Josh White - Cracking the USA, from winning clients to creating a sustainable recruitment desk

Hello everyone, a very quick one from me. It would be a massive help to us with our ambition to help as many recruiters as possible. Achieve their goals and also inspire the next generation to choose recruitment as a career if you hit that follow and subscribe button. If you're someone that prefers to learn in a visual way, we've also recently invested a lot in our video podcast experience. So in the show notes, you'll always be able to find the link to watch the video on our YouTube channel and make sure that you hit subscribe so you don't miss a future episode. Thank you so much for supporting the show and enjoy this week's episode. Welcome back to another episode of the Recruitment Mentals podcast. I'm your host, Heishemeziz, and this week I was joined remotely by Josh White. Josh has worked in recruitment for five and a half years. He's built his recruitment career with Stanton House. However, for the last three years, he's been on a journey where he's taking his UK recruitment experience over to the United States. There's a real trend at the moment of UK recruitment companies venturing out and approaching to take over the US. So over the next couple of weeks, the recordings that I do remotely are going to be focused on recruiters that have successfully taken their careers or at least taken their markets to the States. And Josh is no different. The last three years, he's built out a patch in Chicago completely from scratch. I'm talking, he rocked up there before COVID and he was starting a brand new market that he hadn't done at all when he was in the UK. So over this conversation, we really broke down his strategy, what's worked, what hasn't, what all of you need to understand if you want to be successful in. America, if you were to start over again, what would you do differently? I also asked a bunch of questions that a lot of you asked me to ask someone like Josh. So we had a really good conversation. If you are someone that would love to take your career to the United States or you have an opportunity with your company right now to start building out your market and desk in America, then you are going to get so much value from this episode. Enjoy it and that's enough from me. Welcome to the recruitment, mental's podcast. My name is Hishma Zuz. I'm your host and today I'm really excited to be joined by Josh White. And I've done an introduction already. So we're going to get straight into it and Josh, I want to ask you the million dollar question to start with, which is. And I'm sure you thought a lot about it since you've been growing your team, but I really want to hear your take on like what characteristics and traits do you believe make up a highly successful recruiter in today's market? Let's start there. Yeah, love it. So for me, I think there's I think there's a hundred sort of interchangeable things right that like one person has that one person doesn't have because everyone's, you know, an authentic version of themselves. But what what it comes down to, especially in the early days is someone who has a growth mindset before anything else. Someone who is people or or customer focused and someone who is really at their core, very coachable. I think for you to go from knowing nothing about recruitment to being a recruitment superstar, those three things will really get you there. I love that. I love those points. Growth mindset, coachability and then the other one was like being like really passionate about customer service, did you say? Yeah, it's people focus or customer focus. It's about when you're talking someone that you're actually listening to them when you're talking someone. You are taking in what they say and making them feel heard and that you're actually putting them first right so you know there's loads of little things that go into that integrity. They're critical to relationship building, which is what we're trying to do. Love it. So today I know what people are really excited about and obviously this is what I've been speaking about. I think there's a real trend of UK recruitment firms going to the US. They want it all. They want to take over America. So we are going to talk about your entire journey, but obviously today we're going to really hone in on like what has Josh's journey been like over the last three or so years in taking your life, your career to Chicago and to the States. So I guess just before we go into that, we're always like to start obviously you've worked at a standing house for over five years. You've progressed your recruitment career. You've got a track record there who was Josh before recruitment. Yeah, it's really I've been thinking about this a lot actually not only because you asked me about it, but because it's mental health awareness week month. I actually think I was a bit of a lonely soul. I think I'm you know anyone who knew me when I was at school, you know, anywhere from sort of 14 to 16. I used to walk around the place to never on that one is being million average was really quite frankly. Yeah, quite frankly a little bit ludicrous. I always have my little entrepreneurial moments, you know, selling headphones, you know, I was always talking about big projects and big things I wanted to do. But I never really I never really liked clicked into gear and when it comes to going to sick form college, I got about three weeks in. I was like this ain't for me. I'm going to go work full time. And my first job was selling suitcases in a house of Fraser, which I actually did for about a year or so. And then I then I got into furniture sales and started selling high and furniture. But that that whole sort of, you know, retail thing just it just weren't for me like I think I enjoyed it because I got I was quite passionate about it. And I may I got passionate about suitcases, right? But for me, I really wanted to be in control of my own destiny. And when someone told me about recruitment, I saw that as an opportunity to, you know, being controlled in my own destiny, right? Rather than waiting with people to come in and buy something, I could go out there and get them to come to me. I love that. Yes, like I had no idea what I wanted to do. I mean I even I even did a plumbing course at college. But the only reason why I did that right was I don't know how old you are, but was you around when you got EMA for college? Do you remember that? I don't. Well, I didn't really. I made it into week three of college. So EMA EMA was basically for attending college, you got 30 could a week. Wow. But then that was the next sports game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to worry about that. Well, I had no idea what I wanted to do, but it seems like you had a similar thing where like set when I sort of stumbled into sales, that's like I can resonate. That really resonates me. Like I know you didn't quite have it from, yeah, you're right, relying on people walking into the shop. But I'm assuming what did resonate with you about it was like Josh can show up to work suitcases, financial, whatever. But like you know, if you work harder than the person that you like you will get rewarded for that. And that's when when I stumbled across sales, I was like, I'm like, yeah, this is exactly what I want to do. Yeah, I think I felt quite lonely until I found sales. Like it wasn't that I wasn't necessarily academic. I definitely didn't apply myself, I'm sure we've all heard that before. But when I found sales, I was like, hold on, I can earn money just by chatting to people and helping them, helping them find something, right? I hope I'm in the buy something, this is amazing. Yeah, no, but I mean my first sales job wasn't selling furniture with selling bar crawl tickets in Magaloof commission only. Oh wow. So I a bit more exciting than suitcases. I tried to make it sound exciting anyway. I'm sure you saw a bit more action. Oh, absolutely. Well, I guess what I always like to ask as well. So I love you sharing that. What has a career recruitment given you then that maybe least expected? You know what? I think it's given me the ability to learn and be challenged every day. That is a little bit philosophical. A practical answer would be, you know, it's definitely helped me out. It's given me a lot of financial stability and security and that's amazing. But I think the philosophical piece is definitely around sort of being able to learn, grow, be challenged every single day. I think when you and I see this with people that come, you know, that come through the ranks at Stanton House and I was probably exactly saying you kind of think, okay, I'll do this training thing. And then you know, I cut them months in. I've got it right. I know a training was rough. I know it's a bit of rude awakening when you realize that actually the learning curve is completely continuous. I love that. So just giving you, yeah, no, I think that's great. So just continue to challenge yourself. I was given you the financial stability. But yeah, so obviously ended up giving you a lot more in terms of like just being able to control your own destiny from a self standpoint. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's also moving you out to a state and met my amazing fiance. So I've got to be very grateful for those things too. And yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. So guess final question on the early days and then we'll get into the America stuff, which I know everyone wants to learn about. I'm sure you can agree, but like there's probably never been more young people entering the recruitment. and then it ever has been before, with this sort of equipment boom, the amount of vacancies, the amount of jobs that new people can get working on right away. Like, no more, you know now, what advice would you give to Josh starting out in recruitment and starting his career again, do you think? I would say, I would say prepare to work, prepare to be humbled and prepare to work with intensity and focus and discipline. I think especially, you know, having worked before and perhaps this would have been different if I'd come straight from university. Having worked before, I had a bit of a baseline of like, right, what's it like to turn up to work every day and recruitment was certainly from my perspective significantly harder than anything I'd done before. And I was, you know, very humbled in the early days by, you know, by trying new things and failing at them, you've got to prepare to fail and not let it, not let it throw you off, like stay focused with it. Yeah, yeah, it's tough at the beginning. Yeah, it is. How long did it take to do your first deal? Ah, it's a remember. Probably longer, probably longer than it should have. I reckon it was four or five months. It was a part of time contract or interim who was like, you know, non-qual financial controller. You always remember it, don't you? Yeah, you can't, you can't, you can't forget it. My mind was decent. It was an old colleague. He sorted me out. That's good. That was very memorable. My mind was pretty scrappy. Love it. So, let's sort of obviously just give people context. Obviously, what in the UK for a number of years? Obviously within the finance space, so you just mentioned then sort of a finance professional. Yeah. But obviously, from what I can see on LinkedIn, you can help me out with the timeline. But obviously, 2019 is that when you went to the States or was you already working and building like, because you hear a lot of people right, they try and get traction before they go over there. So, from what I can see online, from October 2019, it says, "Soon you can start cyber security sales in Chicago." Yeah. And did this start? Yeah, I'll talk between 19. So, you didn't do any like building tokens people before you went there? No, we didn't at all, actually. My colleague James, James Warren potentially did like a little bit, but I mean, how much did that have an impact? I mean, it was a couple of months. I think if, I think, you know, I know lots of people that do do that model where they kind of like incubate the business in the UK and then, you know, take it over and they've already got a few clients and so on and so forth. And I think if we had, if we'd done that, maybe that would have been a good thing. But to be honest, I literally, I rocked up at Chicago. I went to meet the team, you know, which was two people who were already there. Two people. Yeah, I was the last person to arrive. I mean, they all arrived about week before me. Went to meet them both and then the next day, rocked up and like, I was like, right, what is this new market I'm doing? Wow. So, just to frame out for people because this is important. So you was doing it with two other people. Yeah. Was there a similar level for you as you experienced wise? Yeah. So you had, you've got Henry Yomans, who's VP of North America. So Henry's a few more years experiencing the me. He's been with Stan now. It's a bit longer. So he joined to sort of run the whole thing and then you had myself and a guy called James, who were pretty much, yeah, same level. Same level, okay. Cool. So then like, so you said they got there a couple of weeks before you. But so like, did Stan and House have a presence in the US at all? Like, just so we understand that. Right, okay. Right, let's pray this down then because that's, that's not. Right. So you said there this market, this new market that I'm doing, just talked to a bit about cyber security and why that ended up being the market that you wanted to focus on because that would be helpful for people. So when we set the business up in North America, we wanted to have a really niche focus. We all know, you know, inch, inch ride mile deep is the way to go and we decided to, we landed on cyber security. We thought, right, that's going to be the right market for us to go into. So we sort of split it up. We said, right, James is going to, you know, do the sort of technical cyber piece and Josh is going to do presales, which at the time we didn't know that meant. But so today, what that looks like is we've got a team that recruit for corporate America, right? So we've got a team that's technical cyber security, folks to help protect and defend corporate businesses in the States. And then we've got my lot, which has expanded slightly outside of cyber now. But what we do is we predominantly play sales, marketing and customer success people into cyber security startups. I bet. Okay. And that you, so have you, how long have you been in that for then that whole time you've been there? Yeah. I mean, I've been doing that since October, October 29th, in now. Okay. I mean, it was fascinating on day one, trying to work out what it was. I remember I moved out there and the first thing I did was change my LinkedIn sales in Chicago and I put cyber presales. Like I didn't even really know what it meant to be honest. And I'm happy to admit that. And so my first, you know, I mean, it's amazing building out, building out market. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'm excited to get into this. So just the last bit of context for people then. So that's what it looked like when you were there. What does it look like today in terms of team? What you did last year or whatever, like let's just get that out the way as well for people. This podcast is proudly partnered with the award-winning source breaker. Now I think it's safe to say that right now the market is crazy. Continue to hear people saying, never seen the market like it. And I continue to speak to recruiters who are inundated with jobs. Which is why I'm not surprised that the number one, we're heard that I'm always hearing at the moment is automation. And if you're looking at how you can enable your teams to spend more time on what they're brilliant at, in relationships, speaking to people, then you need to look at source breaker. It's helped countless recruitment companies scale more quickly, enable their younger recruits and their recruits to get better more quickly and automate a whole lot of the work that a lot of recruiters are probably not so good at and the work that maybe they don't enjoy as much. Because you listen to this podcast, you're going to be able to get an exclusive discount on the source breaker product. So if you have not already, get a demo built in with source breaker, use the link in the show notes. You will not regret it. If you're thinking about that word, automation in 2022, you need to consider source breaker. Yeah. So last year, we started 2021 with three of us. The same three because we didn't grow much in 2021 for obvious reasons. And today we are coming up to 18 people. Oh, wow. What's your financial year, is it January to December or? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we are on track as an office to do well over. I mean, we're at target for the years 3.5 as an office and already, I mean, you know, both teams did over 200% in quarter one. Yeah, on that target. But we had our first sort of two teams worth doing, you know, a million dollars each, which is a good start to the year when you're, you know, when each target team's target is 1.75. 1.70 hours, mega. So what did you just quickly then final bit? What did you end on last year then, Billings wise? So, me personally, yeah, me personally, I ended up somewhere between six and, somewhere between six and seven hundred. Yeah. Okay, nice. So let's break this down. So I guess the first thing that I have to ask you because I think it's really normal for people and it could be helpful for people that are going into the states that aren't, but just really quickly, what's the advice or what are the principles to like upskilling yourself in the new market that you're in? Because I think a lot of people can overthink this, be worried about it. So no more, you know, now these things like if I rock into your all Chicago off his tomorrow and I'm like, I know fuck all about cybersecurity, what are you telling me to do that can help me get their quickest? So then I'm, I don't feel really uncomfortable speaking to people. I don't feel like they're better than me because I don't have the information or knowledge. Like just talk to me a bit about that quickly because I think people can, that's helpful for people. Yeah. So, I think the market, the market itself, in terms of recruitment, right, recruitment's recruitment. So whether you're doing recruitment in the UK or you're doing recruitment in the US, fundamentally like in my opinion, the sort of the principles of the things that you need to do to be successful are the same. Now there are naturally nuances. So nuances would be, you know, you're not going to work a job with a client unless you've signed a contract with them because contract law in the US is everything. So we measure success when we're not doing, you know, when we're not doing deals with how many clients are we signing up. And that's because if they haven't got a contract signed, they don't have to pay you. Yeah, basically, yeah, yeah, basically. So you know, we measure our success, you know, it's a leading indicator for us as to whether or not we're winning. There are all sorts of little things. I mean, we don't, we don't, we're, we're a completely permed business. It's that mouse. I don't know. I can't really offer much from opinion on the contract business. I probably say it looks scary, scary, complicated, but we're not in a position to comment on that. Yeah. What I wanted to get your advice on was for anyone listening, the that is going into a brand new market that they don't know much about. 'Cause you know you said like, you didn't have a clue about cybersecurity. I was just curious. What's your advice to people to upskill themselves in their niche that's been helpful? - So for me, I think, if you're a podcast person, listen to podcasts, right? You can always find podcasts on your, I mean, if you listen to this, you're a podcast person, right? You can always find a podcast on your, on your specialism, on your market. Go and listen to it, right? Like, try and absorb some of that information. But I think the biggest thing, and the thing that you need to do before you do anything else is just go and talk some candidates. And I was pretty open with a lot of people. Like I said to people, look, I'm a group that I just moved here from the UK. I've just started this new market. I'd love to have a chat with you and just understand a bit about, you know, ask you a couple of questions about the market. The best way to learn is getting on the phone, in my opinion. You can do all the reading you on. And I used to be a big procrastinator, right? You know, my first boss, Kevin Colville House, openly told our entire company once that he watched me read a, a FTSE 100 annual report before I tried to co-cool someone. (laughs) - You compensate for like your fear, don't you, 'cause I've definitely done it. - Yeah. - You're like, 'cause you're shitting yourself. - Exactly. And it doesn't help, right? I mean, it's not a kick use of time. So for me, I think the best thing to do is, like, be vulnerable, be open to learning and just be honest with people. - Yeah. - There will come a point where, you know, you need to, you know, not fake it to you make it, but, you know, you need to start. You know, you ask questions in the right way, right? So we teach people how to have a good first conversation with someone without having to know everything about the market and buy them, saying, hey, you know, tell me a bit about what your biggest challenge is. Day to day, that person who asked that question learned something not only about the candor, but about their industry. - No, thanks for sharing that. So let's break this down then. So like, it sounds like, obviously you went, you told us what we ended up in last year, which was pretty much your whole first year, right? And obviously that was during COVID vibes as well. So like, did you have a plan then at all? - Well, I got out there. - Yeah, 'cause like, you said, that it finished nearly north of like 700K in that 2020. So that's like October, 2019, you land. Oh, sorry, yeah. I always get confused at years like. It's a crazy, but okay. And so basically, talk to us a bit about that first year then, firstly, before we then go into the last two. That first year, did you have a plan? How long did it take to get traction? Let's just talk a bit about that as to, like, what you experienced. - It took a couple of months to start getting traction. You know, my strategy was about meeting senior people and making friends with them. My strategy was about speccing, and my strategy was about, you know, just meeting and talking to as many people generally as I could. So I did a lot of that in the sort of first few months. I started to get some really good traction, probably December, January. I was, I did my, I think I did my first, I did my first two deals in the US in sort of January, February of 2020. - Okay, yeah, it's like two to four months. - Yeah, yeah, about that. So that was pretty lucky. We actually, you know, we had this massive gong. We had a budget to buy furniture for the office. And it was a sign to me, and I say it was $500. And I spend 95% of it on the biggest gong you've ever seen. (laughing) - Right. - We were all so excited. And I mean, like the day that Chicago went into lockdown, March 16th, my birthday, I had like three or four offers pulled. I mean, it was devastating. Like I just, I was like, I've moved my life over here. I've been building out this market for five months. I'm about to do some amazing couple of deals, like way quicker than I thought. And now suddenly this has happened. Like, what, what did I do? And that, that year was rough, but do you know what? It was a great opportunity to build great relationships with great people, because I literally, like, I had no jobs to work, right? So I was proactively reaching out to seeing you people and making a ton of friends, right? I was meeting them, putting them through a sort of fall sort of interview, giving them feedback, adding loads of value, keeping in touch with them. Like I built some amazing relationships. And the relationships I built in 2020, are the ones that enabled me. Come to fruition, yeah. Yeah, I had one quarter last year where I built about 450K, which is, I mean, way more than I ever thought I would do in one quarter. It was possible. Yeah. Yeah. And every single one of those deals, you can track to those relationships built in 2020. So relationships, then? Yeah. Is that important in the American market? Yeah, I think so. I mean this with. It's different. It's definitely different. My perspective on this, having worked the US market and the UK market. In the UK, it's really, really hard to even get a seat at the table sometimes with a senior state colder. Like I remember, you know, spending 12 months trying to get hold of a CFO. Like it was an absolute grind to like get, you know, get sat around the table with them. But once you did, you know, you had something that you could really trust in. In the US, I find that, you know, people are nice to a degree, right? Like there, people in the US, people are, you know, sales is a more prestigious career. And it is in the UK. People are less skeptical of sales people. And what that means is it's quite, it's quite easy to get a seat around the table with someone. It's easy to get a, you know, to get a sort of engaged customer as such. Or someone who you think wants to work with you. What's really hard is getting that, you know, that loyal state. It's getting a customer who sort of, you know, won't pick up the phone to anyone else. But you, that takes a long time. What are the principles to get into that point? I think the principles to get into that point for me are about talking to someone not because you've got something, not because you need something, but just because you care about that person. I have so many customers now, you know, I mean, so many. I mean, you can only have so many relationships that are this strong. But I've probably got, I know, 20, 20 relationships with people that I would genuinely say are almost, you know, professional friends, right? I know, I know their kids' names. I know, I know they like to do the weekends. That stuff takes a lot of time to get there. You've got to add value to them professionally. You've got to show an interest in who they are, both professionally and personally. And you've got, you've got to keep in touch with them. How can recruiters listen to this add value to, because I'm sure everyone listen to this, wants to have those types of relationships, where you'd like to think so. Look, how can recruiters listen to this, Josh? Like, when you say add value, I understand that. I have some ideas that come up for me, but like, just to go a bit granular here, like, what does that value actually look like, beyond talking to them about job as well candidates? Yeah, so every, every senior person I meet, every person I meet, I try and give them feedback. There is, there is feedback, you can give it absolutely everyone. And feedback's a gift. But it's something that a lot of the time, we feel about uncomfortable about giving. So yeah, I'll meet someone, I'll say, are you open some feedback? Yeah, that's quite a critical part, because someone has to acknowledge that they are happy to receive it. Most of the time, we've said, yeah, sure. And I'll always find something to give to them. I say, right, you know, I really enjoyed meeting you. Here's what I think, you know, you did really well. Here's a, here's a couple of things, and I'll, you know, give some examples. Here are a couple of things I think, you know, if you tweet, you get a better outcome. And I'll give an example, I'll say, right, you said this. And if you said this, you would have, you know, people would perceive it much better, right? So I'm giving someone something which is, you know, could be life-changing for them. Because, you know, next interview, whether it's through, through, you know, Joshua or, or not, if they bring a technique or, or, or, if they utilize some feedback that came from me, they remember that. What is that? A life of clients? That's really fascinating. I've got a great story to tell you about that. Give it to us. I had a customer, a client who was introduced to me and he said, he said, right, he said, I'm sick of recruits telling me they're different. Like, what, what makes you different? Yeah. I'm talking about customer experience and all the stuff that I really believe in. And he, he basically, he's pretty direct. He said, Josh said, I'm not buying it. He said, I'm not buying it, Josh. I'm not buying it before. He said that. Yeah, he said, I'm not buying it. He said, what makes you really different? And I said, our interview process, when we meet candidates and we vet them, is more thorough than any experience you will ever have. And he said, okay, he can do it tomorrow at 9 a.m. with me. Wow. So I set up and I interviewed this potential client and it got to feedback and I was thinking in my head I was thinking, I don't really know this guy that well. If I give him feedback and he doesn't like it, he's not gonna work with me. But I thought, you know what, the right thing to do here is to give him feedback. And I'm not saying a tour into him, but I gave him very honest, objective feedback that he could work on. And I mean, I think they spent about 200 grand with us last year. - Love that. - The dandruff being the thing that like he picked up on that was like unique or different, probably you even showing up to do it, was probably unique and different. How many people would then bottle it if he said that? - Yeah, yeah, he was like, this is the most thorough experience I've ever had. And he's like, if you're gonna put every candidate through this before they meet me, then you're my guy. - You're gonna send me a lot of time. - Yeah. - Love that story. Thanks for showing that. - That's all right. - So okay, cool. So we've got really doubling down on relationships, giving value, not being transactional. Okay, so let's just talk about a few other things here then. So you mentioned then, so there's definitely, 'cause this has been a nuance that we picked up on, but you sort of said there that in terms of just being a recruiter and calling someone, that's actually been, that's something that's sort of perceived better and differently in the US, that's fair to say. How about competition? How have you found that as you've been growing the market because obviously we all, you were here right, recruitment in the UK is so fucking saturated. Like how, how did you find that on that journey? Did you find that you did end up competing with agencies a lot, or what was a competition like? (dramatic music) This podcast is proudly partnered with Vinceri. Now, you should know by now that they are on the quest and their vision and mission is to be and become the operating system for growing recruitment companies. Well, you may have may not have seen, but I'm here to tell you that they've recently added another fantastic piece of kit to their overall amazing system. It's called Vinio. You can probably guess what it is. A lot of you, and for the last two or so years, have probably accelerated your use of video. So having a tool which is seamlessly in your CRM, what you use every day to prospect candidates, prospect clients to use video in your interview process, just gonna make your life a whole lot easier. So just another amazing reason why you need to check out Vinceri if you're looking for an all in one platform, the operating system that you need as you scale your recruitment business, then you have to consider Vinceri. User link can show notes, because your recruitment mentor is listening, you will get an exclusive discount on price, so use that link and you will not regret it. - The competition landscape is definitely less saturated, right? You just need to look at the numbers to see that, but it doesn't mean that isn't any competition. Like there's still absolutely some really key players in the market, a couple of them are, a couple of them are US recruiters that have been operating for a long time, a couple of them are some of the big British firms that have moved out there. The difference, the difference is, especially with a lot of the US recruiters that I see, is there a bit like one stop shop, right? They do a lot of different things, whereas a lot of the British recruiters that move over there, they tend to be quite focused and in niches. I mean, I would say every person I work with says to me, I'm getting 10, 12 calls a day from recruiters or I'm getting 10, 12 messages a day from recruiters, because yeah, maybe there's less recruiters here, but you've got hundreds of them sat in the UK that work in the US market. - Hmm, okay, so that's interesting. So obviously, you've ended up obviously building traction, building a reputation. What do you think has been like the number, you've probably spoken about it, but I just wanted to ask and clarify like, what has been the number one thing do you think that has really enabled you to build a reputation? - I think it really comes down to being absolutely committed to building great relationships with great people. I just don't think there's anything that, I don't think there's anything that tops that, and it's leveraging those too, right? I let people leverage my network as much as I leverage theirs. So I'm happy to introduce any of my customers to any of my customers, not expecting, not maybe not because they want, we get a lot of cyber vendors that want to work with other cyber vendors on like alliances, and I very, very happily will introduce them not to make any money out of it, but just because I'm interested in two great people to do great things. - Yeah, nice. I've got some specific questions for you. - Okay. - 'Cause I put a post out there, and a couple of people ask some really good questions. So I just want to make sure we get them asked, I think this is a good moment 'cause of what we've been speaking about. So I guess to maybe wrap up then, 'cause we've been speaking a bit about it, and you've done a really good job of sharing what you've learned and these things, but one of the questions was, and I think a lot of people were thinking this right, is like, what would you say are the main differences in recruiting in the US to the UK? This podcast is proudly partnered with Vinceri. Now, you should know by now that they are on the quest, and their vision and mission is to be and become the operating system for growing recruitment companies. Well, you may or may not have seen, but I'm here to tell you that they've recently added another fantastic piece of kit to their overall amazing system. It's called Vinio. So just another amazing reason why you need to check out Vinceri, if you're looking for an all-in-one platform, the operating system that you need as you scale your recruitment business, then you have to consider Vinceri. User link and the show notes, because your recruitment mentor is listening, you will get an exclusive discount on price, so use that link and you will not regret it. - Yeah, so the point around relationships, I think you don't have to work as hard to get someone on the phone, but I think you have to work a bit harder to really build a great relationship with them. - Love it. - The second point is the point around nuances with contracts. You wanna agree things up front, you wanna get a contract in place before you start working on jobs. It's a commitment thing, it's also, contractually you're not as well covered in the UK as you are, as you were being the UK. I think those for me are probably the two main things. - Okay, yeah, nice. Few other granular things. How have your recruitment skills developed since being in the US? I like that question. - I would say I have become way more intense in how I operate. I think in the UK I was all right. Like I never really achieved exceptional things in the UK. I never really clicked into gear. I think there was a lot of potential there, which hopefully is why they moved me out here. But I never really had an amazing quarter, right? Like I did it right. And when I moved to the US, I just like, I was so, I mean, this was up my chance, right? Like I wanted this so bad, I still wanted so bad. I want us to build something exceptional so much and I'm so driven to do that. And I think it's enabled me to work with more intensity, to work with more focus, maybe a degree of structure. And the other thing is I've really transitioned from being an individual contributor to leading people. And that's been hard, right? Like I'm sure I hope my team will listen to this. And there's been pain points, right? It's really hard. I was probably a nightmare to begin with. - Yeah, that's quite common. What it's end up surprising to me the most then about the US that maybe you weren't prepared for? - I think this might be a controversial point. I don't necessarily think, I think there's a lot of hype around it. - What? - Guns of US. - Yeah, I think people are like, you know, you go to US, it's the, you know, you're gonna, you know, I heard someone say once, if you can build 200K in the UK, then you can build a million dollars in the US. - Yeah, I might have heard that before. - I don't necessarily agree with that. Look, the market, the market is, like if you look at it statistically, if you look at the facts, right, then you have got higher salaries. You can probably get higher fees in a lot of scenarios. And obviously that, you know, those two things mean that that does set you up for a bit more success in a way, but I think it's got its other challenges. You can probably build 30% more, but depending on where you live, it might cost you 30% more to live there, right? - Yeah. - So I think, yeah, there's an amazing opportunity. Yeah, you can, you can do, you can achieve amazing, amazing things out here. I think there is this view that if you go and do recruitment in America, then you're gonna make millions, right? And I don't necessarily agree with that. - Yeah, I appreciate you being honest with that. So a couple of granular things in, 'cause I know there's a few more things you wanna talk about, but I'm actually really keen to get your, take on your experience of actually just the human being, taking his life to the US, 'cause I think that's something that's really important to consider and factor as well. So first one is, and we don't, maybe it don't have to go into as much detail, but what's the average interview process look like in the US, is it shorter? Is it the same sort of thing? I know it depends on role, but all in all, is it a bit more of a quick turn around? - Yeah, probably not. It's probably exactly the same to be honest. I mean, I used to recruit contracts in the UK. I recruit Perm now, so I'd not redone Perm before, and based on people I knew in Perm, I'd say it's probably about the same on average. Also, of permanent candidates actually available more quickly, do they all have one week notice periods? Is that a thing as well? - Yeah, the average notice period is two weeks. - Two weeks? - Yeah. - And that's definitely the case that you've experienced. - Yeah, I would say 99% of people with place have been on two week notice periods. - Okay, cool. But more candidate stuff then, so like interesting one, 'cause I've spoke to a few people about this before, and this was actually more from an internal angle, but from your perspective, what candidates in the US, do you think the question was, do people in the US put more emphasis on the company benefits? Is it like the 401k? I don't know, I can't remember what it is, and they're more engaged on the base salary. - To be honest, I think it's pretty holistic. Like healthcare obviously is quite a big thing, because unlike the UK, we don't have the NHS in the US, so you don't have public healthcare. So I think healthcare is a big thing. Yeah, 401k is a big thing. I think broadly speaking though, people always look quite holistically at the package, quite a pragmatic way to look at it. - Yeah. - But yeah, I'd say, you definitely talk about these things, but there is, I guess, a classic. There's an expectation that the healthcare will be broadly in line with what the market should be, and that the 401k will be broadly in line with the market. And anything above that is a bonus, anything down from that you probably want to flag early on. - How have you found COVID impact the remoteness that companies are willing to hire from? Because obviously America's so big, because I guess, yeah, I guess it depends what market you're in, but is it really ended up sort of opening up talent pools where people may not have been able to commute in previously? Other than how's that, what does that landscape look like? - No, definitely, I think a lot of the roles that we recruited anyway were, a lot of it was moving towards remote, but I would say a ton more of it is now. I mean, the US is, you know, you frequently hear people talk about, you know, what is easy just to sort of hop on a plane, right? Like a lot of people are quite used to doing one or two, you know, a lot of professional people are quite used to doing one or two domestic flights a week. - Really? - Yeah, yeah, I remember early on, like people said, you know, when we were setting the business up, they're like, oh yeah, get used to sort of like, you know, hopping all over the place, going to New York for me and going to San Francisco for me and stuff like that. I mean, that hasn't really materialized because of COVID and because there's one or two conferences a year which we can go to and kind of see most of our customers. But yeah, that's probably the biggest shift is I think people definitely aren't traveling as much as they did a couple of years ago. - Yeah, that's interesting. And then one that obviously people always hear about, so we've spoken about high salaries which can mean like bigger fees, but like what about, you don't have to give me like the average at a stand-in house, but like what's the sort of typical percentage that you end up working with customers on? Is it ended up being higher? Because people said like 30% in the US, like what's ended up being quite normal? - Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you get companies, a bit like the UK, right? You get companies like that are, I guess the bottom rate that you kind of see companies go right is this or nothing, which is a bit like resonates with my experience in the UK is probably 20%. - Okay. - Whereas in the UK, say that's 15, right? - Yeah. - That you might get a like a big account. There are definitely instances where you can get, you know, 28 to 32, which is pretty decent. I heard about someone getting 40% once, I don't know whether that's a little bit unethical. Depends on their deliverance. - What's like that average that you're aiming with your team that you feel is like achievable? Like if you were to say to your team, right? But then the, I really want us to be aiming for our average fee percentage of that and around this. - I think somewhere, you know, 28, 30%, I'd be really happy with. I'm confident that the, that what we provide, that provides a great value for our customers too. And means that I can sleep, he's it night, knowing that our customers are getting great value. I never want anyone to be getting ripped off by it, right? - Yeah, for sure. - Especially because it's quite a vulnerable thing. You know, you're signing a contract with a recruiter you've never worked with before. That's quite an interesting point. But I mean, where is in the UK, you typically give them, give them, you know, bring the product to them and then you sign the contract in a lot of scenarios. - They sign in it before, yeah. - Yeah. So when you're, when you're agreeing, you know, you're agreeing a rate before you've delivered anything, it's quite an interesting thing to navigate because there's no, there's no product to go. Well, you know, here's proof of the value, right? - Yeah, that is interesting. So is that when you've then had to double down on them to showcasing the way you work, experience those things? - Yeah, I mean, one of the big things I do is I'll just send a list of people that they can call. So I'll be like, right, any of these 10 people hear their email addresses and phone numbers, they will act as a reference for us. - Yeah, before I ask you about your own personal journey, then like, you've spoken about a few different things. I know this will be really helpful for people, but like, what, if you were to start all over again, how would you do it differently? - I don't know whether I would do anything differently. - Okay. - I think I learned so much doing it the way I did it. And, you know, maybe I would have, okay, here's one. I think my business development strategy was probably a little bit like too many eggs in one basket to start with. I don't think I did enough sort of spec in, and stuff like that. And I mostly focus on building senior relationships, which is kind of naturally what I'm good at. So I think I could have, you know, I was uncomfortable in a new market, in a new city. And I think I probably was a little bit, a little bit, I wanted to stay in my comfort zone to a degree with the way that I worked. I wanted to, you know, I was attracted to working in the way that I felt was best for me, whereas actually, you know, my colleague James, he, you know, got there and started doing a lot more spec in. And I think he had a few sort of earlier wins. And it probably put his market a few months ahead of mine. - Yeah, fair. So what, so people in the thick of it now, right now then, or on the journey light, or people that may be at the very beginning of the journey, like what, what would your advice be to them to sort of wrap this all up? - I would say reach out to loads of people and ask for a ton of advice, right? And put it into, put it into action. I would say keep your strategy quite broad, like, you know, decide on work out what your operating model is really quickly. I think I'm not trying to overcomplicate recruitment, but I think when you're building a market, you need to fundamentally understand what are the things that you need to do on a weekly basis that are going to get you to where you are, right? Because when you're sat in a mature UK business, you've got people who are telling you what that is. When you're building a new market in a new country, you're kind of in the drive and seat on that. So it's something I always push myself on and when we expand into new markets, it's a big focus. Is what are the, you know, three things, the five things that you need to do on a weekly basis to say, John, I've had a great week. Going in the right direction. Well, we've just given these on for one of those things. Is it like, have X number of candidate Regis per week, those types of things? Yeah, spot on. So like, mine would have been like, get a spec out every weekend, every week. Suspect, spec a senior person out every week. Meet three senior people, line up four senior meetings. You know, it's stuff like that. It's the, it's about measuring that meaningful input so that you can really benchmark whether or not you're on track. Yeah, and if you're, yeah, because then you can look at leading indicators that you are. Yeah, exactly. So as we come to the end here, like last five minutes or so, I want to make sure I ask you like, because I think whenever I speak to people that have made the move, I think sometimes this can be overlooked, I guess what was maybe challenging for you personally when you first of all, obviously it helped that you were with two other guys, then if you lived together or whatever, but like, personally, what was that journey like for you in terms of like, actually building social circles there, all those types of things, like the stuff that, yeah, isn't work, right? Because you're not, you're not fucking working 24 hours, like you're living in Chicago. So like, what was that actually like? Well, that's one of the hardest things, right? It's to not work 24 hours. Because you've just moved somewhere to build a business, and you don't know that many people, it's really, really easy to just like be plugged in all the time. and I was definitely a bit like that. I was, I'll say this and my friends and family know this. I was really ready for the move. But I personally, as soon as I got there, I was like, I feel happy. I didn't know I was a bit miserable in the UK. I could don't know what it was. It was like something clicked in me. So I was really ready for it. But look, it's really vulnerable. It feels like you're on holiday. It feels like you're on a vacation for the first few months. And that is a bit mental because it means that you eat out every night. Loads of money, big advice that I'll give to anyone moving to the States. Move here with a load of money saved up. I did it. And I ran dry pretty quickly. But you just live like you're on holiday. And it's great fun. And the first time I didn't, it didn't really resonate with me until the first time I went home. I flew back for Christmas. I moved to end of October. So I went back for Christmas. And when I left my family after Christmas, that's when it suddenly, like, I sat on the plane, and I was like, oh, I live somewhere else. Like, that's the moment that it really hit me. Whereas before the previous couple of months, I was like, this is amazing. I'm on holiday, right? Yeah. Yeah, no. But yeah, I think, you know, put yourself out there. I went on a lot of mandates. You know, I'd like, you know, I'd like maybe a bit of bar or something. And you know, you'd get chatting, having a laugh. And I'd go, look, I promise I'm not coming on to you. But do you want to ever go for a beer? And I make a lot of friends by doing stuff like that. I could just think you need to, it's quite a weird thing to make friends. As an adult. Yeah, yeah, as you go older, yeah, because you, by then, you sort of got your circle friends, haven't you? Was it, is there like, is there, obviously, you're in Chicago? Is there an expat culture or like a community there or? Yeah, there's a Facebook page called Brits in Chicago, which is, really? There's probably one family state to be fair. Yeah, yeah, there probably is, which is mostly like middle-aged people who live in like, writing the sub-abs, right? Like, yeah. But you do find, you do find like, there's probably now a group of like, you know, we've got a Brits in Chicago WhatsApp group. And there's probably 20, 30 of us, something like that. So we've built up quite a good little community now. How did you end up meeting each other? Just seeing each other on LinkedIn and stuff like that? Yeah, on that Facebook page, Brits in Chicago, we found a couple of people, found people, you know, just going down to like the Irish bars, like when the euros was on, you know, you'd see someone sat by yourself, there's a lad that moved it last year, that we saw sat by himself at the euros, bless him. Oh, we like, oh no. Yeah, that's class. I think the cool thing about that is you've instantly got something in common. Yeah. You've moved your life over there. So like, you've instantly got common ground of like, how have you found it? What's been the weirdest thing so far? Visa, are you on? What? Visa, are you on? You know what I mean? So like, yeah, that's cool. So overall then, I guess I'm sure there's been some challenging times, but overall it's been like a really, it seemed like I really sort of used a human being and I could grove. Just you've really grown as a person, which is really cool. Yeah, that happened. Yeah, I love that. Josh, absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing. Thanks for being the so honest, transparent. I know that'll be really helpful for people. And I know that you're someone that's always keen to help. So if anyone wants, yeah, more advice or thoughts, then definitely make sure you can have Josh on on LinkedIn. But yeah, Josh, really excited to see where you take the business in the next couple of years. So thanks so much for joining me. Cool. Thanks, Hesham. Well done on making it to the very end of the episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Done my very best to try and level up this podcast that will hopefully mean that you can take even more learnings from these conversations and apply it to your own recruitment career. Like always, if there are any particular topics that would love me to cover with future guests, then please get in touch with me the best place to reach me is on LinkedIn. Send me a message, what would you love me to cover with future guests? If you have enjoyed the podcast, then it would be amazing. If you could leave a honest review in your favorite podcast, streaming platform, that will simply mean that we're able to reach more people with this podcast. And don't forget to subscribe completely free on your favorite podcast streaming platforms. And we'll be back next week with a new episode of the Recruitment Mentals Podcast.