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Lee:
Welcome to the Event Engine podcast. My name is Lee Matthew Jackson, and today we have on the show, the one and only it’s Young Mike from ExpoCast. How are you today, mate?
Mike:
I’m very good. Being called Young is a nice tree. I turned 40 the other month. That’s great.
Lee:
I love that. I’m 42, so I can call you Young, legitimately.
Mike:
Fantastic. Does that mean I can call you Old?
Lee:
Absolutely. Ask me if you want any advice on being 42 and how to avoid doing your back in when you just do something as simple as sitting I’m here for you.
Mike:
I once sprained a wrist just rolling the window down in a vehicle. And that was years ago. That was in my early 30s. Yeah, no, I’d… Don’t go there. No, okay. That’s the whole of the podcast, isn’t it? Yeah, we’ve gone off track already.
Lee:
The grumpy old men show, isn’t it? That used to be on years ago. I remember that. We’re actually old enough to be on that. That’s scary, isn’t it? Oh, goodness. Before we go too far down that track, Mike, who are you? Let our wonderful audience know all about you, the wonderful Mike, young 40-year-old and ExpoCast.
Mike:
Yes, young 40-year-old. Let’s carry on with that. I’m Mike Frost, founder of a company called ExpoCast, which is a recruitment consultancy for the global events industry, and it launched in March of 2020. Basically, which is really painful first 12 to 18 months, but I’m still here, which is great, which means we survived, have a lot of fun, helping out event organisers, event technology companies, find the right people for their companies and their teams, basically. That’s it in a nutshell.
Lee:
That’s amazing. I absolutely want to go there. How the hell did you survive during COVID? You launched March, literally in lockdown. March was lockdown, wasn’t it? Or was it May? But it was pretty much events were not happening.
Mike:
Yes, it was a very interesting first 12 to 18 months of running the business. I launched it I was a co founder at the time, and she and I had worked in the same for recruiting for the events industry. We knew what we were doing, and we knew what we wanted to do. We just couldn’t do it because events stopped happening and recruitment industry went off a cliff as well. How did we survive? I got a mortgage pause. What do they call it when you have a pause on your mortgage?
Mike:
Basically, we just tried to-
Lee:
A holiday, yeah.
Mike:
Yeah, that’s it. Mortgage holiday. Just basically stopped spending as much money as possible. That was it. We did a few slightly different things to get a little bit of revenue in, but mainly we took it as an opportunity to get involved in all of the industry conversations and initiatives that started happening because the whole industry just became way more collaborative for that period during the pandemic. Bizarrely, it ended up being a little bit of a positive for us in terms of being able to get in front of an audience of the industry. Even though we as individuals, our names were semi-known already, we managed to get the brand name out and elevate our own names within the industry. So when the vacancies did come back, A lot of them came to us just because we’d been so active, trying to help the industry come back as quickly as possible. It was a weird period, bizarre to think about it now. I almost don’t really how we survived.
Lee:
That’s the best answer, I guess. You could have said tins of beans and all that stuff.
Mike:
There was probably definitely some economical food choices during that time as well, definitely. That’s phenomenal.
Lee:
But why I love what you’ve done there is you’ve recognised that this is a time where we can’t necessarily provide recruitment services right now. We’re going to find a way to personally, which you did, Epik, and we’re going to use this time to be helpful and build relationships. That’s something that people very often don’t think about, isn’t it? They think that I’m going to grow my business by marketing and selling my product to as many people as possible. Whereas you guys have gone down the, We’re going to build relationships and be helpful to people. It sounds like when things shifted, i. E, we could now start meeting again, presumably that’s when you guys started to get the opportunities.
Mike:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The people who we built really strong relationships with during that period are the people who came to us either to try and find a job now that there were jobs around or to use us to find the right people for them. As you can imagine, we had a whole heap of calendar conversations during that period with no vacancies whatsoever because of all of the redundancies. We, again, had managed to build up a fairly strong database from scratch during that period, even though we weren’t actively trying to recruit for any particular roles. We were just attracting people who knew that they wanted an event’s job as soon as there was an event’s job available, basically. Yeah, it was pretty wild. Also, I think we just were naturally drawn to try and help out. I mean, neither of us had come from a marketing background anyway, so it’s not as if we could have put together some really snazzy marketing campaign, say, Hey, we’re here. We’ve got no jobs.
Lee:
That’s a genius idea. Yeah, they’re right. That’ll get attention.
Mike:
But we like trying to solve problems. I’ve always, and I think I’m recognising it more and more in myself, I’ve always just been a problem solver. When it did work in other businesses, someone couldn’t find a stapler or whatever mundane issue they had. This is probably selling myself as an employee. Like, I don’t need a job. I’d always just get up from my desk and be like, Don’t worry, I’ll find a stapler for you. It’s just like that natural inclination to try and help people out and solve problems, which I think is, hopefully, what I would say makes me a good recruiter and good at spotting the opportunities to match people with businesses and with teams.
Lee:
On that, just being able to look beyond the day-to-day, look beyond the marketing plan, look beyond your business, and actually start to get to know people so that you can help put them in jobs or find opportunities, how would you go about doing that then in this relational/problem solving mindset that you guys have?
Mike:
Yes. I keep saying we. My business partner, she actually left the business back at the start of the year on very good terms. But I can’t say that Can’t stop saying we.
Lee:
That’s okay. We is good because it’s the royal we and you’re projecting the fact that you are going to grow in the future. So if you say we, we will forgive you.
Mike:
I appreciate that. It’s always been quality over quantity, which means even when there are vacancies, it’s a low volume of roles that we’re working on any given moment in time. The chances of us having an appropriate vacancy for any a candidate who just stumbles across us or decides to get in touch because they’ve made that call that they want to look for a new job, it’s actually not very high that we have a suitable role for them. Our, I guess, unspoken target for every conversation we have is that we always leave somebody with something, some positive action that they can take, whether it is talk to us about a specific role, that’s the ideal. But even if it’s just we’ve been able to give them some advice on where else they could look for vacancies, somebody else who might be a better point of contact, because my focus is all about exhibitions, conferences, and event technology. If I’ve got somebody for an agency background come to me for a new job. I’m not necessarily the right person, but I can point them in the direction of somebody that can. I guess it’s about trying to build goodwill and a reputation of always trying to do the right thing by people.
Mike:
I guess that may mean, bottom line, don’t make as much money in the short term. I’m really confident that in the longer term, all of that goodwill eventually brings people back around. If I don’t make as much money, even in the long run, I can sleep well at night. I’ve got two young kids. Sleep isn’t exactly unbroken at the moment as it is. I’d much rather have a It’s a clear conscience that I’m always trying to do the right thing by people, whether it’s clients or candidates. That’s basically our ethos in not a nutshell because I’ve rambled, but yeah, that’s how it goes.
Lee:
No, I get it. I also get the lack of sleep. I have a four-year-old who still hasn’t worked out how to sleep all night, and I was sleeping next to him last night just for comfort, so I’m there, too. But I think what I’m hearing, the thread here is that we’ve got… It’s still that problem-solving thing, really, that’s inbuilt in you, where people are coming to you and you are developing relationships with people where you’re asking them questions, What is it you’re looking for? How can I help you? These conversations. When you realise, Well, I can’t necessarily help you right now, but I do know somebody who can, you’re also a connector. First of all, someone comes to you for advice, for a conversation, for help, and then you connect people. I totally agree with you. It does come full circle. At some point, someone’s going to remember, Mike had my back at such and such a point. I’ve now got this amazing job as a result, and I know he specialises in X, Y, and Z, so I’m going to give him a call and see if he can find me some staff for this particular project that we’ve got coming.
Lee:
I truly believe that happens.
Mike:
Actually, the It has literally happened to me this week. Amazing.
Lee:
I’m going to soon say it.
Mike:
There’s a chap who, let’s just say, lived in an area where there were very, very few events opportunities and managed to very quickly find something within a commutable distance for him. However, through his own network, he ended up taking a different job that paid way more money. I was like, If you take my job, I’m going to be really annoyed.
Lee:
It’s like, Take it, take it, man.
Mike:
My client was on the same page as well. He was like, Yeah, he’d be a crazy person not to say it. But he gave me a call on Monday and said, Right, we’ve got some roles. I promised I’d do right by you because I knew you helped me out even though I didn’t go on your vacation. Here we are, at that stage now, signing on a new client. It does come around. It doesn’t always work that way, but it doesn’t need to always happen. I know that I’ve done the right thing, and If good stuff comes from it, fantastic. And that’s it. It just then opens up doors for me to be able to help other people, too.
Lee:
We’ve essentially been, without saying the word, talking about networking, I think, for the last 15 minutes, haven’t we?
Mike:
Yes.
Lee:
In a way.
Mike:
There’s a very good chance that’s what we’ve been doing.
Lee:
I think that’s what we’re talking about. The reason I say that is that we’ve talked about having conversations and we’ve talked about solving problems for people, et cetera, et cetera. But I bet some people are listening thinking, Oh, where do I go and find all these people? How do I find these people? How do I start these conversations, et cetera? Could you speak into that, maybe?
Mike:
Yeah, and look, that answer is going to be different for every individual involved. It depends on what the purpose for you wanting to network is. Although what I would say is that regardless of your purpose, networking is always going to be beneficial for you. It depends on which part of the events industry you’re part of. I think for me, a big thing about networking is don’t necessarily go out with too rigid of an expectation as to what you’re going to get out of it, whether it’s an in-person event, whether it’s something online like Activate that you and I were both just on and you can network outside of the mainstream. There is serendipity in networking, and you can see that there’s a lot of things that you can you do have some fantastic random conversations that can lead to incredible things. If you are going to have some structure to your networking, rather than build up a list of of specific people that you want to speak to. I would say it’s more about leaning on the people who are already in your network. Get them understanding what it is you need at the moment, whether it is I need a new job, whether it is I need a mentor, whether it is I need to find a recruiter, whatever.
Mike:
Get your network knowing what it is you’re looking for so that they can then make the introductions, because I think that is the strongest way to start any conversation is when it’s come with a bit of a recommendation from a mutual, somebody that you know mutually. That would be… It’s not really answered your question, has it? No, it has.
Lee:
In terms of where do they go? No, it has been. But it’s highlighted something. I think it’s highlighted something that we all actually have a network when we don’t realise it.
Mike:
However small that network is, it needs to start somewhere.
Lee:
If your network is two existing clients of yours ever because you’re a branch banking new business and you only know two people, or be it you’ve met a few people over the years at events and you’ve stayed in touch on social media, et cetera, you have a network. You could at least start at that point, couldn’t you? If you’ve never met anyone in the industry ever and just have these few people. It could even be a mum and dad, I don’t know. It’s just the fact that we do have some network. You hit the nail on the head there, educating people as to what it is you’re looking for. If people know what you’re looking for and you can really verbalise that in something that’s simple, that sticks in people’s mind, the minute they notice something that Mike said he was looking for somebody who wore baseball caps and did podcasts. Oh, yeah, that Lee guy. Because it’s super specific, super easy I remember. Super random. I know that’s a terrible example, but you get the idea. That is educating that network. Also, flipping right back to the beginning of the episode where you’re talking about helping people as well is not only educate those people, but also how can I help you guys?
Lee:
What are you looking for, et cetera?
Mike:
Because they’re going to reciprocate. It goes two ways. This is it. It goes two ways. They will simultaneously say to you, Yeah, absolutely. I’ll introduce you to anybody I come across. By the way, if you happen to know anybody who meets This criteria. Context is way underrated. I think a lot of the time we just wing it, don’t we, with networking? You just go out there and see what happens. As much as, like I said earlier, don’t necessarily have a list of targets that you want to go and network with because they’ll be able to tell if you walk up to someone and they’ve been on a list of yours. Probably have a script. That person will know. There’s some agenda here. But give people context. Let them know what it is that you need. That is something you can apply to looking for a job as well. I’ve done a free course available on the website. It’s six videos. A big part of that is building this team of people around you when you’re looking for a job. Essentially, there’s the three parts of it. I’ve given them cheesy names. What were they? There’s the hearts, which is people you know personally, whether it’s parents, best friends, partners, whatever, who will understand more about you from an emotional perspective and whether or not a certain job or potential nine manager is going to fulfil that emotional need that you’ve got from a role.
Mike:
Then there’s the heads, which is your network amongst the industry. Whether that’s colleagues, former bosses, mentor, whatever, people who you know in the industry who can potentially be out there networking, trying to find opportunities for you. Then the pros, which is somebody like me, a recruiter who’s out there advocating for you, has really got to understand what you want and can keep you in front of when that right opportunity comes around or whether maybe you want to talk to that person about having a shot, a few speculative introductions, really targeted. There is a whole value to giving context to your network and applying that to whatever your current ambition is, whether that’s a step up in career, whether it’s you need to bring on a few new clients for your current role, whether it’s Whether it’s a target that has been set for you by your line manager, for example. Apply your network. There’s a wealth of knowledge out there. It’s just not in your head yet. It’s out in your network. Just go out and talk to people, but tell them what you need. I’m a big fan of just ask questions. Worst case scenario, it ends up maybe it was a bit of a dumb question.
Mike:
But if you’re asking it of someone who respects you, they’re not actually going to think any less of you. They should be like, Mike, that was, get one. You know the answer to that. But best case scenario, they give you the exact bit of information that you need to get you a bit closer to whatever your current goal is. So, yeah, huge fan of really recognising how you’re surrounded by networking opportunities. You’re probably doing it and you don’t even realise.
Lee:
I think we’re networking right now in theory because we’re building up some rapport. I’m understanding what you do, the At the moment, somebody mentions to me they’re looking for a job in the events industry. You are now the guy I know who I’m going to say, Yeah, you need to talk to Mike. He’s really down to earth. Nice guy. He’ll sort you out. If he can’t help you, I know he’ll pass you on to someone who can. There’s a great example of a conversation that I’ve learned about you specifically and will probably do when it happens. I’m sure it will.
Mike:
In advance, thank you.
Lee:
Yeah, that’s all right. I now need to go and find someone for you. Now I’ve said that. No pressure. No Could we talk about specifically people who are looking for jobs now in the events industry? I think this will be really useful to them. I don’t know what level we should look at here, but some people know they want to work in the events industry, but they’re not really sure how to, say, get into the industry or what it is that they necessarily want to do in it, et cetera. Because you mentioned goals and stuff earlier, and I think some people just don’t really know what their goals are. For some of them, it’s just basic burger. I need a job and I’ve got an event’s degree, or I need a job and I like the events industry. It looks exciting. How can they start to unpack all of that so that they can actually say something that’s helpful to people like you in order to get a job other than I need a paycheck?
Mike:
Yes. Sometimes it is talking to someone, whether it is a recruiter or whether it is, like I said earlier, family members or whatever, talking to people often helps you find out the answers that you hadn’t already identified because you Because people will ask you questions in a different way than you would ask yourself those same questions. If you just try and sit down and go, Right, what do I want? It’s too big. That’s too big of a question. I recommend, if this is something you’re going to just do by yourself, is at least for the first stage, break it down to what do you want from a personal perspective and what do you want from a professional perspective. The professional side of things, it might just be, Well, I need to pay my bills. That might be it. It might be that you know, Actually, I want to be on the festival side of events. I want to be on the trade show side of events. I want to work on the For an event technology company, whatever. Whatever you do know, write that down. If actually there’s a few different types of things that you’re interested in, write the list down.
Mike:
I’m happy for it to be festivals or trade shows or event technology. If you can prioritise them, great. If you can’t, don’t worry about it. But just get some structure to what you’re looking for. If you really don’t know, that’s when I think it’s beneficial to try and find someone maybe like me who or whether it’s… I love all the industry associations are amazing. We’ve got a partnership with the Association of Event Organisers, for I’m always saying to people, even if you’re out of a job, because their members are companies, but even if you’re an event professional without a company, so you couldn’t be a member of the AEO, they would still absolutely love it to hear from someone who’s really excited and keen to get into the industry. That’s why they do what they do. It’s a not-for-profit, an association. They’re not doing it to try and make a huge bottom line. They’re doing it because they just really love the industry. If they get somebody reach out to them who’s keen to get into the industry, that’s going to get them really excited and want to help and help that person identify what they want to do.
Mike:
But there’s lots of industry press out there. You’ve got Adam Parry running event, Industry News, you’ve got MASH Media and all of their publications. You can learn and consume information about the industry. The more that you do that, the more likely you’re going to say, Well, actually, I much more enjoy reading the stories about concerts. Actually, I think I want to get into that entertainment side of the industry. Or, Yeah, okay, conferences might not be the most exciting format, but actually, I love researching things. I love deep diving into subject matter, and I want to get involved in putting the programme together for an event and trying to recruit the best speakers possible. I really enjoy that process. The more that you can consume information, the more that you can talk to people about your professional or personal goals, and let them ask you questions to help your mind turn the cogs in a slightly different way to get the answers, the easier you’ll be able to identify what it is you really want, and then you can apply that to a job search. I don’t think that process at the beginning of a job search is really thought about.
Mike:
I don’t think Not enough. People just go, I need some money. I’ll go on LinkedIn jobs or read or whatever it is.
Lee:
That sounds good. I’ll apply for that.
Mike:
Type some keywords in, hit the apply now button. Whereas actually, you can be much more targeted, much, much more targeted. The thing that we saw a lot in the pandemic, which really makes my point, I think, regarding being targeted with these things, is that you had people who really needed a job, and they were applying. But every single time that you apply to something and get either no response whatsoever or an automated no thank you, or even if you get to an interview or whatever and you don’t get the job, that’s just rejection after rejection after rejection. If you’re doing that in volume, that’s a lot of rejection to take. We were seeing that it was really impacting people’s mental health. It was So if you can afford to take a more focused approach to a job search, it’s actually just healthier, let alone the fact that you’re probably going to end up with a job that is much more desirable to you as an individual. It’s just healthier, right? To be looking after yourself and your mental health and just not getting all of these knockbacks and knockbacks.
Lee:
That’s really… Kind of blow my mind there.
Mike:
So We’ve got here, in most circumstances or in many circumstances, people know they want to be in an industry, but they don’t know really why.
Lee:
Maybe they don’t even understand their own identity, their own selves very much. Having those conversations and consuming the content and having a look at what content you’re consuming and saying, Oh, actually, I seem to get really excited by that particular lineup, the event tech, and such and such said that I’m really good at solving problems. Such and Such said that I have a great communication skills. And such and Such said, I’m really good at sharing complex information in a way that non-tech people can understand. These are all things, and I can start to build up this amazing picture about myself. So now, instead of me just blankets applying for every single job going, I could actually now maybe focus on, say, a marketing role in an event tech company. So that’s now a very, very specific role. And that’s something that somebody else can go, Oh, yeah, I understand exactly what you’re looking for. If I was to go into any networking environment, be it business, be it finding a job, be it whatever, and I say I’m looking for anyone or anything, then most people are just going to go, Cool. This is it, right?
Lee:
I can’t think of anything. But if I go and say, I am looking to work in an event tech company as a marketing administrator, whatever, social media manager, or work on the conference, I don’t know, gappertate, whatever the heck it is that you’re really looking for, that’s going to connect in people’s heads, isn’t it?
Mike:
Absolutely.
Lee:
It’s less of a- Less of this- Less of this in theory as well because there’s less jobs to apply for. In theory.
Mike:
Yes. Again, I’ll caveat all of that by saying that I do understand that sometimes you just need a job. If you really just need to be able to pay your bills, ignore me and just do what you need to do. I’m by no means advocating that people risk the roof over their head to be able to get a perfect job for them. But it’s also like, you know how you look up at the night sky and the longer you look, the more stars seem to appear because your eyes are adjusting. It’s the same thing with this, this identifying what skills and traits you’ve got, what interests you. The more that you think about it and the more that you talk to people about it, the more you will recognise, Oh wait, yeah, no, I do. I do do that all the time, even if it’s just a weird It’s like, yeah, you can probably translate that into a potential skill set that be really applicable to a certain type of job. Once you start on that, I don’t want to make it sound over the top, but that self-awareness journey or whatever, it doesn’t stop.
Mike:
But I think that’s a really good thing because you as a person are going to change throughout your life and career anyway. If you start getting into the habit of recognising things about yourself and asking questions and letting people know they can ask you questions about yourself, you’re going to have a much better understanding of where you are at that moment in time and then what the next right step for you as an individual is.
Lee:
That’s powerful stuff. This has got a really big picture.
Mike:
This wasn’t my intention at all.
Lee:
Amazing. No, I love it. We said right at the very beginning, didn’t we? We didn’t know where this was going to go and we went deep. I love it. This is That’s phenomenal. Can we flip then the script onto people who are recruiting for our role? I’ve unfortunately hired and had to, sadly, fire in the past. That could be for many reasons, including me hiring just the wrong person and not asking the right questions or me not even advertising the job correctly or whatever. But could you maybe speak into what people in the events industry who are recruiting could be doing to find better candidates and hire the right people? Because Having to rehire is just so freaking expensive.
Mike:
Yeah, it’s expensive in so many different ways, isn’t it? It’s not just the cost of if you paid somebody like me, for example, for a fee, but it’s also that cost of the time you’ve now got to spend not doing your core job, but actually reviewing applications, interviewing everything. To answer your question, there’s quite a lot to do before you even really go to market. You can look at it quite simply and say, Okay, well, I need a salesperson. This is the type of thing I sell. So ideally, it’s a salesperson who has also sold something like this already so that there’s less training that they require. But there’s more to it. We have just gone on a real big journey about finding yourself or whatever, It’s also important to do that as a hiring manager, as a business. Lots of companies have got missions and values and whatever, whether it’s somewhere buried on a website or painted on the reception wall or whatever. Are they accurate? Is that actually the, you’d call it the company culture that philtres down through the business? Or is it just words? Actually, in that case, let’s get your employees involved and rewrite that stuff so that it makes sense and that everybody can really resonate with it and somebody coming in has the right expectations of what it is like to work in that business.
Mike:
A lot of the time when people don’t work out in a vacancy is because expectations have not been set accurately. The company might just be in a bit of a hurry or they might just not understand how much detail they need to go into or how much information they need to gather about an individual to assess whether or not they’re going to be the right fit. I had a conversation with a client earlier who had had some turnover in the and essentially it was because expectations hadn’t been set regarding the difference in the clientele that the salespeople were selling to. It’s a much more, I guess you’d call it, aggressive marketplace. Sales people needed a lot more resilience because they were going to meet with a lot more blunt nos before they eventually get that. Yes. People just weren’t, candidates weren’t being made aware of this. They’d worked in a business where they were really successful with sales. I don’t want to call it a gentler clientele, but not quite so punchy. They were coming in and finding it really, really hard and having to work hours and just burning out and then having to leave the business because they weren’t taking targets.
Mike:
So managing expectations accurately, whether that is the really quantifiable stuff like target numbers. I mean, For the love of God, be honest about the commission that people can actually earn, for example, or the bonuses if it’s a bonus role. There’s a lot of real That’s an inward understanding that I think would be beneficial to a recruitment process if companies had the… Companies don’t always feel like they’ve got the time to do this. It’s super reactive, I find. It’s very rare or rather uncommon to have strategic recruitment take place in the events industry. A lot of the time, it just seems like, Okay, well, all of a sudden, we’ve got a load more private equity money, so we’re going to go launch, launch, launch, or acquire, acquire, acquire. We need to hire, we need bums on seats, or, Crap, someone’s resigned because they’ve left to a competitor, or we’ve just completely burned them out. We need to fill that seat. It’s so reactive. You don’t have time to put the detail in. So it’s rather than wait until you’ve got a vacancy to do this reflection to really build an accurate picture of what your, not even an ideal employee, but the persona.
Mike:
If you’re in marketing, In marketing, you put together this picture of your ideal customer, your ideal customer profile, and you’re used to building that. Do the same as a business. Do that ideal employee profile. It’s not to say that you’re only going to hire certain types of people or demographics. It’s absolutely not what I’m saying. Because the whole other part of this is when you do go to market, make sure you’re going out to the whole market. So all of your The advert, the job description, it all needs to be really inclusive language. You need to make sure that demographics who aren’t necessarily on the platforms like LinkedIn or the main job boards are still able to find your vacancies. There are several DEI job boards that are specific for… There’s a… Oh, gosh, what’s it called? I can’t remember what it’s called now, but there’s one specifically for the LGBTQ community. There’s jobs that are specifically for, I think, neurodiverse people. It doesn’t mean that those jobs have to be just for those people, but it’s more about making sure your vacancies are findable by everybody because there’s a lot of talent out there that just don’t ever find out about your roles because you’re just chucking up.
Mike:
You’re copy-pacing your job description as an advert for a star, which is just the worst thing in the world. Then you’re just chucking it up in one place, maybe two, throwing out to seven recruiters who are just going to spend maybe a day on it and then not risk spending more time on it because one of the other six might place it. Then seeing what comes out. There are ways to be much, much more strategic. Yeah, I could keep talking about this.
Lee:
I’m sorry, it was a massive question. But you’ve given us the main point here is that whilst the people who are looking for jobs need to do that introspection. We need to do that the same as a company. We need to understand who we are, who we serve, what our culture is like, what people we want to attract. We don’t want to bring people in who perhaps, like you said with that sales example, I’ve had a softer experience as it were, and this is going to be a cutthroat. We need to be honest about that, et cetera.
Mike:
Keep going. It’s not even to say that by identifying these differences, that means that actually you can’t hire all of those people because they don’t fit. It’s about identifying gaps and then have your onboarding process and your procedure, have it really thorough for a start, but also agile so that no matter what somebody’s gap in their skills, you are able to fill that. You do need to manage that. You manage expectations as to what they’re coming into. If it is someone, just to stay on that sales example, if it is someone who’s coming into something that you might consider a bit more of a harsher sales environment, they need to know that they’re coming into that, but they also need to have faith in you that you can teach them that resilience that they need. You can teach them how to get the yeses, how to respond to more nos. If you cannot do that, then you shouldn’t hire that person because it’s not fair on them and it’s a waste of money and time for you. But yeah, it’s not about doing this real assessment of what you are as a business, who you are as a hiring manager.
Mike:
It’s not about whittling down the candidate pool until there’s only one person in the whole world who might be right for your team. It’s about identifying all the different bits that would make somebody feel like a real part of the team. They’ve got ownership, they’ve got over what they’re doing, that they’re going to feel excited to go to work every day and want to do what they do. No matter how much resilience they need, they enjoy it and they thrive on it. If that’s something that you need to help them develop, you have armed yourself with the skills to be able to develop them. I find it all really exciting because there’s just endless possibilities to be able to upskill companies and hiring and candidates and employees. I don’t know. It’s a huge thing. It’s people, right? There’s no two people are the same. If you treat your recruitment as if they just got to meet this set of hard skills on a job description, then you’re really going to struggle with retention and just hiring in the first place. I’m going to shut up now.
Lee:
No, but there’s that. Again, I can understand that this role is going to entail all of the above. Not only are we looking for people who might meet some of those requirements, but equally, we need to recognise that there are going to be certain things that we need to support whomever comes in. When that person comes in, we’re identifying any weaknesses that they may have because we’re human, we all have weaknesses. I know me personally, too many nos in a row, and I feel pretty damn depressed, so I’m going to need someone to support me in that. Give me the cognitive behavioural therapy or whatever it is I need.
Mike:
In-house counselling.
Lee:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me the counselling.
Mike:
I’m pretty sure some companies have got that as a benefit, haven’t they? Yeah.
Lee:
They shouldn’t be, really. But I certainly get the idea. I know that I do recognise that the question is probably a book and a whole series of books worth of answers. But you’ve definitely given us enough for that whole day. I’ll write it one day. Yeah, you should, mate. It’s good. I can tell it’s in you. It’s bursting out of you. Well, I mean, at that point, mate, this has been a It’s been a phenomenal conversation. I know we could just keep going for hours. We should probably call it a wrap because I’m pretty sure most people are near the end of their commute and they’ve been listening and enjoying. For folks who want to get access to that, I believe you mentioned some downloads, etc. How can people find those and how can people connect with you? Then we’ll say goodbye.
Mike:
Yeah, sure. Basically, for me, I’m on LinkedIn. That’s really the only social media that I tend to actually see. Every six months or so, I try It lasts for a few weeks and then I fade off of it again. So yeah, LinkedIn is where to grab me. Then the website, it is expocast. Co. Uk. On there, in terms of just those free things, there is the course for Jobseekers, six videos, completely free to access, and hopefully it will help you put together that picture of what you really want. Then it gives you some of the real tangible stuff. There’s CVs and there’s interview tips and offer stages and all of that. Then for companies, we do also have a free assessment of your current talent attraction. It’s about 25 questions, and it’ll give you a customised report at the end that basically says, You’re really good at this. You’re a bit shit at this. You’re middling to average in a few others, and then you’re really good at this. Here are the things to try and work on to improve. That sounds really useful. Then obviously, there’s a link to my calendar on there somewhere so people can book in for for a call.
Mike:
And that’s that, really. Website and LinkedIn.
Lee:
Amazing. I thought you were going to say that you’re also a big deal on TikTok and that we should all follow you because you can do these epic dances and you’re gone viral multiple times. But clearly,.
Mike:
Sadly not. No, it’s not in my repertoire just yet. My daughter is seven, so I have a feeling TikTok is in my future somewhere. Oh, no. Oh, dear.
Lee:
I deleted my account eventually. Well, thanks, mate. You are a I really, really enjoyed talking to you. I hope we can have you on again soon. Yeah, thank you. That’s really appreciate it. Would love to. Have a good one and I hope you get some sleep tonight. Take care.
Mike:
Cheers. Likewise. Take care. Bye..
