Episode 21 – Part 1: Improving your recruitment process and attracting the right candidates with Chris Litras, Deverell Smith

The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.

Matt Nally 

On this week’s episode, we’ve got Chris from Deverell Smith, he’s going to talk to us about everything recruitment. So thanks for coming on today, Chris. Do you want to give us a bit of background as to, I suppose your role at Deverell Smith and what Deverell Smith do? And then we’ll go from there, I guess.

Chris Litras  

Yeah, sure. So Deverell Smith, we’re a recruitment company across the property, and real estate sector been established for about 17 years. Andrew Smith set up the company. Many years ago, I’ve actually joined six months ago, from large corporate recruits called Randstad. My background is construction. And I look after development and construction here as a director of the business. So my background involves transport civil engineering recruitment, primarily into main contractors and subcontractors. So I’ve effectively made the jump up to client side and across into property, which consists of course, residential, commercial, mixed, use alternatives, industrial

Matt Nally 

wasn’t there, what got you into the property side of it? We’re having a sort of a mix of backgrounds, like the sense of transport as well.

Chris Litras 

Yeah. To be fair, I kind of fell into transport and infrastructure recruitment, really, I didn’t know what civil engineering was much when I was 20, to start an industry. And, you know, I did that for over a decade on. And I’m very passionate about the industry. I guess, I was equally passionate about real estate, and my friends and family are growing up, you know, many of them are surveyors or architects or, you know, construction project managers, client side or property developers. So it’s something that I’ve always been interested in being a part of, and, you know, alas, the opportunity there also came up and I came across, and yeah, really enjoying it so far. But the company I did work out we covered this sort of sets before was I wasn’t directly involved in it. I was always looking overthinking, I’d really want to go and do some of that.

Matt Nally 

That’s been whispering to you in the background. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. I suppose the context for today’s podcast? And is everything about the recruitment process, I suppose from planning, when to start all the way through to, you know, onboarding people properly? Yeah. I suppose on that note, then, when do you start planning a new hire? Because obviously, there’s a lag between knowing you want someone and actually having them on boarded? Yeah, when is the right time to start looking at? When to start the recruitment process?

Chris Litras 

Yeah, as early as possible, to be sure, it’s something that should be done in advance with where possible, you know, just how companies need to plan their budgets, their forecasts, or their marketing plans, you know, equally that should be where they start looking at soft resources. Whether that is the time to review reflects and plan at the end of the financial year or the calendar year, depending on when that drops, but very much so to plan ahead and look at pipeline of work, you know, whether they’re major projects or frameworks or expanding new business lines, that should be the time where you start to look at what, you know, talent you’ve got within the business, what competency you’ve got, and what workload they have, before deciding to go to the market. Plus, this is assuming this is a planned hire and not a replacement for someone who’s left. Yeah, yeah. Which is, you know, often unplanned. So yeah, absolutely. It’s something that needs to be anticipated and creating a strong succession plan for businesses. That just is just as important as many of the other functions.

Matt Nally 

And how long does the recruitment process take on average? I know, there’s different factors in there. Like, if you’re if you’re bringing on someone that’s already working, they’ve got different notice period dents and stuff, but I suppose ignoring the notice period, part potentially.

Chris Litras 

I think it’s grossly underestimated, actually. Yeah, because everyone’s got their best laid plans set out and there’s so many variables and external factors. positive outlook means some might plan for three, four months. But in reality, there’s always going to be in five or six. If you factor in experts, I mean, I guess for junior to mid level hires, that’s something where notice periods aren’t huge factor. And also, you know, you could plan for things way ahead when someone’s retiring or, you know, they’re an executive for the long notice. But generally speaking, I think, you know, our client base are chronically under, you know, under projecting the time it takes to identify, attract and onboard someone. But even after onboarding that person, you need to factor in the time that it’s going to take for them to get up to speed. Now get If you’re under the table and then become productive, you know, when people talk about onboarding, they’re not talking about productivity. They’re just talking about learning the IC systems, and then knowing everyone’s first name. So, yeah, you know, we really like to work and engage with a client base as early as possible to create a structure of identifying that talent, way ahead of the time where they actually need to recruit. So the more relevant question is not when to plan but actually when to take action.

Matt Nally 

Okay, yeah. Yeah. And that depends on you, as you say, when the what’s going on in your pipeline, when you think you want to be bring someone in? And then going from there? Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Okay. So let’s say you’ve identified you need to bring someone brings bring someone in soon. Yes, the first step of the process? Is it coming up with a good job description, job advert and understanding what you actually want from the role? Or is there something before that?

Chris Litras 

I’d say it’s probably something before that, you know, we’re always start with why, you know, why are we recruiting? And what is our budget? And what’s the impact going to be if we do bring that person in? What’s the ideal candidate and what we’re willing to, you know, have as a variable or negotiate, but then very quickly, it does lead yes to the job description and writing that out. Really important to the job description, twofold. Really, firstly, to assess what the role is, and what the expectations are, for that role, what’s required, but also further down the line, that job description acts as a tool to identify and, you know, attract that candidate and set the company apart from the competition. And anything that provides clarity around the process is always a positive thing. And the job description, you know, and a good advert, are or two of those things that find that clarity.

Matt Nally

Do you find that often people jump the gun, then they haven’t quite identified? What exactly they’re looking for. They know there’s a role to be filled. But that doesn’t happen quite often, where that’s not being clarified properly is to,

Chris Litras

yes, very good. It’s very common, actually, I mean, often we work with clients in the role isn’t even signed off. So yeah, and what is typical is that a job description hasn’t been drawn up formally. Many a time, we will write the job description on behalf of our client, and send it back to them for approval before going out to the market. Because frankly, some passive candidates won’t even engage until they’ve seen a job description.

Matt Nally 

Yeah, yeah. Like I imagine that, then what’s, what’s key then to a good job description? And like, what do you need in that for it to make you stand out for it to be attractive?

Chris Litras

Detail, detail on the company an overview, you know, what the company does and why they think they’re good roles and responsibilities for the, for the candidate and their expectations, and whether those expectations or formal qualifications or accreditations, or soft skills and strengths and you know, key achievements that they need to bring. And then finally, you know, what’s in it for the candidate, whether that’s remuneration package, bonus benefits, you know, what the company culture is like and where they’re going. I’ve seen job descriptions range from a paragraph to five or six pages. I’d like to think striking a balance in the middle is probably appropriate. But, you know, I’d probably say the majority of candidates would prefer a bit more detailed and a bit less.

Matt Nally 

Yeah, yeah. But I agree, agree six pages starts to become difficult to spend the time going through when you’re doing lots of job applications.

Chris Litras 

It might scare candidates might be a precursor to this much hard work to read the job description, what was the railgun entail? But then at the same time, there’s, there’s always benefits to put in different parts of DCM, for example, you won’t see it in every job description, but but many we see now include the reports in structure and also the interfaces internally and externally. Because it gives you a bit of an idea of the role and then life and we always find that it’s really helpful for us to you know, give them a bit of an insight into role

Matt Nally 

instead. Okay, one then talking about job descriptions and the renumeration aspect, one thing that you see come up a lot in conversations is salary competitive, versus what’s your view on that as it should? Should a job description say, what the pay is going to be? Because from my perspective, I think it’s very hard for for someone to know whether it’s even worth applying, are they in the right ballpark? Where they can be wasting their time?

Chris Litras 

Yeah, it’s a good question. Actually, I think this is my personal view, the very best candidates may not apply for a role that says competitive salary. I think large corporates with a very strong presence can get away with it, that in any SME business are going to struggle with that sort of, you know, non value on their advert. because, you know, what are the main reasons people move jobs, it’s money, location, opportunity, culture, you know, very much. So nowadays work life balance. And all of these things need to be demonstrated in a job description and an advert. If you’re, you know, if you’re not putting the the opportunities to increase your package, particularly in the in the current climate, which is, you know, cost of living crisis, I think you’re going to lose out on a small portion of the market. At the same time. I think some companies, internal values, via talent acquisition teams, HR teams, may deliberately choose to leave the out, firstly, to leave an open scope to discuss, but also to find the candidate who’s looking for the job using the right motivations and aspirations. But if we’re gonna go, you know, a row for the majority. Put the money on.

Matt Nally 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think it helps people also gauge what level the role is. So if you don’t put anything, it’s hard to know whether it’s going to be 20,000. Is it going to be 100,000? It could be anywhere, anywhere in between?

Chris Litras 

Yeah, absolutely. I think the other thing is, you know, wage inflation is a very, very popular topic right now. And, you know, clients are, it’s not just the war on talent is not just identifying and attracting talent, but also retaining existing staff. And, you know, in order to get a good candidate over the line, not only do you usually need to increase their basic or package, but also you need to do it to the point that’s going to take them through a counteroffer scenario. Yeah, the existing client is going to be loath to lose a strong candidate. And companies will throw a kitchen sink at this candidate. So, you know, they’re gonna make it very difficult. And, you know, it’s gonna be filled with emotion. And they’re probably going to be made to feel quite guilty plus throw in a counteroffer. And that candidate may or may choose to slick. Yeah. And it’s that initial interaction that you need to get you need to get them in front of you in order to demonstrate the values of the company, and what the opportunity for the for the role is. And sometimes you’re not just you’re just not going to get that candidate in front of you, if you don’t show them what the role is going to be paying.

Matt Nally  

Yeah, yeah, I think I’d agree with that. I suppose on the point you made about, you know, the salary potentially open to discussion, is there a better word than to use in those scenarios? And uncompetitive

Chris Litras 

is such a buzzword, isn’t it? Yeah. I guess not to be fair, competitive salaries is the default isn’t it? Is the go to term, you know, attractive salary market leading salary, you could you could try and spin it and say, Yeah, I’m mostly market leading a very, very lucrative package on offer. It’s difficult because you want to attract the candidate who’s right for the job. Yeah. And who demonstrates the right skills and expertise. But, you know, I’m probably talking as an agency recruiter here, as opposed to an internal recruiter, and as an agency recruiter, I know that, you know, money does talk a lot of the time. So I would always opt to put a range. Yeah, and that range should be appropriate for you know, the level of candidate or the quality of candidate I’m looking for.

Matt Nally 

Yeah, interesting. Okay. And then I suppose, on the the job description aspect, what’s the difference between a job description and a job advert,

Chris Litras 

job description is a formality. A job advert is the chance to talk to prospective candidates, you know, the language is different. It’s, you could put the top line within the job description, but generally speaking, you’re you’re you’re trying to engage with a candidate who’s seeing this advert on a job board or on LinkedIn. Or, you know, maybe on industry press websites, but it needs to stand out. So you don’t need all of the duties. You don’t need all of the responsibilities. You just need the top line there. I think the focus of that advert, and lately you can utilise media, you know, images, videos, links to websites and all these other bits, you know, microsite career websites. I think you just need to get them over to looking at that rather than a bit more detail. So that advert needs to be punchy, it needs to have really, really strong ad copy. And it needs to be direct and speak to the person who’s looking at it with the job description is okay, this is what you’re going to be doing day to day this is the qualification you probably need to be considered for the role and whatnot.

Matt Nally  

Okay, so what would you what do you think it makes the best job advert what makes it stand out? on engaging and gets the highest sort of view rates or conversion rates and in terms of applications, or click through to job descriptions,

Chris Litras 

as an agency, recruiter, we often co brand with our clients. And we will use multimedia really to track those candidates. So, you know, I think there was we’ve got quite a strong social presence. And, you know, we do offer that to our clients. You know, I don’t mean to plug devil Smith here, but just as an example, I think, you know, how do we set our clients vacancy apart our clients company, apart from the competition, it’s never been more difficult to hire good stuff than now. You know, what is going on out in the economy is a factor for for talent acquisition. So, you know, the candidate pools that we’re, we’re hunting from now are really limited. You know, it’s less International, it’s more UK focused. So I guess what makes a good advert is something different,

Matt Nally 

then that that catches someone’s eye to then read more,

Chris Litras 

something different to catch the eye. Yeah. Might sound vague, but you know, get creative. It doesn’t always have to be a direct thing. It could be, you know, come on our website, have a look at our company, you know, have a feel for, you know, have a sense for it feels like, oh, by the way, you know, there’s a really great opportunity here.

Matt Nally 

I suppose that’s where it ties back to understanding how your business is perceived by people generally. So even even as a customer going on to your website, or looking at your social pages. What’s that saying about you, because that will give the same I suppose same opinion, someone who is looking to come on board as a potential candidate.

Chris Litras

This is it, candidates have got a lot more tools now to see a make an assessment over a company, you can go on their social media, you can go on Instagram, and Facebook nowadays and look at a company, you can go on Glassdoor reviews, you can go on LinkedIn, and you know, see the people see the profiles that are working for the company, you know, all of these tools are available now. And, you know, whilst that’s down to the marketing things to ensure that it’s the case, isn’t that talent acquisition to ensure a really strong process of taking candidates through interviews and offer stage. And then finally, the leadership team and the management teams to, you know, care for that staff and progress them and promote them and retain them. But it is all about setting yourself apart from the crowd. And people will be looking at all of the tools that candidates have available now compared to the past are you know, obviously LinkedIn, you can go on Glassdoor where the reviews, you can go on the website, you can see the company values and you know, ESG, credentials, or social value. All of this information is available online now to candidates will very much make an assessment on the company without speaking to an individual. And then they’ll make a decision of whether they’re going to apply for a role.

Matt Nally 

Yeah, so yeah, just as a Yeah, as a general and then make sure every all of your touch points, whether it’s customer focused, or anyone that can see you has a good understanding of what you’re about in terms of promoting a vacancy, then so you’ve got you’ve identified the need for someone to come and fill a role. You’ve got your job description and job advert. What are the different pros and cons, I suppose to the options available around promoting? So I guess there’s things like, you know, a recruitment agency like Deborah Smith, there’s, you know, LinkedIn ads, there’s social media, there’s, there’s job sites, what are the sort of Yeah, the pros and cons to each? Do you think?

Chris Litras

I’ll start with agency costs, because I work at one but the pros of using any agency will always be because they’re a specialist. So you know, what comes with working with a specialist recruiter, they’ve got a network, they’ve got a little black book, you know, they’ve got experience and knowledge in that market, they’ll know typical salaries and whether that salary is appropriate to be competitive. You know, they’ll talk about, you know, who’s busy and who isn’t busy. And that’s, you know, traditional demand supply will say, you know, if you’ve if you’ve got a client who, who is actively recruiting, more often than not, they’ll be looking at their competition thinking, okay, there’s some, there’s some talent here that can be approached. And the agencies, I think, you know, I’ve been doing this for 12 years now. What I’ve seen more so than in recent times, where you know, there is a talent shortage is clients are leaning on agencies to come and work much more closely than before, and it’s much much less transactional. So, you know, specialist consultant, in particular field of recruitment will have candidates who turn into clients, clients who then start to recruit and then therefore, you know, that the world goes round. And I think you know, when you compare that to putting an advert out onto LinkedIn, or onto a job board or onto a careers website, you may never get the right candidate because the right candidate may not be actively in the market. Active in the market, even, they might be passive, not looking happy enough. But certainly would would hear about an opportunity, or even passive, not looking absolutely happy in their role. Yet, if they were to be approached about what is perfect in their eyes, you’d then take that into an active candidate. And I think usually, internal recruitment teams, talent acquisition teams within our client base won’t have the capacity or the ability to do headhunting, which is when they’d go and engage with a specialist agency in order to do so. However, when you’re when you’re recruiting for generalist roles, you know, whether it’s office support back office, you know, a lot of the time, it can be direct to the candidate pause, or if it’s a graduate role, you know, there could be a system in place that that accompany allows to, you know, work via alumni networks to bring in, you know, graduate spares, for example, and promote from within,

Matt Nally

in terms of, I suppose, the the LinkedIn ads and so on? How much? How effective do you think that they are versus, you know, going through an agency route, and I’m not trying to sort of completely oversell one versus the other any point that it’s very much a discussion on this, but can you end up spending a lot of money, you’re not getting much out of it? In terms of LinkedIn ads, or job sites, and how do you manage the quality control aspect of it,

Chris Litras 

I think you’ve got to be in it to win it to be perfectly honest, I think you need to put a LinkedIn AD AD out. Otherwise, you may miss, you know, an absolute diamond candidate who just happens to be browsing vacancies, for one reason or another. You know, in terms of spend, you know, to value ratio, it’s not particularly expensive, if there’s a company who’s recruiting for a senior surveyor, you know, maybe they could put a LinkedIn ad out, maybe they could go to Rick’s job board. And that’d be a little bit more accurate in terms of, you know, facing the right market. So, you know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a LinkedIn ad, could be on a general job board could be on a specialist, you know, industry job board. And I think, you know, there is value in posting those to have the presence and attract the right type of candidate. But at the same time, if it is a specialist role, or go back to engage with an agency, who knows their market, and who can identify passive candidates, because you’re just never you know, you, you have to do the basics to attract low hanging fruit, so to speak. And unfortunately, in the current climate, you know, you will have that because, unfortunately, there are redundancies taken place across various industries. And, you know, if you don’t have the social presence, and you’re not active on LinkedIn, and you’re not regularly posting adverts, you know, those candidates are going to be very much, you know, qualified experience, bring something to the table. And there may be a flurry of activity. And if you’re not posting, you’re gonna miss out on those candidates. You don’t always have to go to a specialist recruitment, recruiting audits identify that key hire. Yeah, but it’s like spinning plates, you need to keep spinning all of them. And if one of them drops off, you might miss out.

Matt Nally 

Yeah, that’s a fair point. I suppose the the other aspect that just popped into my head, as we were talking was around sort of like the general job sites, you know, indeed, read all that type of stuff. Yep. I suppose when are they appropriate to use? And how do you improve the quality that’s coming through? I think there’s, my experience is very easy to put a job post up. But you can end up getting flooded with responses where people are just trying it. And they might they might be relevant. How do you potentially manage that? Are there ways to be more effective on those types of platforms? So you’re not spending loads of time just filtering through stuff? That’s not relevant?

Chris Litras 

There isn’t really, actually yeah, so you spot on that it’s very easy to post the ad. But what’s time consuming, laborious is sifting through all of the applications? There’s been times I’ve had 250 to 300 applications for one role. Be you’ve got to go through some of the time recruiters just take the time pressure off a client. But yeah, I’ve tried loads of things over the years, you know, all of the teams that I’ve worked with, we’ve always tried to do things differently. And I think writing a good recruitment and for and good job description is more relevant to identifying the right candidate than than blocking out irrelevant ones because you can’t control that. And if there’s one internal recruitment, internal recruiter at a company, you know, they might be get inundated. And that’s when they go, right? You know what, this isn’t gonna work for me, we can outsource this. But you know, if I speak to the recruiters that I know, I think 90% of them were so what takes most of your time? is, you know, identify, going through applications from job boards or other adverts.

Matt Nally 

So yeah, I suppose on that note, then if you’re working with an agency, what are the benefits to doing that? In terms of what what’s it saving you as a, as a as an internal recruiter or business owner? In terms of the, you know, what you’re not going to have to do? You still obviously have to be involved in the interview? There’s no way around that? And you’d want yeah, for sure. And you’re gonna have to be involved in at least signing off a job description. So what are the bits that you have when you mentioned the black book bit, but as I suppose interested in what’s the overall process? And what does that look like?

Chris Litras 

Yeah, so the benefits are, it depends what way you choose to engage with a recruiter, but, you know, often we will pre screen the candidate, whether that’s on the phone or face to face at an interview, you know, removes that first stage out on the client’s behalf. So we will have interviewed that candidate against the vacancy that we’ve discussed, to take out, you know, responsibilities, experience, qualifications, and then assess some of the soft skills, you know, you can you can you can read a lot from having a conversation, somebody, how they communicate, and how they put their thoughts together? And how they then communicate those, you know, are they concise points will do, they kind of overlaid with them, and you can give them a bit of a personality fit as well, and personality fit, too. So, you know, working with a recruiter Yes, does mean that you get access to a pool of candidates. But that means those candidates are vetted in a way that’s tailored for your company. And I think, you know, what that then leads to is time saving cost savings overall, because you’re finding the right candidate for the job rather than a square peg for round hole. And, you know, whilst there’s a fee attached to it, I think, you know, when it comes to fees, and I’m stealing a quote from my managing director, James, when, you know, when it comes to fee, it’s not about the cost, it’s about the value. Yeah, what what value is that bringing, you know, what, what is the impact of making the wrong hire, or worse, not making the hire tool for a period? I think the impacts there can be pretty huge in this industry. So you know, there’s there’s lots of benefits. But I think the benefits come with working with a good recruiter, and a specialist who knows their market, as opposed to just a recruiter. So there’s there’s lots of caveats, everything I say today.

Matt Nally 

Suppose around that run that note, one thing that sparked my interest is, do you know there’s any status as to not success rates, but how long some are not how long someone stays with the company, but then they stay on their probation period, at least you know, that they that they’ve come on board, and they work for a decent amount of time? Is there? Is there a difference between the recruitment route because they’ve been more vetted? And there’s a bit more of a process to it versus just finding someone through a job site or something like that? And, and how long they might stay with the company? Is that their benefits there as well? Was it?

Chris Litras

Yeah, I think, I think they call me bias, but I think there, there most definitely will be, I wouldn’t be able to quantify it. But the direct recruitment from our client base tends to be lower level, for starters. And if there’s a very, very good intake strategy at low level, and then good progression plans, you know, good learning, development culture, you know, you will then have really good staff retention. If you were looking at mid to senior level or executive and board level hires, I just don’t think the volume of recruitment happens as much directly. I think the majority of companies will often utilise their own networks and who do you know, and word of mouth and also internal employee referrals? That will only get you so far. But, you know, when you do need to go out and find talent, I’d probably say most companies will opt to use an agency. Yeah, because that they just know that they won’t be able to invest the time or the energy or have enough skill to find the right person. So, you know, the data would be skewed, I’d probably say the success of the, the candidate into the role is very much down to the client’s culture and opportunity, and, you know, and how businesses.

Matt Nally

Okay, so then, one of the thing that ties into this whole promoting vacancy aspects and you’ve touched on this already is the shortage of talent. So, how do you attract or how does the company go about attracting candidates when the shortage because within surveying as often, you often see things around shortages of surveyors in terms of the number of people coming through the number of people retiring. Yep. So how do you make beyond salary? How do you make your job offer the job description stand out.

Chris Litras 

And engaging. It’s a tough market. It’s a tough market, everyone’s looking for surveyors recently qualified senior partner level, equity partner level, there’s vacancies of wash across the entire industry, and all the all of the disciplines and types of surveying, too. So how, how to do it, how to stand out, it really does go down to the company values and the structure are, are very important, but you only really get that if, and if this is working via recruiter, by engaging with the recruiter, and allowing them into the business, giving them the time and the energy and the effort to talk to them about what those values are, and meet the hiring manager and meet the team. And see really what they’re about and what their key strengths are. And, you know, give them information about, you know, the turnover, or the profit or the pipeline of work or the company structure and what they intend to do with that structure going forward. And therefore, whether individual blends into that structure. A lot of the time, recruiters will take a vacancy briefing from a client and just won’t have enough information available. And when you don’t have the information, you cannot then knowingly go out to the market and identify the right person, because they’re not gonna engage with you. So you know, sometimes the JD is a formality. And it gives you a bit of a, you know, a bit of a tangible, a bit of tangible information to go to the market, but really what candidates want to see, and US recruiters need to market the vacancy and the companies get down to the office and meet the people and spend the time. And that’s that’s the comment I mentioned earlier, which is I’m seeing a lot more of that now, which was a positive move for the industry, that clients were engaged in very much so with their agency supply chain, in order to go and find the talent because they know how hard this is. It’s always been hard. Yeah, it’s getting it’s getting even more harder. It’s getting harder now. So I think that’s a huge factor for me, you know, a vacancy can be advertised directly. They may not get applications, they may go to agencies and go right, you know, this is what we’re looking for. I think the best agencies probably wouldn’t work a vacancy unless the client was willing to bring them into their offices and have sit down and go through it in a bit of detail. I certainly know Darryl Smith would typically not work a vacancy on this. The client was shown that willingness,

Matt Nally 

I suppose signifies the intention and the seriousness of all the commitment to the recruitment process. Yeah. Another thing that pops into my head, headhunting, which I’m guessing is more something that you do as an agency, instead of having the Blackboard knowing who might be relevant from previous conversations. But is there an upside and a downside to headhunting as in? I suppose, you know, it’s like in a relationship, someone needs the relationship for someone else to they likely to do the same again? Or are there ways of if you do have someone making sure that they’re more likely to be engaged in what to say?

Chris Litras

I think, yeah, yeah. The optimist in me says, yeah. You know, when we, when we approached someone about a role, we, you know, we tried to cover everything with as much clarity as possible, and we guide that candidate through the process. You know, just because we’re, you know, headhunting is a term but, you know, all Headhunter means is attracting a candidate who’s not otherwise active in the market. So, you know, if a candidate is active in the market, and they’re the right candidate for the role, then there’s no difference to a candidate who was passive is interested and be admired for the role. It’s just the volume of options available for our clients who are recruiting. In going back to your previous question on, you know, what does the client need to do to attract it needs to be the right salary? For the individual, it needs to have the right package, there needs to be the right flexibility available in the current income work conditions, there needs to be the right progression. All of these things are basic hygiene needs now, but then I think what’s going to get it over the line is being a right fit for that role. And having all of the information available to make an informed decision, that’s going to be the thing that gets the candidate the job. Or should I say accept the job?

Matt Nally 

Okay, and my last question, actually, on this particular topic is and I can’t remember I read around this a while ago now, but how much has to do with I suppose some of the extra perks people have because you know, saw something written about. People don’t really care about the I don’t need to pick on this brand. It’s just one I saw listed but the perkbox subscription or the, you know, the the extra this the extra that how much of those peripheral benefits are important or which ones to come to just really care about? Which ones are supplementary that just sort of add noise on the description?

Chris Litras  

Yeah, there’s a bit of noise here and there. I mean, like I said, I came from big corporate to a smaller boutique agency or medium sized agency. So the big corporate has a lot of the frills. But being inside that company, staff are constantly being reminded of those things. And the general consensus is, you know, some of these are good. Some of them are not, I don’t really mind. But I think, you know, a large corporate business has to cater for a wide variety of people. And then such a wide net means different expectations. You know, you’ve got parents, you’ve got, you know, younger people, you’ve got people who travel further and might get a Eurail pass, you know, that doesn’t mean anything for someone else who’s 20 minute walk or cycle to this to the office. But with smaller businesses, I think, you know, they do need to provide something to match and compete with larger corporate businesses. And, you know, if we use perkbox, as an example, it’s better to have it than not, I think, when you have a bad culture, yet, you’re advertising all of the perks and benefits. It’s a moot point. Yeah. However, if you’ve got, you know, an attractive salary, a very good culture, great people leading, and then also these perks on top, will then actually unlocks the benefits of using those perks, because it’s the cherry on top, so it can’t be used in, you know, in absence of all of the other things. But it’s certainly nice to have those. And, like always say, it’s about balance, you know, good salary, a good package, good progression, good benefits, they will come into one other than in isolation.