Filing Cabinet and Fax Machines - Starting in Recruitment

When I determined that I was going to write a blog, I took advice. After all, when I began my career in recruitment there was so much to learn and, fortunately, some great people to learn from. It was the same with starting a blog, so after a chat with a few friends who are much more experienced in this sort of thing, I was advised to begin by setting the scene. It was pointed out to me that while I may have a lot of contacts and an accumulation of knowledge in the TA space, there are a lot more people out there who have no idea who I am or what I do. With them in mind, this first venture into virtual print is therefore a brief resume of my career to date and some of the things I’ve learned from over two decades in recruitment. Let’s start at the beginning when I had to make an important decision…

My dad wanted me to go to university. I had just returned from a winter working in a ski resort and thought I knew better…?Of course, I knew better. There was this advert for a job in IT recruitment you see and, for some reason, it piqued my interest. To be honest, at that time my knowledge of IT and recruitment could have been written on a postage stamp with a paint-brush, but something called out to me and I went along to the interview – and got the job.

It was 1999, in the days when we were all preparing for the impending doom that would be caused by the Millennium Bug (it wasn’t). It was also the days of filing cabinets stuffed to with paper CVs, one computer terminal in the office, primitive email (remember demon internet), fax machines and Nokia mobile phones. Many people working with me today might struggle to believe that anyone could work with this kind of equipment or in such an office environment. Doubtless, in 20 years’ time, their children will be learning about those old-fashioned smart-phones we had back in 2022…

I loved it though. I loved the excitement generated by the actual business of recruitment – of finding candidates and selling them on to clients. I loved the fact that I seemed to be good at what I was doing (and, to be honest, I loved making money which I wouldn’t have made if I was at university). But it was a hard, at times ruthless, training ground. I had colleagues who used to fax CVs to clients and then, once they had been sent, they would call the fax line from their phone so it was engaged and our competitors couldn’t send any CVs. If you didn’t make your targets, you didn’t last long…?

Looking back, I think that tech recruitment was a good place to start. I learned quickly and soon discovered that while you can be agnostic about hiring, you can’t be a recruiter unless you are inquisitive about the sector(s) in which you are working. Accordingly, I made a point of learning as much as I could about technology so that I could talk to clients from a position of strength. I discovered that employing managers would soon call you out if they thought you were winging it, so I also made it a rule that I wouldn’t stop learning.??

This is something I’ve carried through to other areas during my career to-date, not just in terms of the mechanics of hiring, but also in learning about every industry I’ve worked in, both the technical aspects and, equally importantly, what inspires others to make their careers in it. I also soon realised how important it is to be able to communicate at every level of a company in order to understand it, literally, from top to bottom.??

Furthermore, as I developed my career in different areas of the world, I realised that a UK mindset doesn’t always travel well and that it was important, indeed vital, to understand different countries’ cultures and social mores. For example, I have spent many years in the Middle East and India and, while the contrast with the UK may seem obvious, I worked with some big western companies who, although they understood the local scene, didn’t always realise that what made sense in the UK wouldn’t necessarily work elsewhere. Often, for very good reasons, we were hiring ex-pats to impart knowledge to local teams, but that could be fraught with difficulty. I remember in India, where I was recruiting mainly sales staff, I was finding it harder going than I expected, so I invested time in flying around the sub-continent to find out what was and what wasn’t working. You have to put in the hard yards and walk a mile in local people’s shoes to truly understand their culture (it’s worth noting that this also applies in the UK). But doing so means that, at the end of the day, you’ll be a far better recruiter.?

Of course, diversity issues are treated differently in other parts of the world. I recall one senior HR manager who felt that simple compliance instructions weren’t being followed in one country and, despite her being a worldly-wise, approachable individual, she didn’t realise that to achieve what she wanted meant approaching the issue from a different direction.?

Interestingly, when I was in India, about a decade ago, one of the questions was asked at interview was, “what did your dad do?” In the modern, western hiring culture, such a question is a big no-no, but for my interviewers it was important. I’ll have more to say about diversity in a later blog, but certainly, my experience abroad has opened my eyes to the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all approach and different cultures must be respected.?

Another real eye-opener came in the Middle East and this one really helped me understand the distinction between ‘recruitment’ and ‘talent attraction.’?Masdar is a planned city in Abu Dhabi in which power is being provided by solar and other renewable sources of energy. We were hiring renewable energy experts to an oil-producing country and it was soon evident that this was about more than simply managing applications from engineers. Instead, it was about gaining a deep understanding of the professional and personal qualities that incoming talent required to move that particular needle. Seeing those I hired doing well and growing into their roles was immensely satisfying.?

Although recruitment usually sits within HR function, people have said to me, “you’re the most un-HR person I’ve worked with,” which I regard as a compliment. Recruitment, as I found out in my very first job, is about selling a dream and that’s something TA teams should never forget. Talent Acquisition has become its own, highly specialised sphere, requiring unique skills and experience if it is to be done well, but underpinning it all is a recruiter’s ability to sell a company to candidates and vice-versa.??

Now, I’m back in the UK after several years as Global Head of TA delivery at Philip Morris in Switzerland, and currently, I’m on a contract with Reward Gateway www.rewardgateway.com , where I have found management behaviour traits that mirror my own. They want to double in size within the next 12 months, so it’s an exciting place to be. My role involves the full gamut of TA, from evaluating and updating structure and processes to keeping the plates spinning by ensuring we recruit quickly and effectively in what is a very competitive space. Here, decisions are made quickly, so things happen quickly and you can see your ideas being implemented and working. This is the kind of transformation role I really enjoy; one where I can both use my knowledge and skills to help my employer and, at the same time, learn afresh and further develop my experience. And, over the coming months (and in between work), I’m going to be writing more blogs on TA. I hope you’ll join me…

Martin McDermott