In the first episode of the Hinterview podcast Recruiting Alchemy, Andy Simpson is joined by Sam Slade, CRO of Hinterview and they discuss the state of the market, common problems they're seeing and productisation.
Watch the 2nd episode with Nigel Fox, CEO of Annapurna Recruitment
(01:20) - Intro to Sam and his recruitment experience
(04:30) - How did Sam build a more consultative and productised offering
(07:00) - Wafer thin difference between consultancy and recruitment agencies
(10:40) - state of the recruitment market(14:30) - What is commoditisation?
(17:30) - Why not work for a lower fee?(20:00) - Why is commoditisation a problem?
(23:30) - Productisation in recruitment
(33:30) - Where does video fit in to productisation?
(37:40) - AI CVs & Resumes
(40:30) - 1st Interview KPIs vs customer experience
(44:25) - What's the next couple of years of recruitment?
Sam Slade: There's a study that they've been doing for a hundred years. And if you agree that it's fair to say that the CV is really a list of how long someone has been doing certain things for, then it is the 16th best predictor of success in future role. An assessment of your handwriting style is a better predictor of success.
It's in isolation, it's fundamentally useless.
Andy Simpson: Welcome everybody to the inaugural episode of the Hinterview podcast. My name is Andy Simpson. I am the CEO and co founder at Hinterview. I'm joined today by our first guest. Sam Slade, who is the Chief Revenue Officer at Hinterview. And we're hoping to hear a little bit of his background, um, before he joined the business, which I think he's got a really interesting story to tell.
And then obviously, since he joined us and what we've both witnessed and experienced over the last three years, uh, which has been an incredibly bumpy time for the industry as a whole. Sam, welcome. Thank you for having me on, your first ever podcast.
Sam Slade: It's great to be here.
Andy Simpson: Do you want to start us off by telling us a little bit about your Genesis story?
So maybe take the listeners back to how you got into recruitment, how it all began for you and yeah, tell us a bit about that.
Sam Slade: So like everybody, I fell into recruitment, but landed somewhere that, I look back on and it was excellent for my development and experience. Funnily enough, on a personal note, I met my wife, who we now have a child and one on the way on our first day.
Andy Simpson: A classic recruitment story. Classic.
Sam Slade: Another reason not to work from home. Um, but yeah, that was a reasonably sized business. There's about a hundred people when I joined. No prior knowledge of recruitment. Classic case of met someone at a festival actually, who gave me the, "You're good at talking to people lad, you should do recruitment."
So, joined that business as their first ever non grad. My background was very much, well, I'd done a lot of kind of temp jobs, made a lot of cold calls, so, relatively speaking, I, I couldn't believe my luck. So you call people about jobs, that want to speak to you, and they give you this amount of money.
But obviously it transpired, it was a lot more complex than that. And then it was a journey. I think one of the things I appreciate a lot about that time is some of the hard times. So it went through redundancies and all those bits, but more so the experience. So the leadership team, one was former partner at big four consultancy.
So that gave me a real insight into the type of type of way a consultancy operates. Probably the most pure, purest salesperson of all time that I've taken a lot from and also someone that was incredibly relationship driven and probably the hardest worker I've ever worked with. So, super grateful for that time there.
Learned a huge amount and towards the end to kind of link to how I'm here today. We'd move very much into exclusively looking for that statement of work business is kind of exclusive or retained or different commercial option projects where you're very much competing with, you know, pure, true consultancies.
So, of course, the classic, you know, what makes you different? How are you different? There was a never ending quest. To differentiate from this huge commoditized marketplace and hints of you know, very much became a huge part of that. And we were very successful actually in that COVID period, that company was, was acquired by a much larger business.
And 10 years in the time just seemed right to, to make a change. And I saw an advert for Hinterview and here you are, heard you'd acquired a bit of money and,
Andy Simpson: it's long gone mate.
Sam Slade: Yeah, yeah. I think I sent, the head of talent at the time a note saying, hi, I do recruitment and like Hinterview, want to chat, and, the rest is history.
Andy Simpson: Well, let's, let's just unpack that a bit then. So you're working in a recruitment business. Are you a contingent recruitment business with this bold idea of moving into statement of work? Is it the big four connection you mentioned that people feel less intimidated by trying to get out of the kind of recruitment bucket and into the consulting bucket?
Tell me a bit more about that journey for, not just for you, but for the business. How wild was the idea? Because I think the reason I ask is almost everyone I speak to, that's, that's what they want, right? That they want to get off this contingent carousel. They want to be more of a partner, less of a supplier, but they don't really know how to get there.
Sam Slade: The business did a multitude of things. And that largely cascaded down to an individual contributor level. So everybody dual desked or had the ability to, but yes, we were doing permanent, but typically project based: build out contingent interim work. But again, trying to shape it in such a way that, you'd make the higher, certainly the fill rates were pretty good across the board and then true managed services as well.
And I think the business and I certainly had a huge, helping hand because, as I say, one of the co founders was a partner at Deloitte, so it didn't seem all that wild, but, and we were also supplying the resource to actual, Big Four consultancies that were adding significant markups onto those contractors and charging them out, so, Really, if I'm to synthesize it all, I think there's probably a lot of businesses out there offering a similar service level, but perhaps they're missing a trick when it comes to the frame, the commercial proposition and making it clear that it's not really a career risk for somebody to make the decision to go with a lesser named brand.
You know, the cliche, you don't get fired for hiring IBM type thing. And for most recruitment businesses, resource providing businesses, providing they're doing a good quality job. They probably have an opportunity to really compete for that large scale projects work or, significant volumes of interim work to supply those.
If, they rethink maybe how we're framing our services, the support we're providing, and that probably looks a bit different to everybody because you've always, you're always going to have costs there. You're always going to be able to compete on cost versus, large professional services firms.
Andy Simpson: Yeah. I think for me, I started my career in a big four consulting business. And I think the thing that people don't truly understand is just how insane the day rate charge for a graduate one year experiences, I mean, we had a price list and, it's not dissimilar to lawyers. We have a lawyer and every year they send me their updated price list and if I want the partner, it's 750 an hour.
Now that's just, it's so insane, but people just go, well, it's a lawyer. So of course it's 750 pounds an hour. And when you compare that to, if I'm a resource provider, I could be a recruitment business, a staffing business. We can, come in at a fraction of that cost.
We can deliver the same solution for a fraction of that cost. But all we need is to make sure that we package and present it in the right way. And I think that for me is where, you know, the, challenge for recruitment leaders is, is that they don't, it just all seems too overwhelming and too stressful and too big and too scary.
So it's really an interesting. Joxtapose, you know.
So you worked in this recruitment business and did you do contingent recruitment? Did you do like ones and twos, CVs out the door, battling against other agencies, PSL type work? Or was it always just kind of project based, statement of work stuff?
Sam Slade: Yes, definitely did. I mean, I was there 10 years and, like I say, learned a lot along the way. So when you're starting out, Absolutely. I've been in, at the time people did face to face briefs, right? With one hiring manager and there's three of your LinkedIn peers in the room, perhaps the most awkward waiting room in the history of mankind.
But at the time, it was just the status quo. That's just what you do. And I guess you go and you explain why you're the best and have no idea that everyone else probably was saying, I'm relationship focused and my network and all these bits and pieces, but of course, over time, the journey I'd say I went on was competing for those ones and twos, almost trying to audition.
And I'm talking about personally, the last thing I did befor I left was win a three million pound client spend projects with a well known energy provider. So I think people do different things along their journey and I'd probably suggest the, it's going to say age, but the less experienced you are, I think you've got to find your rhythm, find your feet, find your own pitch, and start to understand your own value and really come to learn through experience that everything you do is at the expense of something else.
And actually is working your little socks off for a 20 percent fill rate, a healthy way to make a living, a way to guarantee the kind of experience that you're promising early doors and for me, the answer is no, but it wasn't in 2013, 2014, 2015, but certainly was getting into the 2020s and at that time I was hiring a junior team of resources and things and helping them on a similar journey.
But I was being helped as well along that journey, I want to be clear and give those people their flowers too.
Andy Simpson: Got it. We're going to come on and talk about, because this is really about productization, right? And about positioning and messaging for a recruitment business. And we'll talk about that in a moment, but let's just spend five minutes unpacking the last couple of years.
So you speak to recruitment leaders day in, day out. What would you say for the people listening, looking possibly for some crumbs of comfort or some validation or some reassurance or something else. How would you articulate or describe what the market or industry has been through since maybe that kind of the peak of wild post Covid, say, mid 22?
How would you describe the last couple of years since then?
Sam Slade: I'd start just by clarifying, I suppose, What that peaks looked like, we would speak to people, who would say things half joking, half not like "Sam, I only need to look at a CV and it turns into an invoice. Why would I change anything?"
I think two things happened relatively simultaneously.
One, just the kind of macroeconomic conditions, right? Ultimately there's perceived risk. There's less hires. There's just fundamentally less work in the marketplace. Um, and two, probably the most significant impact in the recruitment space has been the introduction of chat GPT, which I've struggled to date it, but I think it was November, 2022.
Um, so you've got two things going on. You've got. An absolute absence of work compared to what businesses have been useful used to. So therefore a necessity to increase volume of outbound and so on. And that's augmented heavily by that. I could leave this room and email 20, 000 people and AI message in 10 minutes.
That was never possible before. So this level of franticness and then meanwhile, and that's probably been the hard thing for a lot of people that I we've spoken to is to cope in those boom times. There's been a lot of business expansion, but typically resourcing teams, and then just this absolute sudden need to equip them to be able to, you know, hunt or feed themselves or whatever kind of saying, you know, to actually go out, demonstrate a value proposition and win that work in probably the most competitive space it's ever been, right?
I think there's I know there's 30, 000 ish recruitment and staffing businesses in the UK. There's, I think, 205, 000 recruitment professionals. Um, and if you work that out, it's means one in 300 and something people in the UK as a recruiter. It's never been so competitive and it's never therefore been harder to stand out.
Um, we've had the privilege of working, speaking, interacting with. hundreds, perhaps approaching thousands of different recruitment businesses. And I think some people are very much just focused on the volume side, the AI side, how do we just do more? And others have moved into this lane of, you know, how do we really improve our service and seek to retain clients?
And by retain, I mean, ongoing business as opposed to, um, a commercial option. So I think there's been a real shock, particularly to those that joined. In that boom time, there's a never ending debate about if this is the toughest market ever, or if it's a reversion to the mean. And the technology, I don't like the word revolution, but you might call it AI, the fourth industrial revolution they say is adding this whole new, whole new dimension.
I'm not sure if I've answered the question. Yeah,
Andy Simpson: it's a great answer. The underlying theme that you've just spoken about is about commoditization. So we hear this word all the time. For, for people out there who've never heard the word before, can you just, I guess, qualify what that means? And then, and then what is it?
So what does the word actually mean? You know, literally and probably relatively. But then how does it show up in our day to day lives as recruiters? You know, what, why does commoditization, why do I, why should I care about commoditization if I'm a recruiter? What does it mean to me?
Sam Slade: Yeah. So, commoditization at a more general level is when the client or customer perceives the offering.
To be almost identical to other offerings like it. And therefore typically differentiates which route they'll take themselves through price. Um, so we're talking about recruitment services here, but a day to day example might be milk, right? I don't care where it comes from, really. I just want to go the most convenient, cheapest.
Milk. So I certainly didn't, and I know a lot of people don't, and most of the kind of USPs people pitch on don't really have the you, the unique element to it. And it might be true, but sadly, those that perhaps aren't offering as credible service are saying the same, right? You don't get any recruitment business running around saying, Hey, we do a half baked job.
So how it manifests, I think. Is in price and for me, and it's quite a controversial view, but I think logically sound a lot of recruitment businesses, a lot of recruitment people. I mean, incredibly prideful about price and by that I mean the percentage in which they work. I don't get out of bed. I don't work for less than 25%.
But I'd argue, when you're working contingent, you're, you're actually working, you're delivering a free trial, so your price is, is zero, and the 25%, if the fill rate's 25%, which is, is the rough average in the UK, ultimately that customer is subsidizing the rest, so I could make a pretty strong argument you're actually working 25 percent divided by 4, so about 6.
25%, right? Quick maths. Thank you. So, so I think that's the case. I think there's this incredible gulf between the recruiter's view that they're an elite recruiter that only works at 25 percent and A hiring manager's view that this person is just going to work for me for free, no commitment. If I like the goods, then I pay.
I'm not sure you get to say that you only work for 25 percent when those things are true.
Andy Simpson: Yeah. And if we look at, you know, the, you know, let's take price, right? There was, you know, and you, you know, I see LinkedIn posts all the time with somebody saying these cowboys working at 10 percent devaluing our industry.
Yeah. And I kind of sort of roll my eyes because it's people put that kind of stuff on, on LinkedIn all the time. And you think, well, why can't somebody work for 10%? Like the bottom line is if your, if your average fee is 15k, if you're having salary, let's say 60k and you work for, um, for 10%, that's 6k. Well, that's, and you do a deal a month, that's 72 grand a year.
That's twice the average salary in the
Sam Slade: UK.
Andy Simpson: So, so there's nothing wrong with that. But I think what people get frustrated about is that in their heart, they know that they're offering the same solution as that person. And so it pisses them off that that person is charging 10%. And so the only way that they can somehow combat that is by suggesting that it is not sustainable, manageable, whatever.
Now, my point of view on pricing is that it's basically impossible to grow any recruitment business beyond, three or 400k EBITDA if you are a contingent perm recruitment business. So if you're a PSL led working, you know, contingent roles, sending CVs, organizing interviews, you cannot possibly grow beyond a certain level because you can't retain customers for long enough because of the invariable customer churn problems.
But simultaneously The pricing issue, because there will always be somebody who will do it for 10%. And it's really easy to say that that person isn't very good or they're a cowboy. The truth is, some of them are pretty good. But you know what? They haven't got a massive office in Liverpool Street. They haven't got, you know, ridiculous overheads.
They're not going to Ibiza or Vegas twice a year. And they're working in their shed and they're making a tidy living. And they don't have any of the drama that you have. And I think for me, I think if you, if you want to try and hold the line on, I'm an elite recruiter at 25%, you ain't going to do it with, Oh, you know, but I'm an industry expert.
I've been in this game for 25 years. I do that, you know, I've got deep vertical, whatever. It's, it's meaningless nonsense, I guess. So then moving on. So we talked about commoditization in. You talked about chat GPT. So why is commoditization hurt so much in the last 12 to 18 months? Is it, is it just because fewer jobs, more recruiters fighting over the ever diminishing pool of money available?
Or is there more to it than that?
Sam Slade: I think what you said is the crux of it. But let's carry on. I think you've got, yeah, you'll have more, more people than ever working a job. So that fill rate is, is going down again. I think it seems anecdotally that it's never been harder to convince businesses that have an in house TA team or Already spending on recruitment that it's external provider can, can add additional value, um, outside of like really critical niche hires.
And I think there's, there's a lot of people to simply leave, leave in the industry, you know, particularly at the, the more junior end because it's so hard. So yeah, there's an incredible amount of challenges that the offshoot from it, um, be that. Intrinsic motivation of an individual. I mean, how hard do you work something?
If you know it only works one in four times, the race to the bottom on price wars is, is an incredible challenge, you know, talks about percentages. So let's use that. So I'm going to go 15. Well, I'll do 14. Well, I'll do 13. And once clients get a taste of this is possible at four or 5%, I've heard. It's hard to come back from that.
Andy Simpson: Yeah. I mean, I think I, my perspective on, on that is the, the only way to succeed. And I mean, the only way with that model, that contingent business mindset, you've got to be an absolutely ferocious outbound machine. So you've got to be, you know, like the recruitment companies of the 1980s that people used to mock, right.
But they were blooming successful, right. And they had hardcore, relentless, outbound mindset, you know, five hours of standup canvassing, five hours of outbound, you know, we don't care about our customers. We just care about doing deals. And their mindset was they just want to plow through deal after deal after deal at almost any expense.
And to me, that's the only way to win in that space. You don't give a hoot about the rules, don't care about getting kicked off the odd PSL because your behaviour is a little bit rogue. Because I think if you try and do it any other way. eventually you just kind of die because, and this is, this market's been a good example of where customers that had a me too strategy approach, they just sort of died.
And some of them literally went out of business. Others saw that business that they'd spent 15 years building, you know, finish up a quarter of the size. And the reality was, is that, You know, the, um, the sea goes out and you're, you know, you're swimming naked or whatever the example is. Warren,
Sam Slade: Warren Buffett.
There you
Andy Simpson: go. And so I think for me. That's why I encourage people to say like, if you, if you want to apply this model, the only way it can be applied is in conjunction with an unbelievably aggressive sales mentality. And there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to be that kind of person that wants to, you have to want to work in a business like that.
You don't have to lead a business like that. You have to be able to lead a business like that. And I think if I think about all of the successors and not all of them survived, but some of them are, they are unapologetically. Just aggressive. And that's their, that's their mentality. That's their mindset.
But if you, if you, and you know, you're churning 50, 60 percent of your staff year on year, because many people don't want to work like that in or an environment like that. But, but it can work. And I'd argue that, you know, if you just, if you just doing that, that's the only way to make it work. So let's talk a little bit about, we talked about a lot of the headaches that people have had, There's lots of positives out there.
We obviously talk a lot about productization and you've got some, you've got some lived experience and then you've got some kind of consulting experience, if you like, from your, from your time at Hinterview. In your words, what is productization?
Sam Slade: Ultimately taking what is typically an ambiguous service and adding a, you might call it a scope.
Specifically, what does this service do? What actions does the, does the vendor take? Well, let, let me break it down and say a typical experience with a recruiter is as a hiring manager, you tell them about that, your job, and they'll say, great, I'll have a look and I'll send you some CVs and you say, and then you leave the call, the phone call and set think.
How many? When? What's happening here? Um, and just wait. And of course, some people might book in a next step or commit to a shortlist deadline. But yeah, a productized service typically focuses far more on the outcome and is very clear on how it might achieve it. The analogy we tend to use is like, like something you pick up in the supermarket.
It tells you, What it is, when it goes out a day, what the calorific information is so that you can make a decision as to whether this will get you that outcome. So there's not really a shape of, of what it should be. You know, I think an interesting niche of the marketplace that does it really well is, is those that provide nearshore talent to, um, the U S or UK, you know, from LATAM or, or Europe might say Java developers within 24 hours.
Pre coded and show them on video, or it might simply be more akin to, you know, the search firms that put on pedestals that charge six figure fees to take nothing away from individual expertise, of which there's plenty, really, that's just a wrapper and articulating the process that we're going to go on.
And the client is really. Buying into the process because it makes sense and logically resonates. This will get me the outcome I need as opposed to just this ambiguity that comes working with recruiters. And I think, again, that's a by product of that is why most hiring managers choose to hedge their bets.
You know, I'm not sure Andy, how hard he's looking or what he's doing. So I'm going to take this call from Lisa, Moe, and whoever else. And sure, if you're happy to look for me for free, then go ahead. No skin off my nose. Whereas if you have an arrangement, no, I've, you know, engaged this person. And they're going to look for two weeks and skills test them and whatever else it is that speaks to the problem.
And I think one thing that's really interesting is, There are a huge amount of recruitment businesses out there operating mostly contingent that already do a great job, but you see, there's an interesting like image that goes around from Apple, obviously a very successful when they were starting up from their marketing function.
And the key point is, Yes, people do judge a book by its cover and it goes on to say there's absolutely no point in having the best products, the best everything, if people don't perceive it that way. You know, the way we're positioning and framing is everything. And by that, I think they mean, um, you know, rather than six gigabytes of memory, you'll always see them say a thousand songs in your pocket, you know, it's that, that subtlety and some people absolutely nail it.
And they're really exciting to me, actually. It's hard to define perfectly because it's so. Speaks to the problems, the frustrations, the challenges that their specific ideal client has. Yeah. Um, and we also meet people that you think, wow, you guys are doing amazing. You just kind of need to, it's a bit more of a branding exercise.
And then others that maybe a little more help on defining a process and the wins are you will sell more, but it's also repeatable, scalable. You know, those junior people that a lot of BD training is, you just call people, but having something [00:28:00] tangible, more akin to a product to sell that speaks to specific pain points makes life all that easier.
Andy Simpson: Yeah, that's a great, um, a great answer. And I think from my, from my experience, you mentioned about, you know, a good, one of the examples I had, I was in with a, um, a customer six months ago, and we were talking about, but why do you not win more jobs? either on an exclusive basis or, um, or, or with a bit more commitment.
And there was clearly a bunch of reasons, right? Partly they didn't have a plan. They didn't have a product. They didn't have a strategy, but it was also partly psychological because the individual was just like, Oh, they just don't have, they, they don't have the balls to ask the question. And so we sort of like challenged that a bit.
And so let's just unpack what you mean by that. And he says, well, if they were braver. they would ask, you know, they would ask for the job on exclusive. And, and when you sort of push on that, that door and you open it and [00:29:00] you realize that behind it is just a big empty room, because when you ask about like, okay, well, what if the client says, why, why should I work on exclusive?
They, they don't know what to say because there's no, there is no difference. And so the typical response is generally. Either a load of kind of word play, or often it's, it's, it's, we fabricate, I mean, we literally lie to the client about what the benefit is. And we say things like, Oh, I can get sign off from my CFO to get six resources to work on your job.
So you're still incredibly vague, but it's also not true. And I always say to people like when, when the central component of your offer is an outright lie. belief was always going to be in short supply. And so people aren't going to be rushing to ask the question because, you know, what are they going to do?
Well, if this goes well, I might get the opportunity to tell my client loads of half truths or outright lies. It's not a very exciting way to do business. And so, and I think we, you know, we concluded that, you know, ultimately the reason that it's not really about bravery, But it is about confidence and they're two very different things because running blindly and, you know, running blindly into a hail of fire is not the most sensible thing to do, but being brave in the face of, a challenging scenario was definitely the right thing to do.
And, and I think trying to articulate to the customer that, you know, we've got to train people if we want them to be brave, they've got to, they've got to believe before they can be brave. And that's, I think, part of the challenge. A
Sam Slade: hundred percent. I don't, I don't know how much clients. Question people on that when you're working for free, yeah, back to that point.
So it's easy. Um, but when you are asking that question, yeah, I think you need to, to succeed. You need to be able to set out a clear list of, of logical and perhaps emotive reasons that it makes sense. Um, you know, one, one of the things that's just come to me that's maybe relevant is, um, yeah, when pitching for larger work, let's say.
And I remember the first time that I was like, what's happening here? But someone just really bullishly said something like, but Sam, you're all fishing in the same pool, aren't you? You know, you can't create new humans. So it doesn't make sense. And then we ended up having this weird conversation where I was just following the, the analogy or the metaphor.
I'm like, but do you believe The best fisherman in the world has better equipment than someone else. And it was a super odd thing, but, um, it kind of got me thinking and it's such an upside win is. Packaging the tools and the bits around you that you're adding to get that is is super powerful, particularly today.
I think most using a lot of generalizations here, it could be said that most recruiters are really like pounding this network that they've got, but I think clients know there's not a huge amount of truth to that. There's a law, I can't remember what it's called, but it says each human can only know and remember meaningful details about 150 people at a time.
So once you've got your friends and family, you probably know, like, 40 candidates. Like, outside of the CRM. And obviously LinkedIn's, um, democratised, arguably commoditised. Access to talent. So people like Stephen Bartlett, right? If you don't listen to me, go and look at his, his chapter two. There's a whole page about all the tech they've, they've got.
But saying someone, Yeah, but I pay a ton of money for these fancy LinkedIn licenses. And we have this tool that provides me mobile numbers for everyone in the world and we have video messaging. So we're able to get in front of more of them and we can make video job adverts for you. And on and on and on.
Oh, and by the way, I've got loads of experience. It's just those bits. How do we actually surface the things we're doing? And when we talk about that with people in a far more meaningful way, they're often like, Oh, either I never thought about it or I had thought about it, but thought we need to keep it all secret.
But transparency is probably one of the easiest ways to differentiate.
Andy Simpson: Yeah. We talk a lot about transparency. You know, positioning, but where does, like, just to, you know, to plug our own, you know, to plug our own product for a minute, like where does Hinterview fit in to a productised stack, right? Why, why can't I just, if the search companies, a search company doesn't necessarily have to be a Hinterview customer to, to do six figure deals.
So why would a customer need our solution? To have a productized service. Why would they?
Sam Slade: Um, they wouldn't need, but it'd certainly be incredibly beneficial. So if we zoom out a bit, a productized service, why don't we rebrand it as an incredibly compelling offer? And an incredibly compelling offer. You know, the equation we, we like to think of it around is what's the dream outcome of, of the customer, the client, typically it's going to be hiring the best person the market can provide other times it might be to somebody that can functionally complete the role quickly.
So we're trying to make this offer dramatically increase their, their perception that they will get the outcome they like while simultaneously reducing the time it takes to get there. And most importantly, and the thing that. Almost nobody thinks about is the effort, energy and investment of time that they make.
So at the highest, most macro level, using videos to introduce candidates to clients is a radical time saver for your client, or frankly, for everybody involved in the process. I hear, and hey, maybe they're right, but I don't think so. People say my clients trust me and so on. But, but the truth is. Nobody whose job isn't recruitment enjoys interviewing over and over again.
If you can create an environment where your client only meets people in person that they think is a great fit. They're already seeing how they might be able to solve the business challenge. That's incredible value. And you know, the, the repeat business from our customer base proves that to, to an overwhelming point of view, but then we can do other things with a toolkit.
So maybe you've got a client who. Their employer brand is not perceived as, as perhaps they'd like, or perhaps they're a startup doing amazing things, but they want the best. Or they can be involved in kind of video job adverts and things that help with that attraction piece. Adding video messaging to like a LinkedIn recruiter project is proven to increase unique candidate replies by 280%.
So that's nice from a functional point of view. But it's also another explainer as to why you should trust me with this, because I'm going to do all this work, make an amazing video job ad, phone, email, and video message every candidate that we identify together as an amazing fit. And then I'm going to meet all these candidates and ask them some questions on your behalf, or you can lean on my expertise to showcase why they're great, send them to you in an amazing package.
All you have to do is click yes, maybe have two interviews, I'll handle the rest. When you compare that to their typical experience, which is have three or four phone briefs, be unclear what's going on, you know, CVs come in and go in, CV doesn't, it just doesn't give you much information. That's a fact previously.
But now there's clear evidence to suggest a lot of CVs are AI anyway. And then you have a bunch of phone screens. Meet, I think 16, 16 hours is the average to fill one permanent job from a hiring manager's point of view. They're night and day. Okay. Yeah. I could get passionate and rant about this, but I'll start.
Andy Simpson: Just talking about. Let's talk about CVs, right? Cause you mentioned the, in the middle of the call, chat GPT and how chat GPT has kinda changed has kind of changed the, the, the, you know, the way the way recruits work. And I think in the last six months, I've probably seen eight different AI resume generation tools, right?
CV generators. So you feed your CV in, and it gives you this beautifully parsed, branded, either anonymized or non anonymized tools, right? So is it fair to say that that part of the market will also become commoditized. And if it does, and if we're working on the basis, the CV is already quite a poor mechanism to reflect whether or not the candidate's a good fit.
Surely it's going to get even worse if every CV is AI generated. The grammar will be perfect. The spelling will be perfect. The presentation will be beautiful. And it will tell us less and less about the real person behind the words. Is that, is that a fair assessment?
Sam Slade: I, I think it's a fair assessment, but I, I also think people dramatically understate or overstate how useful the CV is before AI.
I like to, as you know, know a lot about strange niches. There's a study that they've been doing for a hundred years, I think Schmidt and Hunter, if anyone wants to look it up. And if you agree that it's fair to say that the CV is really a list of how long someone has been doing certain things for, then it is the 16th best predictor of success in future role.
[00:39:00] Whereas, well, to give that some context, And An assessment of your handwriting style, which apparently they do in Israel and France is a better predictor of success is in isolation. It's fundamentally useless, proven out by far smarter people than me. Um, so how, how, how are you supposed to make useful decisions off of that as a, as a hiring manager, as a client, you know, the first CV is, I think Da Vinci and don't quote me, but like the 1500s.
It looks the same. Whereas. A fixed video or a fixed interview. It's not about the video fixed interview where people are asked same questions in conjunction with, um, a couple of other bits. is the best. So if you can provide somebody the information that scientifically is the best way of selecting who will be best in this organization, why wouldn't you?
Particularly if you're meeting them anyway, which is the claim of most. Yeah.
Andy Simpson: Um, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's a great, it's a great answer. And I think for me, you know, when I say to people, You know, do you meet your candidates? And they say, yeah, yeah, yeah. We meet all of our candidates, meet all of our candidates online, which is fine.
And then I go, great. Well, you're already doing the work, right? So let's just help you package the work that's already taking place and transform that into an offer. And then it transpires that they're not really meeting their candidates. They say they are, but what they're really doing is 10 minute phone call, but that, but they're still driven by.
CV send out KPIs, first interview KPIs. And one of the, I mean, one of the maddest things about recruitment is that we as an industry are still obsessed with the volume of first interviews as a measure of success. And so we say to ourselves, the more time you can consume in your customer's diary, the better this business will be, which is Quite literally diametrically opposite almost every other industry, which is what they're offering and promising is to save you time.
Whereas we're like, nah, you've got to get 10, if you get 10 first interviews a week, you'll do a deal. And of course you might do a deal. You probably will do a deal on those kinds of volumes, but will you, but will the customer go, what a great experience I've had? No, they'll go. I had to meet loads of candidates and yeah, one of them was good, but loads of them were not.
And then when somebody comes along offering a, just a better solution and they focus on the time saving, and for me, the biggest problem we have when we're talking to new, new customers about interview and why it's so powerful is I can literally guarantee them that their number of first interviews will go down and they look at me and they're like, well, that sounds terrible because when you've spent 20 years Addicted to volume, getting off of, you know, getting, getting, getting clean is a, you know, on that, you know, on that drug is a challenge.
And it's, it's often, it just so ingrained in the, in the way that a leader has been raised into what I was no different, right. I worked in a volume recruitment business, high, you know, sale, big, strong sales focus. And to me, it's, it's abundantly clear. That for many people changing their mindset about volume and all the benefits of volume is the biggest barrier to them changing how they do things.
And that's the hardest part of it.
Sam Slade: Unquestionably. I think similar to me, we both got maybe unique experiences where we, relatively unique, where we have worked in recruitment, know how it works, spent a long time with lots of recruitment businesses, many great, and are customers of recruitment businesses.
Yeah. And actually as an individual, if people, you know, quite, quite good sales, people say, well, what, what does good look like for you? I've said, and do you say that I never meet anyone that's a total waste of my time. They might not be a fit, but that I never feel like what the hell. Yeah. And that's true of every hiring manager.
You know, they don't, they're not in this space, right? They've got. A board meeting. They've got six people that need promotion conversations. They've got, you know, a retail store. That's not performing. Who knows? Yeah, they got loads of stuff going on and it's very hard to build an extra 16, 20 hours into a working week or a working month and frankly, if, if you're paying often tens of thousands of pounds, you'd, you'd subscribe a lot of value to the more time someone can pick up.
And we're talking about, um, video interviewing, which is the clear opportunity for the biggest time save, but it's also the subtle things like. The little red carpet moments, like you put putting the team's invite in, you know, doing all the candidate stuff around me. Yeah. Those little bits that make the customer think.
The cherry on top. Yeah,
Andy Simpson: 100%. And I guess finally, where do you see the next couple of years? You know, what are you hearing in the market? What are your, what are our customers telling you, and what does the future look like for the next couple of years in, in the world of recruitment?
Sam Slade: I have no crystal ball, but it strikes me that those that have productizing and branding effectively, and most importantly, have a clear way of, of retaining business, because it's so hard to win new business today, be that through, Some kind of recurring commercial structure is, is what the people that are really winning in this down market are doing.
You know, there's a couple of examples of frankly recruitment businesses that have got 10 million series A funding, right? Stephen Bartlett's the famous one getting into that game. And obviously we know a lot that I won't talk about here. So I see probably not everybody, but some real changes and interesting ideas, particularly around commercial models.
And far less kind of new business focus and total acceptance of client churn, because it's incredibly hard to build, build a thriving business on that basis. And I think a good third of the market will go that way quite quickly. Third, we'll perhaps do nothing and wait for, For the green shoots of recovery, but, you know, what do I know?
But 2021, 2022 doesn't seem like it's going to come around again for a, for a few years. And who knows around the rest, it's always been a dynamic sector, right? There's always a huge percentage of top billers going and starting on their own with total variations of. How that pans out and for some successes be the next juggernaut for others.
It's be a lifestyle business that's paying them more than they were as an employee. And sadly for a lot, it doesn't work out. Yeah. It's hard to say because the industry is so vast, but a real shift towards more niche offerings, offerings that specifically speak to clients problems. And I also just completely wildly.
I think the 180 model will make a resurgence in time.
Andy Simpson: That's really interesting. Thanks a lot for your time today, Sam. I appreciate it.
Sam Slade: Thanks for having me.
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