Being an inclusive recruiter is easy to say but much harder to prove. It’s James Whitelock’s pleasure this week to welcome Emma Freivogel founder and MD at Radical Recruit. Emma has made it her mission to get disadvantaged jobseekers back into work. Emma talks us through the ethos of Radical Recruit, some of her successes and the future of Radical Recruit.
Episode Transcript:
00:00.00
ThinkinCircles
Welcome back, everybody to the marketing rules podcast and today I’m joined by Emma from Radical Recruit. Emma is an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast I think we’ve been trying to get you on for probably something like six months but sometimes you’ve had to cancel sometimes I’ve had to cancel. But finally, we’re here, face to face sitting down and recording for everybody listening today Emma it would be great if you can tell them a little bit about kind of rat a recruit. There’s one of the reasons why I wanted you on because you’re a little bit different. Everybody else who’s kind of working out there the way your business is set up the way it works kind of who. Who you work with is quite unique and that’s what kind of I think our audience are going to find fascinating. So yes, if you could just kind of tell us a little bit about radical group first.
00:43.40
Emma Freivogel
Yeah, sure. Well thanks for having me I think probably the delay in recording this was mostly my fault well appreciate your patience, okay so to set the scene I have worked in the h and services sector for like 15 years and throughout my tenure in in the charity sector I was responsible for managing a whole load of return to work ready for work jobs brokerage type services for what I call the underdogs of society and in retrospect I now know that those were.
01:18.19
Emma Freivogel
Watered down crappy versions of what people who experience disadvantage need to get ready for and enter the labour market as well as progress in their chosen careers. before I found it. Radical. I worked for a grassroots organization who supported women and women coming from the criminal justice system as well as women who had been in the care system to , get jobs reintegrate back into the community re-establish themselves in in the roles that they had before prison and in theory does not reoffend and throughout my 2 years in that role I became acutely aware of sort of the failings of the third sector in providing those types of support.
02:12.43
Emma Freivogel
And I believe that I could do it better. So radical was born in 2019 October ironically only a couple of months before the pandemic completely halted most recruitment and at that stage, I didn’t really know a great deal about recruitment. I didn’t really have a lot of sorts of business savvy. I knew that to do this work better. We needed to operate like a commercial recruitment consultancy does normally and I guess that was sort of them.
02:50.53
Emma Freivogel
The model that that shaped radical in the beginning. So, I sort of set out to work with 3 constituencies ex-offenders care labours and homeless folk because they tend to be the same people at different points in their life journey and what I really wanted to do was sort of agitate that cycle then. The pandemic sort of happened and those who were closest to the bread line and, not represented the labour market were adversely and disproportionately impacted by the plague. Brexit happened and there were all these amazing opportunities because employers couldn’t find talent, skilled or just labour generally and of course George Floyd’s murder and the world’s sort of racial equity awakening, which caused them to think about diversity. More seriously? and turn their sort of rhetoric diversity rhetoric into meaningful action and often that was through recruiting people who were marginalized because of their difference if you like so being the typical founder. Love shiny new things. Really enjoy the opportunity to try fail iterate. Try again, sort of grabbed onto lots of different opportunities. and broadened our reach to anyone with a protector characteristic under the law, and I use that term loosely in the context of getting into the labour market because most people don’t enjoy the projections they need and those with sort of adverse usually adverse life experiences who make it tricky which make it tricky to. Get into the labour market in the first place or sort of return after a period of absence. So, I’m talking about ex-offenders care levers people who have, survived domestic violence, and abuse modern day slaves really anyone who has a barrier to work so 3 years on we have made 50,020 faces so I’m not sure what the county is this week, and we worked with some amazing brands like warner media and sage and these WPP as well as sort of small and medium enterprise. And placed radicals from lots of different backgrounds into all sorts of jobs, everything from sort of marketing managers to accountants to civil enforcement officers, you name it. We’ve probably done it as well as a recruitment piece. We’ve also done a whole load of learning over the last three years and, come to the realization that there’s loads of people who are what we call? radical, who will allow us to take them on a journey from a to be a being possibly. Not sure what they’re want wanting to do for a career or not sure what they’re good at or how their sort of skills transfer from life to work to B which is sort of radical-ready and, in a position where they can navigate through a competitive recruitment process, so that’s not so much. I think probably the hardest. Part of the work we do is with employers to get them to the point where they’re, attracting engaging with recruiting on boarding and supporting radical people to flourish so around the recruitment Piece. We’ve developed a really.
06:25.88
ThinkinCircles
Okay.
06:33.81
Emma Freivogel
If you like commercial offering to get our clients radical-ready and that might be through supporting with infrastructure like policy and process. It could be helping them to position their brand as a sort of diverse diversity employer of Choice. It could be helping them to shift their cultural dial and get buy-in from those who are doing the recruiting, it could be helping them to sort of reimagine their assessment or interview tools. So that. they’re assessing people fairly all sorts of things really to ensure that when we put a radical into an organization, they will succeed, I guess.
07:21.97
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, yeah, so to find your kind of radicals as you find it in the first place are you doing a lot of kind of outreach in in, in in in prisons and in kind of how you do kind of go out because that for me feels like the kind of difficult bit to kind of get them. in the traditional sense. The candidates to know who you are to know that a business like yours exists to help people in those situations.
07:47.75
Emma Freivogel
Yeah, sure, so we do lots of sort of engagement activities on behalf of our clients. We have a database of radicals that have gone through our employability program and are endorsed for recruitment. So, we have that database like any other recruiter would where we can’t fill a vacancy through that database, we will design a marketing campaign that talks to and really engages with the communities that the client wants to connect with that aren’t finding through their traditional search methods, we also have an amazing network of what we call inclusion partners so they’re organizations who deliver different types of services to radical people. So, for example, housing or, it might be. Employability provision. It could be drug and alcohol counselling and all sorts of things, and what we do is we take our clients vacancies to our inclusion partners and ask them to market to the radical people that they’re supporting. We have like. I mean we’ve got 800 job centres on our on our book but sort of network. We’ve got probation services prisons, we have churches, people where places where radical people congregate, and we have connections into those communities really what we do is we use our brand which is trusted amongst radical people to endorse the clients that we’re working with so that radical people feel like if they do apply their application will be taken seriously and that they will be participating in a fair and equitable process. To ensure that they sort of have the same opportunities to win the job on merit.
09:37.12
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, yeah, given the respect that they’re due I guess right? That’s what kind of, but they might have kind of missed out on through other through other means and then from the flip side, from the client side, the clients that are using you.
09:53.53
ThinkinCircles
Being cynical are they doing it because they are now this this the discussion around equity and diversity is something that they are trying to kind of participate in truly and do want to find. Some great candidates and great radicals who can work with him that they just might not be able to kind of have any interaction with previously or is there a kind of a mixture of well they’ve kind of feel that they should be doing this for kind of CSR reasons and things like that and I know that’s kind of? So yeah, you might have both I mean but you kind of Maybe you choose who you want to work with how does that kind of process work.
10:32.27
Emma Freivogel
Yeah, good question. Sorry I’m not sure whether you can hear that background noises a helicopter flying over no okay.
10:36.31
ThinkinCircles
So, it’s he’s worth.
10:44.40
Emma Freivogel
We work with any organisation who wants to turn their diversity commitment into meaningful action by recruiting radical people to work with us all our clients are sort of vetted quite thoroughly. To ensure that the motivation is pure, and they are willing to do the work that would enable them to attract engage with recruit retain radical talent often clients come to us wanting a band-aid solution. And, 3 years on, we’re able to walk away from that sort of business, most clients I think come with sort of genuine authentic commitments but perhaps don’t understand and fully empathize with the challenges. Ah, radical people face when it comes to entering the labour market so to give you an obvious example one in 7 people are neuro divergent in the community and. To sort of attract neuro divergent people and ensure a process from application interview on boarding is accessible a huge amount of work needs to be done to really understand what the barriers are for this this group of people so it could be that. someone is dyslexic for example and your usual, advertising copy your marketing copy your recruitment copy isn’t accessible because it’s on your website. It’s written in black font on a white background and there’s no accessibility plugin. There are loads of word pollution on the page so for a dyslexic person to read that job ad and then hit the apply button and complete the potentially inaccessible application form, that’s a real barrier. Without doing the work to understand exactly what the challenges are employers are really these people are self-selecting out of the process because it’s just not accessible, so we do a lot of work to look at end-to-end processes through specific lenses.
13:04.39
ThinkinCircles
Yeah.
13:13.71
Emma Freivogel
Disability being a frequent 1 We’ve got. There’s loads and loads of sort of untapped pools of talent that organizations just not thinking about you’ve got 11,000,000 people with a conviction but sorry, many organizations have that box. It says do you have a conviction. And so someone with a conviction having been discarded on the talent strap scrap heap over and over and over again is going to read that and be like I’m not going to tick that box because I know I’m not going to get a chance to apply I won’t bother so we looked at like we look at these processes through all of these different lenses and help our clients to really reimagine how they would usually , talk to these pools of talent. , attract them get them to apply for the job and interview them.
14:01.65
ThinkinCircles
So, kind of part of your kind of business and role now is that education and consultancy piece for you for your clients.
14:08.71
Emma Freivogel
It’s the biggest part of what we do honestly and the hardness part because I mean there’s a piece around sort of shifting attitudes and challenging popular perceptions of radical people I mean largely speaking. Our people are viewed through a lens of mistrust. They’re ass ed to not have the skills, or the motivation required to apply for a job and sustain employment, and for decades often centuries depending on how old the company is they’ve not been considered viable candidates. So that’s like a big piece. There’s a piece around sort of de-biasing processes. And making processes and tools accessible. There’s a bit around sort of helping organizations to understand their risk appetite. there’s a whole load of misplaced fear around litigation and various other things, when it comes to hiring people with disabilities and especially people with convictions, and then that that piece around. Okay if you hire someone who’s radical. What support do they need that might be different to your sort of Bog-Standard average mainstream candidate so thinking about sort of their longer-term requirements. So, we support post placement as well.
15:26.25
ThinkinCircles
With regards to the kind of clients are they receptive or there is a pushback, or I mean I know you said you kind of self-select some of these kinds of businesses now. But it’s interesting to kind of. the kind of people that your kind of dealing with is it kind of is it mainly the recruiters a talent acquisition In-house. Is it who are those kinds of people that your kind of now having these kinds of discussions with within these businesses.
15:54.33
Emma Freivogel
Yeah, I mean it’s I’m not sure I’ve got the answer to that question I think it’s mostly sort of at HRD level in-house.
16:03.45
ThinkinCircles
And suppose I’m trying to see well where it’s kind of driven from within these businesses that’s and that’s the kind of question. Really, I mean if it’s if it’s something that for the for the people in the in the that’s listening. the In-house recruiters and things that is that driven by Them. Should it be driven by them. Is it driven kind of high above. where in organizations because you sent you water for some big organizations and it would be kind of it’s just interesting to know where the where the drivers are for this that kind of that bring you in, I mean.
16:30.74
Emma Freivogel
Yeah, I think I mean it’s different for every client, if I’m honest, I would say for our sort of bigger corporate clients. Mostly it’s sort of hr teams who are coming to us. but we can knock on the diversity door as well or door. I think for this the work that we do for us to really add value people from all parts of the business need to be involved and I think what happens is board set diversity targets and then that responsibility is delegated to HR or diversity whoever the diversity lead is and perhaps they’re not, appropriately resourced, or qualified to do the work. Or perhaps there’s no budget to bring in sort of consultants like us to help do the work. they haven’t thought about sort of the long-term requirements around capacity building. The people who would be doing the hiring. it might be that they haven’t considered their policy position on sort of X Y and Z that would impact. Their ability to work with us so executive sponsorship and accountability is important I’m not convinced that most of our clients have that and that’s a conversation we often end up having with our clients, they know what they want to do. They don’t appreciate often the work that’s involved and the cost associated with that work and the fact that it takes time it’s a I mean it’s very cliche me saying this but it’s a journey you can’t achieve diversity without having equity of opportunity and when you’re bringing diverse people in to retain those people you must create places of work where they feel like they belong and they’re included so the recruitment piece is a tiny piece of work and there’s , there’s much bigger. Sort of structural issues that often we need to tackle with our clients as Well, but the problem is we work with Teeny tiny start-ups all the way to big matrix organizations. So back to your question I’m not entirely sure that any type of person within an organization is coming to us saying can you help it really depends on the business.
19:03.47
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, and from some of the kind of previous conversations we had. There are some kind of some interesting updates at radical kind of coming in in the future I understand there’s kind of different. you, your kind of expanding slightly. Why didn’t you kind of take us through what the kind of future holds.
19:19.40
Emma Freivogel
Yeah, I’m excited because I mean I’ve known I’d needed to do this for about 2 years but typical founder your kind of like juggling millions of balls and trying to keep the doors open throughout arguably the most challenging sort of economic and political environment. Ah, but I’ve managed to convince my 2 right-hand h ans. Kirsty and Holly to co-find a second radical brand, and we will divide the existing entity into 2 and relaunch Radical Recruit as a charity. That will support businesses to pipeline for early careers and those entry levels sort of roles in several different sectors from retail to construction to catering and those sorts of opportunities. Ah, great for radicals who are furthers from the labour market who will go through a really, intensive program support to get them to the point where we feel, and they feel that they have the tools and the confidence to navigate through a competitive recruitment process and get their first job. Potentially. Or a job that would enable them to sort of return into the labour market after a period of absence, be radical the second brand will be a or is an unapologetically commercial entity and it will hopefully make loads of money. So that we can fund the charity the work of the charity. It’s 1 thing that I don’t want to continue doing is rely on grants and government funding to do this important work with super radicals. So that entity will offer all our training all our consultancy. Things like Tim away days and learning events and, recruitment services for professional people centric disciplines mostly I say that we’ve placed loads of accountants as well. I’m not sure you call them people centric disciplines. But yeah, Roles within professional services mostly in the in the corporate world. Yeah.
21:33.39
ThinkinCircles
Okay, I mean that sounds amazing, right? It sounds like there’s a lot kind of happening over kind of the rest of this year Emma it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you today I hope everyone has kind of has been as enjoyed it as much as I’ve listening to kind of what you guys are doing over there. And we will obviously include all your details in the show notes if anybody wants to know more, they can kind of reach out and contact you directly? I’m sure once kind of in a few years’ time when things have even caught even bigger in a six. It’s even slightly said it’ this kind of huge corporate entity with all kinds of charities and things. We’ll have you back on to kind of discuss that but Emma for now. Thank you very much.
22:05.80
Emma Freivogel
I would welcome that, and thank you very much for having me, mate.
Watch the interview:
