Mastering Contract Recruitment: How to Scale From Ones & Twos to Big Project Wins with Jack Proctor

[Music] Jack, welcome to the put-goast. Thanks for having me on. Really looking forward to getting stuck into this. You're someone that has been in this contract game for over a decade at one organisation. So there's a lot that we want to unpack and the way that we've sort of structured this that we think would be really helpful for people is we're going to first talk about how to master. We've got here a fast-paced contract recruitment. Getting to that 10k weekly GP milestone plus where we're doing that ones and twos with clients. And then more where you've really been or where you've been developing and developing others is then how can we go from there to then mastering and becoming excellent at client-led, project-led, statement of work, where we're going to call it, but basically where we're then increasing the number on contractors, the number of deals that we're doing per client. Sure. And then you've been on a journey on that, so we're going to talk about that. And then you've been in this sort of billing leader leadership role. So we're going to get some lessons there because that's tough for people. So we're going to sort of hear how you've approached that is the goal. So as we always like to do, I'm going to give people the highlight rail here. So let me know if I get anything wrong. Sure. So 10 years in recruitment at Opus, I think we've got here with more than 3 million personally built yourself over 10 million in the council you brought in over that time. Yeah. You actually styled out and permanent for 18 months, but then from then have been contracts through and through that's where we stayed. So got here sort of built your reputation in Java script, contract recruitment, UK. Got that I think post or best of 12-ko weekly GP. Then you found yourself managing and leading a team of like five during lockdown. Yeah. Then you had to sort of be agile transition with a few different bits because of the market. But in early 2020, I think you, I've got here, handed over more day-to-day team management and you just found yourself more like a pure BD focus role. Yeah. Correct. Opening up doors, creating opportunities for the wider team of the business. And then so 2020 I want to achieve something in the K-week GP personally with an additional 24K per week, delivered through clients that you brought on with other clients. Yes. And then 2023 became regional director for contract recruitment across London and EU. So currently you've got 11 consultants. Yeah. So you're leading by the front, but also then managing. And we've got people in this team, 6% 360 niche recruiters. Yep. And around 40% who are either entirely focused on the account management, maximizing client relationships, maybe managing key accounts. Then you've got sort of delivery and maybe working across contract. We've got time and material as our outcome-based project. Yeah. And then right now final piece, I know it'll fluctuate, but I always like to ask currently probably spending 60% outward facing BD, 40% inward facing leadership. Yeah, that's about right. I know fluctuate, week to week. Okay. So then what that looks like is you're setting the strategy, ensuring the team's hitting budget, your coaching consultants, quarterly, monthly one-on-one, all that sort of stuff, as well as opening up doors, cracking opportunities for yourself and everyone. Yeah. Awesome. So let's start with this first part because I think what's really interesting about the journey that you've been on, I think, and why I'm glad we're focused on this, is that because of the business that you work for, has been a very entry-level model historically. Yeah. You would have seen a lot of good, a lot of great, maybe a lot of bad as well. So you've learnt things yourself, but you've also been part of maybe other people's journeys, you've been around people that have gone on to do great things themselves. So I think there's a lot of different places that you can take the sort of principles, really that we're going to talk about. But I've probably had this on the phone over the last couple of weeks, like multiple times. So I just want to hear your take on this first before we get on to this, because obviously you have done a lot in the UK and still do and have people that focus on the UK. Yeah. I think there's this narrative at the moment of UK shot or it's really hard. We've always heard people talking about the US. Yeah. How would you describe the UK typical contract, tech niche market? I don't know. How would you describe it? If someone said, "Jap, what's the market?" How are you describing that to people? Yeah, I think it's an easy excuse, right? It's like the one thing that is completely out of your control is what the market's like, what the economy's like. Obviously, certain economies are doing better than others. Certain technologies are growing more than others. But either director years ago told me, it's not the market, it's the way you work the market. So you have to recognise the state that that market is in and then act accordingly, right? So certain markets are not growing, and certain markets are growing. If you found yourself placing milkman, then yeah, probably you're in the wrong market. I don't think many people use milkman anymore. But if you are in a relatively good business where the management have done relatively good due diligence into the markets, they cover whether or not that is massively growing or whether it's relatively stable, you can work that market appropriately. So it takes something like, we do a lot sort of unsoftware development life cycle, right? So maybe take a technology that isn't probably massively growing at the minute, but a lot of people focus on something like PHP. 100%, you can do a good bit of damage in that market. You just need to recognise where it is, right? So if you say, say an amazing market, there's 1,000 jobs advertised in the UK for whatever it is, PHP developers, right? And that's a good market. And in a bad market, there's 500 jobs advertised, right? You don't need that many jobs in a week to do a good job on that market, right? If you're working it back from say, to what my team is an example, our 360 function on our team, a good week, like what a good week that we know will deliver, say two deals per head at the end of the month, is 10 jobs a week, right? So we don't need 500 or 1,000, we just need 10. So you've got to figure out within that 500 of a poor market going sort of, going find your 10, if you see what I mean. And that's about, I guess, recognising whether your job led or candidate, right? I think if you go back to say, you know, the heyday when the markets were unbelievable, at 2021, 2022 period, it was very much candidate led, right? It was, you have the product, you kind of have the market, right? You haven't got clients to you, but you put that product in the front of a client, and that's enough to get in the door. It's not that anymore, right? When an economy gets a bit tougher, it becomes a lot more demand led rather than supply led. So rather than getting the commodity, getting the candidate with the niche skill set, it's about going to the market, and going to those that are hiring, those are running big projects, and doing it the flip-ray round, if that makes sense. So I don't mean to diminish, right, doing good due diligence into markets, that is such a bad rock of any recruitment business. Yeah, I do think it's a quick excuse, right? We interview a lot of people, you know, growing company, you interview a lot of people, and the amount you hear, like, yeah, I mean, this market is dead, I mean, this market is dead. It's not dead, it's just tougher than it was a little while ago, right? Do you think to be successful in the UK market, you have to be niche. Would you like to agree with that? Yeah, currently 100%. So it's about, you take your market, and you go niche, and niche, and niche, and niche, until you know it all. Like I said, I used to work with him, so I'm a big Ned Manheliot fan, and he said on your podcast a few weeks ago, about there being only a certain amount of people in your market, he said 600, something like that. You kind of want to get your market to a point where it's about that size, and you know all of it, because then you're the go-to person. So there's an example, like, a long, long time ago now, right? But when I first built my contract book in JavaScript, I didn't just do JavaScript, right? 'Cause it's huge. I did, at the time, like ReactJS was like unbelievably in demand, I think it'd just come out in like 2015 or whatever. I just did ReactJS, and I only did it in e-commerce businesses. Right, so there's skills at that, and industry at that. Exactly that. And only in London. Oh, I'm location there. So then you know, and there's enough there. There was plenty there, right? And I, I reckon I was big-headed enough to say I had a bigger market share than I probably did. Right, but I had, I was, I was probably less than 1% of the market share. Right? So yeah, I think whatever market you have, the tougher the market gets, the nicer the tighter you've got to get around it. Is that because you need to really be in the game of information insights, and if every single day or every single week, you're like starting from zero or 0.5 because you're on a different search for a different industry, is it just going to be harder versus if I'm coming up against Jack who all he's doing is ReactJS for e-commerce businesses? He's going to know the people more quickly, and then every time a hire manager goes, do you know someone that could do this or got an experience that you're going to go? Yeah. I know four people. Is that the reason why? Just because then you're just compounding information. I think so. Yeah, I think it's twofold, right? If you look at it from a candidate facing viewpoint and also a client-led view, to your clients, you're unbelievably credible, right? And so that scenario I've just painted you there, you've 500 jobs rather than a thousand. We just say, in my recruitment consultants, attacking those 500s, so you've got to set yourself apart. The credibility saying, I don't know why I'm still using PHP, or something seems very outdated. Let's change it, right? Let's just sort of trendy like AI. So say you're looking for MLOPS engineer, right? Without knowing your market inside out, you're kind of going to companies and saying, hello, you do MLOPS and I do MLOPS. So should we make it happen? And obviously the answer's going to be no. If you know that space inside out, if you've got enough information from your candidate network, you should be approaching that saying, I understand you're currently rolling out XMLOPS program. I understand this is the budget behind that. I understand these are third parties you're using. I think this is the budget for it, and these are the current challenges you're having. You've got X person, X person, X person, running that program for you. I heard they're doing a really, really good job. I work with a really similar network of people that have worked with that person. That person faces really similar challenges with your competitor. Weird, kind of weird if they say no, right? It gives you a lot of credibility. But from a candidate perspective, great if you can impress a client, but you actually have to really, really deliver. And it's impossible to deliver across the whole of machine learning. Right? It's just impossible. You can't know the people off the top of your head. The whole value that you add to your client is your network. So you have to know it inside out. And if you don't, then you're all talk really, aren't you? And all of that compounds if you're having conversations with similar people about similar things versus you're having new conversations with new people. Yeah, that's the reason. Isn't that? Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So let's start with one of these first sort of principles. I'm sort of talking about it here. We've got market focus adaptation to growing on shrinking markets. Talk to us a bit about this like because I'm sure you've seen this play out over the 10 years. Yeah. How do we get better at understanding what is a shrinking market versus maybe a market that's just having a dip? I don't know. Like how how do you view that firstly? What sort of signals do you now see and go all actually? Maybe we need to sort of consider, you know, looking at maybe a particular part of this market versus keep them what we've always done. I don't know how have you, how have you got better that? What sort of signals have you, look at it, lack of job flow, is it lack of interviews, what are you dropping, is it how have we got better that? Because I think that might be helpful for people to hear. That's a good point. I think patching a holistic view, you can obviously, you know, who's up as much market news and stuff, where investments going and things like that. We recently, you know, over the past 18 months, sort of have a real look into service now. We picked that, you know, from sort of a holistic level looking down at the ERP markets that we don't cover and what's got most investment, what is the fastest growing, what regions is it fastest growing in? So there's obviously that view. Obviously, of course, you know, every leader in any recruitment business is like absolutely neurotic around the ratios and the stats and things like that. So you're always going to sort of monitor, you know, oh goodness, you know, X market is dipping. It's been dipping now for three months. Do we need to do we need to get tighter in that market? Do we need to back up and go into another? But I think fundamentally it's your conversations with candidates there on the front line. And if so much more than you do, if that's your market, you're unsure about it, go and talk to your candidates and be honest about it. You know, I'm seeing this from my perspective, I see that this is really popular, but this isn't so much. Like what, what's your view on that? What are you getting approached by at the minute? What market needs do you have? Because 100%, like these, you could be a market specialist 100%, but you still work in stuffing recruitment. So they work in their actual profession. So they're going to know way more than you. I think you've got to print your candidate base, I think. And I think what we said, and what you've seen time and time again is regardless of what these signals might say and what information you may have, there will likely be someone out there that's doing good to great numbers, with that be 10k week, GGP, whatever you do to be good. So I think that's the other thing as well, isn't it? I think I've got here. We've done like a market, I know we've mentioned PHP, but it's part of this where isn't growing fast, but still there'll be potential for good results. And you've seen that time and time again. Yeah. 100%. Look, we have some clients, the higher PHP, right? We don't have a consultant on the edge. Bigs, we don't see it as a growing market. But yeah, like in big technology markets, which they're a week over, then 100%. If a technology has a big backer, there's going to be people out there using it and your jobs to identify them. Is it more about reframing it where with the market piece versus like putting in a finger and saying, I'm only this good because of the market? Yeah. But actually, I asked you, do you feel like there in certain markets, there might be like a performance ceiling or like more of a ceiling, potentially in terms of what might be. Some more than others. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, definitely because you've, like I said, you've got you know, some are growing, some are not. And you obviously, there's more. I think it's just being more of that. Because obviously, if you're in a particular market, it's getting less investment, it's going and that, you know, output and write. Of course, things are maybe going to flow a bit more, things are going to find things a bit more easier. And the numbers you might be able to do are going to be larger. Yeah, definitely. 100%. I want to make sure we understand this piece in terms of the job led versus kind of lead market. So, you know, when you said 2021, referring to that period, where a lot of people said it's a real boom period, it's normally in terms of like, literally, you can put people out there that get interviews, all of that sort of stuff. When you say, now it's changed and it's job led, I just want to make sure we're understanding that. What would you actually mean by that in today's market? What does that actually look like? Yeah, sure. Perhaps to put it in practical terms, right? I think when we pick our markets, we pick the most candidate lead ones we can, where the candidate is the commodity, but like I said, increasingly, that is more and more difficult to do. So, how come if you go back say maybe two years, maybe three years, when interest rates for a lot lower, mortgages were a lot better, things like that. It's cheaper to borrow money, right? And we did a lot of the time in sort of scale up SME-sized businesses, VC-backed, PE-backed, right? And there's a lot of money flowing around in that world at that time because it's cheaper to borrow money, right? So a lot of investments up, so an unbelievable amount of clients are hiring in those areas, you're looking at, right? So it's kind of enough there to have the people map the market and put the people in front of the market, whether or not you know they're hiring. And there's probably a good chance they will come back and say, we're hiring now, we do hire this, we're hiring the future. The conversion rates we used to get on, sort of outreach like that, was a lot better. I think now it's not quite as like that, right? It's not everyone is hiring quite as much, right? It is more difficult to get investment and things like that. Acquisitions aren't happening as perhaps frequently as they were. So it's more about going deeper, not just attacking everyone who has ever hired someone in your space, digging in, trying to find the people that hire contractors in your space for contract recruitment for all purposes, and are hiring right now, or are running big programs that are going to need those people in the near future. So it's going to the requirement, not just everyone who operates in that market, as I mean, sense. Yeah, yeah. We'll get back to the episode in just a second, but first, a quick word about something that's helping agencies solve one of recruitment's biggest problems, productivity. Every week recruiters lose over eight hours to admin, updating CRMs, chasing follow-ups, writing notes, switching tools. That's one day every working week, and it all adds up to missed revenue. That's where SourceWell comes in. 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Let's get back to the show. How does that look different in terms of practical terms on the candidate side is, I've got these people, they've got these skills, they've got these experiences, I can put them in front of these people and they're likely to go, yeah, we actually don't need that person now, but absolutely next time, let us know what actually we're doing in that person now. But what you're saying is, it sounds like then it's more information-gathering using that information, connecting the dots, then having conversations like that. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's not just about, getting some really skilled people and throwing them at the market, that doesn't work, right? It's about using the people that you know, building your candidate network really, really well. Then discovering the people that are running big programs or whatever else. Let's put it into context. I always think our job really, really fundamentally when you really boil it down, all our job is building really good candidate networks, really good client networks, and then using those to throw them together, basically. In the past, we're actually talking to a candidate, but what sort of job they would like, what sort of company they would like, perhaps matching it up to then the companies that you know that do that sort of stuff. It's more about, okay, it's not just about when we talk about information-gathering, it is not just about where are you interviewing. That's great. That's really good information. Of course, it is. It's about who the other really good engine is that you know if it's engineering role. He's the best manager you've ever worked. Who's the best colleague you've ever worked with? What's the programme you're almost proud of? What's the programme you're currently working on right now? Who the supply is into that? What's the budget for that? Who's in charge of that? Who else do your colleagues report into? All of this different information, right? And then taking that, giving you credibility to the market, following the ones that are running big programs, hiring right now, operating in your space, and going to the client knowing that they're in a good position. You see what I mean? Right. Just approaching them because you know they will once operating in your space. We're talking about it now, but this is the other piece right. I always hear this when sitting down with people like you, which is really building those networks really, and you're just talking about it. Because I'm sure you've had to get better this from the management side, but I'll always hear statement sentences like, like, know you're the 50 best contractors in that space or whatever. Yeah, yeah. What defines a great contractor versus luck or below average one? Look, really obvious stuff, right? Well, you're looking at CB, how long are they been there, things like that? But actually, two things there, right? One of them is, are they really high quality? Are they excellent at what they do? Right? That's one thing. And I just talk about how you sort of look to attract those people, but for me, they're the people who operate in your target clients. Right? There you are target clients for a reason. They will hire good people. They should be target candidates as well as target clients, right? Until they become a client. But actually, the other part of that is how committed are they and how committed are they to working with you and your client? A good candidate isn't just one that's really highly skilled. It's someone that will accept a job, start a job and stay in a job. If you see what I mean, I just sort of down you to judge that commitment. Of course, there's so many skilled people out there. And for me, the best way to identify them is, like I said, when you get a good bit of information about a company, go and talk to all the people that work for that company or have worked that company because you know, they'll be pretty high quality. If you're saying, I know 50 people in my network, but they're all really frosty, not really interested in talking to you, then they're not great, then are they? Yeah, so twofold, I think. Yeah, nice. What about if I was to say a great contractor can effectively communicate the impact they personally had or the outcome of project that was part of the program that was part of is that part of it? Or because sometimes I hear that. Yeah. - Yeah, I guess so. If you're selling someone's profile to a client, if you want to be able to say, it's not just about, you know, this person's got 10 years experience. You know, it is about. - And a great contract will be able to articulate that. - Yeah, 100%. - Yeah, definitely. - And like I said, if they're not and they're frosty and they don't want to tell you about their project successes and what they've done really well and what impact they've had then, perhaps they're not quite right. - Nice, love that. Should we talk about this? 'Cause I really liked this. You were sort of talking about there, we've got this six and five. - Six by five. - Yeah, six by five. - Tell us about this where this maybe came from. - When everyone talks about recruitment from a high level, it can sound quite simple, right? But then you get into the good stuff. It's actually really complicated, right? I said the most simple thing in the world that I have and I like get really good candidate work. Get really good client work and throw it together. Fundamentally, that is what you're doing, right? You're getting good information from candidates and then going on acting on it. Then you layer lots and lots and lots and things on top and it gets a lot more complicated and tricky. I think for people who are not even necessarily new to the industry, but you know, are in a position where you can need to go back to basis. I find this really, really helpful. So five by six, right? Five times six is 30, so you get 30 points, right? So five by six is you finding five really good bits of information from candidates in your network. And then the six is the actions that you take around those. So the six actions for us and I appreciate people who work slightly different, the six actions for us is you found out the relevant managers stakeholders, they get added to your CRM sales software, whatever, skill code accurately, that's one. They get added to however you organize your sort of lead sheet, we call it job index, or a lead sheet, whatever else. They get a sales call from you, they get an email follow up, a LinkedIn invitation and follow up. And then you get hold of all the open to work candidates that work for that organization, because then your candidates for your next day's work, hopefully you get better candidates and you also get candidate information on what's going on in those companies. So that to me is a really simple way of going and building out your market, get five really good bits of information and do six actions around each of them. Here is another example is like what would be another like classic good quality piece of information that would then off the back of that, you could have those, is it always those six actions? - You've got to use a bit of emotional intelligence, right? If you think, yeah, actually, you know what, I know this kind of email to that person's going to land terribly, then no, obviously don't do that, right? You know, we have a lot of marketing material that we can use, you know, one page of documents, testimonials, case studies, you know, all different sorts of market information, news, things like that, you can perhaps send over instead, but as a standard, they're kind of the basics. I think what I really liked about that when you shared it with me, and I'm sure you've seen this on the leadership piece, what I'll often hear from leaders, founders in terms of what can be a bit of a skill gap or frustration is, Jack's really good at getting the information, but then he's not quite good at then connecting the dots of them, what he should do with that information. That's why I like this because, obviously, you can tailor this to your market, how you work, but then we can just make it a bit more easier and it's just almost given people like a bit of a menu of like, right, if you get this sort of information, these are really your options. There might be other things that you could do, depending on what you get, but for the most part, if you find this out, one of these six things should be them one of your actions. - Yeah, 100%. - I think that, so I really, I always like sort of framework like this because that's something that then people can apply. Because I think that is sometimes, I'm sure, I don't know if you've seen this, but I think sometimes that can be hard to train or sometimes people can take a little while to get that because you may just do it second nature now, whereas I've just heard this. So I know now I'm gonna go do that, but you're sort of making that easier for people on what dots to connect. - And I think it's nice to have, I think, sometimes a really simple framework to pull something down to because like you know what this job is like, it's interesting, right? When you talk about it in a podcast, you can kind of make it sound really simple and it's not, right? And it's not like, like, you know, I'd be really open and honest. We've had a really tough couple of weeks, actually, right, pretty good year, but a pretty tough couple of weeks, and you can see people getting really frustrated. And when you're down in the weeds of it, and you can get, do not mean like, "What does tough mean?" As in, like, we've had a lot of things not play out. I've had a lot of problems. - Yeah, a couple of things, right? - A couple of those weeks where you control all the controls, but you know, we sell people to people, a lot of subject to change, a lot you can't control unfortunately. And sometimes those things don't go away. And for some reason, they also end up at the same time, right? But you can see when people are in the bit of a fuzz and they're a bit of a, "I just don't know what to do." Or maybe I'll try this. Oh, this isn't working. Maybe I'll run over here and try this. Or maybe, but to just boil it down to something really simple. I'm like, come on, this is your job. You go and ask really diligent questions, get five bits of info, go do those six actions around them. And you can do that in a day, really good day. - Yeah, I think that's why those types of things are helpful. - Yeah. - Just because you just mentioned it, when I've sat down with contract recruiters, and we've spoken about some of their toughest periods, how have you got better at helping people get out of the whole of their books, taking a big hit, or like a big dip? And because I think that seems to be one of the biggest challenges, which is obviously very different to pun, is like contract recruiters absolutely work their socks off for two years, three years, always dreamed of getting to 12 and a half K, 15 K, whatever the milestone is. And then that key account that has always done you a solid, just pulls a plug on something, or I'm sure you've seen this. 'Cause then you're talking about the knock on impact of that is, oh my God, I'm back down to like 6K. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And like that then goes on for another week, another week. How have you got better at helping people get out of that? 'Cause that seems to be one of the biggest challenges it seems in terms of like performance wise and maintaining it and coming back from those things. - Yeah, 100%. I think you've got to be, and this is so much easier said than done, right? Like I preach this by creating struggles to stick to it. You can't just pride yourself on the outcome, right? So I think let's break our jobs down a little bit, right? We're all here for placements, right? And placing individual, which increases your weekly GP, increases your earnings, promotions, whatever else, right? That's the top of the chain. One step down from that is interviews, one step down from that is vacancies, one step down from that is your attitudes and your inputs. And I always think it's very, very important to give people clarity on where they are. And they're in one of three places, on track behind or ahead. - Okay. - And I think it's really important to not only celebrate when you're ahead. No matter where you are in that life cycle, the important thing is that you are doing activity that is conducive to getting you to the next, right? If you are doing loads and loads of placements and your weekly GP's on a high, then we want you to be absolutely, you want to be relentless, right? And get it higher and higher and higher. If you're on track, but want to get better than does the same message. If you're behind, then as long as you're doing that activity, you're controlling your controllables, following and trusting your process, then there's celebrations to be had in that right. So don't just celebrate every time you make a placement. If you know where near that in the life cycle, then you need to be celebrating and make a fuss when you get a bite back from a really good company you've been targeting or a meeting with a client that you really do sort of mean it's about, I don't care, like if people in our team aren't doing loads of deals, that's not a problem, right? If they're not getting any interviews, that's not a problem, let's look at the jobs. They're not getting any jobs, that's not a problem. Let's look at the activity and the effort. That's the bit we care about. If you do that to a really high standard, a really high intensity, really high effort level every day, follow this process that we know works, the rest will come. So I think it's sort of moving down the outcomes of what you're getting behind. I think that also works in the inverse, doesn't it? Because I think then the other challenge on the flip side is everything in Jack's head and what he's driving for was he wanted to be the top performer, he wanted to reach X milestone, he gets there and then he's like, oh shit, now I've got to maintain that. It's almost getting back to these things again, isn't it? And because then we're avoiding the C world complacency. - Yeah, 100%. - And it's then getting back to these bits that you just said, doing all those things that you that helped you get there in the first place. - 100%. - Yeah. There's a person in my team and he's brilliant, right? But he's had his contract book has been great, right? He's, I think he got to about 13 grand a week in a really difficult market, right? And then it's leaps and I've got the back down to like two in the space of like four or five months. - Must be so hard to tell. - Really tough, right? And yeah, 100%. Like he used to like going out, dying in this amazing place. And then he's on the meal deals for London. The process applies, right? High intensity, high inputs, like off you go, go and do that to a really, really, really high level, be really inquisitive with everyone in your market. Everyone you speak to, you'll get it back in six months. - Yeah, it's class. - I think I would you agree that if you're a contract recruiters, really good to go through those. - Yeah. - You don't know, just like that, dude. - It's also inevitable, right? Like it's, I've never met anyone who's gone through a really good billing career without ever having some sort of horrible drop because they've lost X client or X, whatever. Resilience isn't the right word. I know everyone says that. - But you have to go through, shit, don't you? You have to go through the sort of things I think to actually learn stuff. - 100%. I think resilience isn't the right word. It's relentlessness. It's like, doesn't matter if you're running 30 grand a week or two grand a week. You've got to come out with the same energy and enthusiasm. - I think this is the sort of unique challenge that comes with the contract game. I think because Perm is different, you know, when I was in permanent recruitment, it's like, right, new month, we go again. You can also have placements that maybe you're talking up for two months, time, three months, time. But whenever I sat down with people in contracts, you sort of have that build and then it just must be a real tough pill to swallow. Like that guy that you just said, doesn't it? - Yeah, you said that must be really hard. - It takes time to build, right? - Yeah. - Because this always comes up and you've already spoken about it in terms of speaking to people, using that information. And I'm always curious to hear how people talk about this in terms of, we hear this word, relationships a lot, right? And I think for you to do an effective job of using information, you have to be able to get the information. And Crem from wrong here, but I just can't see it working if Jack the recruiter calls me. And then it just feels like a one-way conversation interview and I'm just getting information out of you. I mean, so I think talk to a bit about, I don't know how you help your team with this. Like how can they be effective at building relationships? How do you think about building relationships? And how would you define that? Like someone asked me that recently, I think it's how would you define, yeah, I've built a good relationship with that person. What does that mean? Like how'd you do that? Are you talking in? from sort of like when, you know, people knew, 'cause you've got no relationships, like people knew into the industry and where they've got no network. - Yeah, I think, yeah. If we know an important part of the game is getting information and then using that information, you have to be able to get to it. - Yeah, sure. Like, honestly, like, maybe I'm daft, I think people massively ever think this. - Really, okay. - Yeah, 100%. Right, because I think, but how do you build relationships with friends and like your family, you just, do you know what I mean? Like, you talk about things. - Well, how do you just talk about things of common interests and you, you know what I mean? And you find things to talk to people about and things like that. So, first of all, it's all about give and take, right? And it's all about that. And I think, if you just started working in a recruitment agency, right? Just set up on your own wherever that situation might be. It's difficult because you've not got much to offer, but you have to think of some sort of value out to give to that person. So, if I'm starting a new recruitment agency, I'm probably, have I got any roles, vacancies that I'm working in my space, you know? But I will 100% have clients that my business have worked with, right? That do hire in that space. So, I think any value you can do, right? That might be a good bit of market information that might be a client you're working with. Like, Mr. Mrs. Candida really keen to get in touch with you. I specialize in this area. I'm not working on anything right now, but I'd love to put this client on your radar. I've got X meeting with them in a couple of weeks. This is what they're all about. These are the programs I've got going on. Should they have any contract vacancies coming up? I'd love to keep you in the loop on them. Can you tell me a bit about your own situation? Do you see what I mean? You just added a little bit of value, right? Or it might not be that. Might be some market information you've seen. Might be a certain technology that they're working in or whatever else. But I really don't think there's harm in saying, "I'm new to this industry, but my job is to build a network of unbelievable people in this specific space. I've identified your profile because of this, this, this as being unbelievable in this space. And I'd love to just understand a little bit more about what you do. So, when we have new roles coming in, I could talk to you about them. 100% people might hang up. They're probably not, you know, to your point earlier on on what makes a good contractor. Well, if they hang up, there's probably not a good one, right? We'll get back to the episode in just a second, but today I'm excited to talk to you about one of our partners, Rayz, who are hands down the best way to fund and manage your contract book. I've had countless people on the podcast over the years singing their praises. Ray's supported hundreds of UK and US agencies large and small in managing their runners. From funding placements, managing time sheets and expenses, ensuring you're invoices, collecting payments from your clients and getting contractors paid on time every time. They're passionate about helping you to keep more of your hard earned margin, making sure that you can focus on what's important, winning more business and growing revenue with a piece of mind that all of the admin is taken care of by Rayz. But rather here at them from me, why don't you hear from one of our previous guests on the show, Pat Wates from Coltek on how Rayz has supported their huge growth and international expansion since 2020. Rayz have been a key partner in our success over the last four years. The 100-day off-fathers, second to none. The service to the offer makes you feel like they truly are an extension of your team rather than an outskirts partner. We have grown significantly as a business and we wouldn't be able to move as fast as we have without knowing that our clients and candidates are looked after from onboarding to contracts out, to invoicing time sheets, payments. Rayz has got all of that covered for us and they was asked to grow the bid. They accelerated the growth of the businesses we have done. I continue to do across the US and Europe. As we've grown, you know, and mature as a business, we've moved on to their new direct model, meaning we're able to tap into incredibly cheap lending and provide working capital to help us to continue to expand. They've been a great partner to us so I can't recommend them highly enough and long made that partnership continue. As you can see, Rayz is a trusted invoice finance provider, empowering some of the fastest grown recruitment agencies in the market. You can book a demo with Rayz and mention the recruitment mentors podcast to enjoy 50% off your first month. You can click the link in the show notes or you can go directly to www.RaysTech.io/RMP. That's www.RaysTech.io/RMP to get access to that offer and check out Rayz. And then there's another channel that we can use is that open to work piece? We can maybe be a bit tactical there. Definitely, yeah, because I think that's so powerful. And I actually think it's something I picked up off one that was on one of your podcasts was everything they do is a lifecycle round client. I can't for the life of me a member who it was, but yeah, 100%. If your client outreach has been into the client you're targeting, then you're going to find out loads, you know, when you're vetting your candidates and telling, you're getting them to tell you more about the programs that've worked on, more about the skills that are proud of, more about their achievements, you're also getting really good information on that particular business, which you can then set up, which you can then later use to serve some credibility, which is valuable, right? - I know you said people can never think of it. That's probably fair, but I think this is also where like fake jobs or like all the reverse candidate flipping stem from, 'cause it's like, why am I thinking of doing that? Well, it's because then I've actually got something tangible to speak to them about versus, I'm doing this market or I'm building my network, you know what I mean? I think that's where that can stem from, right? 'Cause then I've actually got something to give you. - I agree with you, yeah. - It's tough, right? But I think claiming you're doing something that you're not, so it's set. - You're up for failure, 'cause it's-- - 'Cause if you might get short term wins, but in the long term does that play out, I'm not sure. - And you're also, look, say you're talking to a high volume of people in a day, it's a high volume of people you've gotta get back to on something that's a little bit fabricated, right? And I don't think that's, but I don't think you need to. I think you're making life difficult for yourself by doing that. - This is the fake job piece, you know? - Yeah, 100%. - And when we say fake job, you tell me what you perceive that to be, 'cause I know this, this can be quite common and contractable. - 100%, right? I know this goes on, right? But if you're talking to someone and saying, I'm calling you because I'm working with this client on this vacancy, and you're not, right? And you're doing it because you wanna give them something to get something back, or you are sort of chasing that vacancy, right? And you want a short list of people ready for it, or whatever else. I just think you're creating a situation for yourself that you might not get anything from, and you're gonna have to follow up on, right? I think it is easier to talk about, like I said, talk to them about a client, talk to them about something you're excited about. Just think as long as you go at it with enough energy and enthusiasm, like I'm a massive, massive advocate, never expect someone to be enthusiastic about something that you're not enthusiastic about, right? So if you're on the phone to a client, a candidate, if you are beaming with enthusiasm for what you were talking about, difficult for them not to be. - Or if they do not, I mean, if they operate in that space, then I know it happens, right? I'm not daft, I know. That is an easy way to start speaking to people and build a relationship, but it is an easy way. But I don't really don't think it's the best way. Is one of your channels the classic flip call? Like, 'cause that is an effective strategy. - But I think that's a little bit more, you know, the way I would go about that is perhaps a little bit different, right? Unless we are, of course, generally working on whatever it is, head of, director roles, VP roles. But I actually think, and I think this is slightly true, right? I think a lot of those type of roles actually, or in my experience, maybe type of client, I work with, I don't know, but in my experience, a lot of those roles don't always come about by especially on a contract basis. Here's a vacancy, can you fill up vacancy for us? I think a lot of the time for us, it's a case of, Mr. Mrs. Client, we've got a really good senior person that we've worked with for a little while in this space. They do this, they've achieved this, this, and this. They operate in a really similar space to you. Is it skill set? You think you'd be interested in? She sort of means that rather than then saying to her, I rarely say to a senior candidate, I've got this vacancy, it's this, it's this, it's this, it's this, because rarely do I. I'd much rather have the conversation of, I'm actually speaking to you because I work really, really heavily in this space. I find that when you find someone with your sort of skill set, you can often put them in front of quite a lot of our clients. And kind of, you do on the flip, right? It's kind of like a football agent. And so I think I can put you in front of these businesses, businesses like this, businesses like this, businesses like this. If you have niche down and you are operating that, they're going to be familiar names and there's no right answer here, right? But I think that's, I think that's how I'd prefer to do it. But doing that, sort of open to work piece, I think you naturally fall into those types of calls and those more senior people. Yeah. Speaking to them about their career and then we'll go to your team and use all that. 100%. Yeah. Usually if people are open to work on LinkedIn, they've often got a CV on their LinkedIn page, right? So that's-- OK. You'd be pretty open to talking to you if they've got their CV on LinkedIn and are clearly looking for something. And then the final piece on this sort of fast pace, ones and twos in clients is like organization, like that's going to be a key isn't it? Do you know what I'm talking about? Something that someone brought in recently or shared of you that works in a different organization around the sort of contractor categories. Of course, a quite good tip was that-- Yeah. --because then we've got in this game, we've got to be really good at prioritizing the right information, the right task, keeping on top of all the other staff. 100%. So talk to us a bit about these different categories. Yeah, I thought it was really good. It's important when you have senior people in there whilst they adapt to your process, you can't take something from their experience as well. Yeah, we had someone start recently, never even something that occurred. To me, like you say, you know, have 50 candidates that know who you are, but he kind of started with us and he breaks down his candidate work into sort of three quite distinct areas. So he has A candidates that are his current contractors, B contractors that are contractors that are in the market looking for work right now. And he has C contractors that are those open to work, people not necessarily looking right now, possibly working within a target client, good source of sort of market information, good relationships with those people. And then he breaks his day down and when you speak to those people, so obviously you're A people, I think Andrew, C people are at ERM work. So you're likely to talk to them sort of pre-half nine, post-half four, probably been busy during the day. You'd be people of the active people on the market looking for work day up people to go and talk to during the day. So yeah, I thought that was quite a good thing these boys. Again, it's just good to have these things when there's just a lot going on. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's easy to be able to simplify it, isn't it? Yeah. Let's just run this out with, because then we can sort of compare it. [BLANK_AUDIO] I'm going to try to recruit her and I've got my book up to whatever. I'm in a particularly niche industry. I've maybe got max two contractors and one client. I've maybe got a spread of 10 to 12 different clients that have one to two contractors in. That might take me to over 10k a week. Could you appear depending on what my margin is? What is my client engagement strategy going to look like? Because then I want to hear the difference because I know you'd be mapping this out. What might my client engagement strategy look like? That's different when we then got on average and there's six contractors in per client. So what, because you were seeing this, you've been in this game and then you've got recruiters in it now. How would you describe the client engagement strategy for someone that's in that position? I always compare some contractor books to like cars. So if you can imagine someone's run in 10, 15, 20 grand a week and they're doing it solely off reactive market information, lead and chase, six by five. If they're doing it solely off that, it's relentless. Because it relies on you constantly, constantly going and going and going. And I always say it's like you buy in like a shit Ford Fiesta like putting all the mods on it possible. And like bombing it down the motorway in 200mph, but it everything's shaking. You've got the wing mirrors rattling, your wheels are coming off, like you're talking about that. That's how I always see it. Because it's a lot of clients to look after. It's a lot of contractors to look after. When it's purely that just reactive stuff because you've got we have one point something contractors per client. There's a lot of people to look after. There's a lot of terms to sort out. There's a lot of clients to keep happy. So it's difficult. And I think there's a transition to be made on stepping back and sort of saying, right, how do I get now? Let's look at my clients, look at my strategy. How do I get more people in each? Because I think there is a bit of a ceiling. And so there's a shelf life to think. I think so. I think in two ways, right? I think there's a bit of a ceiling in that like physically, you've got the time. Like if you actually got the time, right? Like I've seen someone run 30 grand a week doing that, right? And I've never seen someone so time poor and work all the hours in the world, right? And like I got to, didn't get anywhere near that. I got to 17, but I was time poor. Like it was tough, right? And I think there comes a time where you need to sort set a real strategy on like actually, right? How am I now retaining these clients? How am I doing more in these clients? And when you use the industry, right? I remember like when I was like three, four years in, I had like four contractors in a client. And I was naively like, yeah, I've got them. Like, I got that kind of thing. All their recruiters spend away me. I got some money. 100%. It was mad. And like I won't tell you who the client was. They're big. Right. I've got four runners there. And I remember seeing someone like contractors. And I was like, I have a new contract. He's two work with me. He was like 200. And I was like, oh, God. So that's such a good lesson. Now I've heard a few people share that. Like that's a really good lesson. Oh, you need to, yeah, 100%. So two ways of looking at this, right? I think you look at it from client backwards or you look from kind of your activity outwards. So you put me in touch with Adiert Jones, right? And he, and you spoke on his podcast on here about how he kind of reviews his client base. I found that really interesting. And it's a really sensible thing to do, right? So look at your client base. Look at the clients you've currently got runners that and assess them one by one and look at, right? How many contractors do I think I can get in each of those places? Okay. I can get another four in there, five in there. Okay, that's going to get me to X weekly GP. Well, actually, I want to be at X weekly GP. So I need more clients. So you sort of mean, so your strategy is going match those clients out and then go and find these new ones. But I think that's client inwards. Look at it activity outwards, which is kind of more how I look at it. It's at what time you're dedicating to it. So for me, I always advocate everybody spends at least 20% of their weeks. That's one day, two mornings, two afternoons. However you want to split that up, looking at their existing clients and target clients. And I categorize those in the same place. I think an existing client should always be categorized as a target client because otherwise you can get complacent with that existing client. And that's like me with my four contractors and 200 contracts company, right? Yeah, because I wrote this down. You said something to me around never stop treating your existing clients as targets, even after placement is made. I think that's what everyone can relate to. I think that's a good sort of way of putting it. So you can get complacent. Comments. Definitely. So we've put a bit of a structure around it recently where you spend a minimum of 20% of your week doing the correct outreach, the create target inactivity to go and expand that client. And there's really obvious things in there, right? There's asking for referrals, doing your contractor. So that we could contract a BD clause, ensure other people have different terminology for that. But speaking to contractors, getting lots of information about what's going on in there, mapping out the rest of the business, using borrowed authority to go and sort of build credibility with the rest of businesses, things like that. I think a lot of people know industry. We're very insular, right? If you want advice, you kind of go to someone else who works in our industry. I know a couple of people who don't. They work in like really good, huge software as a sales businesses or consultancies. And a lot of our clients are consultancies too. So I've spoken to their sales teams and growth people and things like that. How they do it. And we've kind of built like a sort of a quarterly sort of sequencing of outreach, right? That isn't just hammering people with appropriate candidates and calls, basically, right? It's a different type of outreach. A real quick one from me and we'll get straight back into the conversation. Some of you may or may not be aware that I am also the founder of a business called Hector. Hector is an all-in-one training platform for recruitment founders to maximize team performance. The reason why I'm sharing this with you is because if you are someone that is enjoying this podcast week after week, you might even share this podcast with your colleagues. Then I'd love to connect with you. Our training platform is powered by top performers delivering practical training for today's market. We believe training a lot of the time in the recruitment industry is dated, is stale, is delivered by people that did it five, ten, fifteen years ago. And we are completely going against that. So a lot of the people that you're able to learn on this podcast, you're able to learn even more from Hector. So if you'd love to find out more about how we could potentially help you get more out of your people, ramp up their performance more quickly, then please connect with me on LinkedIn or click the link in the show. And it's where you'll be able to book a call with us. Let's get straight back into the episode. Because we're getting into how we go from like that to then, yeah, averaging. Because I think the stat that you gave me like before 1.7 deals per client per year, now we're over the last 10 months, 5.6 deals per client, right? So on this journey, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it's 2023 was like, it was 1.61, 0.7 deals a client and on the last rolling 12 months, that's last month, it was we're on five. But what I just wanted to ask you just put into my head as you're talking about. I love that analogy with the car. Hopefully conversations like this help. But if I'm in that position right now, and I'm like, Jack is literally describing me, do we feel that's the company's responsibility to go jack? I've done a house sustainable. This is let's figure out what our strategy is to make sure we're not a fiesta going 200 miles now or we're a better car that's maybe cruising a bit more. It's a bit more predictable. We're not worried about breaking that on. Or is that entirely on the responsibility of the person? Do you know what I mean? I find that quite interesting because what if I'm surrounded by people that, that's how they operate like they're all just fiesta's going 200 miles out. And they don't know any different. Only you know your clients, right? Like only you know your clients, your contractors, what's, you know, you're in your market. Chances are your manager isn't. So I think look, we, you know, hopefully you can tell that we trample guard rails to nudge people in the right direction. We very set out processes of how you do this. But yeah, I think I do think there's a bit of autonomy, a bit of accountability to get it sorted. Because yeah, you don't want to be for fiesta. You want to be a Bentley. Yeah. Yeah, I just thought of that just because I guess it is where a few tech and responsibility and just be willing to take a can of it and go, you know what? I don't know how sustainable this is. I don't know how much I want to do this this way anymore. Yeah. If you've got that drive, then I guess you're going to be curious about, right? How can I make things more predictable? How can I make things feel a bit more controlled versus so reactive? Yeah. I guess if you've got that drive, then you're going to come up with solutions around it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Would you say the main difference is then on getting to the point where, yeah, we are averaging five to six deals per client versus like less than half and that is a lot of it around having more of a systemised approach on how we take 100% a client from that to this. That is that. 100%. Because it's not easy, right? It's really easy to sit and say, oh, yeah, I'll just speak to my clients more. I'll just speak to my contractors more. I'll just add some managers around my clients. It's too complicated, right? You, like my old director used to say to me that you fall to the level of your systems. So you've got to build a system that works that captures everything. You're not missing anything, right? So obviously that starts with, it starts with speaking to the people you know, that starts with speaking to the stakeholders that you know that starts with speaking to your workers that know that you're building a picture of kind of the organogram of the business, constantly asking for a furlough, getting a picture of what programs are going on, doing outreach into those various areas as much as you possibly can, right? The way we've set the structure up is you, we've developed like 12 different types of outreach, right? Some of that is linked in, like social media interaction. Some of that is marketing work, right? Round case studies, events, testimonials, you know, all of that sort of good stuff as well. And it's structured week on week, right? So every week during your 20% dedicated to this, this is the outreach you do to those people, right? You've then got a week to do a follow-up call into those people. The following week, they get the next piece of outreach. There's 12 pieces of outreach, so you get to the end of that's very conveniently and fills a quarter. So you have, you know, a small amount of targets per quarter, get to the end of that quarter and the last kind of outreach to them is, look, clearly this isn't the right time, you know, hopefully you can tell we're enthusiastic about working with you, but. This is a new client. Yeah, yeah. So hopefully our possible cross in the future sort of thing. Let us know if you'd also like to talk to us about your own career and things like that. And then perhaps you come across in the future. So that last message obviously to new clients, but the rest of the stuff kind of applies to new and old. And then if it's existing clients, we've got a similar process, right? Yeah. We've got a thank you note post placement meeting. Yeah. How impactful day by the way, which we've set down with a guy called James, who was like big on this, he just big on meetings in general face face. And he was like, what's been really. powerful for him is like having feedback and review meetings. Like I've got some contact, isn't there? Let's get a meeting and I'll come down to your office and let's talk about what was good about the process, what is and then like, so you've got post placement meeting there, getting a review. - Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's super important 'cause it's great reason to get in front of your client 'cause you need to take feedback and it is a good service, right? But, you know, there's also not silly. You're gonna go there with your little sack of open questions about, you know, tell us more about your programs, tell more about who else we can work with and all that sort of stuff as well. And it's all about awesome referrals, these types of things, just doing all those good quality basics. - 100%. - Yeah. And then if you have done another placement of them, awesome for testimonial, client entertainment or gift. - Yeah. - Create a case study. - 100%. And if nothing's reacting off those things and you're, you're, so we've sort of got like a flow chart, right, for sort of existing clients. If that stuff isn't working, they go into your flow chart for treat start treating them as a new client again. - If I'm something new to your team and we're my manager and we're like, right, yeah, let's take strides to sort of turn my desk more into like, a Bentley. - Yeah. - And we're like, yeah, we just need to do more of our existing clients. It's like, what does that mean? So we've tried to really systemize that. That's the problem that we've solved. - I think so, yeah. - So just let's just speak to the people that you do a lot of work with more. It's like, let's do these things. And then I'm assuming, 'cause we've got this organized, you can start noticing what's working, what isn't, what's more impactful and then you can keep iterating. - 100%. Like, we've had so many different people in our business stand off and say, and not even just in our business site, that we've had, you know, we've had to say external training that you should do more deals with less clients. And like, you're like, yeah, thanks. Like, obviously, that's the dream. But that's so much easier said than, you have to have a system, you have to have a process. And if you don't have a system, you don't have a process. Like I said, you fall to the levels of your systems, if you don't have a system, it's not going to happen. I recommend that everybody with a contractor dedicates 20% of their time to this, right? This more long-term view. 'Cause I know how a lot of group agencies work. You will always have someone for even down your neck. What's coming in this today, this afternoon, this week, this month, you can't just abandon your reactive reacting sucking up market information, obviously, right? Because you won't place anyone for months, right? I recommend that people do it for 20% of the week. But I think as you get more and more senior, you need to have more of your time. This is all my time, as far as business development goes, right? Managing consultants at OPA side probably expect that it's 50%, 60% of their time. As you move up, as you build your network out a little bit more thoroughly, it becomes more of your. - If you've done a good job, then you should be able to get more out of less in terms of you've got the relationships, you've got the introductions, there's people that you can call on. - I think so, yeah. And the more time you focus on that, the more time you ask about how do you build relationships, right, you just repeat this and repeat this and repeat this and repeat this. And that's how you build relationships. You have the best relationships that people can talk to, the most, right? 100%. I've done this kind of unsystemized and unprocessed, and it's taken me this year to really define a process around it. But I've kind of done it for a while and it works. - Right, yeah. - There's two of our clients that come into my wedding, like it works, right? That's the main bit to focus on there is like the transition of how much of your time should it and recognizing how much of your time should take up. But I think it's really good. And I think from a company wide perspective, it's also really helpful because you get a lot of people in our industry who have very short billing careers because they're knackered, right? Or one or two things, they're knackered because they're the Ford Fiesta, or they kind of get to the end of the road on 360 recruitment. When you use this to build out bigger clients, it opens up more opportunity, right? So in our team now, we have 360 people, we have 180 delivery people, we have 180BD function, we have account management. So it kind of opens up for people who are doing unbelievable job at 360 recruitment. That's absolutely awesome. You want to keep doing that, keep doing that. But for people who are, I'm going to the end of my tether on this. I think I'd like to do a more BD focus role. I think it lends itself much more to that if you can get it right. I think, how would you describe the difference of, like, statement of work to them, time of materials? Because you were just like, I don't know, you just explained it to me in the way where it's like, I think it's just more about how people procure this stuff and it's more about that versus, because when I hear contract recruiters talk about, yes, about statement of work, then I hear like, I think projects and like, I don't know. I'm not sure I might be being distributed, but like, how would you? No, not at all. No, that's completely valid. I think it lends itself to more project led work, right? Because you're working to it. Statement of work stuff. Yeah, it does, because it's your working to an outcome and that's not necessarily about individuals. So it does, it lends itself to more volume led recruitment, which is a good thing. So if we're talking about, you might help me with and we're doing the statement of work way, I might be saying, Jack, yeah, in order to do that, we're going to need full contractors versus we're doing it the other way. It might just be, I need this particular individual with this skill setting experience. Yeah, it could be anything, right? You can do a statement of work for one person for one day work, right? Yeah, I don't think it does. It lends itself to larger scale things, I think. But it's how come? Because people are, you know, if you're a stakeholder in a business and you need to deliver a program, you could recruit, yeah, okay, so I'm going to recruit, I need 20 people to recruit that. And I've got three recruitment agencies, so they may be going to get, you know, I'll throw it to them, they get six each. The statement of work, you're wrapping it up and giving it to one, right? If you see what I mean. So you're pitching sort of for those 20. To be honest though, I don't think, and I'm sure there'll be people that disagree with me on this, I'm sure there will be, because there's definitely, look, we're quite new on this statement of work, sort of outcome led journey. We really, really are. But it's been very good to us. For me, all the statement of work is the nature of the procurement you're drawing up. That's not the defining feature of what you're doing. Your service is not all that dissimilar, right? There's definitely another governance of compliance layer on top. It's not the defining feature of what you're pitching, you're pitching your service as you normally would. The statement of work is just meeting your client where they're at in terms of procurement. It just means that if a client says, "I need to procure this as a statement of work," then you can do that. Other people might disagree. I'm sure there's other people out there you're pitching it very, very differently, but for us, it's not necessarily about opening more doors. It's about not closing them on ourselves by saying, "Oh, sorry, we can't, we can't contract like that." What's the main, if you said, "I don't know the journey," what's been the main benefit there? And is it, has it been the increase of people that you've then. I think so. The ability to do it means that the types of clients we can go and engage with is better. Because we know that's how they want to procure. We do an awful lot of work in UK public sector in my team and specifically roles with, you know, like, really high levels of clearances and tough stuff like that. It is a litany of consultancies involved in that work, brilliant relationships with some of them. But it's always a really convoluted supply chain that you do know what I mean. There could be loads of people in that supply chain being able to procure in that way means you can kind of go up the supply chain a little bit, cut out margins that are in between you and where your contract is actually ending up. So it has 100% is kind of free to explore bigger organizations and sign terms with, you know, some much bigger businesses. But I don't think the determining factor is that we can do statement of work. Right. I think we're meeting them where they're at. Do you think by doing more of that, the main benefit you've experienced so far is, do you think that's been a big factor as to why you've now got 5.6 deals per client versus 1.7? I think so, yeah. The systemization of it is kind of like new, you know, we've kind of really put an emphasis on that this year. But that whole 20% on clients we've been, you know, sort of gunning out for quite 20% on sort of target clients and existing clients. We've gunned that for a little while. I guess I see my role in that as if our team are spending 20% on time on their target clients, I'm spending 20% on my time on the top 20% of their target clients as well. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Let's sort of run this out then with you've been doing, you know, good chunk of this journey whilst also then leading managing. So I think I just wanted to get some non-negotiable thought of you. Something that just popped into my head, I'm just curious to get your take. I speak to a lot of founders who want to launch contract or start contract. I'm not going to ask you about that. But you've seen a lot of people now and data. So what I want to hear from you is, what have you seen to be a fair window on like, we hire Jack, he hasn't got experience. What's like a fair runway for him to get like a good level? I don't know what your typical performance milestones are. But you've probably seen this play out a lot. So I'm just curious, if I go into your team, I'm excited, I'm doing the will staff, I'm doing what I'm into. How does that play out? It's three months of fair amount of time to like really get my contract but going, because I'm sure you sort of work to a budget. And you've seen a lot of data. You've seen a lot of data. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just, I want to hear non-experienced and then experienced and we've made a good hire. They tick all those boxes, they're doing what they're saying. I know it in my very bottom, just curious to hear your take on that. Yeah, yeah. Do we have minimum expectations of NFI from people joining the business? Yes. This is just something like so un-productive to like running a good business unit. I don't really care. Okay. What I said to you earlier on, like I think one of the most important things is giving people clarity. So the reason that those expectations are there is to give people clarity. Are you head on track behind? What I care about is is that person doing all of the things that are conducive to getting them to where they need to be or getting them to the next bit. And if they're not, that is a problem. If someone is underperforming and not showing the right activity in order to perform, then yeah, of course, in any industry in the world, that's an issue, right? The defining bit for me is are they doing the right things? We've had people that have come in, hit their straps, right? And got to 10 grand a week in like just over a year. Unbelievable. The most successful person in terms of what the GP either have managed two years, two years to actually really hit their straps, right? But they were the best at the activity. They were the hardest working. They do see what I mean. So you've been married? 100%. It's really. I get what you're saying. It's I understand that. I think I was just curious because again, I know there isn't like a perfect answer for it, but you know, you've been in this position. You've seen a lot. Yeah, yeah. There's joint responsibility. But I think a lot of people probably harder contract recruiter who's experienced and then it just hasn't worked out. Yeah, sure. So if I join your business, I've got like free as contract recruitment experience. Yes. You know, I've got non-compete. In three months, should I be getting that to a very good point? What would you work to? I think so. Yeah, I'd like to see, you know, from sort of Tranny's consultants, we'd like to be seeing a deal a month from senior consultants, that sort of category, sort of two plus. And then when we ek it, up from there, right? It sounds like a really like modern way to speak, right? About like, oh, we're not about output. 100% about outputs, 100%. But we're really about the effort and the attitude that's going into, you know, that plays out. Because I know that plays out 100%. Like, seeing it so, I'm a really good example of that, right? I was 18 months, right? I've worked at service for 10 years. For my first 18 months, so Neil, who's now my director, started after I'd been in the business about 18 months, I was average, at best, honestly, when I was doing permanent recruitment and the culture's a lot different then, right? It's completely different organization, but it was, you know, it was in at eight o'clock, doors locked behind you. That morning, mean, starts then, it was suits, ties, and it was very different business. And I wasn't performing at the level, I needed to perform, but I was first in and I was last out when I was on the phone all day. And I was out doing anyone on activity, right? When my director Neil started, I was like, "Guys, guys going to look at my stats and be like, 'This guy's got to go.' Like, 'I said, but, but.' No, the emphasis was on, no, actually, of the people here, right? And from that era, there's me and one other person in the business in the London office that would, from that, do whatever it is eight and a half years ago. That stayed. Like, it's, you know, if you are doing the right things that are conducive to getting you to that next bit, that's important bit. Yeah, for love that. I asked you for like one to three non-negotiables on the leadership management side. I think you've spoken in detail about clarity for performance. Yeah, sure. We per, don't lower your standards and expectations, bring people up to them. What do you mean by that? Usually, people who are in leadership positions and businesses have got there because they're pretty good at it, usually, right? That suggests that they have good expectations of themselves. They have really, really good standards. When you have people joining your team, new hires and whatever else, they come from an area where the standards might not be the same as yours. And I think it's very easy, very easy to placate people a little bit and kind of be like, 'Oh, is that what it was up in?' Oh, you don't want to work like that? That's okay. Right. You know, you're, you're, you're, well, I'm coming a bit later. I just, it's not a good example. We've never done that. But that's not, I mean, like if just like pand into people, or though, yeah, 100%, right? I've learned my lesson on it. I get them at one of my, I'll direct his Rory. He was, say, never ever lowering his standards and expectations. You bring people up to yours. I think people learn that the hard way, the 2022 piece. 100%. Yeah. It's a slippery slope. That also applies when you've got some under outcome-wise, it's like killing that it's still holding true to that in terms of, yeah, because I think that that's the other things that people struggle is like, yeah, but they're doing all these deals like, let's not worry about. Yeah, but how are they in that place? 100%. So if you've got someone who is not playing up to, you've got one person here, right, who's doing unbelievably well, running a really good, really GP, really good, whatever, but their standards are through the floor, right? They, you know, whatever, don't turn up to meetings. They don't, you know, they're in late all the time or whatever else. And you've got four people who you're trying to show those standards too. And your example is of a top biller is, yeah, well, yeah, well, he doesn't need to do it because he builds loads. She builds loads. Just, it doesn't. You're going to ruin those four people. So yeah, 100% they just can't slip. And I actually think the more senior people that I work with, I'm probably more on top of. Interesting. On that sort of stuff. Because you know that how quickly that travel downstream. I think so. Yeah. I've been on a few different podcasts recently, different talks and the position I'm in I can sort of try and draw similarities, golden threads. And this is one of them is like the people that I sit down with that have built high performing teams or are able to attract good people or a good job of that. I think one, they've got clarity on what you're talking about performance standards. A lot of people don't have clarity on that. They can't sit down and go, if you join my team, this is what I'm going to expect to view. And if you do that, this is, this is where we can tell you, this is the journey that you're being part of. That's like number one, just being able to clearly articulate. If you join, this is what you're part of. Yeah. Where we can go. And then the second part to it. And this is, of course, easy said and done is then protect it all costs, which is what we're talking about here. Now 100% of people like you just said, you've got a really good person generating loads of good revenue, hitting numbers, but they're standards of food. The floor, you've got to be willing to have those hard conversations, even though when that person can go, yeah, but Jack, like I'm killing it mate, we're in about like relaxed chill. Yeah, yeah. But like you've just said, it's probably even more important with those people because the knock on effects and how quickly that comes spread. 100%. I completely agree with you. Yeah. And I'm sure there's loads of more senior people in me that you spoke to that probably, do you know what I mean, learn that lesson ages ago and what else? But I think that that also applies to performance as well, right? Like when I say, don't let the standards slip down at the expectations slip. Look, we're month on month, like doing right. Number of people we have in the team, the productivity ahead is pretty good, but the best ever month we ever had, we're way off that. Right? And I think it's really easy to drop your things and be like, well done, everyone. Really great month. You know, this is absolutely amazing. Like we've had a really good month with this productivity ahead. And that's what we care about. Well, yeah, of course, if people have done well, people have improved. If people have performed really well, 100% that needs praise, that needs incentive, reward, whatever else. But it also needs the reminder of, but just let you know, that's the bar. That was the bar that we set into that month then. So that's where we're going back to. And that goes to an individual level. If someone's had an unbelievable month, the message to them is like, well done, but that's your bar now. I love it. As far as we finish here, like, I don't know if you've had people ask this to you before, but how have you found like you personally 10 years doing this building your career? How have you consistently kept yourself engaged? Is it now you get a real buzz out of helping and growing an individual and seeing what they're going to do? It sounds like you're not getting complacent. There's like new things that you're doing and implementing the system and you're seeing the result. That like, how have you maintained that own personal engagement for your career? Keep moving forward. Because if you're doing that, then that's going to be easy to then create that for other people. I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I've been very fortunate to be honest. Like, I've literally my entire crab only worked at Ophas right since university, right? Like moved from Stoke to London. I've been here since. I've been really fortunate to have like some wicked people around me, right? Who are very, very good at a lot of stuff. I'm crap at. Which kind of means that I've been afforded to go and do the stuff. I'm good at writing. And again, perhaps it's a product of the business that I work in where it's always growing. So it's like, when I look up, there's not a sealant. Yeah. There's not a, you know, going when you get to a certain level, it's not a case of like, oh, I've got to hit that number to get that promotion. It's kind of like, right, like, what can I build? Like, what do I go and build now? I think my career at Ophas is a bit of a utility player, a bit of a genre show. Like, it's, you know, I mean, like, I've done free six of recruitment. I've done one A.E.B.D. I've now managed, you know, look after one of the contract teams. It's all just, so that sort of, I guess, kept me on my toes. But I guess they're really felt in my comfort zone. Yeah. Which is, you know, that's the insight. But you're always willing to go into that conscious and competent stage. Yeah. Definitely. I absolutely properly get a kick out of seeing people, the individuals in my team do work. I know what, I know what it means. I know what outside of work. I know what it changes when you hit those big numbers and I know what the impact is. It's amazing. But I also, I get a massive kick out of the client-led stuff. And I always think if you're in a management position, it's very, like, a lot of recruitment businesses, right? You can't, you do this, you do this, you do this. Now, you're a team manager and that's how you manage people. This is the model. Whereas I think what I've been quite fortunate is that I've kind of been able to, you kind of create that yourself. What am I good at? Well, I'm actually really good at that client bit. So I'm going to do that. And really fortunately, I'm surrounded by people who are good at the other bits. So bit afforded the ability to sort of play to my own strengths a little bit, which I think is important. I'll say, I think, you know, if you're not doing the stuff that engages you then, it's going to be hard. Yes, tough. Love it. Well, I think like you just said, though, I think that it is one of the coolest things about our industry where what's in an organization straight out of uni and like you just said, they're loads of skills that you gain, loads of different experiences. I think that is one of the coolest things about our industry. And I can tell ever since me and you, like, just how passionate you are about this game that you're playing that you're in. But I just love it. So, yeah, loads of great things there that people can take. So I really appreciate you joining me. Now, honestly, thank you so much for having on. I'm like, I'm big listener. Pretty much everyone on my team, as well. So, obviously, yeah, boys, and thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. I hope there were plenty of golden nuggets for you to take away. As you will know, I'm your host here of the recruitment mentors podcast. But I'm also the founder of recruitment mentors. We're a online subscription based learning and education platform. We're on a mission to help thousands of recruiters achieve their professional goals and successfully progress their careers through modern and engaging online learning. So if you're a recruitment business owner listening to this, there's a good chance that you value self development, personal development. You're trying to develop a culture of continuous improvement. But we've partnered with a number of grown recruitment companies who were struggling to understand how they can invest more in their people, how they can upskill them more quickly without spending more time, without having to spend thousands of pounds of external trainers. And we've ended up being a really great fit, modern fit for recruitment teams. We can ultimately help you get more out of your teams by giving your people access to modern and engaging online learning, which they can access on demand. The thing that's really cool about what we're doing at recruitment mentors is that all of the people that your teams are able to learn from and the people that are delivering the learning content are people that are in roll right now. They're billing, they're actively facing the challenges that your teams are, and a lot of the time they're amongst the top performers within their companies. Which means your teams are going to be way more confident to learn and spend on their learning when they know they're learning from people that are doing it right now, have been there and done it. There's nothing worse than feeling like training is not relevant and not current. The best place to find out more about recruitment mentors and if we can help you accelerate your team's performance is a semi-missage on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn directly and I'd love to connect with you and to find out if we can help you get more out of your people. [BLANK_AUDIO]