Role Showcase - People & Performance Partner NYC

I interviewed Jayne Laird , Lead People & Performance Partner in the USA for Oliver James , as the hiring manager for this position, Jayne is going to provide us with some valuable insight into exactly what a People & Performance Partner does at Oliver James.

For context, Jayne has 12 years’ experience within the recruitment industry, 7 of which spent at Oliver James' New York office after relocating across from our Manchester HQ. Jayne had an incredibly successful career with us as a full-desk (360) recruiter and manager and built out the permanent division for our Change and transformation desk. Jayne was awarded the top permanent biller in 2020.

At the end of 2021, Oliver James noticed Jayne’s ability to develop teams and spearhead upskilling, and so she transitioned into a people and performance partner position, where she could use her recruitment experience to help build and scale the US business whilst transition her career into coaching and development.

What exactly is a “P&P partner?

"Well, it is useful to state what we are NOT. We are not a traditional learning and development department that focuses on just classroom training and workshops. We have a unique infrastructure to support our goal of creating an environment of high performance, and fostering a continued growth mindset. We have our Head of Learning Experience David Parker who has built a “best in class” learning platform with market leading content from top billers across the globe.

We have built a unique framework of processes and skills that help facilitate us being the best place to not only learn recruitment, but for good recruiters to evolve into greatness. The foundations of what Oliver James does and how they do it, allows the People and Performance team to partner with their learners from zero years’ experience right up to the executive leadership team. This means as P&P partners to the business we don’t get stuck talking about the theory of recruitment but rather we work with recruiters and leaders on their challenges and take them on a journey of improvement."

A huge part of our role is to aid the strategic growth of Oliver James in the USA. The executive team use data and analysis from the P&P partners for valuable insights to enhance their business decisions. So that's another layer of uniqueness in this role, that you get to partner with senior leaders to impact the future success of the business.

So I have talked about the coaching aspect or the role, and the data and analytics. The final part of the role is to lead and facilitate all core training content in addition to workshops. The core aspect of our job is to be a coach. Coaching is a lifelong skill, anyone can tell someone how to do something, but coaching gives you a skill to add real value through true partnership. I think of the P&P division as a standalone business. Our offering is to better our clients. In essence every single person at OJ is a client of yours. You work with them on THEIR challenges, and what THEY want to improve and you go on ?that journey with them accelerating everyone’s careers. ?

The People and Performance division wouldn’t be such a unique position without the vision of Oliver James and their desire to not just say they want to be the best, but to act like it. Learning, upskilling, and bettering yourself isn’t restricted to someone who is new to the world of recruitment but it's for us all to keep moving forward and achieving greatness."

How will we support an experienced full-desk recruiters to transition into P&P?

"Well thankfully, all of our P&P partners have gone through this change of transitioning from being a recruiter, so it’s a process that’s tried and tested! There's a variety of exercises, observations, and plenty of learning time to ensure that you are prepared. Believe me, the onboarding gives you all the tools you need and by the end of it, you raring to get out there and do it yourself.

We practice what we preach, and continual learning applies to P&P as well. Following onboarding you will have bi-weekly coaching sessions to further enhance your coaching, training and stakeholder management skills.

Additionally, the Global P&P community have an open forum monthly to share challenges, successes, ideas, trends and updates".

?What’s the career growth like in these positions?

"The traditional progression route from P&P partner is to progress to Senior P&P and then into either people management or an individual contributor to specialize in a particular area/skill. However, one thing I know about OJ having been here 8 years, is that the story is yours to write, as the business grows so do the opportunities and the definitions of what they look like. We have had people like our head of learning experience carve a brand new position for himself that didn’t exist before, as well as people creating new roles across operations and sales, for example a global DEI role.

What was the biggest challenge for you when moving into this role?

"The hardest part of the change was the more ambiguous nature of measuring success versus what I had been used to in recruitment. In recruitment you have a billing target and that usually means if you hit it you get promoted. The skills and the impact in coaching and training can at first appear subjective and hard to quantify. So at first you will miss the 'well done you did a deal' but you start to understand what your measures of success look like as you develop in your role. And of course I will be there to help point out all the great wins you are having along the way."

What is the most rewarding part of your role?

"For me, I’ve spent my career in sales, and so I get the most gratification when I’m able to win people over by changing their perspectives and mindset, which then translates to more success for them, there is a real opportunity for us to turn a vision into reality. The other thing I love is the full circle moments. When you are working with someone brand new to recruitment, you over time watch them flourish into a great performer, you then start that training journey with them into management and then witnessing them grow into incredible leaders. I loved recruitment, and influencing decisions, and this role gives me the opportunity to do just that, but with people I am invested in and know so well."

For more information, please get in touch with me directly @ [email protected]