by Julia Fras | Jun 10, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing
The traditional view of technology roles is that they are only appealing to and filled by men, but this week’s guest is shining a spotlight on the women making waves in technology.
Nadia Edwards-Dashti is the Chief Customer Officer at Harrington Starr, podcaster, and now the author of ‘Women of Fintech, Walk the Talk’.
In this week’s episode of The Marketing Rules Podcast, Nadia talks to me about why she decided to write her book, what she learned from The Women of Fintech and the current ED&I landscape of Fintech.
The Episode Transcript:
00:00.00
thinkincircles
So welcome back. Everybody to the marketing rules podcast and today we are joined by Nadia from Harrington Star who um, I’ve wanted to head on for a while because there’s a kind of a big announcement Nadia is gonna kind of share with us today. Oh although if you follow her on Linkedin It’s been It’s been It’s been well promoted. But um. Can now describe edta as ah as an author and today nette is going to talk to us a little bit about her book and everything that kind of inspired it and the kind of journey to get it. But for the rest of you the ones who haven’t we don’t follow you on Linkedin? um, maybe you could kind of give us a little bit about your journey. And really your kind of journey in in recruitment and kind of leading up to to the writing of the book.
00:37.16
Nadia
Thank you and James thank you so much for having me on on your show. Um, it’s really exciting that you want me to be here and that I can hopefully add some value to the audience. But um, just so a little bit about me and who I am I’m I’m currently the chief customer officer of Harrington Star um we place technology and sales staff into the financial services sector um have been doing so since we founded the company in 2010? Um, I’ve been in recruitment long before that though, 2005 I started in recruitment. Bright eyed, bushy-tailed the the typical story I fell into recruitment. Um I’ve always placed technologists into financial services. Um, so I’ve had as any other recruiter will say I’ve had such vast visibility of the area that I’ve worked in I’ve got to see so much stuff that. Um, that that people don’t publish and I know all the recruiters listening to this will really relate to that because we do we see salaries. We you know people talk about the gender pay gap now we have seen that we’ve we’ve got examples of it. We’ve got evidence of it. We’ve seen it for years. We talk about the ethnicity pay gap we’ve seen that when people talk about wanting to address their. Board composition. Um, we’ve seen it all. We’ve been part of those conversations. We’ve witnessed things that haven’t been fair in the industry especially if we roll back to 2005? Um, but that’s where I started and I start my story saying I I was privy to. Ah, lots of things that weren’t fair and I still am um and this has been something that first wound me up. Ah second I found difficult to to remain within the industry knowing that this is how it was third I became empowered to try and change it and that’s essentially the journey of. How I got to the book. Um I worked really hard as a recruiter because in 2005 when um I could barely find a candidate for a role who was ever going to listen to me. Um, when I said that’s not fair. Um, so I I learnt the trade and I worked really really hard I’ve I’ve done my 15 hour days um I’ve done the. 12 meetings in a day and the big pictures to boards to get you know to get the clients on I’ve done the retained work I’ve done the exclusive for the next three years with different companies. Um, and you know what it’s allowed me to do is get get really really confident in my ability to solve. clients’ problems when it comes to talent and 1 thing that’s happened over the past ten years I’d say is that talent in financial services especially in the technology space is becoming so so hard to find because this area is growing at such an exponential rate.
03:25.48
Nadia
But where are the people and if we keep on looking for the people in the same places we’ve already always looked like we’re just not if the the physical is physically impossible to be able to hit the the amount of growth that these companies want to hit so. Social justice part of what I do is paramount. Of course it’s what you know it’s what I get up for in the morning I’m super passionate about making that industry a better place. But also when I’m talking to ceos and people who are looking at numbers and profit margins and valuations of their businesses. Actually the inclusion journey that they’re on is becoming more and more important which is brilliant to talk about with people because companies and there’s many of them. You know have just just had series a funding. You know they come to me and they say well look when we’re going for series b we need to. Be able to answer the question. What are we doing on our de policies um is is practice actual procedure. You know is is it actually happening. What are the tangibles and you know a lot of people. Um, they need help like they want to. They want to build a more inclusive workforce but they don’t know how because. If you look at the history of financial services and you look at the history of technology. It’s ah been exclusive rather than inclusive. So. There’s so much change that needs to happen. But as I said from the start I’ve seen so much that wasn’t right? But I’ve also seen so much that is right. And so I feel now my responsibility is to share what those right steps are and I’ve had the absolute privilege of recording a podcast series myself since 2018 where I’ve interviewed over 300 senior leaders within the financial technology and fintech space. Talking about inclusion and how do you reach inclusion within your business and the book came out of me deciding these podcasts need to be everywhere. You know everyone needs to have the lessons from these podcasts and all these wonderful people that I had the privilege of speaking with I want to make sure their lessons are heard. Um, and people people still read books I know everything’s online but people actually still read books and you know I I received a handwritten note and I thought to myself. Well you know we’ve all forgotten how how we used to rely on handwritten notes. And it meant something to me and it made me think well look if we were to write this in a book. It could mean something to the right people so that’s where it all came from.
05:56.48
thinkincircles
So I mean it’s It’s ah it’s an amazing story. Um, what’s interesting I’d like to kind of just kind of roll back a little bit to the podcast. Obviously as a podcaster obviously as ourselves. Um, why did you go down that route. You know why the podcast and why not.
06:13.89
Nadia
Yeah, so um I’ve got really a quite nice story about this. So um, it was about 20017 I started going and speaking at events about the good things that I was seeing for diversity equity and inclusion within the industry. Um, and I was invited.
06:14.44
thinkincircles
Something else at that point. So.
06:33.51
Nadia
To Amsterdam to speak at the european women’s payment network their annual conference and I presented a presentation called step forward for gender equality and within it I celebrated 13 different companies in the London Financial Services scene who were doing great things for gender equality. One of the things i. Spoke about was raising awareness of the women within your industry letting people see those women. Ah ah, really addressing the visibility of it. Um, and someone asked me a question said what are you doing to do that and I answered the question but I remember thinking fool I haven’t answered that.
07:10.81
thinkincircles
And.
07:11.24
Nadia
Like very comfortably. That’s a little bit outside my comfort zone and I thought well why is it outside my comfort zone. It’s because I’m not doing enough and as a recruiter as everyone listening will know you know we’ve been networking for years. We’ve got huge networks within the areas that we focus on. Actually what are we doing to leverage those networks and. I hadn’t really leveraged the network enough back then and I thought well I’m I’m going to and I’m going to bring the visibility and I thought right? What could I do okay never done a podcast before let’s give that a go and you know what? my first podcast didn’t have a clear introduction I didn’t have barely had a name for it. Ah had no no set questions I didn’t really know where the conversation was going but you know by by the end of it and by now you know I’m I’m really clear on what the purpose is but um, that’s the story of how I started podcasting.
08:01.21
thinkincircles
You were kind of um oh I kind of a forced down that route to kind of to to to walk the walk.
08:06.10
Nadia
Well exactly yes when we watch the point of talking if you can’t actually do the action and I thought you know I I have a great responsibility here and it was it was brilliant as well because again, um, you know recruitment. Let’s go back to 2005 how we. How we connecting with our with our audience how we connecting with our customers were cold calling what are the what are like the hit rates of cold calling. You could do a hundred dials in a morning and how many people would answer of those people that answer how many is actually going to turn into business. If you look at then me me having conversations with people on podcast so much more meaningful. We’re no longer talking about you need 7 points of contact to turn an introduction into a piece of business. It’s a whole different way of looking at the sales cycle and it’s a whole different way of looking at recruitment because. Yes I am a recruiter first and foremost. But now because I’m always having inclusion conversations I can add so much more value to a company I’m having so many more conversations across different avenues within that company that recruitment is. Of course what they’re going to be needing me for as well because I now can boast that yes I can identify female talent for you I can identify diverse talent and actually it’s because those individuals have listened to those podcasts. So. It’s kind of come full circle as well.
09:32.20
thinkincircles
Yeah, yeah, well I mean it’s great. It’s a great story to hear about the kind of the power of the podcast and how that’s kind of how that’s worked out but ah what point during the kind of podcast series. Did you did you start to think this could be a different format. This could be something else that could be.
09:48.47
Nadia
Um I think it was really early on actually um I was it took me a long time to feel comfortable recording the podcasts. Um I was when we first started doing them. It was obviously pre-pandemic right? So I did it? um.
09:49.10
thinkincircles
Could be more within this.
10:05.90
Nadia
Not just recording the audio but I did it in a room face to face with a camera on me and I try and look at the camera which really really stresss me out and I I definitely lost sight of actually what’s my purpose here and what am I trying to do um but once I got used to that I realized look.. There’s a., There’s There’s a ah focus. Um, and that focus is we’ve got to raise awareness of women within this industry because the podcast started purely as the women of fintech. It’s now much more in depth than that and covers all sorts of inclusion aspects but starts as the women of fintech and I did get my head around it. Ah, probably by about episode 20 of this isn’t about me. It’s about them. It’s about their journey you know and and actually no one’s really interested in what I’m saying they’re interested in the individual and how they’ve overcome the challenges that that they were challenged by what was their lived Experience. How have they handled the situations that they had at work and what’s made them better and stronger and what lessons you know, have they have they been able to share and once I got it really clear that. That’s what it’s about actually discussing recruitment became became part of that sort of whole package but the focus. Really just was away from me and all all about as I say the great and wonderful women of Fintech. That’s how I introduced the the book but but you know but now it’s the the men of of fintech. It’s um, it’s the non-binary of Fintech. It’s people that have the potential to join fintech. Um, and it’s about the environments within Fintech. So. The mission is a really big Mission. It’s a movement of change and I think that recruitment is a huge part of that change because ultimately every business that wants to become more inclusive they need. They need job seekers who are going to be included and I’ve positioned myself to be able to help them within that Journey. So. It became more about the mission and recruitment coming into that mission than anything else.
12:03.37
thinkincircles
Yeah, um, and and explain to me a little bit more about the kind of process of of kind of writing the book is it is the book ah kind of or my transcripts of the podcast is it new interviews How how does it? How did you kind of bring it together.
12:18.45
Nadia
So I mean it was a real journey like I mean anyone? Um, anyone thinking about writing a book with pal grave Mcmillan who’s my publisher like they are serious. Um, it’s ah you know a bit a business publisher. They’re very very focused on making sure that. Content is to a certain level. Um I had to go through a number of rounds of reviews and the people reviewing by my book. Proposal were anonymous so they literally could write whatever they wanted back to me and it was credibly like the the harshest criticism I’ve ever received in my life but also the most empowering because. Actually in my heart I was thinking wow they are taking me seriously about writing a book you know like so great that they’re giving me this. Um this really tough feedback but essentially the way that I went with the book was um to to tell a story around like what is what is fintech and financial services technology. What are the problems that we face in the industry. What are the good stuff that we’re doing because actually in fintech and financial technology. There’s a lot of really good stuff that’s happening for inclusion but there is a problem. We’re not reaching a tipping point of change and it’s because actually we’re trying to do a lot of really nice things. Without handling what the foundational problems are so the book essentially concludes around how you make those foundation changes and how everyone can be involved in that so rather than it being transcripts. What I did um, remember that Christmas that got canceled and we were all in lockdown. That Christmas I listened back to 120 of my podcasts. They’re each 20 minutes in length minimum. You can imagine the time that I put into this and I wrote out 3 or 4 standout quotes from each individual I then put each of those quotes into sort of themes. And then I I weaved in those themes into what I wanted my chap to layout to be like so the entire book is not me saying this is the landscape of fintech or financial technology instead. It’s um, it’s Joan, Ceo of global processing services says. This about fintech says this about her board members says this about her board experience or whatever it is um, this individual came from this background this other and individual came from that background so you know one of the the great people I interviewed was ah Billy Simmons founder um of a business called daylight. And I think she did her degree in tourism. So I was using her as an example of she’s Ceo of a digital bank and and 1 of the first digital banks aimed at the lgbtq plus community.
15:04.69
Nadia
And she didn’t come from a stem background and that’s one of the biggest issues that we face in financial technology when anyone’s trying to be more inclusive they they really are wedded to stem backgrounds. Um, and I was trying to prove the point that there’s so many founders and ceos that don’t come from that background and Billy was 1 example. And I had probably 4 or 5 other founders that I quoted in that section as well. So um, it was it was yeah weaved together like that.
15:30.22
thinkincircles
Yeah, um, and you’ve mentioned a couple of people who are kind of mentioned in the book I mean without spawning and I know this is gonna be like picking your favorite child but is there any kind of um, a couple of stories that and and quotes that you can kind of also kind of share with us some of your favorites.
15:44.83
Nadia
Yeah, um so I won’t I won’t ruin the book. But um I would say that there is one that really really stands out um from and it stood out for me the minute that she said it in the podcast. Um, so I knew it was always something that I was going to use. Um, so her name is hennah ashraff and she’s the. Head of testing um at a fintech called cash plus and she said with all the challenges she faced as a woman in technology over her career that she always thought about this saying I can choose to be pitiful or powerful and I chose powerful. And I just loved when she said that because that was at the end of a podcast where she had really opened up to the challenges of of a woman over the past fifteen years in the technology world of getting to the point of being a head of testing the monetary challenges. The. Just people listening to her like how her how her opinion was heard in different meetings. How she was questioned how she was recognized how she was remembered and for her to say I chose powerful. Um, that was something that really that really stayed with me and again not wanting to ruin the book but actually my my final chapter is. Be powerful and I open it with um, just like hennah eshref said um and you know that’s actually what the book’s about us all choosing to be powerful to make change happen and one of the key things of the book is. I think when it comes to inclusion we all as human beings we all know it’s the right thing to do the social justice element. We get it but we also know that it’s really really hard and that can be overwhelming so it’s really easy to go oh. That’s an over there problem for somebody. Someone over there will fix it because that’s just easier for us to think that um and actually it’s not It’s an over here right now. All of us let’s get involved problem. Um, so so yeah just a couple of standout things.
17:41.37
thinkincircles
And yeah I mean it’s amazing. Um, and you mentioned the kind of the the be be powerful thing that kind of quote that kind of really stood with you and was there anything else that you learn from writing the book that you can share with us and.
17:56.30
Nadia
Um, I’d probably say that one of the early chapters is about and the power of networking and leveraging your network which I’ve mentioned slightly before um, but actually the book itself like wow it was just the journey of it because. If you can imagine I’ve quoted 118 people within this book from the first 118 podcasts that I recorded um to be able to quote them I had to call them all up to say this is what’s happening. This is the quote I’d like to use and also this is how I’m going to use your quote in. Ah, particular part the transcript all the while I’m trying to write this book every evening and every weekend while my first born is is is napping or asleep you know after a full day at work. So it was um it was really really like a challenge like a real challenge to do it. But I think um, what really stood out for me is how how I’ve really solidified my network um because by explaining what I’m doing. Um I really think that everyone everyone really felt like like how heartfelt I am about this um that this really is my mission. Um. And and a real important part of this which I haven’t mentioned is when I first approached pal Graveve Mcmillan about writing the book I had just had um my my first baby um a girl and I was really really um, impassioned about protecting her. And protecting like her future and if she wanted to join financial services or technology or fintech or whatever. The new tech will be called that she’s got a level playing field and that’s played a really huge part of the journey. But I think me. Kind of opening up that vulnerability and like my life that has really solidified this wonderful network I have and turned it into this new word that everyone’s using you know the tribe and I feel like this is my tribe now you know I’ve got I’ve got such. Ah, great connection with these men and it’s it’s men as well. Not just women. Um you know who who are working really hard to drive inclusion but wanting to partner with people that genuinely want to make a difference. So the biggest learning curve for me. There was. Having a network is 1 thing but having a tribe is another.
20:16.94
thinkincircles
Yeah, um, and taken all that into consideration and aligned with the book. You know what’s the landscape for for d and I within kind of fintech today and what’s it kind of what’s a trajectory.
20:30.65
Nadia
So um, on the social justice side of things look I think everyone understands that um, they’ve got to be considering this but also just for for the physicality of how are people going to grow their grow their businesses. How are they going to hit their targets. Their revenue. How they’re going to hit their valuations. How are their future investors going to going to and evaluate them. Especially when a lot of the questions now are around what what’s your dei strategy. What’s your policy. What are your metrics. Um, so I do think there is an appetite. Um, but there’s a couple of couple of very big barriers. Um. 1 is um, it’s really overwhelming like I’ve mentioned before like where do you start? you know because this is this is people and all and all different types of people. Um and and all their once needs motivations how to invest in them. How to support them to how to build psychological safety. It’s a plethora of. So many different things. It’s really overwhelming for people to think like where do I start? So the where do I start thing is a great question but the barrier to that question is when people freeze and they say where do I start actually look at this. We’ve got this product product that we need to complete all this project that needs to be. Finished or whatever it may be well that’s day-to-day work. Let me get that done and inclusion I’ll come to as a luxury. That’s one of the biggest barriers another barrier is that there are businesses still out there that just will not subscribe to this because they do not see it as valuable and they’re really really happy um to grow their business. By searching in the same places. They’ve always searched and by identifying people who look and remind them of them who will laugh at their jokes who will and think that they’re funny who who who they recognize from perhaps their school days and that is another thing I spoke about in the book in terms of group think. People feel safe in their group it when when the group thinks the same because you say something everyone gets it because you all think the same and you all come from the same background this I think will be like especially in fintech because fintech’s all about challenging the status quo and. And thinking up new new ideas for solutions. You didn’t even know we’re a problem you do need diversity of thought for that. So I do think that those types of business leaders will find themselves stuck but they are they are still out there and they still. Um, thinking that they can continue the way that they have done so those are just 2 of the big barriers. Um that we face There’s so many others? Um, but there is an appetite out there I know that there is because the amount of people that are coming to me.
23:05.83
thinkincircles
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no I’ve we’ve we’ve had a couple of guests talking about similar kind of subjects. Um and just the fact that we’ve had more guests talking about these kind of subjects mean that there’s more and more interest in this in this minute. Um, and ah, what’s next for you. What’s ah is is there Another book. In in in the pipeline are you allowed to tell if it’s it’s tellative. There’s a there’s a Sequel. Ah.
23:26.77
Nadia
And is soable I am already thinking of a sequel. But um I think I’m gonna wait until my 2 kids are at least both over one because um, yeah, like right right now and they’re both under 2 and it is yeah it’s it’s pretty um. Yeah, it’s pretty tough going in terms of my evenings but I’m I’m doing the podcasts day and day out I am like I write down stand out quotes all the time and I just think poof. This would be brilliant content for the next? Um, but the next thing on the agenda really for me is the book launch itself which is um. Being hosted on March the fifteenth in the schroeders building in London um, I’ve got panels speaking from 11 till 12 and then lunch afterwards and we still have a few registrations left so I will share that with you for anybody that would want to join us and we will also be opening that that out for a virtual attendees as well. So you can imagine I’m really focused on making sure that that book launch goes well and you know the the panelists are happy and they’re able to communicate everything they want to and also that I get to thank everybody that has contributed to the book from the podcasts. Um, but I think for for even further in the future. My podcast series aren’t only the women of fintech I have the humans of fintech the talent surgery and the maternity and paternity stories of fintech which are all really focused on different different avenues of different people’s lives. Um, there’s so much content there that that could be turned into books for sure.
24:57.28
thinkincircles
Brilliant. Um, so before I let you go just remind us of the ah the name of the book and um and I assume this is going to be available on all good online retailers and things things like.
25:04.43
Nadia
Fintech women walk the talk.
25:09.92
Nadia
Yes, it is available now you can find it on Amazon um, waterstone smiths yeah, any any major bookstore.
25:17.90
thinkincircles
Brilliant, amazing stuff. We will also include all of your details in our show notes. So if anybody wants to kind of contact you directly they can um will also include a link to podcasts and. And if we can find it if it’s up there. We’ll find it. We’ll have a link to the to the Amazon kind of store as well. So people can kind of pre-ordder if they want to um, but for now an edit has been absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. So thank you very much.
25:36.33
Nadia
Thank you.
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by James Whitelock | May 16, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing
On today’s episode of the RecruitingDaily Podcast, William Tincup speaks to James Whitelock from ThinkinCircles about recruitment marketing leadership and why it’s time for recruitment marketers to have a seat at the table.
The Episode Transcript:
Music: This is RecruitingDaily’s Recruiting Live Podcast, where we look at the strategies behind the world’s best talent acquisition teams. We talk recruiting, sourcing, and talent acquisition. Each week, we take one overcomplicated topic and break it down so that your three-year-old can understand it. Make sense? Are you ready to take your game to the next level? You’re at the right spot. You’re now entering the mind of a hustler. Here’s your host, William Tincup
William Tincup: Ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup, and you are listening to the RecruitingDaily Podcast. Today, we have James on from ThinkinCircles. When we talk about recruitment marketing leadership, why it’s time for recruitment marketers to have a seat at the table. We’ve been talking about this with HR, for I believe like 300 years. And because of COVID ironically, they were thrust into not just having a seat at the table, but standing on the table and building the table and all kinds of stuff on the table. So it’s a great metaphor and a wonderful one for James and I to explore with recruitment marketers. James, hello. Would you do us a favor and introduce both yourself and ThinkinCircles?
James Whitelock: Well, firstly, thank you for having me on. It’s an absolute pleasure.
William Tincup: Sure.
James Whitelock: Long-time listener, first time kind of guest. So yeah, my name is James Whitelock and I’m the managing director of ThinkinCircles. And we are a recruitment marketing agency based out of the UK, but we have kind of a global reach. This is a kind of a subject that’s close to my heart because it’s something we deal with with our kind of clients on a daily basis. We only work with recruitment agencies and businesses that are kind of circling the recruitment and HR space. And traditionally these businesses don’t have a marketing function. So that’s kind of where we come in, and it also gives us kind of, really kind of good access to understanding the businesses’ and agency’s philosophy around marketing and how they think about it, what they think its usage is, and all the kind of preconceptions that’s kind of come with this. And as you said, the last couple of years have been really interesting from a recruitment marketing perspective.
William Tincup: So we’ll start with some basic kind terms for the audience so that they kind of can understand maybe where these concentric circles kind of overlap. Obviously we’ve been taught employer brand and the importance of employer brand over the last couple years from a technology perspective, we’ve been taught also about CRM candidate relationship management software and recruitment marketing. Now that we have some basic terms, you knew I had a bunch more, but where do we start when we try to explain this to our leadership, the structure of how things should work? How should it work? If you had a magic wand, how would you have it work at firms?
James Whitelock: Well, this whole thing about having marketing have a seat at the table, that’s exactly what marketing needs to be. When you look outside of recruitment and HR, most businesses kind of take marketing quite seriously. And it’s one of the kind of considerations they have right at the conception or when they get to a stage where they’re big enough and they need to then to start to grow their brand. And when I say a seat at the table, it means someone at director level, really someone who’s around the board table, you can drive this type of strategy from the top down. In traditionally within recruitment, it doesn’t happen that way. Recruitment is so kind of sales focused, the actual marketing that kind of gets sidelined basically.
So really what we’re talking about is someone who can interact with every level of the business, at different parts of the business and understand them, but from a marketing perspective, right? And by that, I mean, how are you going to talk to your different audiences? What’s the message that’s going to be in front of those people? How are you going to kind of convert them? What’s the journey these people take? What is it you think they need? Where do you add value beyond that kind of transactional affair that we usually have within recruitment, which is, “Well, we’re going to charge you to find this candidate to place into this role.” There’s more to it now, right? There’s much more to how recruitment works. Everyone listening I’m sure would know this, but to do that, marketeers need to be much further near the top and kind of get beyond this stage of the coloring in the department, which is the kind usual kind of joke that’s thrown in the marketeer’s way, beyond building PowerPoint presentations and making things look pretty, much more kind of strategic-
William Tincup: It’s, “Oh, you’re playing with art. That’s cute. Do you need some glue? Do you need some scissors? That’s awfully awesome.” And what’s the irony of that is, is corporate marketers have struggled with that for years, until they became a bit more scientific. Once they crossed over and really kind of started doing things with really learning math and Excel and all of these things to where they can start building business cases and using RO at that time, a return on advertising and things like that. It’s like, they had to actually show up at the table with math, for finance and accounting and sales to respect them. And the irony here in America, at least the irony of that 20 years on is, it’s hard to find a corporate marketer that’s actually an artist.
James Whitelock: Well, it’s an interesting point you make, right? Because I think we almost need to move a little bit away from that. Okay?
William Tincup: Right.
James Whitelock: I think we’ve got very obsessed with… Return on investment is the thing that always gets thrown at marketeers. And once you start becoming an accountant instead of a marketeer, then I feel something has probably gone wrong. Something’s gone awry. And not saying that all marketeers need to be kind of creatives in no way, but I think they need to be strategists and they need to be given the kind of breadth to kind of build out these plans and build out these strategies. And like other functions within many businesses, this takes time. And so I think that whole kind of accountancy kind of piece, the whole thing around Excel spreadsheets and going into the fine detail of where every single penny has been kind of converted from, sometimes doesn’t do us any good. Right?
William Tincup: Oh, oftentimes.
James Whitelock: Yeah. I think it’d be really detrimental to what marketeers can really add to a business.
William Tincup: It’s funny when I owned an agency, when people would ask me about that, I’m like, “Listen, there’s some things that’s really easy to do the calculus on.” Okay? So we would do an email campaign. Let’s do something simple. Put in $10,000. I can kind of figure out and really kind of draw down on exactly what that gets you coming back. You want to redesign your logo or your message? It’s going to be harder for me to do the math because what drives that is when sales people have given up on your message. That’s what’s happened. If they’ve given up on your message, then you need to invest in it regardless of the outcome, because you need your sales team to believe in the message. But it’s hard for me to do the calculus. So I’d always bifurcate and say, “Hey, there’s certain things I can do math around and certain things I just can’t. You’re just going to have to trust the fact that you need to do this. And there’s other compelling reasons for that.”
James Whitelock: Yeah. You’re completely right. But this comes back to the fact that sometimes even marketeers aren’t the best communicators. And it’s our job to make sure that the sales teams know exactly what we’re doing and what we are expected of them and put it into forms and terms and something that’s digestible that they can use. Right? And it’s about understanding the sales teams as well. So many times you walk into some kind of businesses, and this is businesses we work with, you’ve got the sales team on one side of the office and you’ve got a marketeers maybe on another. And it’s like, “Well, that’s not going to work. Right?”
William Tincup: Nope, nope.
James Whitelock: That’s just not. I mean, you need these teams kind of embedded together. There’s no way that the guys can kind of respect each other. Again, this is where this whole, the coloring in department and the guys are just shouting down phones basically, that’s-
William Tincup: Oh, and I’ve seen it worse, James. This is years ago, I had a chief revenue officer, at that time they called them VP of sales. And he goes, “Here’s the deal about marketing, they send me spreadsheets, I delete them.” And I’m like… I mean, I was caught off guard, and I’m like, “Well, okay. That is what it is. Why?” He goes, “Because they think that what they’re doing is fruitful, and they send stuff to me because they’ve been to an event and they’ve captured some data. And they send it to me and they think that they’re doing the right thing. So problem is, is all that’s fodder. It’s not helpful for my BDRs. It’s not helpful for my team.” And so I mean, you’re absolutely right. It’s like on some level you’ve got to actually get together and go, “Okay, what’s a combined plan?” Like, “Okay, you’ve got to forecast, a revenue goal that you’ve got to to hit. Fantastic. How do we play a part in that?”
James Whitelock: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that only can be a good thing. And that then lets marketing one, prove they’re worth. One, then embed themselves within the business, but also lends them… You can start thinking about things like account-based marketing when you go down those. There’s methodologies that will be alien to some recruiters and the way that they can work together with marketing. I go on about ABM all the time and I know we’re not here to necessarily talk about that.
William Tincup: Right.
James Whitelock: But then it’s when there’s other methodologies, right? There’s other things beyond building a PowerPoint presentation or a deck for these guys, right? There’s things where you can all work really well together with a goal and a single outcome, like kind of account-based marketing or something similar. Right? Other things that we kind of do that only once we kind of embedded with the sales teams, and we’ve got kind of authority from the top down where we can put these kind of things in place.
So this is where this whole kind of seat at the table kind of scenario really kind of plays its piece because if we can kind of build this strategy up, we can say, “Right, this is how we’re going to work. We’re going to do this, this, this, this, and this with these guys over here. We’re going to work with the internal recruiters around EVP and employer branding over here.” And then it all kind of starts to add value. And that’s where you start to move away a little bit from the kind of number crunches, and you start moving kind of this blended approach from, “All right. We can prove growth. We can prove return. We can also be creative. We can be strategic.” And that’s where, I think, marketing is at its best.
William Tincup: And one more question before we get to some success stories, because I think that’ll help people and it’s based in the recruitment marketers, we kind of talk to each other, oftentimes there’s awards for people that do great and things like that. But outside of that, I’m not sure the rest of the executive team understands what great recruitment marketing looks like and feels like, and what impact it has on employer brand, what impact it has on candidate flow and all these other things that it has impact on. And I remember a campaign Ikea did, I think it’s in Australia a hundred years ago. And it was, they put job adverts inside the boxes, which it was inside the boxes, but they were created like instructions, so it went like a typical Ikea box you’d buy, whatever, a bookshelf or whatever it was.
And you’d have it, but this was a job ad. And they’d have the instructions too, but those were separate. And so you’d look at it and it had all the different things that you had to… All the pieces and all the things that it literally looked and felt, same paper, same thing. It just felt like… And it was just like, “Oh, that’s bright. Like that’s actually really, really, really bright.” And I’m sure it was effective because people that shopped at Ikea, probably there was an affinity already and I’m sure it worked, but it was just a bright campaign.
James Whitelock: I mean, you had probably a couple of different outcomes. Right? One, it was just a good branding exercise. Right?
William Tincup: Right. Right. Good point.
James Whitelock: I mean, they probably knew that they weren’t going to get a huge amount of kind of applications. But it proves to the people that they are hiring, they’re growing. The people who are kind of buying Ikea means they know that this is a kind of a growing business, that they’re after this kind of thing. So, I think that’s actually that more of a kind of a branding exercise. And it obviously was effective because you are telling that story now.
William Tincup: That’s right. Yeah.
James Whitelock: You remember it.
William Tincup: Yeah. And again, candidate flow. Did they do the return on investment? Did they sit around with Excel? Eh, probably not.
James Whitelock: Yeah, exactly.
William Tincup: Probably not. I mean, you can name names and all that stuff. In fact, if you can, that’s great. It’s just give us some examples, take us into the world where you’ve seen recruitment marketing work so that the audience can start to put their hands and heads around, “Okay. What does it look like when it works?” And obviously, we can deal with some of the opposite when it doesn’t work, but let’s just see if there’s some positive stories first.
James Whitelock: So I’ll give you some of the things that kind of we’ve been working with some of our clients. Obviously, our clientele are all recruitment agencies. So the recruitment agencies, they sit in the middle of this process and they’re either loved or loathed. So sometimes we’ve got a battle against that in the first place. But for instance, in the UK in a minute, there is this real shortage and this, I don’t like the term, war for talent, but there is a need for really good recruitment consultants, right? Every business that we’re working for in a minute is screaming out for recruitments because the market has gone crazy, so they’re trying to grow. So that is a lot of work that we are doing in a minute. And so we’ve got a couple of businesses that we worked on, one specific and they work in inclusivity.
So they have an inclusive kind of recruitment process and they work with businesses who want to be more inclusive, and that’s their whole kind of USP and they’re trying to grow at the minute. So we’ve been working with them to kind of grow their team. And we’ve basically picked up on this kind of inclusivity kind of theme and running through any of the kind of marketing material that we’re picking up there. So this is a good example. If you can latch onto a theme that is going to kind of do really well, those are the kind of things that I think are going to turn on. Obviously, you’ve got to know your audience pretty well, so you’ve done all the research around this. You know these kind of people and you’re trying to kind of came from, and some of that now is you can obviously do a lot of that through technology.
There’s all kinds of tech out there that you can kind of get your message in front of people. But again, that specific message and this inclusive message seemed to be really switching on for this inclusivity. Now everything else they’ve done and all their kind of positioning, all their messaging was around inclusivity, but where we kind of drilled that down into the people who also want to work for them, that really switched on. That really kind of had a turn on. And for that business, that means it really generally is in the DNA of them. And we were to kind of latch onto that. So that’s kind of one example.
So inclusivity is one of these things that really switch on. And when we talk about inclusivity, we’re obviously not talking around just having a photo of someone who is disabled, someone who is older, someone who is kind of from a minority background. We’re talking about much more, that the process is very open, that at no point along that process, are you kind of canceling people out.
So again, we have to try and put those things into our marketing as well, which isn’t necessarily easy. And even from our point of view, we’re still learning, but that is a good example of where things are kind of working at the moment when it comes to kind of trying to recruit consultants.
William Tincup: Yeah, you’re building themes that people can, in this case, a really, really, really good theme that you believe in. It’s obviously something that the firm values. And so it proliferates everything that they do. And it also is something that people care about.
James Whitelock: Yeah. I mean, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
William Tincup: So, all right. Go on. I know you had like jillions of these, so we’ll go on to the next one.
James Whitelock: So a lot of our clients are also in the tech sectors, right? So we’ve got a lot of IT and tech recruiters, and that is notoriously kind of difficult to kind of recruit in because it’s just such a highly, highly, competitive industry in a minute. Something like 50% of all UK recruiters are in IT. Right?
William Tincup: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
James Whitelock: So it’s a big pool, but with a lot of fish in it, basically all trying to get the same kind of candidates. So how do you try and stand out from the other businesses? Well, so one project we’re kind of going through at the minute is really to kind of make sure that they look significantly different to everyone else out there. The problem with recruitment is, especially, let’s say the process of recruitment online, very similar, right?
It’s become an expectation that you are going to work. You are going to use the website to apply for a job this way. This is how it works, right? Now, that’s just kind of standard UX, but how you kind of position yourself is the thing that’s going to kind of catch on. And even simple things as your branding and the kind of branding and the imagery that you use to get across. So really simple kind of branding and marketing tools, and everyone or most of the people you talk to are going to say, “Well, we don’t want to have any stock photos of people sitting around a desk.”
William Tincup: The diversity hands. Yep. Yep. Got it.
James Whitelock: Yeah. But everybody has still has them. It’s kind of like, “Well, if you don’t want them, why are you… You’ve been using these across all of your brands for the last 10 years, and only now you’ve decided.” So the things like really kind of going outside and thinking completely differently and thinking about what actually your audiences want from you and what turns them on and what is the things that’s going to kind of attract them.
William Tincup: Right.
James Whitelock: And usually that isn’t necessarily stuff around recruitment or them kind of even doing their job, but it’s much more kind of it’s pushing about. So the stuff we’re doing with this business is there’s some bright kind of colored, just crazy abstract imagery that we’re working with them. It’s got almost zero to do with the kind of areas that they’re recruiting in. Okay? But it’s had a great response so far, you know?
William Tincup: Yeah.
James Whitelock: And again, this is one of those things where looking outside of recruitment can also help. Right? If we were kind of working in other areas, you’d be fine with kind of looking at this kind of different imagery. And it’s really simple stuff. Right? But so sometimes, again, they’re so wary of taking these chances. And again, this is the role that marketing can play just to try and nudge people along to push these kind of boundaries.
William Tincup: I think people are wary though, James. Sorry to interrupt. I think people are wary because A, you’ve got tradition, maybe some things that the history, tradition, et cetera, but some of it is ego in this sense of you’re pushing and talking about audience first. Okay, what is your audience care about? Okay, then let’s go build a layer around what they care about, so we can engage with them kind of on their terms, not necessarily on our terms. And there’s a whole lot of executives that just will see that and go. “Yeah. But I really like the color blue.” “Okay. That’s fantastic. Your audience, mostly female, hate the color blue.” I mean, that’s poor example, but the idea is like if you serve an audience, if it’s in recruitment marketing, you serve an audience, then bring in candidate flow, et cetera. In corporate marketing, you serve the customers. Okay? So you serve an audience and at one point you have to make the decision, are we going to be audience-driven or customer-driven, candidate-driven, or not?
James Whitelock: And interesting enough, recruitment is quite unique in the fact that we are B2B and B2C, right?
William Tincup: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep.
James Whitelock: Because we have a candidate audience who are kind of B2C, and then we have the B2B, which is the clients we’re serving. So as marketeers, it’s actually quite a tricky job to try and do all of this at the same time.
William Tincup: That’s right.
James Whitelock: So trying to kind of one size fits all, sometimes doesn’t work but sometimes does, right?
William Tincup: Right.
James Whitelock: Many a time do we talk with our recruitment agency partners and their candidates become their clients, all this kind of stuff happens, especially again in IT, when you’re at senior IT level, definitely that kind of happens. So having some marketing leadership to understand that in the first place, okay? And how you then go on and you take people on that journey where we know we’re going to get very senior IT people we’re replacing. We know at some point they’re probably going to then become our clients. So from a marketing perspective, what does that journey look like? How do we continually kind of make sure that we have touch points with them. It’s the right kind of touch points at the right time, that what we’re delivering them is reflective of their journey within that business. And when they’re ready to then hire, and then it’s a different message that we send to them.
This is the only thing that can only really be done from quite a senior level. Right? This is not a graphic designer’s job or a social media manager’s job. This is why I talk about this kind of marketing leadership and importance of it, because there are these things that are really quite, quite complex relationships that kind of need to be understood, researched, and then delivered.
William Tincup: That’s right.
James Whitelock: That other businesses and other kind of corporates just don’t kind of get involved in that kind of journey.
William Tincup: No. Two quick questions, because we’re running out of time, but both of them I really want to get your take on. One is how should recruitment marketers be judged? And I avoided the analytics and metrics and typical stuff because I just wanted to kind of take on, at the end of the day, we do have a seat at table. That’s fantastic. Sales, got it. I understand how they’re judged. How should recruitment marketing leaders, how should they be judged?
James Whitelock: So I was try and steer clear of the kind of vanity metrics, right?
William Tincup: Right.
James Whitelock: The amount of followers we have… Social media didn’t really do marketing as much help when it come up with followers because everybody just got obsessed with having as many followers.
William Tincup: That’s right.
James Whitelock: Within recruitment, I’m a big fan of potential value in the database. Okay? So that is how I like to kind of talk about this. So we drive candidates to wherever we want to drive candidates to. If they end up in the database, there’s a potential value of that person. We know how much it will be to… If we place that person, how much an average kind of fee that would bring in, okay? With a client, when that client comes into the database, we have an idea of average, how much they’re going to spend over a year. So then at that point, they have a potential value. And I always like to think, “All right, how is the potential value that we have brought into the business?” So it could be hundreds of thousands of pounds potentially per month. Right?
William Tincup: Right.
James Whitelock: That’s how I like to see it. And I think that’s almost as-
William Tincup: That’s healthy.
James Whitelock: Yeah. It’s as healthy as you want to get. It proves that there’s money sitting in the database ready to be kind of-
William Tincup: It also forces recruiters to think about the database and instead of casting new and trying to avoid the database, think about the database and say, “Hey, there’s things here that are valuable.” So I like it. I like it on a couple different levels. I like staying away from the vanity stuff, A. Staying away from kind of just ROI-ish related stuff. But I love the idea of,” Hey, listen, there’s value in this database. You choose to use it or leverage it or you don’t.” I love that. Last question. And you’ve dealt with a jillion of these as well, where do great recruitment marketers come from?
James Whitelock: That’s a really good question. If I knew, I’d go and kind of find them.
William Tincup: It’s like a Clover, that’s only in one part of Ireland, and you can only get it at one place. I’ve been fascinated with this for years. It’s like, “Do we build them ourself? Do we harvest them?” Or like, is this just an ex recruiter that just really, really likes the creative side and understands recruitment. And then it’s, we take them through the paces and they become recruitment marketers? I don’t know. I honestly don’t have the answer to this question. That’s why I thought maybe you would.
James Whitelock: It’s all of the above, you know what I mean? So once you’re in though, it’s a bit like the mafia, you know?
William Tincup: Yeah.
James Whitelock: Just when you try to get out, it drags you back in.
William Tincup: Oh, yeah.
James Whitelock: You don’t seem leave.
William Tincup: Oh, no.
James Whitelock: That’s that’s the thing. So from my position, kind of like even a lot of recruiters, I just kind of fell into it. It wasn’t something I kind of planned. I just kind of ended up working for a recruitment agency in the back office and then kind of that’s where my path started. We’ve got people working within my business who are ex recruiters who then kind of had a kind of creative flare and just kind of worked their way up and understood and did whatever kind of courses they needed to do to understand it.
William Tincup: And you’ve had marketers that come over from corporate or came up through university and come over and they understand kind of consumer marketing, but they don’t understand this. So then they have to kind of unlearn some things.
James Whitelock: Exactly. And as I said, it’s quite unique in the way that recruitment marketing works. So, yeah, some are ex recruiters, some are people who just kind of fall into it. Generally, it’s the marketeers within recruitments start quite kind of junior level and then over time, work their way up. And then there’s that pool there. Rarely does a senior marketeer ever decided, “I’m going to go work for a recruitment agency.”
William Tincup: Right?
James Whitelock: That doesn’t happen.
William Tincup: No, no. They’ve already got the scars at that point to prove that they know certain things. James, this was wonderful. And we’ll need more time next time to explore stuff. So thank you so much for carving out time for us and the RecruitingDaily Podcast.
James Whitelock: Well, thank you for having me.
William Tincup: Absolutely. And thanks for everyone listening to the RecruitingDaily Podcast. Until next time.
Music: You’ve been listening to the Recruiting Live Podcast by RecruitingDaily. Check out the latest industry podcast, webinars, articles, and news at recruitingdaily.com.
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#ThinkinCircles
#RecruitmentMarketing
by Julia Fras | May 5, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing
Why, how and what we measure in marketing has always been a point of contention. More than often marketing KPIs are set from high above and have little to no relation to the day to day efforts and success of a marketing department.
So, are KPI’s dead and should we bother measuring anything at all?
Join James Whitelock this week to discuss this is Glenn Southam. Glenn is a vocal proponent of the role of marketers and community managers for the influential Lonely Marketers group.
The Episode Transcript:
00:00.60
thinkincircles
Welcome back, everybody to the marketing rules podcast and today I’ve got everyone’s favourite marketer everyone’s favourite recruitment marketer glen self and with me um, Glenn it’s a pleasure to have you on the podcast I know I’ve been on on the yours. The lonely market here and I promised at that point that we definitely get you back on to hear because. Um I think ah you know there’s not many you have your kind of reputation within the recruitment marketing space. So it is good to have you on because I think you’re going to kind of add a lot and ah and as a lot of our um listeners are in that in that area are in kind of ah the marketing space and recruit marketing space I think it would be absolutely valuable to have you on. However, before we get on talking about a bit about kind of measuring marketing. It would be good to just kind of get a little bit about your background because I’ve known you for a few years now and I know a little bit kind of how you kind of come into the industry. But for anybody who’s not kind of familiar with your work as it were. Ah, can you kind of give us a little um, kind of update on on how you get to where you are stay. So.
00:58.20
Glenn
Yeah, of course. Um, thank you for the kind words reputation can go one way or the other. um um I’m glad you? Yeah I noticed you didn’t say good or or bad on there. But ah yeah, just as a you know as ah as a whistle stop if you like um like most people within this wonderful world of recruitment I I fell into it. I graduated back in a very long time ago now back in 2004 applied for every job under the sun. It’s a lot harder to apply for jobs back then as well than it is now. Um and and I ended up. Um you know, but applying to a marketing assistant role. A financial recruitment firm in London called Mark Satin um and I’ve joined their marketing assistant done. Absolutely everything from a marketing perspective even Print Advertising Back in the day um and and that’s where my journey journey started and you know I’ve been in the industry. Ever since? um, quite long stints in in businesses usually high-g growth businesses where a lot of change happens. So I never really had the chance to to get bored. Um, started up teams from 0 where I was number 1 grown those teams internationally as businesses have have grown. Um. And then the last business where I was kind of a proper employee if you if you like that got sold and then I made the decision to um to come out and do some some consultancy work and you know over that period of time probably works with. Thirty thirty five recruitment businesses on their marketing efforts as well as over the past couple of years supporting individual marketers in terms of you know, growing their careers if you like and you know my passion is always to get marketers. Ah. Better seat at the table or a seat at all sometimes and um and that’s where my where my focus has been and over the past couple of years like like you mentioned as well. Um, kind of naturally evolved the the lonely marketers community of which the podcast happens and thinks if there’s one good thing.
02:49.20
thinkincircles
And.
03:08.37
Glenn
Um, to come out of the whole Covid pandemic it. It certainly is that um lany Mar community.
03:13.35
thinkincircles
Yeah I mean it’s interesting. You mentioned that that because for anyone kind of listening. It’s it’s a WhatsApp group full of ah recruiter marketeers um 1 or 2 kind of marketing consultants like myself and a few others. Um and it’s just this kind of safe space for. Discuss everything kind of recruitment marketing. Um, and actually that is where I kind of got the idea for today’s kind of chat which is around measuring marketing and how you and how we go about that. Um, and it seems to be a reoccurring kind of I was going to say an issue but it’s it’s a theme that kind of comes up. Um, and it would be good to kind of you know, pick your brains around and get your thoughts around this because I said in the in the in the WhatsApp group. It tends to kind of come up very similar times when budgets are being discussed these kind of things, it kind of, its season that this seems to kind of come up and I know it’s something we get asked from an agency point of view. You know you know the you know how to get return on investment. How do we measure the success and all that kind of stuff so I thought would be good to kind of have a chat around that. Um, so you know one of the kind of first things I always kind of tried to kind of talk to some of our clients about is that you know. It can be quite hard to measure the the kind of the effectiveness of of marketing but is it. Okay, that’s the you know the traditional thinking is it is its its can be difficult but with everything else that’s out there now is it still as difficult. Um, as it always was so what’s your kind of thought that.
04:45.84
Glenn
Yeah I don’t I don’t think it’s as difficult as it always was um, you know like like you say this has been a question that’s been put to me from managers and clients and and everything since since I I started. Um I think the. You know the rapid rise in technology that’s out there and the sophistication of of crms email marketing platforms, etc, etc makes it a lot easier to to measure stuff. Um, but. Still think there’s a disconnect between what people are measuring why they’re measuring it for the sake of it. Um, ah you know so many businesses and individuals that I’ve worked with who have been reaming off you know, just so much data from Google Analytics from email platforms and. Just spreadsheets and so you know we’re set we’re sending this you know upwards on a monthly weekly basis and it’s a little bit pointless to to be honest, it’s it’s a little bit reporting for reporting’s sake. It’s not really proven kind of any return on investment. Um. But equally and um, ah I think we’ll probably come on to this is that you know can you can you measure everything or should you be measuring everything but look It’s certainly easier. Ah ah, a top level to get the the insight into how our audiences. And maybe our consultant to be honest, how they behave and interact um with us as a brand as well as any specific content that that we create I think that’s that’s obvious.
06:31.47
thinkincircles
Yeah, yeah, um, and it’s Interesting. You kind of pull up that point around um reporting for reporting’s sake and and again this may comes back to to a theme that I know we’re both kind of passionate about about marketing having this kind of this seat at the table and Whether. It’s much more upon us as marketeers to to deliver that more that kind of whatever we are going to report on when we’re no know we’re going to talk about that. Whatever we’re measuring but to report that more effectively and to kind of understand exactly what the board or whoever at the senior management teams are expecting and want to see. As opposed to saying ah with you know, traffics up to the website on the website by 20% where does that what does that actually mean and I mean and yeah, again your your kind of opinion on on that.
07:21.98
Glenn
It’s it’s applying marketing principles to to what you’re doing internally I think so it’s it’s it’s knowing your audience you know that that’s what we do as marketers is we want to understand the audiences understand their their challenges and present them with solutions insight. Um, data that that makes those problems go away and and when you’re talking in in recruitment terms in reality to the people you’re reporting you need to be talking at the basically about new candidates new clients. And revenue. Um but you know those 3 things is is all that you need to re review your reports on now I’m not saying that the rest of the reporting that people may be doing and the insights that they’re getting is not invaluable. It is if something’s going wrong. If something’s going wrong and you’re not hitting the milestones the targets the the ah roi that you may have created yourself. Um, then you can dive into that reporting to be able to understand what the the triggers or the levers are there. But I think. You know it’s a little bit less is more you know put your marketing to hat on when you come to report and I think you know I’m going to speak to the CEO the MD the sales director. What do they care about and only present what they care about what you care about in reality they probably couldn’t care less. Ah, to a certain way and it’s kind of having that level of acceptance yourself I think you know makes you a better marketer and probably have a little bit more um impact within the business that you’re working in.
08:58.65
thinkincircles
So that’s interesting because that comes on to next next point about you know our our KPI is dead because if everybody’s everybody’s got their own skin in the game right? like you’ve just said if you’re reporting to the sales director. They’ve got a certain but certain targets and certain. Things that they want to see from marketing and certain things that they’re interested in the finance department has something else. HCharDepartment has got something else the Md and the board have maybe got something else. So one of the things that comes up in in the group a lot is that marketers have been kind of slapped with these kind of key performance indicators and. There’s a kind of bit of a pushback as well. You know, does this really meet this how how affect what does this mean for my job you know am I you know do I really want to do I need to be kind of hitting these you know what’s the point. Um, so is that kind of kind of just put hanging this kind of sword of damocles with with Apis over mark over marketers head. Dead and we should be coming up with a different way of of measuring and.
09:55.13
Glenn
Yeah I think I think KPI is generally not just from ah from a marx point of view generally in recruitment. They’ve um, they’ve always had attached to them. It’s a little bit of a dirty dirty word. You know in the in the in the world of recruitment. It’s. minutes hour minutes hours on the phone. How many calls you send how many cvs you send, etc, etc. You know the premise of keep a key performance. Indicator is still a hundred percent sound I just I just don’t think people spend enough time on finding out what those key performance indicators are for any single. Activity that that’s happening from it from a marketing um point of view I think a lot a lot of it comes down to a little bit of a lack of planning if if I’m being honest people. People businesses. Don’t know what they’re trying to achieve from their marketing from the outset. So if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve from your marketing from the outset. It’s very hard to know what kind of results you need and if you don’t know what kind of results you you need you don’t know what activity you need to push into that. And then it comes down to to KPIs I think from ah from a marketing point of view. We. We always we always focus on um you know conversions around websites. You know the contact form downloads at a very basic level job applications. Um, you know if you’re kind of job led with. With websites I think I think they’re all they’re all varied and they’re worth looking into but like late it has to be tied into to whatever you’ve been aiming for at the start because it’s very easy. Yeah there’s even a lot of talk sometimes around. Um you know followers.
11:34.89
thinkincircles
Yeah, so.
11:44.16
Glenn
You know or the likes that the the vanity type metrics on social media and and you know I’m not 1 of just saying oh that we need a 0 kind of followers. But if you’ve got the data and the insight that that you’re able to say right over. Ah.
11:45.42
thinkincircles
Yeah, yeah.
12:02.35
Glenn
Period of twelve months you know say content consistency stuff has remained the same and for every 10000 extra followers followers. You get you know your engagement goes up by nat point five percent on Linkedin and you can see that trend then it’s then there’s value in saying.
12:19.67
thinkincircles
And.
12:22.22
Glenn
Well, we want to increase our followers by by 25 you know by another 25000 saying it for the sake of it is pointless without that that data and insight to um to back it up and I ah genuinely think um, you know for for marketers and marketing as a profession within. Recruitment to to kind of take that step up is that um, they’ve got to create that bandwidth or time in their career or in which resulting in their down weeks to really dive in to data dive into trends. Um. Pull that insights out and do you know what in recruitment yet, you’ve got so much. It might not be the best quality at a lot of places granted but there’s so much there you know sitting on your on your your your bullhorns at every think of this world. There’s so much to dive into. But no one takes ownership of it like literally nobody usually owns the CRM I t might have it individual consultants own their own little bubble but that is a huge opportunity I think if if kind of marketing takes control. Finds out what they want to know about it and then influence the kind of the processes and draw out the the trends and that insight because that informs everything than the data in the insights. It informs internal training. It will inform the content that you create the type of content that you create how you distribute it and things. But we. We work in the majority of times on pure assumption and and it’s it’s it’s baffling everyone else doesn’t you know people outside of recruitment. Don’t you know, go to the extreme Amazon doesn’t work on the assumption they work on you know tens of millions of data points.
14:05.45
thinkincircles
Yeah, exactly.
14:12.32
Glenn
Informs How they communicate with people and ah I think there’s there’s no reason why we can’t do that and I’m saying we as marketers and maybe as an industry can’t do that to you know, improve that candidate and then client engagement a bit.
14:24.53
thinkincircles
Um, so that comes up brings up a couple of kind of follow-on questions. Um is so with regard to these couple the the KPIs that are the that our fellow marketeers are being set. That’s probably being set by not them in the first place that and I think that. Possibly this issue. It’s been kind of set from on high and you’re right? These vanity metrics come into play then and so we talking ah again this whole kind of seat at the table should we be should we be setting our own kind of ah metrics to follow and we should be influencing we should begin of upselling this to the. Borden said that this is this is what I want to measure because I know it’s because I know it’s important and this is what’s going to affect the the bottom line.
15:05.79
Glenn
Yeah I think if you’re not getting the the support and and then this happens you know in in ah in the best possible way sometimes is. It’s like look I trust you to kind of get on with your job and you know we believe in what you’re doing is good and it probably is good. Like as martyrs sometimes you need that little bit more you want that little bit of structure and drive is that you do have to um, you do have to take it on yourself sometimes create your ah level of accountability for yourself for your own team. And just have it work in a way in the background for a bit so you can build up the knowledge and then rather than moaning every month that you kind of you’re not having the kind of the right conversations, etc, etc. You’ve built up a huge business case of evidence. Your impact of of what you’re doing um and push it upwards I think it’s just taking and I think it’s taking that little bit of pain and you might have get ah some pats on the back. Um immediately. But I think it’s it’s worth it in in the end it gives you a lot more credibility when you’re having those conversations internally when you’ve got you know the evidence to to back it up I take the and that that goes on the same with with budgets as well. And. You know I think budgets and ah ROI ah are obviously linked. But there’s a you know a huge majority of recruitment businesses who don’t have um marketing budgets. It’s a cost center. It’s like oh yeah, put it in marketing. Oh yeah, don’t worry, you can do it and I think. If. That’s the case you might think oh that’s brilliant I can split us can spend what I want but it doesn’t address that issue of return or investment. So I think you know if you haven’t got a budget or someone said oh yeah, we don’t need one. Don’t worry about it. Do it just create it yourself. Chuck something on it excel. Work backwards saying right? I want to achieve x, y and said this year I’m going to need this I’m expecting these types of results and just create it yourself for for your own accountability more than anything.
17:18.26
thinkincircles
Um, um, and I that brings up questions about the skillsets of a market modern recruitment marketeer. Um, and I so I suppose like again, this is an assumption that a lot of us in recruitment marketing probably haven’t gone down a very formal process. You know you know and. Ah, lot of it’s kind of on the job learn and you know some of us have kind of fallen into it. Some of us might come on very kind of a lower level and then kind of worked our way up and it poses the question is yeah, the modern recruit market here needs to be kind of part data analysts as well because crunching through all these numbers like you know. The the thought of diving into your kind of your database at your business which has fifty plus thousand kind of entries in it something and and and trying to kind of crunch all that and analyse that and use the database. You know how it should be used. You know to analyse that data. Can seem pretty scary all right? Um, so again, this is probably one of those other kind of the seat at the table questions is is the modern is a modern recruitment marketeer. No longer really that a marketeer is more you know is data is part data analyst as well.
18:26.65
Glenn
Yeah I think the role of marxin has has changed um and and I think the understand on the whole um for what marx can deliver within a business has has changed he speaking from. And personal experience certainly over the past three or four years I’d never imagined that and and you’ve probably um, found the same here with them with thinking circles I’d never imagined that I’d be working to the extent that I do with smaller. Businesses smaller recruitment businesses who want to start their marketing journey a lot earlier on you know I’m literally talking like sub 5 person recruitment businesses where you know in in days gone by. It’s just sell sell sales head down. Get the revenue in conversations of. Marketing are happening you know alongside those kind of sales sales conversations which is which is great and I should see it see it as a great opportunity but equally I think traditionally that first marketing higher within recruitment businesses would be the admin level. Help help with the socials help with this help with that I think I think it has I think it has changed I think people people now want um yeah, ah, a qualified and when I say qualified I means someone with um, more. Rounded experience of ah of a more commercial world and you know it is being willing to to be to be paid for I I had a ah had a conversation on um, on on Linkedin. It was going it was going on um a couple of days ago around you know the the whole. Specialist marx approach or the generalist marketing approach and um’m you know Ah I’m a proud ah Jack of Jack of all trades and there’s plenty of Jackson Janes of all trades out there. But I think when you become a general and you’re able to dip into things. Everywhere just makes you more commercially aware of what’s got what’s going on in the business always with ah your marketing hat on for the majority of it and focusing on that the brand and the experience and and things. But yeah, ah has the skill. The data has certainly. Changed it I think there’s more and more marketing is led by data you know, marketing. Ah data is isn’t now just um, something that sits in finance if if you like ah where it is position. It traditionally it is it is I think it is marketing now. Um.
21:10.13
Glenn
And that doesn’t mean that um you know every marketer has to go and be an expert in interrogating databases and um, you know being experts in Sql say I don’t even know if I’ve got that acronym right? Um, but I think whether. Where the market-rolls there’s experts who are good with that that kind of thing and they form part of the marketing function whether internally or externally what the market Marketers job to do is to bring that data to life is to story-tell, it is to sell it to other areas of the business and and that’s. That’s the challenge and probably you know where I’d see the more traditional marketer is utilising the data. Maybe not you know, pulling all the the nitty gritty out of it but taking it and having that ability to turn numbers Graphs. You know up and down percentages. Into something that’s really compelling both internally but also externally for for candidates and clients.
22:12.67
thinkincircles
And I think that’s a really good point I think that then um, partly goes into justifying the value of ah of a good recruitment marketer. Um, because kind of back to your point around the smaller businesses that are kind of more interested in marketing a kind of a startup little one. Ah we have several on our books who are kind of sub 5 so of my about businesses who you who want marketing? Um, but there is a certain amount of those other businesses that that you know and and for anyone watching we’re not watching undo air quotes who do it themselves as well, right? which I think to a certain extent. Um again. Values marketing a slightly bit because if you kind of if it’s kind of if the recruiters when they’re starting up doing it themselves and they believe that marketing is sick out some posts on on Linkedin. Um, then there’s there’s that kind of mindset sometimes kind of gets into into businesses that is easy because all it is is just putting out a Linkedin post when actually now what? what? ah. You know a modern market brings this whole plethora of of kind of skills in interrogating databases influencing that database understanding what’s going on what’s happening and being able to trend it out and kind of get ahead of that kind of thing and then communicate that as well. Which is the really bit which the bit I don’t think we do particularly well is communicating that. Um.
23:23.92
Glenn
Um, nice.
23:28.31
thinkincircles
Which is um which is an interest point’s so coming back to our kind of main discussion around marketing data you you meant you’ve picked up on a few things that we should and shouldn’t measure but just kind of remind us again. What are the kind of things that you believe that we should be measuring and more important than things that probably shouldn’t be.
23:45.92
Glenn
Yeah, ah like I think I think it it completely depends on your on your marketing approach and it sounds ah sounds like a ah cop out and it depends what what types of type of business that you’re um, that you’re that you’re operating in and where where the focus is in in terms of.
23:47.37
thinkincircles
Isuring.
24:05.59
Glenn
In terms of growth. Ah I think nowadays for for me in terms of the biggest opportunity for for recruitment businesses and marketers in general is is around engagement. You’ve got to be measuring engagement. Um, because especially. You know at the time of us recording now where 99% of the markets. Are you know, a candidate short is how are we interacting with the majority of the market with content. Um, you know on a regular basis. But. Whether it’s for our email whether it’s via social media whether it’s via you know, events for you know, real real or virtual now in in this crazy new world that we live in. Um I think you need to be measuring all of those. All of those kind of touch points and the value of those touch points to be able to inform how much people were bought into your brand and again I think this it kind of leads on to um and you know we joked. We joked about it when you were on um on my show James. Like you’ve got to build out these models that that allow you to add a value to certain type of activity for the people you’re reaching out to you know, an easy inverted commas social post is worth a lot less value to someone engaged than than. And event that you’re you’re running for for 200 people and things. But I think those engagement scores is is what you want to look at um, but but ultimately like say going back to what I was saying is like how does that how does that translate and flow through to um, you know. Candidate acquisition. Um, you know leads? Um, and and you know ah I think often forget this sometimes but especially now internal hiring as well. You know if you’re if you’re kind of a control of employer brand and you’re working with ah an I r team. You know, make sure you you create. That that level of engagement there is there as well. I think that’s um, you know I think that’s really important.
26:18.10
thinkincircles
I Think yeah I completely agree and and and um, we we see that with that with our clients you know that as as you said the many it’s it’s it’s that trying to bring on New Talent bring on candidates um and more and often trying to kind of bring on new members of staff. Um, one of the kind of metrics that I like and it would be good to is I like this? Um, this potential value Point. So Once you’ve got someone into the database you’ve drawn them into the database then they have a potential value at that point you know if they’re good enough to be in a database the average value of ah of a.
26:43.45
Glenn
Um.
26:54.96
thinkincircles
Of ah, a candidate in your database is x okay, so as a marketeer you’ve brought in a potential value into database of potentially £100000 in a month or something on that because if they all of them were placed. That’s possibly how much they could be um, but knowing how and and but and and like nice thing that is it counts for how.
27:11.39
Glenn
Um, next.
27:12.60
thinkincircles
Recruitment works is that they could sit there for a couple of months without much happening or just being kind of engaged with and just going backward and forwards doing what the market is doing they cc recruit but there’s a value attached to them if they’re there. There’s a value you brought them in from they’re worth 20 grand or something like that you know and I always quite like that I think that’s a nice one and if you can prove that. It’s not that difficult to prove that you’ve gotten there. You can go back to the board and go look There’s a potential value of this in the database you know it’s up to you guys to ready kind of to do the next is to place them right.
27:37.56
Glenn
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree I always you know? Ah I’ll talk about expected value. It’s exactly it’s exactly the same thing and I think as a marker. What what you can do you can speak your finance people you can jump into whatever analytics tool you might have on your crm and work out and you can slice and disco as deep as you want. It’s like. Well from the point of registration through to um, you know someone being hired the average time to fill is is x and you can keep monitoring. Um, you know when you’ve brought in those leads and if it hasn’t filled again. This is what makes you kind of more commercially whereas a marker. Is that you can speak to other people in the business say well, why hasn’t this happened. It might be a training thing within the business. You know it might be an individual personnel thing and things. But I think you know and I’m I’m talking. Yeah you know this is a utopian world for for me is that um, ah. I’d love that you know if we say there’s eight eight stages to a recruitment process is that is that marketing whether it’s sort of Crm um or anything controls. However, many it might be say 4 stages to the point of attraction acquisition.
28:52.34
thinkincircles
And.
28:52.45
Glenn
And nurturing and then when you hit certain triggers into nurturing that’s when um, the recruiters can actually get involved now I know in reality that’s not going to happen because people who search the the CRM. Um they can select select 50 candidates and. And send them out a message and um and ah does any any work that you might do as a marketer but I think you know if you increase your standing in the business and you increase your influence and you’re able to demonstrate results even on. Ah, you know take a small subset a small team or something to show that process works. Um, within recruitment will make a huge amount of difference I think it would boost brand value or boost your reputation in the Market Market and and bottom line It would give you a better chance of of probably placing candidates. Um, it kind of goes against all of the the urgency and the here and now um. World that we live in. But again, do you know? what? it it happens in in a lot of other walks of life when it comes to you know either B 2 B marketing or or the the B Two C world and there’s there’s no reason why you know we can’t at least um strive for it if not if that tried. You know, completely revolutionise everything tomorrow.
30:07.55
thinkincircles
Um, and I think that is a great place to finish on I think I think that’s a great sentiment to finish on Glenn. It’s been an absolute pleasure having on a podcast today I’m sure at some point and the future will have you back because ah, you know, um we could carry this on for hours. Ah, but for now, thank you very much.
30:23.56
Glenn
Thanks James, a pleasure.
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#MarketingRules
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#RecruitmentMarketing
by James Whitelock | Apr 4, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing
Click PLAY to listen to the podcast episode:
The need to find and engage with the right talent at the right time for the right role is the forefront of most recruiters minds right now. Driven by a shortage of candidates and passive candidates only willing to change jobs in the right circumstances.
One method to keep you and your company at the forefront of the minds of your audiences is to build communities.
Join me this week to discuss community building in recruitment is Dualta Doherty. Dualta has successfully built communities for candidates, clients and now runs a peer to peer community called RecWired.
The Episode Transcript:
00:01.43
thinkincircles
So welcome back. Everybody to the marketing rules podcast and today I am joined by Duelta Doherty from RecWidred and all kinds of other places as well. Um, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Um. Usually we ask kind of our guests to say give us a little bit of kind of bet about our background if they don’t if people if our listeners and our audience don’t know anything much about you but I would imagine most people listening would know who you are so just Gunna give us ah a brief kind of recap of kind of you know. Of yourself and and the businesses you’re involved with and and little bit about your background.
00:37.84
Dualta Doherty
Yeah we’re probably guilty of shouting a bit loudly over the years um so I’ve been in recruitment for about 1112 years now um the last two years bit of a blur for for a lot of us started in Australia one of the big businesses and then. I got a taste of entrepreneurship on the way to Canada with my wife and we set up a resume writing business and went to Canada the market crashed and before we knew it we were in central America looking to launch a recruitment business and. Just so happened that she’d been dealing with some rector as an internal recruiter so we both said we’d jump into that. Um I always thought I’d like set up a ah tech recruitment firm because that was my was my background and it’s what I was really into and. But we’d moved around so much that joining those dots with my experience level at the time just wasn’t right? So we we had a good time in central America we made some money we moved back to Europe and Charlotte fell pregnant. So then I had to explore this whole. Way of replacing her in the business and that led us to the 4 hour workweek and looking at compartmentalising different elements of the recruitment process and early stage outsourcing in 2016? Um, and that got us our first hire and then we just kind of. Went from there. Um I suppose the last few years Charlotte’s been in and out of the business and we’ve had kids but house did all that grown up stuff back in the Uk. So really only been back in the UK ecosystem 5 years not and. During that time started start at the podcast which kind of led to a community which kind of led to an advisory practice which led to me speaking to here today.
02:42.62
thinkincircles
That that’s pretty succinct. Um, so I tell ah we we’ll get on to kind of what we’re going to talk about tonight today around kind of community building. But what? what was it? Um, why did you kind of keep on moving was it just a kind of ah just travel bug. You just. Kind of what was it that kind of because central America right? seems like an odd place to kind of and to end up and start kind of and and doing recruitment. Um, so so cool. How did you get there.
03:10.10
Dualta Doherty
So I’m obsessed with the digital nomad movement I listen to like podcasts on it I was I was always always interested in location independent entrepreneurism I just think that. Why would you like if you can and you don’t have kids and you’re young and all of this. Why would you not take advantage of living in a cheaper place learn but learn different cultures see different things yet make New York money and I suppose it’s just the gamification of life isn’t it and. I I just I suppose if it take a step back. My parents left Donny Gale when I was just finishing my degree so from regional Ireland and you know that’s 10 generations of the Daharde family from that tide and when they went to Brussels. Then kind of did part part time post-grad in marketing. Um, which kind of led to a doctoral and working in a pub for a period of time. Um, or so i. I suppose I had already moved from the home base and then I was kind of still figuring myself out I went to Australia and then I’m just in the travel boat like this new world like pick beans on a farm and do all that great stuff and then I end in Perth with a bunch of other Irish guys in their twenty s and we’re all in recruitment together Irish and english. And you know just getting a taste of that expat life but from more of a professional standpoint than I had in Brussels and yeah, just it just seemed like okay well worse the next boom and you’ll find that with a lot of recruiters who move abroad. They’ll do a few years in Dubai and then they might go to oz and they might go to us and. Like I suppose with us I really wanted to test her like these different places and just just experience something different I love it though. A lot love travel.
05:07.50
thinkincircles
Um, ah how easy is it to set up a business in in Central America
05:11.91
Dualta Doherty
We didn’t um so we had a Canadian registered business at the time we found this wonderful tax loop at the time that if you’re out state of Canada and you had of a business and you’re non-resident so we kind of ran that for a bit until we had to set up a grownup company in the Uk um.
05:16.19
thinkincircles
Right.
05:31.79
Dualta Doherty
But I think if you wanted to live maybe tax free in central America you can set up offshore corporations. There’s digital noman visas now available for the Caribbean for for lots of other entities as well. The problem is it where you’re banking. So if you. If you do that there you really need to be earning serious money and not the itty bitty placement here and placement there that we started off um because the banking charges would be too hard so the Taxman will always get you unless you can have it fixed. You know.
05:58.52
thinkincircles
Either.
06:04.59
thinkincircles
Ah, there’s no, there’s no getting away from it. Um, and were you were you recruiting in central America were you recruiting back in for for Canada.
06:12.50
Dualta Doherty
No, we were just doing what we like still what a large part of our 1 of our practices is is like moving u k recruiters around the world and and Australian Recruiters and irish recruiters around the world. So we just kind of find this little gap back then and we just kind of steered into it and. Because we’d worked in North America and Canada it just was something we were passionate about and so we were in central America and at the time I remember I was like this is a great story. We should tell it and Charlotte was like well nobody else is doing anything like this. So let’s just let’s just keep our location as Canada and. And I was like oh think we’re missing a trick. Um I know it’s the thing to do you know but like then it was I suppose people people say in 2006 lot a lot has changed since 2016 in terms of how you present yourself you like personal branding versus company branding and all all these things that didn’t really exist.
06:53.20
thinkincircles
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
07:09.11
Dualta Doherty
The recruitment world back there.
07:09.57
thinkincircles
Um, and so did you did you have a plan at that point did you know where the trajectory was or was it just kind of right? We’re gonna gonna try here for a little while we’re gonna see how it goes we’re gonna move here because ah leading into kind of the topic for today around community building. You know where where did. That vision star or was did it did it happen once you kind of got back to the u k.
07:34.90
Dualta Doherty
It’s a really good question. Um, and it kind of happened along the way it. It definitely wasn’t a strategic plan. Um I I think once we got to the u k. I was like okay how do I get out of this sector act stuff like I’ve fallen into this I I mean I’ve automated 80% of it I was bored. It doesn’t scale. The conversations are the same. Just wasn’t my wife’s pulling money out of the business to buy a house to have children to do all of it like I I was completely unfulfilled um and then it started doing really well like once she kind of came back into the business. She’s real talented it and it started like doing really well and it was great. But. At the same time I was still really really unfulfilled. Um and I had Andy Hallard come in and have a chat with me and as in an advisory capacity. He he came as a candidate actually and then I was like hey you should set up your advisory practice and he was like. Okay, well maybe I’ll start with you and then we kind of got talking and I went through a bit of a process with that. Um and whatever plan we came up with did Mark famously and but I did enjoy working with him and we got talking more and more and. I think he had 20 years of brand equity in large farms and I had I had a I had built a different community than the one I set out to build so I thought I’m gonna have a recruitment podcast I’m gonna make loads of money of all the twenty five year olds who’s going to listen to this podcast and then. They’re gonna use me and I’m gonna make and that’s gonna be it but that didn’t happen. It was 35 to 55 year olds listen the podcast who are recruiting entrepreneurs who either want to set up scale or find out what their competitors are doing so then we were in another. Membership network briefly like and I remember just going like so I could do this better I could do this way better and I used to study people like David Stephen Patterson in the UK in the US and I was watching what he was doing on Facebook. He was engaging people and all the rest and I thought wow that’s interesting. But I’d like to do a bit of that but I’d also like to do for further up the food chain as well bigger companies that are scaling like our client list so we had a client list the listenership and we then decided just over a couple of.
10:11.84
Dualta Doherty
But the red wine to set up a WhatsApp group and then that became 4 different WhatsApp groups and a vendor group and it just went from there and then we I had ah a virtual team I so I still do so and he was able to like like jump in and use all our resources. And then we worked out what he was good at what Charlotte was good at what I was good at and then we figured out where the gaps were between the finders, the vendors. Um and then it just so happened that like and it is the advisory for bigger companies.
10:40.60
thinkincircles
Yeah.
10:49.57
Dualta Doherty
And we kind of find our place doing advisory for startups and and and so five billers who want to have a profit centric boutique and I’m really passionate about it and we we find ourselves in that world. Um. So it’s it’s it’s ah it’s a work in progress. It’s definitely not the finished article but we we got strategic absolutely from that moment of those 2 bottles are red wine. Yeah to to this point there’s been a lot of work and I have a very talented team that worked for me. Um. My marketing manager is brilliant at Georgiana she’s trained in somebody who we’ve got as community manager and she’s brilliant as well and then we’ve just basically managed to build up this really strong operational framework and Charlotte and Andy are both quite strong operationally Charlotte more so than Andy. Um. And he has his own strengths as well. So it’s kind of just it’s evolved and we’re at a good space with it all now and kind of can see the trajectory of where it’s going to go.
11:54.59
thinkincircles
Um, and it’s Interesting. You manage that kind of you You mentioned that that strategic kind of aspect and I suppose anyone who’s kind of wanted to go down this route potentially themselves is that something you would have referred to have maybe done earlier so you had much more kind of. A vision or do you think it’s something that was that naturally was just going to come ah come at a certain point when you hit critical mass.
12:20.52
Dualta Doherty
That’s a really good question. Um I wasn’t ready to do it earlier. Um I think without Andy at that moment I would have had so too much imposter syndrome to do it and I think getting like. Getting to work with him over a period of time and I learned a lot just in terms of like he would have managed a lot of vendor relationships with ah with s 3 and and I got to see that and how that worked I got to see. The advisory stuff and how that worked and I got to put my own spin on it and make it better and it getting getting access to that over a period of time I was like okay now actually the stuff I know it is really good. He give me that validation. Maybe. Because he’d been at the at the higher level with those organizations because essentially I was a I was a senior con with a load of ideas and I never had the patience to go. Okay I’m going to work up this corporate ladder I was like ah this this stuff’s great for all you lot. But. I’m wanted I’m on a different journey I just didn’t know what that was.
13:36.13
thinkincircles
Um, and if you have the taken all that into consideration if you had the opportunity to do it Again. Knowing what you know now knowing the kind of experience you’ve gone. Where would you do it differently or is that is the is the route that you took to kind of build in this community. Perfect for you? yeah.
13:55.75
Dualta Doherty
Um, so if I had a done it differently. The the community wouldn’t be a recruitment centric community. It would have been whatever niche vertical I I would have went into within technology. Um, the tricky piece. There is I wouldn’t have had an advisory practice because I’m not one of them I haven’t done all those steps. So. It’s actually probably worked out for for the best you know at this stage. But. For a long long part. It was just like a bit directionless and I didn’t have anybody to bounce things off my wife’s quite headstrong so we would have thank god she’s not on this call I would have had an id and she would have said no and I would say like no I have an idea she says no I say to Andy and Andy’s like I’ve got a bag of cash here to want to join a flash that one evening and then she goes go away I’ll do it and then like so it’s think yeah, just it just business changes and the the world has changed as well. You know like it. Before everybody was much more like precious on their on their process and like I have the secret sauce but you don’t really like I mean a process is a process and you know it’s I think you know Gary Vee does it very well in terms of like he gives it all away for free. Um. Um, we’ve always tried to do that you know because even if you do give it away for free people won’t be able to do it.
15:35.50
thinkincircles
And well yeah I mean speaking from our own kind of perspective is exactly what we we do at our business is is you? You can tell me how to do everything we do to the nth degree. In fact, you can probably Google everything that we would do to the nth degree and and read about but most most customers aren’t. To be in a position to be able to do it themselves anyway. So you know that? um that work will eventually kind of roll in. Um so that’s kind of how you got started with the community. How do you How do you keep it going. How do you keep growing your community now.
16:08.40
Dualta Doherty
Yeah, it I suppose they there’s there’s a couple of all all always so like I would study what the TR and do and what the pirates do and I would see the gaps that we have compared to what.
16:11.50
thinkincircles
So do you want to grow it I suppose the other question is you know.
16:26.96
Dualta Doherty
They have and and also see some things I think we do better than them. But when you look I always would look at like who’s the market leader. What do they have? What do we need to do to get to that point and what value can we give them for free and you know then. How do you turn that into a revenue source now the the tricky piece is we used it as a top of top of the funnel exercise as opposed to paying members so there’s a there’s a gap there because. It’s top of the funnel people aren’t taking at a series is if they’ve paid a paid member. So your influence to be able to sell whatever you need to sell isn’t the same as I’m on your board and I’m doing this and so I think that’s definitely Lesson. Lesson learned now that the way around that is is peerto peer learning and advisory and that is the direction that we’re going in the dary group and then andy’ have his has his own advisory practice as well. So yeah, it’s ah it’s just by studying. What people are doing well and what they’re not doing well I think you know with regards the vendor side. We were always very like we I mean we can move the needle for you and we’ll prove it with data. Um, and then you can and and you’ll want to. You’ll want to do more with us because you’ll see that the data there proves that every time you do do something you’re making more and that took a like we had to learn all of that and we had to put all that into practice and then once we had it all on practice then we had to manage it all and then we had to. Automate as much of it as possible and then we had to get and get our virtual team in place and just make sure it all runs smoothly and but it’s it’s not a I think that the loop has to be you know like it without getting too technical on it but they.
18:36.56
thinkincircles
I don’ forget, go bit. Yeah.
18:38.66
Dualta Doherty
To drive to drive more people to the community. So then they can get the value for free and then decide what which one of our programs is most suitable to them whether that’s like our mastermind program or how to how to you know, put vas in your business or if it’s. If. It’s Charlotte Ronin their operational mentoring their operations people or whatever solution. It is or if it’s they need a um ah trainer with with some great great like partners in there like Dan Alexander and Richard Gibbard and different accountancy and different finance people and. We’ve we’ve managed to test and partner with the best people in the market who we enjoy working with and who we trust that do a good job and you know the community tells us if they don’t and then if they don’t if somebody else will come in and do it so it’s.
19:33.70
thinkincircles
Yeah, um, and it’s interesting and it’s interesting. You kind of you picking up again. What you mentioned before around you’ve now got you’ve got a marketing manager and put and bring on a community manager. Um, you know you’ve got now got to a stage where the community obviously needs managing and it needs.
19:35.50
Dualta Doherty
Mean fast.
19:51.12
thinkincircles
It needs nurturing and it needs continual kind of engagement. Um, ah, kind of what point again. Did you see that is it was it a situation of this you were You weren’t able to kind of handle it yourself or did you see was there a call from the membership that they wanted more things from you and so you needed to someone else to to.
19:52.15
Dualta Doherty
Yeah.
20:10.82
Dualta Doherty
Um, um, not that that was looking at best practice so like in in terms of what people other people do well and events virtual events peer-to-peer learning and.
20:11.70
thinkincircles
So manage that so.
20:30.72
Dualta Doherty
Treating the partners like they’re not just there to buy the drinks so we studied we spent ours and ours and ours have meetings with partners and we we quick a laundry list of what they didn’t like and what they did like and know everybody wants something for free. That’s not going to cost them anymore right. So but usually it came down to that. There was no data provided. They were treated just like they were there to buy the drinks and we wanted to create something where they felt more part of it. But at the same stage we didn’t want them in the chat on whatsapp. If possible to sometimes we make an exception for a brief moment but mostly because we don’t want one of the members. We don’t want to be tagging the same person every time and forcing people on people like it has to be they we want to do that through media through like results. To to tell people what like what’s working what’s not working so it’s definitely more of a strategic plan to to figure out all of that and what we’re halfway there you know like it’s we all have our own our own businesses our own consultancies. So I didn’t. Any type of business that I have I come up with a process or I come up with the idea Charlotte does the process and then we get somebody else to do it and I see and that’s exactly what we do with this so um charlotte run manages the operations and he manages the partners and. I do I do the media and engage the groups as much as possible.
22:09.33
thinkincircles
Um, but again, that’s one of those things you’ve had to learn right? You know you’ve kind of come to that kind of to to to that kind of strategy and that process um over time and through obviously you know making mistakes or kind of just. From from data-driven kind of responses so which kind of brings me on to you know what are things to avoid right? What what’s going to really kind of like you know make it into a complete car crash or kind of that or totally turn off and disengage with your with your community.
22:42.72
Dualta Doherty
Well,, but there’s lot there. There’s there’s that there’s so much. But I mean let’s let’s talk about it Maybe from the perspective of a tech recruiter who’s set up their community. So suppose you want to work out what the purpose is So is it. Is It is it to sell up like a mentorship program where you can be the bridgeway between you know, a client and senior candidate and you can come across more consulting than just selling them something. Um is it is it as place. Strictly for cios of of in the yeah Uk or within a certain segment and okay, well what? what other communities do they have right Now. What are they interested in how much stuff do you want to do are you prepared to do the peer-to-peer learning because that’s the key right. Because if if you have peer-to-peer learning you get grouped think and there’s more like there’s more common commonality of interest as opposed to it just being random. So it’s it’s It’s absolutely one of the most important thing. Um. And then I think you know you need to be engaging the community through media where they’re the celebrity as much as anything else. Um, and then it’s just just by figuring out. What do they want from it. What what do other people like we didn’t invent it in the recruitment space. There’s there’s there’s there’s Lows. We Just. Just know that there’s It’s a multi-billion dollar industry and there’s a few people dominating it. So How can we put our own spin on it.
24:23.26
thinkincircles
Um, and what’s the future for for the community that you’ve kind of built up where where does it go from here.
24:31.36
Dualta Doherty
Um, I think we will probably divide up the regions a bit more. We have an australian arm. We really want to steer into the us piece I think we want to bring like we’re brilliant in the startup space and we’ve got some really good connections. In the boot in this scalable boutique and in the enterprise space. But we really want to bring them to life more. We’ve brought the startup space to life. So um I think the peer-to-peer learning for the the bigger companies and those people um is definitely. Something that we want to do more. We have our Christmas party already scheduled. It’s booked out and we’ve so want to do more of those type of type of events. Um I guess.
25:20.50
thinkincircles
So that’s kind of like events that you’re kind of almost kind of going a different direction. You’re taking the kind of online back onto face-to-face in that in that sense.
25:28.44
Dualta Doherty
Yeah, like so it’s we we do the online stuff because look the the important thing is if you’re if you’re doing on the online stuff you can. You can obviously track the data and you know, ah all of that stuff’s really important and the the partners need need value they need Facetime they need promo and you know you like our our community needs good services but sometimes you just need a bit of a laugh to and like it we had grateful in our last event.
25:58.78
thinkincircles
That’s true.
26:03.40
Dualta Doherty
And we’re we’re actually having a mini one next week in London um, for for the startup community for for the people who are on our mastermind and people who potentially are looking at at that and it’s you know you just get you get 50 recruiters on the bear in a.
26:21.27
thinkincircles
Sounds messy.
26:22.43
Dualta Doherty
And a room that’s great, but that I mean because it’s all right? You know when you’re when you’re a senior con and all they’re asked you you can do that all the time and you’re out and you’re young and all their s but Founders. Don’t get the chance to do that as much and they don’t so it’s. Nice to be in a room full of other people different levels your different challenges. Sometimes you know you might think oh Wow I’m further ahead than I thought or well there’s a guy over there is real successful. Must go speak to him and see if I can if find get a bit of inspiration and just put putting people together isn’t it. That’s what we do.
26:53.74
thinkincircles
So brilliant dual. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. It’s been great to hear about you and your community and a little bit about your background. But for now thank you very much. Thanks.
27:05.46
Dualta Doherty
All right? Thank you.
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