTER FOR RECRUITERS A no-deal Brexit would cause chaos for recruiters, leaving agencies and workers in limbo, lawyers have warned.

The warning follows comments made by international trade secretary Liam Fox, who told the Sunday Times that he rated the chances of a no-deal Brexit as 60-40. So what would a no-deal Brexit mean for the industry?

Helen Murphie, employment and business immigration partner at law firm Royds Withy King, warned the consequences of crashing out of the EU without a trade deal will undoubtedly make Brexit even harder for UK employers who already fear a fall in business, higher prices, and recruitment issues. She predicts employers and recruiters will have to be a “little more” inventive to recruit and retain staff in light of a no-deal Brexit: “Employers and recruiters should now be looking at resourcing from other groups and considering more flexible ways of working, including schemes to recruit older employees, students, ex-offenders and those with disabilities, all of whom face difficulties getting work.”

More: https://bit.ly/2vOj6iJ

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TUE, 7 AUGUST 2018

TAKEOVER BID FOR HARVEY NASH WON’T AFFECT GROWTH PLANS, SAYS ELLIS Harvey Nash shareholder DBAY Advisors’ bid to take the global technology and outsourcing group into private ownership won’t affect the business’s growth plans, according to CEO Albert Ellis.

Ellis spoke to Recruiter following the group’s statement that the company had received a cash offer made by funds controlled by shareholder DBAY Advisors.

DBAY already holds a 26.1% stake in Harvey Nash. DBAY investment director David Morrison said DBAY knows Harvey Nash well, having been investors since February 2017. He added they are “delighted” at having the opportunity to partner with Harvey Nash’s management team to further strengthen its position in the specialist technology recruitment and outsourcing markets.

Ellis revealed shareholders would vote on DBAY’s offer at a general meeting in October. He told Recruiter nothing would change in the short term but DBAY would be involved with plans for growing the business. “That’s their main strategy – to grow the company,” he said. “We’ve made acquisitions. We’ve made three in the last nine months so there’s no real change.”

More: https://bit.ly/2M05E60 WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 9

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CONTRACTS

CONTRACTS & DEALS

Adecco Recruitment giant Adecco has sold its remaining shares in staffing software business Beeline to investment firm New Mountain Capital for around €110m (£97.7m).

The activities of Beeline were deconsolidated from the Adecco Group in December 2016, following the merger of Beeline with vendor management system IQN when private equity firm GTCR acquired a majority stake in Beeline.

GTCR already held a majority stake in IQN. The deal is subject to closing conditions including certain regulatory approvals but is expected to close during Q3 2018.

Bullhorn Cloud computing company Bullhorn has acquired Invenias, a UKheadquartered provider of cloudbased software for executive search firms. Bullhorn revealed Invenias will retain its own sales organisation and leadership team following the deal. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hays Recruitment giant Hays has renewed and expanded its current partnership with New York City Football Club (NYCFC). Hays has been the club’s official recruitment partner since NYCFC’s inaugural season in 2015. Under the new deal, Hays will continue to deliver services to NYCFC, strengthening the club’s front office by securing talent, and offering its expertise as NYCFC look to source professionals for the construction of its new stadium.

Staffline Recruitment and training group Staffline has completed the acquisition of Apprenticeship Levy provider Learndirect Apprenticeships (LDA) for a nominal sum. Staffline plans to integrate LDA into PeoplePlus, its skills and training division. The firm said the acquisition would increase PeoplePlus’s share within the Apprenticeship Levy market to 10%. The acquisition is funded from Staffline’s existing resources.

Liberty Vets Liberty Vets’ management team of Laura Mould, Colin Durbin, Sam Wilkinson and Emma Liddon have acquired an 80% stake in the veterinary staffing specialist. Liberty Vets is backed by recruitment incubation and support business SSG. Advising on the sale was RG Corporate Finance partner Carl Swansbury and corporate finance executive Adam Cassidy. The management buyout (MBO) team was advised by Simon Porter from Machins Solicitors. Funding for the MBO has been provided by AIB, led by Kevin Goodall, with Haines Watts providing financial due diligence on behalf of the bank.

DEAL OF THE MONTH

Morson Group Technical, aerospace and rail recruiter Morson Group has acquired technical recruiter Anderselite.

Anderselite will become a wholly owned subsidiary within the Morson Group maintaining its own brand and contracts while working alongside other Morson Group companies. The deal has the full support of the management

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teams of both companies. As a result, Anderselite will become part of the Morson Group.

Legal and financial advisers on the transaction to Morson were Beyond Corporate and Deloitte, while advisers to Anderselite were Shoosmiths, Fiander Tovell and Meridian Corporate Finance.

Terms of the deal and how much Morson paid were not disclosed.

Anderselite was acquired from its then parent company US-based CDI Corp by Anderselite’s management team and employees, led by managing director Simon Trippick and finance director Steven Smith, back in September 2016.

More contract news at recruiter.co.uk/news 09/08/2018 11:02

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TRE NDS

INSIGHT

GLOBAL CONTRACTING HOTSPOTS What do agencies need to know when finding contractors for the countries most in need of talent?

BY MICHELLE REILLY

T

here’s certainly no doubt that the contingent workforce has the potential to deliver significant profit to the recruitment arena. In fact, the recent Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) Industry Trends report revealed the sheer scale of this profitability, with a staggering 87.6% of the industry’s turnover coming from temp/contract placements last year.

However, in this globally connected world where almost every destination has some form of appeal to professionals, it is hard to know where to focus your attention. According to our data, though, there are six key hotspots for contractor activity.

The Netherlands With the Dutch economy growing and predictions of further positivity over the coming year, it is unsurprising that July saw a 186% increase in demand for contractors in the country year-on-year.

Interestingly, only 26% of these professionals are Dutch nationals, suggesting there’s a heavy reliance on international expertise at the moment.

A look at the data in more detail reveals that much of this demand comes from skills-short industries such as technical & engineering, pharmaceutical, IT, energy and oil & gas.

For agencies, bear in mind the compliance challenges contractors could 12 RECRUITER

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face when operating here. For example, if the individual is going to be residing in the country for over four months, they will need to register with the personal records database (BRP). Workers are also able to obtain a 30% ruling, which will see their taxable salary reduced by a maximum of 30%. However, there are stringent criteria to be eligible for this.

Spain Last year, Spain experienced the greatest growth of all of the advanced economies, and this period of expansion looks set to continue. In line with this uptick in positivity, a 154% year-on-year increase in contractor numbers has taken place.

Crucially, much of this demand is currently being met by EU professionals, who make up 51% of the contractors operating in the country.

However, securing a placement for your contractors isn’t without its challenges. For example, very few firms based in Spain hire professionals who can’t speak the local language in some form – even for English-facing roles.

Recruiters also need to be aware that any freelance professionals operating here will need to obtain a Numero de Identificación de Extranjeros or ‘NIE’ number. For any contracts over 90 days, individuals will also need to sign up to the foreigners’ register.

Egypt At a time when economists are predicting a 5.2% growth in the Egyptian

economy over the coming fiscal year, there’s a clear need for contingent workers to fill resourcing needs. In the first three months of 2018 alone, contractor numbers rose by 73%, with sectors such as pharmaceutical, technical & engineering, solar energy and offshore oil & gas leading much of this demand.

Egypt is a destination of choice, but employment and tax compliance here can be complex, with all non-nationals required to apply for a work permit when entering the country for a job. For recruiters, the fact that these can take around 50 days to obtain means the placement process can be lengthy.

With most contractors choosing to operate under an employed solution in the country, bear in mind that under this model there is a liability for employer and employee social security contributions. These have to be covered ILLUST RAT ION | ISTOCK

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INSIGHT

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by the agreed contract rate, so this should be taken into consideration when agreeing pay rates with the individual.

Finland The Finnish economy has been growing faster than expected, with reports revealing an increase of 2.8% in 2017. In comparison to figures from last year, contractor numbers in the country have risen 89%, with 76% of this demand being filled by Finnish nationals.

There’s a clear preference to operate under an employed solution here, with 70% choosing this option – unsurprising given that self-employed contractors are subject to social security payments levied at 23% of their taxable income.

When negotiating placements on behalf of a contractor, recruiters also need to be aware that tax is split in two: state tax, with a top rate of 31.75%, and municipal tax that ranges from 16.5% to 22.1% depending on the location.

Ghana With Ghana on track to become one of the world’s fastest growing economies, it is now one of the leading destinations

for contingent workers. An 86% increase has taken place in contractor numbers year-on-year to July 2018, with particular demand across marketing and energy.

Securing a placement in this destination, though, is complex. For immigration purposes, non-nationals will need to operate under an employed solution and will need a Work and Residence permit. Only highly qualified candidates are able to secure this, however, and cannot be present in the country while the application is being processed. In addition to the required permits, the applicant must also undergo a medical examination in order to receive a medical report.

It is clear that contractor placements present a significant profit pool for recruiters, but with international compliance requirements varying across the top destinations for contingent workers, agencies need to seek expert advice.

Michelle Reilly is CEO of 6CATS International

4 5

POWER POINTS The contingent workforce is one of the most profitable areas for agencies today, with this area generating a turnover of £28.2bn in 2016/17, according to the REC There’s been an increase in contractors working remotely (37% from 2017 to 2018), providing their services from their home country to other destinations, as international compliance becomes more complex 6CATS International has also noted an increase in contractors working offshore again, up 46% year-on-year Contractor numbers across The Netherlands, Spain, Egypt, Finland and Ghana in particular have risen in line with economic expansion Compliance requirements vary significantly across these destinations, with issues such as lengthy processes and detailed application necessities likely to affect placement timelines WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 13

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TECH & TOOLS

Get with the programme Taking programmatic to the next level SUE WEEKES

Programmatic advertising is in use daily by many recruiters, enabling them to serve up relevant and targeted ads and information to jobseekers in real-time.

It is a technology rooted in advertising and marketing – not recruitment – and this means the learning curve can be high for recruiters. At the end of last year, Nano Interactive launched Nano INSIST (Instant search-intent targeting) to allow recruiters to target jobseekers with more transparency but also pledged to help educate the sector and put in place good practice. Further signs it is evolving is US-based company Perengo launching one of the first tailored programmatic recruitment platforms in the UK in the final quarter of 2018.

WHY IS PROGRAMMATIC SIGNIFICANT? Programmatic is the natural evolution of online recruitment.

The rise of social media in the Noughties and more widespread use of analytics and technologies like machine learning have brought both more complexity and levels of sophistication to the process. In turn, increased activity across more digital channels has led to the gathering of huge amounts of data that can better inform recruitment strategies.

But managing it is a challenge.

Programmatic can bring a level of automation that helps recruiters harness

the power of this data, making their campaigns and spend more meaningful.

BUILT FOR RECRUITERS FROM THE GROUND UP Perengo has taken an advanced advertising technology and made it recruiter-friendly.

Programmatic advertising makes use of clever algorithms and analytics, and involves a split-second bidding process to get ads and information out to targeted audiences.

Previously, specialised agencies may have had such technology custom-built for them but it wasn’t widely available. Perengo has built a platform that gives direct access to programmatic

recruitment to any agency or resourcing department.

WHAT CHALLENGE DOES IT SOLVE? The people behind Perengo, who include veterans from hightech companies such as Google AdMob and Criteo, have taken the trouble to understand the typical day of an online jobseeker so they can use programmatic technology to deploy contextual ads at the relevant touchpoints. “A typical jobseeker might engage with job ads at 15 different, contextdriven touchpoints throughout the day, and across various digital channels,” says Mike Kofi Okyere, CEO and founder of Perengo. “It’s a huge

JARGONBUSTER Programmatic advertising: a machine, rather than a person,. buys online advertisements.

It involves a demand-side platform (DSP), which works out which impressions to buy and a supply-side platform (SSP), which sells the space.

I M AG E | I STO C K

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challenge for a human to design, deploy and manage an effective ad campaign that reaches the candidate at the right time via the right channel. We have created a framework that models the typical jobseeker journey.”

BRINGING DEMAND-SIDE PLATFORMS CLOSER At the heart of PA is a demand-side platform (DSP), which manages the bidding process and distribution of the ads. The Perengo DSP, which can be integrated with major applicant tracking systems such as ADP, Bullhorn, ICIMS, Jobvite and Taleo, automates campaign management and gives feedback on a campaign’s performance. All a recruiter has to do is set up the campaign, such as inputting job ad text and other basic

details. Many DSPs are rules-based – ie. once the budget level is hit, a campaign is automatically halted.

Perengo claims to be “true programmatic” and takes a more holistic approach by assessing a range of datapoints and optimises where and when job ads are placed.

AUTOMATION EQUALS MORE FACE-TO-FACE TIME The automation that systems such as Perengo brings can help free up the recruiter for more value-added work. “Use software to create, manage and continuously optimise job ad placements and associated conversions,” says Okyere. “Recruiters can focus on more important tasks where they can apply their experience and judgement to select and interview applicants.”

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C

INTE R AC TIO N

VIEWPOINT

Redesigning recruitment Diversity: current efforts simply aren’t working

BY SIMON FANSHAWE

hat’s wrong with diversity? People are going home at night from their full-time role as global head of D&I at Conglomerate Ltd exhausted with all the effort they have put in. Women are being reverse mentored. There’s black, LGBT and all sorts of other history months being arranged. There’s a calendar circulated to all staff that has Diwali on it and Ramadan. The company takes a float at Pride and their logo goes rainbow for July. What’s not to like?

What’s not to like is that there are still more men called John, David and Andrew in the top 300 jobs of the FTSE 100 (chair, CEO and CFO) than there are women and black and Asian people. I know because I counted them and had it quoted in Parliament so we could get it on the record in Hansard. And according to the Workforce Race Equality Standard in the NHS, you are almost twice as likely to go from a shortlist to a job if you are white than if you are black or Asian.

And every corporate website has some ‘blah, blah, blah’ like this on their website: ‘We aim to foster a culture where individuals of all backgrounds feel confident in bringing their whole selves to work.’

‘We want a workforce as diverse as the communities we serve and we value the experience that brings to our business ... etc’ These are real quotes. But the reality is that none of these companies have any black or Asian people in their Exec teams.

W

“We can’t train or educate ourselves out of our bias”

SIMON FANSHAWE OBE, partner, Diversity

by Design

So what’s wrong is we are just not reading the evidence. What’s wrong is that there is too much invested in good intentions and not enough in changing the way we hire and promote people.

You probably know the story of the orchestras recruiting for musicians in the 1970s in the US. The orchestra staff said they just wanted to listen to how people played and recruit the best musicians. And they kept recruiting white men.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with white men.

Some of us are perfectly charming. But it’s just a bit unlikely that all the best musicians would come from the same group of people. So they put a curtain in. Then they really could just listen to how the musicians played and they could really choose the best ones. Surprise! A much more diverse group emerged.

And the evidence (see Professor Iris Bohnet’s book What Works – Gender Equality by Design for the detailed research) showed that we can’t train or educate ourselves out of our bias, we have to redesign processes to enable us to make better decisions. Our good intentions don’t do it. And secondly we make decisions based on the wrong evidence. In this case the non-musical fact that they were white and male lead to an aural judgement that they played better!

So we need to stop spending thousands of pounds on “unconscious bias training” and other initiatives, and expect that putting Diwali and Ramadan in the diary or taking a float at Pride will actually to lead to more opportunities for promotion for black, Asian and gay people.

Instead, we have to embrace significant change, and redesign recruitment and promotion processes to give us the talent mix companies need to face the complex challenges of the fast-changing future.

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I N T E R AC T I O N

SOUNDBITES

WEB CH AT

How did you spend the first £1m you earned in recruitment?

TONY GOODWIN

GOOD ARTICLE BUT MORE NEEDED I read your article ‘How to prepare your workplace for a transgender employee’ (20 July). A good quick read and good advice from Lisa Gillespie who was probably limited by word count. Here are a few of my comments expanding on it.

The article talks about gender transition in two years. Reality is nearer five or six years for most people, which is mainly to do with NHS waiting lists but also because some medical treatments actually take many years to take full effect. Many workplace health insurance policies don’t cover gender transition and this is worth looking at when purchasing your company’s healthcare insurance. The NHS does not cover all possible procedures.

Every trans person has a unique journey and medical needs but most employees will not be able to afford the much quicker route of private medical procedures, which can easily reach £5k-£80k+ depending on their needs.

The article also doesn’t cover gender questioning employees, gender fluid employees or non-binary gendered employees, who should be treated the same way. They may not signal to their employer their intention to transition to a specific gender, but instead simply change or tweak their gender presentation over time to what feels comfortable and right for them. They will most likely signal to their employer when they are ready to discuss gender and name changes, including non-binary pronouns they/ them and the Mx honorific.

G ROUP CEO & CH A I RMA N , A N TA L IN T ERN AT I O N A L A N D A N TA L IN T ERN AT I ON A L N ET WORK

“My abiding principle has always been to spend money on experiences rather than things, so it’s been on holidays – for example, the Maldives, Dubai, touring India seeing the Taj Mahal with the family, international football, rugby, big boxing title fights. I like doing things with my kids that I might otherwise not be able to afford, such as skiing, white-water rafting, paragliding and canoeing. Shared experiences are more important to me than cars, clothes, jewellery, watches or expensive things. That’s why I enjoy having eight children so that I can share those experiences and memories that become more valuable over the years.

Although I have to say the public school system in the UK has soaked up a lot of excess liquidity I might have had with eight kids!”

ZACK FEATHER CH A I RMA N , UN IT Y H EA LT H CA RE RECRUI T MEN T

“I had been brought up knowing that it was harder to earn a pound than spend it, so when I first came into a significant amount of money I was extremely careful how I spent it. For the first £1m I took my time in spending it. I looked at numerous investments and where I expected a minimum return of four to six times my investment, so I scrupulously looked at what I was going to spend it on. I invested into a health tech business called Umed, which was ground-breaking in curating medical data and now blockchain tech in patient data, as well as BrandLab – a fashion technology business that is revolutionising wholesale fashion industry. I then bought two houses in high-growth areas of the country. Finally, I bought a Ferrari, as life is too short not to have fun along the way.”

CARA CAPSTICK MANAGING DIRECTOR AT PARKER SHAW

HEALTHCARE PULLBACK DUE TO REPEAL OF OBAMACARE? On reading ‘Financials: US Cross Country Healthcare sees slight fall in revenue (2 August)’, the question here should be ‘Was the pullback by healthcare systems a direct correlation to uncertainty around Obamacare being repealed by the Trump Administration?’.

Trump has failed to completely destroy Obamacare, but the cost of healthcare continues to rise, yet healthcare providers seem to be cutting every expense they can because of uncertainty in the marketplace.

PETER SEARLE EX ECUT I V E CH A I RMA N , A IRSW IF T

“I never have. I just saved it and I put it into a house.

All of the money I have ever made, I have put into property… because it’s a good investment and I wanted to live in a nice house. You never know how long a career in recruitment is going to last. I was doing well when I was a salesman. I decided it was a good time secure my property, so I put it into a house I bought in Bristol and paid down my mortgage.”

RICHARD EIB

IM AGE | PAL HANSEN

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TH E BIG ST T O RY K ATIE GEORGE

PHOTOGRAPHY: JON ENOCH

Amazon’s EMEA tech campus recruiting lead Katie George’s enthusiasm must give her the edge in the fierce competition to attract graduates on campus. Dee Dee Doke went to meet her omething approaching unabashed joy dances across Katie George’s face at virtually every juncture of a conversation with her. It’s the kind of delight you expect to see from someone who’s about to embark on a threemonth, all-expenses-paid holiday or has won a life-changing amount of money in the lottery.

However, our conversation has nothing to do with fanciful leisure pursuits and everything to do with her work as EMEA tech campus recruiting lead at Amazon where she has worked since May 2017.

As she explains: “Any hiring that happens in a technical team… in any country in this region, it will come through my team . This is probably the most exciting campus recruiting role I’ve ever had.”

And now is an especially exciting time for the company that first made its name as an online

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retailer and has since exploded into all sorts of businesses, from fashion to films, delivery innovations, iconic products such as Alexa, web services and too many more offerings to count.

In the UK, where Amazon will employ 27,500 by year-end, the company has invested £9.3bn since 2010 and has launched development centres in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London, working on projects including Prime Video, Prime Air, Alexa and Amazon website/mobile customisation. A second development site in Cambridge, opened last November, has capacity for 400 new specialist roles including machine learning experts, knowledge engineers, and speech scientists, to name a few. The London Development Centre, which opened a year ago, allows the doubling of specialist R&D roles in London from 450 to 900.

SEPTEMBER 2018

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“One of the reasons I came here, one of the reasons a lot of people come to Amazon, is you will be heard”

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T H E BI G STO RY K AT I E G E O RG E

Custom mer-centric c With tech at the forefront of what Amazon is all about, George and her team are increasingly busy.

In addition, there has been an internal restructure in recruitment, for instance bringing together the campus recruiters into one global team. There are over 30 campus recruiters for the EMEA region.

“The reason we are bringing our campus recruiters together is to become more ‘customer obsessed’,” George tells Recruiter, referring to one of Amazon’s 14 leadership principles.

The campus team, she says, places graduates into any and all Amazon businesses, unlike many other recruiting teams in the company who focus on specific divisions. “We’re one of the only teams at the moment that will span across that number of businesses.

“A lot of what we do will be external facing. So historically we’ve had a number of different campus recruitment teams in different Amazon businesses, who are going out to similar universities at times and marketing to the same students – which,” she says, “is actually fine and has worked really well in the past. But we want to go one step further and make it better. So we’re bringing together all those resources and, jointly as one team, going out externally and marketing to those students what those roles are.

“It’s clearer, more ‘customer obsessed’ and it’s worked for us really well in the last year,” George says.

George previously worked in campus/graduate recruitment roles at AIG, Credit Suisse, Rothschild and Barclays Wealth. Making the switch to the funkier consumer brand for employment for herself resulted in part from the unique selling point (USP) that she pitches to potential graduate recruits: Amazon’s culture.

George: giving graduates a chance to have their say at Amazon

CV: KATIE GEORGE May 2017 – present: EMEA tech campus lead, Amazon May 2014 – March 2017: EMEA head of campus recruiting, AIG Oct. 2011 – May 2014: Campus recruitment manager, Credit Suisse June 2010 – Oct 2011: Graduate recruiter, Rothschild Sept 2006 – July 2009: Graduate recruiter, Barclays Wealth Sept 2006 – June 2007: Graduate recruitment co-ordinator, Barclays Capital EDUCATION: MSc, Occupational Psychology, University of Nottingham BA, Psychology, University of Warwick

Cultu ure of listtening “When you’re a graduate recruiter and going out to speak to young people, they have pre-set perceptions of what they think of the corporate world,” she says.

“Here at Amazon, you can go out as a recruiter and genuinely say to students, ‘You’re going to have your say’. That’s what this generation wants. They want to come into an organisation where they can, from day one, sit in a meeting and actually be listened to. Everybody wants that.

“One of the reasons I came here, one of the reasons a lot of people come to Amazon,” she says, “is you will be heard.

We’re not very hierarchical – obviously, we have levels and we have people who move up and get promoted here, but I get listened to the same amount as someone who is two or three levels above me because what I have to say is important and what everybody on my team has to say is super important too.

“So for me,” George says, “I’ve created a culture in the team where people know they can bring their whole selves to work, they can say exactly what they think, and if they disagree with me, I want to hear about it. Because how [else] do we improve our processes, and how do we improve our business?

“That’s an easy culture for me to instil in my team because everybody else here is doing it; I’m not going against the grain. I’m doing what the Amazon culture promotes. So I would say that is something that really attracts graduates to work here,” she says.

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TH E BIG ST T O RY K ATIE GEORGE

thought I could influence and support and help people more in a personal capacity, and if I could go into the workplace and help people there, I could make a huge impact.”

Recru uiting rea alisation After completing a master’s degree in occupational psychology at the University of Nottingham, she put her interest in psychology in the workplace to good effect by turning to the peoplecentric environment of recruitment.

She launched her recruiting career at Barclays Capital as a campus recruitment co-ordinator on a temporary contract, but was hired on in a permanent capacity before she’d even finished the temp assignment. “I had super supportive managers,” she said.

Did she feel that she fitted in? “People asked me if I felt different in the workplace because of the colour of my skin or my hair, and I never did,” she says.

Inclussive initia atives Equal opportu unity A child of a mixed-race marriage, George was born in Swaziland to a South African mother from Soweto and a British father from Bridport, Dorset. “An interesting combination,” she says with a laugh. Her family was “accepting of everybody and everything, so for me it’s second nature to feel that everybody’s equal”, she says.

Born at a time when apartheid was still manifest in South Africa, George moved to London at age five with her mother and sister when her parents divorced, her father remaining on his farm in South Africa. “I can’t say I felt disadvantaged at any point,” George says.

At the same time, she acknowledges: “I suppose that drove me towards wanting to understand people, their career paths, their lives, to help them navigate through life. It can be tricky at times.”

She thinks her father, who being white is an ethnic minority in Swaziland, first realised that his daughter was an ethnic minority when he came to England to visit her on her first day of psychology studies at the University of Warwick. “He looked around the [university] piazza, and he looked at me, and he just went, 22 RECRUITER

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AM AZON’S 14 PR I NCI PLES OF LEAD ER SHI P

▶ Customer obsession ▶ Ownership ▶ Invent and simplify ▶ Are right, a lot ▶ Learn and be curious ▶ Hire and develop the best ▶ Insist on the highest standards ▶ Think big ▶ Bias for action ▶ Frugality ▶ Earn trust ▶ Dive deep ▶ Have backbone; disagree and commit ▶ Deliver results

‘Oh wow, you look really different to all the other students!’ I knew that already because I’d been in school in England,” she says. “It was quite funny.

He looked very concerned for me. I wasn’t concerned about it given the way my mum had brought us up, in a very inclusive environment.”

Initially, she wanted to be a clinical psychologist. But as she neared the end of earning her degree, she realised: “I

Having grown up in an inclusive environment, offering the same to others is important to George. “It’s something that I brought with me to Amazon, but it’s not just a personal goal. I’m very happy to see it’s happening here already anyway,” she says.

She speaks enthusiastically of diversity/inclusion initiatives underway at Amazon including the availability of a women’s innovation bursary and the launch in June this year of a transgender toolkit that aims to not only provide support for people seeking gender reassignment but also to provide information to their colleagues.

“Diversity is a big aspect of what we all try and do,” she says. “It’s a big organisational goal; we are looking for a diverse workforce regardless of where we are. So that goal remains the same wherever we’re recruiting.”

George was recently identified as a future ethnic minority business leader by a major newspaper, an accolade that has thrilled both herself and Amazon.

However, looking beyond this type of award, George should keep in mind one of Amazon’s principles of leadership: ‘Think big.’ She is already well on her way to being a future leader – full stop.

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FINDING THE FINANCE 24 RECRUITER

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I N V E ST M E N T

Funding is the lifeblood for staffing firms, but whether it’s for growth or survival, recruiters should know exactly what they need the finance for before approaching investors.

Colin Cottell investigates When international recruiter Staffing 360 Solutions acquired Clement May, an RPO [recruitment process outsourcing firm] operating in the IT sector in July, the deal was facilitated by the group’s bankers HSBC. “When I met them to talk about funding for this deal, it took about 10 seconds for them to say ‘yes’,” says Brendan Flood, Staffing 360 Solutions’ chairman and CEO. Flood says this relatively painfree experience owes much to the relationship built up over many years between HSBC and CBSbutler, before the technical recruiter was acquired

by Staffing 360 Solutions. According to Flood, this acquisition together with that of US recruiter FirstPro Georgia was itself only made possible because of a $40m (£30.7m) three-year term loan from Jackson Investment Group.

Flood says raising finance “has been imperative” to the firm’s growth strategy.

“We can’t buy companies without raising money to fund the seller, who usually want a significant proportion of the purchase price in cash. There’s a limit to the extent that we can use earn-out, deferred payments or our own stock, so we have to raise cash,” he says.

FUNDING CLIMATE In common with Staffing 360 Solutions, unless they can finance their operations out of current income or cash reserves, funding is the lifeblood of staffing companies. They use it in a variety of ways. Some of the most common are to improve their short-term cashflow; to expand their business; to fund management buyouts; or to make acquisitions. So what is the funding climate for staffing companies at the I L L UST RAT I O N | IKO N

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moment, and how should staffing companies take advantage of the funding opportunities that are available?

Chris Smith, who heads up the debt advisory practice at Clearwater International Corporate Finance, says before a staffing company rushes into any form of funding arrangement, they need to take a step back. “If someone comes to us and says they want to raise finance, the first thing we ask them to do is to tell us why they are raising the finance, what are their business goals and ultimately what they want to do with the business.”

Karri Vuori, head of M&A at investment bank Liberum, says funding can be broken down into three broad categories: debt, private equity and public equity (raising money on the stock exchange). However, the precise form of funding that is best suited for a company will depend on its individual circumstances and needs. “We are agnostic as to the form of finance, as long as it is appropriate needs of the particular company,” he says.

In the past, issuing shares through an IPO [initial public offering] on the stock exchange was a popular way for staffing companies to raise capital, with even relative minnows, such as Kellan Group, joining long-established public companies such as Michael Page. But Vuori says that for the vast majority of today’s companies this is no longer a realistic option. He says that staffing firms looking to do an IPO today need to be large, with profits of at least £10m, and preferably have exposure to the US. Other than for this type of company, Vuori says the IPO market is unlikely to support a staffing company. “We are at the peak of the business cycle and if it

all goes wrong, recruitment is one of the sectors that is going to fall the most. So a very UK-focused recruiter doesn’t make an attractive IPO at the moment,” he explains.

If raising capital through the public markets is only an option for a select number of staffing companies, Smith says other sources of funding are readily available. “There is a lot of debt capacity in the market,” he says. For many staffing firms this means invoice finance, with banks and other lenders keen to lend typically based on 85% or 90% of the value of staffing company’s invoices.

Looking beyond invoice finance and asset-based finance, Smith says the availability of debt finance depends on individual businesses and their circumstances. For instance, recruiters operating in niche sectors, or sectors where there is a strong underlying demand such as teaching, will be looked at more favourably by lenders than generalist recruiters. Smith says that recruiters who have “a good growth story” and “can demonstrate that they have a reason to exist in the sector they are servicing” are a key metric for ensuring that people will be interested in funding them. In contrast, “a business that looks like it is flat or slightly going backwards will find it harder to attract funding”.

OTHER FUNDING OPTIONS In addition to banks, others are keen to put their money into the sector, with debt funds and direct lenders having considerable amounts of capital raised from individual investors that they need to invest. “They need to put that money to work, and they are willing to be a little bit more adventurous than banks will be,” Smith explains. In one deal involving the acquisition of a nursing agency that Clearwater helped facilitate, a debt fund was prepared to put in almost twice the amount of capital that the banks would have done, Smith says.

Phillip Ellis, director of Optima Corporate Finance, says the chances of a staffing business being able to raise funding depends “first and foremost on the quality of the management”.

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steadily over a number of years, established a track record, banked profits and is on a continuing growth curve should have a good chance of raising debt to support that growth.”

In contrast, a start-up “that says it is going to grow quickly in its first year or two is not suitable for debt”.

According to Vuori, the widespread availability of debt capital makes it an attractive option for staffing companies.

“There is a ton of debt capital available in the market at the moment at terms that are very attractive,” he says. “Covenants [conditions imposed by lenders] are relatively light, and interest rates are very low, making debt a very attractive form of finance.

“It is three or even four times cheaper than equity in many cases,” Vuori continues. “If you are a decent quality recruiter you should be able to borrow at 3.5-4% net interest.”

EQUITY ROUTES Vuori says the exception is those companies that already have large levels of debt. For these highly geared recruitment businesses, he says the only option is to go down the equity route, raising funds by selling shares in the company. But even though owners of staffing business may be prepared to accept the reduction in control that goes with this option, he says this may not actually be a realistic option.

He explains that despite the private equity (PE) market being “awash with capital”, with the sector currently at the peak of its business cycle, PE investors are wary of investing in staffing companies, making it harder than in the past for recruiters to get PE investment.

“PE will need to exit their investment in a three to five-year timescale – they need to sell it off to someone. And making a decision to invest in something that you might exit in three years when you think you might be in a downturn by then is

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problematical in a very cyclical industry.”

KNOW THE PITFALLS Although staffing companies may be keen to raise funding, and may well have good business reasons to do so, advisers warn that there are certain pitfalls they should avoid.

“My advice would be not to leverage it up to much, so around three times your EBITDA [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation] for banking funding and about four times EBITDA for debt funds and direct lenders is probably where the market is,” says Smith. “If there are headwinds, people switch off recruitment, so a staffing company’s income can be volatile.” For this reason staffing companies should leave themselves some headroom just in case things don’t run to plan.

Vuori points out that while the terms of any financing agreement are clearly important, just as vital is choosing the right finance partner. “Particularly on the PE side, there is a huge spectrum of cultures: how involved will they be in the business and its day-to-day running; what financial benefits will they bring; how aggressive will they be if things turn bad.” He cites Growth Capital Partners, owner of specialist technical engineering recruiter Shorterm Group, as a PE firm “with a reputation for being a very relaxed and helpful owner that doesn’t interfere too much”.

In contrast, Vuori continues, “other houses have more aggressive stances, and the moment you start veering off the investment plan, even if it is through no fault of the management team, you may start finding that they step in, sack a member of the management or interfere heavily – that’s the cultural aspect you can’t know unless you know the players involved day in, day out”.

Smith agrees. “If all you need is cheap, working capital that is fine, but if you are talking about financing to support the growth of the business and achieving the long-term aims of the shareholders, you have got to find the right partner to support you,” he concludes.

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POWER POINTS Work out what you need funding for.

Carry out due diligence on potential lenders.

Don’t chose the cheapest finance – the terms and conditions are likely to be less flexible.

Be conservative in how much you borrow to give you headroom should things not go to plan.

Test what would happen if your revenue were to drop by 20, 30 or 40%.

Would you still be able to service your debt?

Get to know your lender and be transparent about any problems that arise.

Make sure that PE investors share your goals and ambitions, and are a good cultural fit.

When considering PE investment, ask yourself how much control of the business you are willing to give up to secure that investment.

SEPTEMBER 2018

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Issue 65 September 2018

RECRUITMENT MATTERS The View and The Intelligence Why diversity is key

The big talking point p2-3

How to start an agency

Legal Update p4

Introduction fees

What’s coming up p6

KEY SECTORS COULD FACE

LABOUR CRUNCH

POST-BREXIT British firms could come unstuck in key sectors, such as food supply, if the government does not allow employers to continue to access temporary and seasonal workers from the European Union (EU) after Brexit, says the REC. EU nationals make up 7% of the population but account for 14% of the UK’s workforce, according to a report from the REC.

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The report – ‘Shortterm labour for long-term growth’ – says that four out of five (81%) of employers who create temporary or seasonal jobs said they hire EU workers.

Much of this is driven by a shortage of labour in many areas of the UK: 42% of employers said they had not been able to find enough workers to fill all their seasonal or temporary

vacancies, a concern echoed by recruiters. Approximately a third of recruitment agencies supplying agency workers to each of the warehousing (29%), hospitality (38%) or food and drink (39%) sectors had not been able to meet their clients’ overall demand for staff.

REC chief executive Neil Carberry says the report sends a strong message to government.

Minister for Disabled People Sarah Newton p8 “Employers need the government to secure the transition period quickly, including an agreement on mobility in the exit deal.

Temporary and seasonal roles need to be part of this.

The right to work must be attached to the individual coming to work, not dependent on sponsorship by an employer or the promise of a permanent contract,” he says.

The report was released just before the latest labour market statistics released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which showed unemployment rate was the joint lowest since 1975 at 4.2% down from 4.5% a year earlier.

Carberry says employers need certainty to ensure the trend continues.

“There may be more challenging times ahead as we move closer to leaving the EU. With employment high, a comprehensive mobility deal is needed to stop lack of people being a brake on jobs and prosperity,” he says.

www.rec.uk.com 07/08/2018 12:48

Leading the Industry

THE VIEW

A revolution is coming, says Tom Hadley, REC director of policy and professional services

Neil Carberry, C, CEO of the REC, ty on why inclusivity and diversity is central to good recruitment

While we all had the popcorn out watching the Brexit drama in the House of Commons one night earlier this month – and, for the record, business needs government to have the space to do the pragmatic deal on transition, goods and immigration – the other story from Parliament that night was about age discrimination.

I don’t agree with the way the Women and Equalities Select Committee has talked about our sector, on very limited evidence. My experience is that recruiters are the engine for change – not the brake on it, which the committee implied.

As well as being the right thing to do, they know discrimination makes no moral or business sense – especially in a tight market with candidate shortages.

Our prospects for growth and prosperity are damaged if any group of people are denied opportunities to work because of who they are.

Looking beyond stereotypes is key – age is not an indicator of ability; shedding the perception that older workers are less productive, because it is not true. As recruiters, challenging client perceptions of older candidates as being ‘too experienced’, ‘overqualified’ or ‘out of touch’ with what an individual may be able

RIDING THE TIDE OF THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION to bring to the job is vital.

After all, when REC members across the country tell us candidate availability is their key challenge, why would we leave some of the best skills on the shelf?

Promoting inclusive workplaces should be a hallmark of our world-leading recruitment sector. The REC is already leading the way – our joint initiative with Age UK aims to highlight the skills and experience of the older workforce, while enshrining best practice in recruiting those over 50.

Through our Good Recruitment Campaign we support client organisations in evaluating what they do and be more ready for a tailored and inclusive range of choices from their agency. And REC guidance – through webinars, workshops and conferences – can help recruiters to assist their clients to reach new heights in finding the right talent for them while focusing them to remember that older workers are a critical part of the economy and will become more so in the future.

It should not be lost on us that recruiters are uniquely placed to guide employers on how to attract and retain a wide range of talent – another example of how central the industry is to some of the key questions faced by the UK today.

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We have been engaging in some serious high-energy futurology since the launch of our Future of Jobs commission last year. Our involvement with the All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) on AI and the 4th industrial revolution have underlined the sheer extent of potential disruption, as well as the shimmering opportunities that a changing landscape can provide.

Investing in infrastructure at the right time is one of the characteristics of successful recruitment leaders and it has been encouraging to see how the industry is looking to harness new technology to provide world-class services to both candidates and clients. We are starting from a strong base with over 80% of employers expressing satisfaction with their recruitment agency partners, according to our JobsOutlook report.

For future-focused recruiters the opportunity also lies in being ahead of the game in terms of pre-empting major sectoral developments and being able to meet evolving skills needs. The recent PWC report argued that manufacturing, transport and storage, and public administration will see the largest long-term decrease in jobs due to AI with sectors like professional, scientific and technical services, health and education seeing the largest net increase in jobs in the long run. PwC predicts that up to 20% of UK jobs will be displaced; the recruitment sector is uniquely placed to help employers and jobseekers make sense of this shake-up.

The next phase of our Future of Jobs project is aimed at prompting further reflection on what seismic changes to the world of work will mean for our industry.

With regards to technology and AI, the feedback from REC members so far has been emphatic. The way forward is to walk towards this brave new world, to understand and harness the latest tools and innovations. In the same way that existential threats to our industry like job boards and social media were resoundingly seen off, the key is to be confident – though certainly not complacent – about the sector’s ability to ride the wave of the 4th industrial revolution.

You can follow Tom on Twitter nt @hadleyscomment

www.rec.uk.com

07/08/2018 12:48

50%

THE INTELLIGENCE A NATION FACING A DEVELOPING SHORTAGE OF TEMPORARY WORKERS

Thalia Ioannidou, REC senior researcher The UK’s economic strength is built on companies being able to do great business.

With the UK’s employment rate at record high and a fall in net EU migration driven by a decrease in EU citizens coming to the UK for work, ensuring businesses have access to the people they need is of critical importance.

In July, the REC published the report ‘Short-term labour for long-term growth: EU agency workers post-Brexit’.

The report investigates the potential impact of the end of freedom of movement on the supply of temporary workers, particularly in industries that have a significant reliance on

AGENCY HEADCOUNT GROWTH SLOWS, BUT REMAINS POSITIVE The latest real-time information from the RIB Index shows that year-onyear (YoY) growth in the headcount of the median industry recruiter has been slowing since Q4 2017 – but remains positive.

With the move into negative territory in H2 2016, the average monthly headcount growth across the year was just 1.6%. Following a notable uptick in Q1 2017,

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EU temporary workers such as food and drinks, hospitality and warehousing.

As the report demonstrates, EU temporary workers provide a valuable contribution across the country in a wide range of sectors and at various skill levels. The REC’s survey of recruiters shows that a significant portion of temporary assignments in key sectors in the last 12 months were filled by workers from the EU. Notably, over half of respondents that supply the food and drinks, warehousing and hospitality sectors reveal that 50% or more of their temporary assignments were filled by EU workers.

A particular reliance on young EU temporary labour is also evident – over half of recruiters placing EU temporary agency workers in hospitality and food and drinks roles claim 50% or more of these workers were 18-30 years old. The number

50% OR MORE OF THEIR TEMPORARY ASSIGNMENTS WERE FILLED BY EU WORKERS IN FOOD AND DRINKS, WAREHOUSING AND HOSPITALITY SECTORS

of respondents who only place EU temporary agency workers who are over 30 years old is negligible across key sectors.

Similarly, the REC’s survey of employers reveals that nearly half of all businesses had used EU workers to fill seasonal or temporary roles in the last 12 months with three in five claiming 10% or more of their contingent workforce was from the EU. The UK is faced with a developing yet pressing labour shortage. A third of recruiters supplying agency workers to the warehousing (29%), hospitality (38%) or food and drinks (39%) sector had not been able to meet their clients’ overall demand in the last 12 months.

For employers, candidate

Figure 1. Total employees versus last year (%) – quarterly average 16% 14%

14.1%

12% 10%

7.8%

8%

6.2%

5.8%

6% 4%

availability remains the key challenge for them in meeting industry’s needs, with two in five employers (42%) that recruit temporary or seasonal workers being unable to meet their demand for labour. This represents nearly a quarter (23%) of all UK businesses.

The analysis of the views and concerns of recruiters and employers adds further evidence to the Brexit debate and informs the government of the labour needs for temporary workers so that appropriate provisions are made. The flexible workforce plays a crucial role in keeping British businesses economically viable and competitive. Any post-Brexit immigration system that reduces the availability of temporary workers in the UK is likely to have a detrimental knock-on effect on the overall UK economy.

You can download the REC’s latest report at www. rec.uk.com/research running at 4.0%. With YoY growth in total turnover and NDR for the median RIB recruiter remaining buoyant, businesses appear to be capitalising on the opportunity to optimise the potential of existing headcount.

4.1%

2% 1.4%

0 -0.2%

-2%

-2.0%

-4% Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Apr-May 2015 2016 2017 2018

which remained strong for four quarters, the monthly average headcount growth for the median RIB recruiter across the year was 6.4%.

While remaining positive in 2018, the average monthly YoY growth across the first five months of the year has slowed and is currently

Belinda Johnson runs employment research consultancy Worklab, and is associate knowledge & insight director of Recruitment Industry Benchmarking (RIB) – part of the Bluestones Group. The RIB Index provides bespoke confidential reports on industry benchmarks and trends.

See www.ribindex.com; info@ribindex.com: 020 8544 9807. The RIB is a strategic partner of the REC.

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The Big Talking Point

START-UPS

STARTER FOR 10 Looking for a career change? If you want to start your own recruitment agency, the REC is here to help. We know the opportunities available and the pitfalls to avoid.

Our dedicated Start-Up Your Own Agency course offers a comprehensive overview of how to run a profitable recruitment agency.

For a taster of some of the areas we cover, here is a 10-step guide for starting a recruitment business.

1 What is your unique selling point? There are around 23,980 recruitment agencies in the UK, according to the latest Recruitment Industry Trends survey and standing out from the crowd is important.

It is vital new agencies pick a target audience and offer a unique service to clients, whether it be by skill, region or sector.

The REC’s regular jobs market data and research offers important insight into the latest recruitment industry trends.

You can use these resources to hone your target market.

set up a traditional high street model or low-cost online start-up? Either way, you will need to have a clear and transparent pricing structure that considers your business running costs.

The two most common structures are flat-rate fee and commission fee, which is based on a percentage of the candidate’s salary. Our start-up course covers both in depth.

2

4

PLAN

HAVE A GOOD SOURCE OF FUNDING

Develop a clear plan that is simple and realistic. Set easy, clear and timely targets and goals, but be prepared to be agile and flexible to change. As part of our Start-Up Your Own Agency course, you will learn how to develop a clear and realistic business plan, following tried and tested methods.

It is sensible to have enough cash to cover six months of costs.

Any loans or investment needs to be legally documented and all parties aware of risks. It may help to use invoice discounting from one of the main banks to help with your cashflow, especially if you are recruiting temps, contractors or interim hires.

3

5

DEVELOP A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL

DEVELOP A MARKETING PLAN

Recruitment businesses can take a wide range of models, and each come with different overheads. Are you going to

Taking a planned approach to marketing will ensure your business is seen and heard in a busy and noisy marketplace.

FIND YOUR NICHE

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6 SET UP AN OFFICE THAT WORKS FOR YOU Virtual or premises – that is the question. These days most recruitment businesses are set up virtually – but is working at home the right environment for you? Some may prefer a separate working space to keep them motivated. A guide to setting up an office is provided as part of our start-up course.

7 INVEST IN A QUALITY CRM All great businesses require great technology, but what are the tools that will help your business succeed? Common technology which includes front and back office support software is a good option, plus payroll services, a CRM database and a website. Do some market research and look at what works well for your competitors.

8 ENSURE YOU’RE INSURED All recruitment businesses require legal expenses insurance.

There are many providers and you should shop around to find the best cover for your business. As part of REC membership LEI insurance is provided as a benefit.

9 LISTEN TO THE BEST – LITERALLY The REC’s Scale Up podcast features interviews with 25 of the most successful recruitment entrepreneurs, talking about how they built their business. Each podcast episode contains compelling stories and insight from the careers of some of the UK’s most successful recruitment entrepreneurs. Search for ‘Scale Up Podcast’ in iTunes or on the REC website.

10 JOIN THE REC FOR ONGOING BUSINESS SUPPORT AND TO DEMONSTRATE YOUR COMMITMENT TO A PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS

Not every method of communication can be right for your business, and the methods you use can change as your business grows, but the six main tools to consider are: public relations, advertising, online marketing, direct marketing, sales promotion and face-to-face selling.

Some promotional activities are expensive, and the tactics chosen should be informed by your objectives. REC members have access to a comprehensive bank of resources, such as a guide to the marketing your business, to help you make the right decisions.

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An REC membership will enable you to stand out from the crowd, giving you a distinctive voice and winning you more business. We are leading the campaign to build the best recruitment industry in the world, being the only professional body to require every candidate to take an online test before granting full membership. Once a member of the REC, you’ll have access to the most current research on all legislative and economic developments, along with advice and support from top legal experts and leading industry professionals.

To start your recruitment entrepreneur journey, visit www.rec. uk.com/start-up or contact our accounts team on 0207 009 2100.

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07/08/2018 12:49

Legal update

INTRODUCTION FEES A RECRUITER’S STRUGGLE WITH INTRODUCTION FEES

By Bunmi Adefuye, solicitor and commercial adviser at the REC Claiming an introduction fee can be challenging for recruiters, with candidates now more accessible to employers on social media and recruitment platforms leaving recruiters victims of back-door hiring practices. A back-door hire occurs when a candidate was initially introduced to the client by a recruiter but later on the same candidate is engaged by the client without the recruiter’s involvement.

Another common scenario is where two recruiters send the same CV to a client for the same role and it is incorrectly assumed that the first recruiter is entitled to the introduction fee. The loss of introduction fees could be catastrophic for a recruiter, particularly where they place highly skilled candidates in a very niche sector.

From the client’s

perspective, they simply don’t want to pay two sets of fees and then possibly decide to walk away from that arrangement, which is a loss to both the recruiter and the candidate. The best ammunition for a recruiter is to ensure that there is an agreed contract with the client from the outset. We need to go back to the basic principles of contract law where a binding contract between the parties requires: • an agreement • an intention to create legal relations • consideration.

Contracts don’t have to be in writing to be enforceable as they could be concluded verbally. However, the recruiter will be in a stronger and more secure position with a contract in place if the matter escalates to legal proceedings. The contractual

provisions is one aspect of claiming a fee but case law has established that the recruiter must do more than just submit a CV. The recruiter must be the effective cause of the engagement.

There are two old cases in the recruitment sector where the recruiters battle with their clients for introduction fees. Wallace Hind Associates v Lastolite Limited (2000) and Law Staff Legal Recruitment Limited v Just Costs Limited (2009). Both cases considered the principle of the “effective cause of engagement”. Although the facts and the circumstances in the cases were different, the judges concluded that simply submitting the candidate’s CV wasn’t enough and the recruiters had to demonstrate that they played a role in the candidate’s engagement with the client. Unfortunately in

both cases the recruiters were unsuccessful.

Given that the recruiter’s obligation doesn’t end after submitting the CV, additional steps must be taken which include arranging interviews or other assessments for the role, obtaining feedback, passing correspondence between the parties and generally playing an active role throughout the recruitment process.

As the recruitment industry is highly competitive, it’s very likely that a recruiter at some point will have to pursue a client or a few clients for introduction fees. However, if the recruiter has agreed terms with the client and can demonstrate that their actions beyond sending the CV resulted in the engagement of the candidate, they are in a very strong position to claim their fee.

USING REVIEWS TO ATTRACT QUALITY CANDIDATES

By Nathan Alder If you’re in the business of recruitment, you know the importance of quality over quantity. Getting the right people with the right skills to choose your agency over your competitor’s is one of the biggest challenges facing recruiters today in an increasingly saturated jobs market. The more skilled the candidates, the more desirable they are to employers and the higher chance you have of placing them in a job. But how do you go about attracting the top talent, and what can you do to convince them that you’re the right agency for them?

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THE POWER OF REVIEWS With competition at an all-time high, the cream of the crop need to know that they’re not only going to get placed in a great job, but also get a great experience throughout the recruitment process. In the past, word-of-mouth and personal recommendations were a recruiter’s best friend, but this process, much like the candidates, has moved online.

Independent online review platforms allow candidates, who have gone through the entire recruitment journey, to leave real reviews about

their experience. Customer feedback is becoming just as powerful as personal referrals, and can go a long way towards establishing trust in your business and driving higher quality candidates to your agency.

And 94% of consumers say that reading reviews influences their decision to some extent, so if you’re not collecting candidate feedback already, then you need to start!

Feefo is the UK’s leading reviews and customer analytics platform, used by more than 4,000 brands worldwide.

www.rec.uk.com

07/08/2018 12:49

Inspiration

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE INSTITUTE OF RECRUITMENT PROFESSIONALS

The View

Helen Lacey is the managing director of Red Berry Recruitment and an honorary fellow of the IRP

Faiekha Narshola Adams is the director of Pinnatte Solutions Ltd

Q&A

WHAT I KNOW

How did your business start?

I started my business in January 2007 with £15k. I painted the offices, designed the company logo after coming up with the name and strapline. In the February I started territory mapping, attending networking events and doing sales calls and in March of that year, I recruited my first member of staff.

Starting a business is like pulling water from…

If only starting a business was as easy as getting water from the tap, but it’s more like pulling a bucket from a well, in that the quality of water can vary. I would like to be a little cheeky and say my business started with an idea combined with passion and a business plan.

What sector do you recruit in?

We are a traditional high street agency – temporary and permanent, commercial and industrial, priding ourselves on building great relationships with the local businesses and community.

Where my business is focused I specialise in the Information Technology sector across diverse industries such as software, telecommunications, financial services, insurance and engineering.

What are some of your big challenges?

I would say at present it’s finding talent. Three of our branches are quite rural, so finding experienced recruiters is difficult.

We do like to train our own but that obviously takes time.

Second to that is the overall candidate-short market and the lack of loyalty some candidates have. Thirdly is the clients’ understanding of how fast the market is changing and how fast decisions need to be made What are you looking forward to?

We are just about to move to a new office in Cardiff, so that is exciting, and I have had a strawberry Gin and a raspberry Vodka created for us, so looking forward to launching that.

I don’t think many recruitment agencies can boast they have a gin named after their company, can they!?

What does the future hold?

The future, I think, is going to be tricky, challenging and turbulent. However, ever the optimist I am sure we can weather the storm. We have a great team here, full of energy and positivity, so I am keen to see how this year pans out before making any more decisions on more locations or divisions.

Starting a brand is difficult Realistically, it’s a mental typhoon with a lot of different emotions. Creating the concept and branding of your business to represent you and your values is just the beginning.

Be aware of what’s happening around you Awareness needs to be your mantra, taking in only what is most valuable to you and surrounding yourself with the right people that will help you grow and get to the next step. Be confident; if you can convince yourself you can do it, then you can convince anyone else. I truly believe in this statement: ‘Your capacity to sell anything, whether a service or product, lies in the passion you feel about it.’

Positive energy is vital Self-belief, passion, effort and focus will be your building blocks to the next step of growing your business. Pinnatte Solutions will be a legacy grown from its roots with flourishing flowers of positivity touching the very lives it was created for. We will help people move one step closer to where they would like to be. I am really excited about all the things going on in my head.

To keep up to date with everything the Institute of Recruitment Professionals is doing, please visit www.rec-irp.uk.com

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What’s coming up?

RECRUITERS CAN BE LEADING VOICE IN DISABILITY CONFIDENT DRIVE There are more than 7 million working age people in the UK with a disability or health condition – and the recruitment industry is in the perfect spot to find jobs that will transform their lives, writes the Minister for Disabled People Sarah Newton.

At 75.6%, the employment rate in Britain has never been higher. This continued success is to be celebrated. And jobs continue to be created. In March to May 2018 there were 818,000 job vacancies – 33,000 more than for a year earlier.

As recruiters, I don’t need to tell you that the competition among employers to attract the right people with the right skills is high and is likely to be a key challenge for employers and the recruitment sector in the coming years.

As Minister for Disabled People, I am pleased to see that employers are increasingly looking to address their recruitment needs, not only by considering a wider range of potential sources of talent, but also by seeking to understand how to best attract and retain a more diverse range of people. As the Future of Jobs Commission said last year, we need to see a labour market where inclusion is the norm – for employers and employees.

And it is great to see the REC and many of its members leading the way through the Good Recruitment initiative, which has the active promotion of diversity and

inclusion in the workplace at its core.

There are over 7 million working age people in the UK who have a disability or health condition, representing a vast and varied pool of talent that businesses could tap into.

More and more employers are recognising the benefits disabled people can bring to their businesses. However, some continue to have misconceptions about what employing a disabled person will mean. For example, disabled people don’t always need expensive workplace adjustments. Many don’t need any adjustments at all. Many businesses also tell me that they lack the confidence to employ disabled people and are concerned about ‘doing or saying the wrong thing’.

The Disability Confident scheme can help employers overcome these barriers by giving them the skills and tools they need to successfully recruit and retain disabled people. Nearly 7,000 employers are already members of the scheme and are benefitting from the free support it offers, including online guidance, access to members-only social media groups, and

RECRUITMENT MATTERS The official magazine of The Recruitment & Employment Confederation Dorset House, 1st Floor, 27-45 Stamford Street, London SE1 9NT

priority access to specialist events to help organisations progress through the Disability Confident levels.

I am hugely grateful to REC and its members who continue to be great supporters of the scheme. Manpower has joined the Disability Confident Business Leaders’ Group, bringing the sector’s knowhow to the development of the scheme, and there are over 200 recruitment agencies now signed up to Disability Confident. If you aren’t yet one of them, I urge you to join today by going to gov.uk/disability-confident.

We are moving in the right direction, but we need to do

more. There are still far too many disabled people who want to work but are faced with barriers. And there are too many employers who are potentially missing out on the talented people they need.

Recruiters can help to address both issues by influencing your clients to be more inclusive and consider a wider range of prospective employees. And if you have already been doing this and are seeing the results, it would be great to hear about it – we are always looking to showcase best practice.

To get involved with the Disability Confident scheme, contact policy@rec.uk.com

Membership Department: Membership: 020 7009 2100, Customer Services: 020 7009 2100 Publishers: Redactive Publishing Ltd, 78 Chamber Street E1 8BL. Tel: 020 7880 6200. www.redactive.co.uk Editorial: Editor Michael Oliver michael.oliver@redactive.co.uk. Production Editor: Vanessa Townsend Production: Production Executive: Rachel Young rachel.young@redactive.co.uk Tel: 020 7880 6209 Printing: Printed by Precision Colour Printing © 2018 Recruitment Matters. Although every effort is made to ensure accuracy, neither REC, Redactive Publishing Ltd nor the authors can accept liability for errors or omissions. Views expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the REC or Redactive Publishing Ltd. No responsibility can be accepted for unsolicited manuscripts or transparencies. No reproduction in whole or part without written permission.

Tel: 020 7009 2100 www.rec.uk.com 8 RECRUITMENT MATTERS SEPTEMBER 2018

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07/08/2018 12:49

Advertorial A DV ERTORI A L P E R T E M P S N E T W O R K G R O U P

Never give up on your recruitment business dreams Tim Watts, Lifetime President of Pertemps Network Group Pertemps Chairperson, Carmen Watson, has been named Director of the Year (West Midlands) by the Institute of Directors

F

or any business, in the recruitment world or other, when starting out you never quite know how far it will all go.

Of course, you have dreams and aspirations to become hugely successful but there are just as many stories of near misses and failures as there are of world domination.

When my mother started Pertemps in 1961, she, like all good business people, had ambitions to take us to the very top but even she would probably never had thought that her ‘little’ business would one day be ranked in the top 100 UK private companies.

Had she still been with us, I know she would have been as proud as I was recently when we officially broke into the big league with the Sunday Times announcement that we were to feature in the Top Track 100 for the very first time. Our sales had simply grown so much that we were now too large to feature in all of the other listings!

Business Desk) yet our Network of companies are winning accolades wherever they operate. Our friends ISE Partners recently claimed the title of Best Candidate Care at the Recruiter Awards along with a Global Supplier Award for Service from PRO Unlimited.

Expanding your offering can often be a daunting experience for any business owner: why start-up elsewhere when your current services pays the bills? But I can speak from experience in saying that risks are often worth taking. Pertemps dipped its toe into the training arena a few years ago and have never looked back. Our Driver Training Division was only recently named Training Provider of the Year at the prestigious Talent in Logistics Awards.

Keep investing, never stop learning, never stop dreaming.

Success is there if you show the right qualities, endeavour and scope.

The only question for Pertemps is: where to next?

Hollywood?

Here lies a lesson to all new recruitment start-ups: keep moving forward, manage change effectively, invest in your own people, your clients and your candidates and your dreams can very much become reality.

↗

Long-lasting relationships in all these areas are key to success. Look at Pertemps Chairperson Carmen Watson: joined our business back in the 1970s as a secretary and recently named Director of the Year for the West Midlands by the Institute of Directors. What a remarkable story of how sheer determination, talent and vision can lead you to the boardroom and national recognition. Her accomplishments should be viewed by all first-time recruiters as a shining example of what can be achieved. On second thoughts, even those with as many years in recruitment as myself should take inspiration: Carmen is just that.

Now there’s a thought… ●

PERTEMPS NETWORK GROUP Meriden Hall Main Road Meriden CV7 7PT For further information please visit: www.pertemps.co.uk Telephone: +44 (0) 1676 525200

However, a successful recruitment business is not about one or two people. Our senior management and teams across the country work as a family to produce results.

It’s widely recognised that we are the best large business at what we do in the West Midlands (we have recently acquired yet another trophy saying just that from The

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Annual Conference and Exhibition 7-8 November 2018, Manchester Central

Leading the People Profession

Early booking discounts end 6 September

Be inspired at the 71st edition of the UK’s biggest HR event. Explore the new role of the people profession in driving good work and good business.

5 content streams 38 conference sessions 100+ speakers 5,000+ people professionals

Keynote speakers : Sir Lenny Henry an d Rachel Botsman

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07/08/2018 12:39

C A S E ST U DY

S STRENGTH T TO S STRENGTH

TMP Worldwide’s acquisition by RPO brand PeopleScout brings an opportunity to make the most of the two companies’ complementary skills, finds Recruiter editor DeeDee Doke

Andrew Wilkinson

ake this lesson from the creators of TV’s Doctor Who: a dose of regeneration and reinvention is necessary every so often for businesses to stay relevant, interesting and, frankly, alive.

Never has been this so true as it has over the past 15 years, when rapid change has been sufficiently prevalent to become a cliché in the recruitment industry. And few industry stalwarts are as aware of the benefits of reinvention as Andrew Wilkinson, long-time CEO of UK-based TMP Worldwide.

While a provider of recruitment process outsourcing services, for the last two years under the brand name Yocto, TMP is best known for its creative and often thought-provoking employer branding and recruitment marketing for an eclectic range of clients, including Virgin Money and Coventry City Council.

Over the past 20 years, Wilkinson has helmed more than one reinvention of TMP, through the company’s years of being the less flamboyant relation of

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CA SE ST STUDY UDY

TMP is best known for its creative recruitment marketing, such as this campaign for Coventry City Council back in 2014 to attract social workers

the job board Monster in the late 1990s and early Noughties to breaking those symbiotic chains and becoming its own individual, creative being in 2006 as the result of a management buyout by Wilkinson. Two years ago, in seeking a more definitive identity for its RPO offering, TMP gave birth to Yocto while maintaining the TMP name for employer branding and recruitment marketing activities. Now, Yocto is quietly putting its branding away, to be replaced by the new family member, PeopleScout.

In June, TMP Holdings, operating in the UK as TMP Worldwide, was acquired by global workforce solutions provider TrueBlue through its PeopleScout RPO subsidiary. Little known in the UK, PeopleScout is an RPO giant in North America and Asia-Pacific, with clients including Boeing and Marriott, and looks to cement a stronger presence in Europe and the UK. Wilkinson now wears two hats, retaining TMP’s leadership and adding the EMEA group MD title for PeopleScout.

“For the last 12 years, my focus has been very domestic, very UK,” Wilkinson tells Recruiter. “And the market has transformed incredibly. We were a big media business. The media spend in the UK has probably dropped by over £1bn on recruitment marketing. So if we didn’t reinvent our business, we wouldn’t really have had a great business.

“The journey over the past 12 years has been to transform the business from a very media-orientated business to an RPO business focused on resourcing and the big opportunity that exists there.

“In a sense, it has been like, ‘job done, we’ve transformed the business’ to the extent that PeopleScout felt it was worth 30 RECRUITER

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buying, so we’ve completed that part of the journey.”

Could this be a case of ‘back to the future’ or ‘déjà vu all over again’ for TMP and Wilkinson? “It feels very much like it did in 1996,” he says, referencing the feverish days when Monster was taking off in the UK and Europe. “We [TMP] are the first foothold in Europe as a business, there’s a big market opportunity to grow across Europe because, in a sense, PeopleScout hasn’t been in Europe before. There’s a brand to build!

“So, for me, the excitement of seeing how we can once again have the opportunity to help a company develop and grow its EMEA footprint is actually rather exciting,” Wilkinson says.

European challenge The prospects are clearly exciting on both sides of the deal. A report by independent industry analyst NelsonHall said: “Already the largest RPO provider in terms of number of hires (around 300,000 annually) and the largest RPO provider in terms of revenue in North America, this acquisition makes PeopleScout one of the major RPO contenders in the UK, moving from roughly 20th largest in terms of revenue to approximately fifth.”

With headquarters in Chicago, Sydney and now London, PeopleScout operates across 70 countries with global delivery centres in Charlotte, Toronto, Montreal, Bristol, Krakow, Gurgaon and Bangalore.

For its largest US client, PeopleScout hires 60,000 people a year – that’s a

proposition of a different scale entirely than TMP has previously operated at in the UK and probably for the rest of Europe as well.

But the challenge lies not just in the numbers, PeopleScout president Taryn Owen tells Recruiter. “Balancing volume with niche recruitment, particularly within the same customer, can provide for unique challenges with delivery model solutions within the client base,” she says.

“Imagine creating process for 58,000 hires and a targeted marketing campaign and pipelining effort across 50 different states for 50 different challenges in order to recruit that volume,” Owen suggests, “contrasted with a high-touch, ‘white glove’ onsite at a corporate location filling very challenging roles even within itself such as financial technology, HR.” Early conversations with TMP began in 2015, Owen says. “We had a strategy to look at acquisitions and acquire a great firm with a referenceable RPO client base.” And while relatively few in the UK resourcing community knew of PeopleSoft, Owen says that her company found TMP “to be the best-kept RPO secret in the market with a phenomenal RPO delivery model and client base that nobody knew about it. It was really an exciting opportunity for us to look at bringing the organisations together so that we can be known for recruitment and RPO in this space”.

And the purchase of TMP is actually not the first step in PeopleScout’s drive toward world dominance in RPO. Last year, PeopleScout acquired human capital and management consulting services firm Aon Hewitt’s RPO business, with employees in the US, Canada, India and Poland, as part of what was described as an initiative to further position PeopleScout as “the leading global RPO provider”.

Wilkinson predicts: “The journey’s just begun. I think we see expansion in Europe on the horizon. I think that will be opportunity-led and customer-led, customers that want to expand their footprint in Europe. We’ve already got new business pipeline opportunities with European footprint requirements.”

• See also News p6.

SEPTEMBER 2018

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CO M M U N I T Y

SOCIAL NETWORK WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO? GET IN TOUCH!

E

From sponsoring fast cars and charity bikes, to hearing from gold medallists and picking up awards, you’ve been showing the best side of recruitment…

PARALYMPIAN CRATES TELLS RUTHERFORD BRIANT TO GIVE 1% MORE VIA The team at Rutherford Briant Recruitment met Paralympic gold medallist Danny Crates at their company half-year meeting. Crates gave a motivational talk to the company, focusing on giving ‘1% better’ to everything that they do and challenged them to overcome hurdles. Apparently, managing director Toby Briant previously gave Crates a job as a window cleaner in the shark tank at a Sea Life Centre many years ago… We want to hear more!

NRL’S REDMAYNE CROSSES THE US FOR CHARITY VIA Last month we brought you news of NRL Group’s CEO Andrew Redmayne battling to finish the Trans Am Bike Race. Well, we can tell you that after a gruelling 36 days and 4,300 miles in the saddle, here he is pictured at the finish. We’re sure the £17.5k+ raised so far for MIND will make his aches and pains seem but a distant memory…

CATHCART ASSOCIATES SUPPORTS SCOTTISH TISH F1 STEM STUDENTS VIA

Protec Technical’s director Malcolm Roberts picks up the Queen’s Award from HM’s Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire

SECOND QUEEN’S AWARD FOR PROTEC VIA Recruitment and staffing company Protec Technical has won a second Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category. Director Malcolm Roberts (above right) is pictured receiving the award from Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire at Protec’s office in Fareham

TWI TT ER

Team AcceleRace, an all-girl side from Linlithgow Academy in West Lothian, is one step closer to competing in the world finals of the ‘F1 in Schools Challenge’ in Singapore this September, thanks to sponsorship from STEM recruiter Cathcart Associates. Team AcceleRace fielded the fastest car in the UK at Silverstone racing track, putting them in a great position for success in Singapore. Put that pedal to the metal, girls!

Demi & Blue @DemiAndBlue_ Jul 30 RT @clockworkTalent: Very proud of our #OfficeDog, @VHeadOfDogital for featuring in this months @RecruiterMag! He’s spreading the word and letting everyone know how dogs can help in the workplace! @RecruiterMag instagram.com/recruitermagazine/ recruitermagazine.tumblr.com/

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E CAREERS CO M M UNITY

The Workplace

BY GUY HAYWARD

34 RECRUITER

uncertain about how many days it’s okay to take off, you’ll see curious things happen.

People will hesitate to take a vacation as they don’t want to seem like that person who’s taking the most vacation days,” says Mathias Meyer, CEO of Travis.

Either approach – unlimited or an insistence that you must take your holiday – are better than the broken approach of days given. If you choose the unlimited route, people can feel guilty for taking time off.

They feel it shows their boss and colleagues they are not committed. But we need our time away from the office; the modern workplace demands it.

What else can we do? I like the approach taken by technology solutions company Leidos Europe. Normally reserved for five or 10 years’ service, sabbaticals can be taken there after three.

Meanwhile, travel aggregator Skyscanner’s CEO believes that the inspiration for technology lies in China. So any employees that book a holiday in China are reimbursed to the tune of £750. The hope is that his people will return home with product ideas.

He also allows his people to spend up to 30 days every two years working in any one of their international offices.

That’s giving them experience.

“We pay for our people’s holidays upfront with the cost deducted from salary over the course of the year” What do we do at Goodman Masson? You can buy and sell holiday; we subsidise ski trips by 40%; and each year we send a group on an annual challenge overseas for 10 days (canoeing the Zambezi and trekking across Madagascar to name a couple). Then there’s our exotic holiday fund; we pay for our people’s holidays upfront with the cost deducted from salary over the course of the year. It makes holidays affordable and possible!

You’ll also have some ideas.

Whatever you choose, be bold, different and creative.

Your people will love it. ●

↗

IN A WORLD WHERE we are under continual pressure to provide an engaging working environment for staff, benefits have become a central component. Holiday is a benefit – well, at least I think it is – although so easily overlooked. Make it 25 days a year plus one extra for every year’s service and job done. We should all be showing greater innovation than that.

Imagine a scenario where you MUST take off 25 days a year. A true commitment to the wellness of the employee and a pledge that is saying we want you energised with a zest for life and we’re protecting you from burnout and fatigue. I love this idea and it’s exactly what technology company Travis CI has done (I might even do the same).

I’ve often wondered about unlimited holiday schemes.

Made famous by Netflix and quickly adopted by Richard Branson and his Virgin empire, unlimited holiday allowances have been implemented by an increasing number of UK firms. On the surface they sound great, but you often hear that it never really is unlimited… people often take less.

“When people are

GUY HAYWARD –redefining the modern workplace CEO, Goodman Masson

SEPTEMBER 2018

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CO M M U N I T Y

CAREERS

Part 2: Is your work set-up holding you back?

E

Find your next move in recruitment on jobs.recruiter. co.uk

BY TARA LESCOTT

↗ TARA LESCOTT is managing director of recruitment-torecruitment agency Recruiter Republic

ARE YOU ACHIEVING THE BEST EXPERIENCE in your current role and are you positioned to maximise your opportunities?

Are you in control of your recruitment career?

Following on from Recruiter’s August’s issue, in this second part of our article on assessing your true worth as a recruiter, we continue with our checklists to help you decide if you are at the right place in your career at this present time. Hopefully your responses will reveal the best result for you.

Do you have a mentor?

Do you have someone whom you can turn to with any business or recruitment-related question?

Somebody who champions your progression, offers advice, guides

“If you’re not excited by what you do, something has to change” you through difficult situations and greatly contributes to your growth?

Yes or No? Everyone in recruitment should have somebody to be their mentor – someone they trust to offer good advice, and who can be relied upon to champion their career and progress. Who is that for you?

On a scale of 1-10, how motivated are you by your boss, team, and environment?

Are you excited about your work?

Do you love the daily process of uncovering new roles and candidates? Do you love setting your plan for the day and setting yourself targets? Do you love the competition with your team? Do you have fun while you work? Are you excited about your future?

Yes or No? If you’re not excited about what you do, and you’re living for the weekend, something has to change.

Is your desk capable of delivering big fees?

To avoid confusion: being specialist

in your approach is the right way to go – this will never be in doubt. But some companies take this approach too far, and end up restricting their consultants with desks that are focused on too narrow a niche or too small a geographical remit.

Not sure if your desk is restricted?

Ask yourself these questions: If you met an exceptional candidate today, would you have 20 hot, high-quality clients with whom you have a good relationship that you could talk to straight away? And if you met a new, exciting client, do you have a large candidate pool that you can approach? Do you believe your desk is capable of producing £300k-plus?

Yes or No? If not, how can you possibly believe in your potential to earn the income level you desire? You are not in control.

Conclusion So, how do your answers look?

High fives to all the recruiters with mainly ‘Yes’ answers. You are doing great, and you are clearly working for a great firm that is invested in your long-term success – you have nothing to worry about.

But if you came out with three or more ‘No’ answers, chances are that your current company is noticeably hindering your career. It’s time to start asking yourself some serious questions about what you need to do to progress your career at the level you deserve.

Don’t let somebody else dictate your success – take action and be the empowered recruiter you deserve to be.

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INVESTOR DISPUTES: HOW TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS Tensions between investors and managers or founders develop easily: the business may not achieve projected turnover in the timeframe expected; skills of the management team may need to adapt or change to achieve targets; there may be tensions about the strategic direction of the business.

Principle 3 of The 7 Principles of Conflict Resolution – 'Construct a resolution with the conflict resolution framework' – can help overcome these challenges and enable growth.

Manage your physical and emotional response: All conflicts start with people; noticing how we feel physically and mentally helps achieve a measured response. Directors may feel undermined when challenged on performance. Investors may feel angry at slow growth. Taking time out to manage these responses can defuse tension and help focus priorities.

Louisa Weinstein Clarify your agenda: How you frame the issues and set the agenda is crucial to keeping the lines of communication open. Keeping agenda items neutral and focused on principles rather than personalities creates less room for antagonism.

Clarify fears, wants and needs: Directors driven

See the bigger picture: Understanding others’

Practise empathy: From an investor perspective this may mean getting behind the passions and challenges of the director. For directors, this is about embracing the targets of the investors and understanding their personal drivers for achieving them. Establishing how and where others want to succeed and helping them to do it can move us closer to achieving common goals.

perspectives can quickly unlock impasse. Investors may need a deeper understanding of the development process and adjust expectations. Directors may need to compromise creativity to meet financial targets. When this is done, options become clearer.

Take back control: With high financial stakes and challenges to capacity, conflict often brings out the worst in us. We need to review our conduct throughout and regain control, making it easier to learn and move forward.

by fears of being sacked can get distracted from focusing on outcomes. Writing down fears, wants and needs helps focus on relevant issues and negotiate differences. It also grounds us in the reality of what is, as opposed to the fear of what might be.

Get your facts straight: The more evidence-based investors and directors can be, the more they can understand differing perspectives of the facts and the business. With this clarity options emerge.

Identify options and outcomes: Presenting the other party with alternatives focuses parties on what might be possible. It also keeps the focus on what is best for the business and the individuals involved.

36 RECRUITER

↗

Clarify top and bottom lines: In any business venture, it is crucial to know what you want, your ‘walk away’ point and the space in between. This ensures that any decision you finally make, even if it is to end the relationship, is thought through and not reactive.

Set up the conversation: Before discussing the issues, practical preparation including timing, location and relevant players is crucial. Above all, the tone with which you set up the conversation can define the conversation itself and benefits from being carefully thought through.

Key to a successful relationship with investors is focusing on the best interests of the business while taking responsibility for our own actions. When we do this we act in the best interests of all the parties involved.

LOUISA WEINSTEIN is an experienced mediator and the author of The 7 Principles of Conflict Resolution and the head of The Conflict Resolution Centre

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‘I love being able to use my recruitment knowledge to help a challenged business owner make the right hires’ MY BRILLIANT RECRUITMENT CAREER What was your earliest dream job?

↗

I kept flipping between wanting to be a vet and an air hostess.

NATASHA WOODFORD, director of recruitment, clockworkTalent

What was your first job in recruitment and how did you come into it?

I had just come back from working in hospitality in Dubai and was looking for a job where I could still interact with people. To be honest I didn’t really know what a headhunter was back then. It was 1999, but there was a local executive search firm that was hiring and I pitched up for a role hiring people in e-commerce and got the job.

Who is your role model – in life or in recruitment?

My dad. He is a self-made man. He didn’t go to uni; he left school at 15. He’s been a corporate banker for the same bank for 35 years. He worked with one company and was posted all over the world. He’s an awesome survivor of prostate cancer.

He’s got an MBE for his fundraising efforts. He’s an amazing husband of nearly 50 years and he’s a kind and loving dad.

What do you love most about your current role?

I love digital marketing because it’s so fast paced. Career progression is unlike any I’ve

38 RECRUITER

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Natasha Woodford seen in any other industry. It’s breaking all the conventional rules. It has business owners in their 20s. I love being able to use my recruitment knowledge to help a relatively naïve jobseeker, or a challenged business owner who desperately wants to make the right hires.

What would you consider to be the most brilliant moment of your career?

to anyone. If you’re going for a sweet dish, then it’s a 12-egg pavolova.

Laugh or cry, what did your most memorable candidate make you want to do and why?

Repeat business – there’s one chap I hired three times over his career. I saw him from mid level all the way to board level. There are also some companies I’ve hired for six or seven times now.

Cry – in my first formal interview I did on my own. Imagine a warm, stuffy London office, down in the basement; you’re interviewing, a technical interview; it’s all going a bit long and technical, and I might have dozed a little bit… something I have never repeated.

What’s your top job to fill at the moment?

What’s the best or worst interview question you’ve ever heard?

A head of SEO and content taking the reins from a founder.

I hate: ‘If you die and come back as an animal, what would you be?’ My favourite question is: ‘If you were giving an industry conference talk – what would it be on?’

What is your signature dish?

Chicken satay, my mum’s recipe – we don’t tell it

What would you regard as your theme tune?

Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield.

IMAG ES | SHUTTER STOCK / ISTOCK

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E CAREERS CO M M UNITY

manager at the multi-sector recruiter’s Ilford branch.

Soraya Simms joins as operations manager in the agency’s Birmingham branch.

BWD: Mike Aitchison has been ADMIRAL RECRUITMENT: The founder of the niche hospitality recruiter Paula Rogers has joined the board of the Institute of Hospitality.

ADZUNA: The global job search engine has appointed Christopher Gamble as vice president of sales for North America.

appointed client director of the financial services staffing specialist’s newly created specialist finance and lending division.

COGNITIVE GROUP: The Microsoft talent solutions provider has appointed former innovation partner at international recruiter SThree Paul Knox as group sales director.

CURO TALENT: Annie Andrews ASTUTE RECRUITMENT: Vijay Patel joins the Derby-based recruiter as divisional manager for the launch of a new executive division.

BERRY RECRUITMENT: Samm Larkin joins as operations 40 RECRUITER

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joins the Microsoft recruitment partner as head of technology.

DYNAMITE RECRUITMENT: The multi-sector recruiter has appointed Chloe Emmerson as senior recruitment manager.

Executive search and interim management consultancy Green Park has appointed Trevor Phillips OBE as chairman of its board of directors.

The founding chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the first elected chair of the Greater London Authority, steps up to the role of chairman having served as a non-executive director advising the board since April 2017.

The writer and broadcaster is also currently chair of New York-based corporate leadership think-tank The Center for Talent Innovation.

A former ITV executive, Phillips remains active in the creative industries, writing regularly for several national newspapers and serving as a board member of London’s Barbican Centre and of Headlong Theatre.

EAMES CONSULTING GROUP:

GERARD DANIELS: The Australian-

The professional services recruiter has promoted Richard Williams to director of finance and operations from head of finance. Adrian Chua has been promoted from senior consultant to managing consultant.

based executive search firm has promoted Alison Gaines to global CEO. Gaines was most recently managing partner of Gerard Daniels’ Asia Pacific practice.

ERECRUIT: The global recruitment technology provider welcomes Mark Hodgkinson as director of services and support, Adapt – one of Erecruit’s recruitment software solutions.

GREEN PARK: The executive search and interim management consultancy has appointed Trevor Phillips OBE as chairman of its board of directors. Phillips steps up to the role of chairman having served as a nonexecutive director since April 2017. Jo Sweetland, managing partner of Green Park’s private

Email people moves for use online and in print, including a short 09/08/2018 12:19

sector practice, has also been appointed to the board.

HEIDRICK & STRUGGLES: The global executive search firm has hired San Francisco-based partner Scott Atkinson to lead its venture capital practice.

TRUEBLUE: Steve Cooper, current CEO of the US blue-collar recruiter, becomes executive chairman of the board. The agency’s president and chief operating officer Patrick Beharelle has been promoted to CEO. Kristi Savacool, former CEO of global HR solutions business Aon Hewitt, has joined TrueBlue’s board.

Redactive Publishing Ltd 78 Chamber Street, London E1 8BL 020 7880 6200

CONTACTS EDITORIAL +44 (0)20 7880 7606 Editor DeeDee Doke

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING Sales executive Jack Stevens

deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

+44 (0)20 7880 7633

Reporters Colin Cottell, Graham Simons colin.cottell@recruiter.co.uk graham.simons@recruiter.co.uk

Contributing writers Sue Weekes, Roisin Woolnough Production editor Vanessa Townsend vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk

Designer Craig Bowyer Picture editor Akin Falope

RESOURCE SOLUTIONS: The global recruitment outsourcing provider has appointed Adam Shay as global marketing director.

SEVENSTEP: Recruitment process outsourcing services provider has made Amy Bush president and Paul Harty chief solutions officer.

SNAG: The platform for hourly work has appointed Fabio Rosati as chairman and CEO.

VMAGROUP: The International recruitment and executive search specialist welcomes senior communications specialists Daniella Soesman (l) in the Netherlands and Liesl Weber (r) in Belgium.

YOU R NE X T M OV E A selection of vacancies from recruiter.co.uk Academy Ambassadors Recruitment consultant Rec-to-rec Central and Greater London £26k-30k dep on experience Collins Squared Recruitment consultants x 4 Property & construction London and Manchester £22k-40k basic + comp package

SOURCE TECHNOLOGY: The technology staffing specialist has promoted Matt Mangan to director from associate director.

TALMUNDO: The HR tech company has appointed Reya El Thaalabi as country sales manager for the UK.

Howett Thorpe Recruitment consultant Farnham, Surrey Office/commercial/rec-to-rec £30-35k + comms

paul.barron@redactive.co.uk

+44 (0)20 7880 6245 Sales executive Jonathan Adebayo

PRODUCTION +44 (0)20 7880 6209 Senior production executive Rachel Young rachel.young@redactive.co.uk

PUBLISHING +44 (0)20 7880 8547 Publishing director Aaron Nicholls aaron.nicholls@redactive.co.uk

RECRUITER AWARDS/ INVESTING IN TALENT AWARDS +44 (0)20 7324 2771 eventsteam@redactive.co.uk

jonathan.adebayo@redactive.co.uk

CIRCULATION and SUBSCRIPTIONS Recruiter is the leading magazine for recruitment and resourcing professionals. To ensure each issue of Recruiter magazine is delivered to your desk or door, subscribe now at https://subs. recruiter.co.uk/subscribe. Annual subscription rate for 12 issues: £35 UK; £45 Europe and £50 Rest of the world • Recruiter is also available to people who meet our terms of control: http://bit. ly/RecruiterCC • To purchase reprints or multiple copies, or any other enquiries, please contact mysidekick@recruiter.co.uk or +44 (0)20 8950 9117 CONTRIBUTIONS Contributions are invited, but when not accepted will be returned only if accompanied by a fully stamped and addressed envelope. Articles should be emailed. No responsibility can be taken for drawings, photographs or literary contributions during delivery, transmission or in the editor’s hands. © 2018 Redactive Media Group. All rights reserved. This publication (and any part thereof) may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in print or electronic format (including but not limited to any online service, any database or any part of the internet) or in any other format in any media whatsoever, without the prior written permission of Redactive Media Group.

Redactive Media Group accepts no liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein. The publishers cannot accept liability for any loss arising from the late appearance or non-publication of any advertisement for any reason whatsoever. ISSN 1475-7478

Total average net circulation between 1 July 2016 & 30 June 2017 – 14,995. is also sent to all REC members

For more jobs, people moves and career advice go to ● recruiter.co.uk/jobs ● inhouserecruiterjobs.co.uk ● internationalrecruiterjobs.com

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ADVERTISING +44 (0)20 7880 6213 Sales manager Paul Barron

jack.stevens@redactive.co.uk

Scan here to get your own copy of

09/08/2018 12:19

E THE LAST WORD CO M M UNITY

Rhys Maddocks UK investors fail Britain’s tech firms

Recently, Matt Hancock, the government minister responsible for digital, proudly proclaimed the UK as the number one venture capital (VC) investment country in Europe, and London the Silicon Valley of Europe. Apparently it is easy to grow big technology businesses in the UK. Really?

In 2015 I created the JobSwipe app. It features an intelligent search technology, where candidates could swipe through job matches and the app would reorder the next jobs to find more accurate matches based on their swipes. The idea was to simplify the job search process and create a worldclass job search app.

It looked like a great business opportunity. I was a software developer and knew how to build the products cheaply. I had 10 years’ experience of running a job board and job aggregator and knew what was missing in the market. The brand and

concept were strong (most job apps now use swipebased search). Here was the chance to build a world-class brand and job app – all I needed was some money to launch the product. What could possibly go wrong?

I went to HSBC and asked for £25k. No. So I went to Lloyds and asked for £25k. No. Essentially UK bank funding is a non-starter.

Firstly, they don’t understand technology, and secondly, the computer says ‘no’.

They only want to lend money to companies with an established history and financial projections for three years.

Next stop, venture capitalists. James Caan’s Hamilton Bradshaw: No. Virgin Start-Up: No. Other VCs didn’t even respond.

Then I was featured on the back page of the Financial Times. A full article on the app and my technology – probably the best bit of PR a company looking for funding

Think the next big app company will come out of the UK? Think again 42 RECRUITER

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could hope for. I thought the phone would be ringing off the hook with UK investors wanting to help. Wrong.

One guy did call though – from San Diego in the US. He had heard I could not get funding and wanted to help.

So I stopped approaching UK VCs and banks.

Yes, £3bn in VC investments took place in the UK last year. The biggest – £391m for Improbable – was from SoftBank, which is Japanese and recently bought ARM, the chip designer. Next, with £364m, was Deliveroo – founded by two Americans and an investment backed by US fund managers. Then there was TransferWise (£211m), founded by two Estonians and supported by US investment firms. See a pattern emerging?

I later mentioned the product to an acquaintance from a US company in the

RHYS MADDOCKS is founder of AdSwipe and director of job board XpatJobs.com

recruitment industry. Within five minutes he saw the potential. A week later we met for lunch. His company immediately wanted to be involved and offered me all the funds I needed – and an offer to take the product to the US. The deal was fully closed within a couple of months.

We are now on the way to creating the No 1 job search app globally.

Wonder why all the biggest internet and app companies come from the US? To create a global app brand requires significant investment – Uber has had $15bn (£11.5bn). Think the next big app company will come out of the UK? Think again.

SEPTEMBER 2018

09/08/2018 12:19

WE’VE GOT A LOT TO SHOUT ABOUT...

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Re

s to ason

coun

23 am: # e r t S ay t on P

Compliance.

It’s a jungle out there.

Compliance

At PayStream we put compliance right at the heart of everything we do.

We’re one of the leading providers of umbrella and accountancy services and we’re regularly in touch with tax advisers, lawyers and most importantly HMRC to help our teams and agencies see the wood for the trees when it comes to legislation updates and changes in HMRC’s approach.

Working with a compliant provider helps to minimise the financial risk to your business and safeguard its reputation, both of which can add value to your business. Working with a partner you can trust - just another reason why you can count on PayStream.

Call 0800 197 6516 e: info@paystream.co.uk or visit www.paystream.co.uk

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