Hire Love: How to Hire Passionate People to Make Greater Profit

Decker

PREFACE

Since 2012, I have been leading a very passionate and profitable life and I love it. That is not to say that I wasn’t living a full or passionate life before that, but in 2012, it was like I put my foot on the accelerator and got on the Formula One track.

I have always been a very driven person, highly competitive and, some might say, a workaholic. I have also been willing to take risks, which is why I left a very rewarding career in marketing to start my journey into recruitment in 1999. At the time, I was the Marketing Manager at Simplot Australia. For those who don’t know, Simplot is a large Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) food manufacturer that markets, manufacturers and owns brands such as Edgell canned vegetables, Leggos pasta sauces and Birdseye frozen vegetables, just to name a few. As the Marketing Manager, I was responsible for a team of marketers and also managed the recruitment process. This part of my job became the unholy bane of my existence!

What was so awful about it?

Well, when an employee left the organisation, it was always poorly timed. Whether the employee was great or not, they always seemed to resign just when I needed something important done, and inevitably, the rest of the team had to work longer and harder to get it finished. Recruiters were also consistently hard to deal with. In general, they didn’t understand me as the client; often, they didn’t even bother to come and meet with me. They knew Simplot’s brands and where the company was, but they knew very little about the job, culture or others in the team. I felt that they were just throwing resumes at me with the expectation that one would eventually stick. Often, I was wasting time interviewing people who weren’t even close to being right for the job and I was getting very frustrated. They also seemed to treat their candidates like commodities, rarely considering the emotional toll involved with any career move, and their poor service to candidates would reflect poorly on my business. Finally, these recruiters just seemed too expensive for what they delivered. A few CVs sent to me, a few interviews arranged and then a big bill. Where was the expertise? Where was the service?

Despite my distaste for dealing with them, I had to admit that I needed them. I didn’t have the time to sift through hundreds of resumes and I didn’t want to write an advertisement and organise publishing it in The Age. (Yes, reader, I am that old. I started in the days when the only way to advertise was in the classified part of the newspaper. In Melbourne, that paper was The Age, and the cost for one advertisement, for one day, was between $8,000 and $13,000. Can you believe that we thought that this was reasonable?) So, like many others, I kept using recruiters.

The realisation of just how bad recruiters were dawned on me in one single, epiphanic moment. I was interviewing a candidate sent to me by a recruiter and, within five minutes, we both realised that we had been set up.

The role I was interviewing for was a Brand Manager within my marketing team. The recruiter, let’s call him Mr Flick’n’Stick, had sent me the CV of a fantastic candidate with years of great experience, however, he was a lot more senior than the role required. I remember questioning Mr Flick’n’Stick, wondering why this candidate would want to take a step down in his career. I was told that the candidate wanted to move to Simplot because it was a bigger company and that he wanted to join a well-run business with great brands. While it was true that we were a great business with a number of great brands, the ‘well-run’ part of the equation was only half true. At the time, we were in a state of change and turnaround. We had just been bought by Simplot out of the Adsteam/Pac Brands Consortium so there was a lot of ‘fixing’ to be done. The third reason the recruiter gave me as to why Super Candidate wanted to step into a more junior role was that he had heard about me in the industry and wanted to work with me.

I have to admit; I was pretty impressed with myself. I was a lot younger then and it was my first big Marketing Manager role. To hear that someone had heard of me and was willing to take a step down in order to work in my team was a lovely stroke to my young ego. We’ve all been there, right? Freshly promoted, intent on building the perfect team, moving into a private office with a door…

Back then, everyone aspired to an office with a door and then to an office that was big enough to have your own meeting table in it. You could hold team meetings in the warmth and luxury of your own private office!

Yes, I had one of those. The door, the table, the very important meetings.

I had made it.

Of course, I was happy to interview this well-credentialed and experienced candidate.

We met, and within the first five minutes, I was burning up with embarrassment. I had started the meeting feeling pretty confident and after a few niceties, I said something like, ‘Thanks for coming, Super Candidate. I hear that you know a bit about Simplot and me and that you’re really interested in joining my team…’

He looked at me blankly and replied, ‘No, not really. I was told that there was a Marketing Manager opportunity at Simplot and that the business is in turnaround. Mr Flick’n’Stick said that Simplot needs some great marketers because there is a capability issue and they’re looking for someone with my experience.’

My heart dropped. This guy was there for my job.

He had been told by Mr Flick’n’Stick that the marketing team was underperforming. He had no idea who I was or what brands the company owned.

(Excuse me while I pick up the pieces of my shattered ego…)

We had both been set up. From my marketing days, we call this the ‘foil’. You set up something or someone else as the bad comparison to make your product or service look good. By sending me candidates who didn’t fit the brief, Mr Flick’n’Stick was making me desperate to fill the role and, therefore, more likely to hire someone who may not have been right but who was the ‘best’ of everyone that applied.

For Super Candidate, I guess I was the foil. Mr Flick’n’Stick was showing the candidate that he should really consider some of the other roles presented to him, otherwise he would end up having to work at a lower level job for a new manager like me.

Needless to say, my bubble had been well and truly burst. It was this experience that planted the seed of my first business. I couldn’t believe the lack of process or the ethics of the recruiter. There was no sense of partnership or expertise sharing and I was angry at the amount of time wasted and the disrespect shown to both the candidate and me.

I started my first business, Market Partners, about eighteen months after this incident. The insight behind starting Market Partners was simple: If only sales and marketing people recruited for sales and marketing roles, life would be easier. I wanted to create the recruitment agency that I would want to work with. I wanted to be a partner and an advocate, and to share in the risk and reward. Ultimately, I wanted to work with people and companies that I liked and respected to help them grow to have the businesses, teams and careers that they wanted.

I quit Simplot with no idea how to run a small business, let alone how to run a recruitment business and, together with my good friend Sacha Leagh-Murray, we started Market Partners.

Over the next twelve years, we grew the business and in 2008 we merged the business to become a national entity called Carrera Partners. We had built a good reputation in the marketplace and had offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane but things just weren’t right. As a leadership group, we wanted different things and to take the business in different directions. Our purpose, passion and values were no longer aligned. It was difficult to stay engaged and I felt that I was no longer adding any value. I didn’t love my work anymore.

In November 2012, everything changed when I travelled to Uganda with The Hunger Project. I took the brave step to apply for the Business Chicks Leadership and Immersion program and I haven’t looked back since. Until then, I had always thought that I was a global citizen. I am educated, aware, caring and I thought I understood the complexities of issues such as hunger, poverty and injustice. I thought that I knew enough about the plight of the world’s poorest and that I was contributing to a solution — after all, I sponsored two World Vision Kids, bought presents from Oxfam and gave donations to every charity event my friends and family participated in. However, it was not until I spent time in Uganda that I realised what it was really like to have limited or no opportunities. This is when I saw the real impact of hunger.

Many of the things I saw and felt in Uganda are hard to describe. But what I did learn is that I had no right to complain about my life and that I had no right to waste the opportunity to live the life I wanted. I have been blessed enough to be born into a life where I take the basics of food, warmth, education, healthcare, safety and even love not just for granted but as an entitlement. This is not the case for many around the world. I accepted all this as a given, in the same way I accepted that I had to stay in the business and job because it was ‘the safer option’. Going to Uganda gave me the opportunity to question and appreciate that I had choices.

When I came back from Uganda, I had changed. Consequently, I changed everything. My business, my business partners, where I was going to send the kids to school and where we were living. (I did keep my husband, though.)

Not only did I rebrand my business, create new businesses and celebrate my ten-year wedding anniversary by renewing my vows in Las Vegas (yes, Elvis conducted the ceremony), I also joined the Victorian Board of The Hunger Project and am now the Chair, I attended the Women in Focus Conference in Port Douglas, the Unstoppables Conference in Antarctica, I travelled to Necker Island with Richard Branson and to top it off I launched this book in the Amazon. That is, The Amazon in Brazil, not the online store. Can you believe it?

One of the best feelings in the world is when you can say ‘I love my job’, ‘I love my team’ or ‘I love where I work.’ I did not have this for a long time and I had to make a lot of changes and take a few risks, but I definitely have those feelings now.

For me, and for many, having a meaningful life means being passionate about what you do every day. And I have found that the more passionate you are about your work, the easier it is to do, the more fun it becomes and, as an added benefit, you make more money.

Over the last fifteen years working in recruitment, I have had some ups and downs: hiring our first person; firing our first person; surviving the Global Financial Crisis; finding a great business partner, John Davies, who I have worked with for the last twelve years; merging the business to have national coverage; and then having to de-merge the same business because of values misalignment. Believe me when I say that I know the importance of working with people who have the same values as I do, and I put my money where my mouth is.

Today, our business is Chorus Executive, a full-service talent management and recruitment company. Our goal is to be a partner, not a supplier, to everyone we work with, to add value and be valued, and to connect employers and employees who have the same goals, values and passion. When the purpose, passion and skills of an employee and the purpose, passion and needs of a business are aligned, real profit can be realised. The thing to note here is that profit is not always financial. Profit also includes quality of life and work, engagement, happiness and commitment.

Every day, we talk to employers and job seekers who are desperately trying to find each other. On one hand, we see employers who are passionate about their businesses seeking equally talented and passionate employees. They want employees who are intelligent, driven and desire more than just a pay packet. On the other hand, we see talented individuals seeking fulfilment in their work, looking for new challenges and fresh experiences. Our job is connecting these two groups and, in this book, I want to share my insights on how to find (and keep) these talented individuals for your business.

Over the last fifteen years, we have partnered with hundreds of organisations, interviewed tens of thousands of people and placed thousands of talented individuals into their dream jobs, and although the recruitment process has changed, the needs of businesses and employees have remained the same. Employers want to find passionate, committed and aligned employees, and employees want to find roles and organisations where they can be passionate, be challenged, feel valued and are encouraged to thrive. The two parties just need to find each other. This book will show you how to hire love and ensure you hear the words ‘I love my team’, ‘I love my job’, ‘I love what I do’, because when you hear those words you can be assured that your business will be more productive and profitable.

Thank you for taking the time to read this book. I hope you enjoy it and gain insight from it.

Christine Khor

INTRODUCTION

You probably haven’t picked up this book for pleasure. You have picked up this book because you are having trouble building the team you want. You might work in Human Resources, you might be the head of a recruitment team, you might be a manager who is frustrated with dealing with people issues all the time, or perhaps you are a business owner who simply cannot find people who are as passionate and committed as you are.

You are not alone. In January 2015, the 18th PwC CEO Survey found that, of the 1,322 global CEOs interviewed, talent acquisition and management was seen as the second most critical thing for CEOs to cultivate after strategic thinking.¹ And iconic leaders such as Jack Welch and Richard Branson agree, continuously including talent and leadership in their top three must-haves for creating a successful business in their books Straight From the Gut (Welch’s book) and The Virgin Way (Branson’s book).

In The Virgin Way, Branson argues that you can have the best technology, the most well-known brand or the cheapest product, but if you don’t have the right people in your business to make it, sell it or ship it, you are not going to be very successful or profitable. In Straight from the Gut, Welch preaches the philosophy of ‘People First, Strategy Second’. Both of these amazing leaders are clear — the best strategy, brand or products will not be successful if you have the wrong people.

The issue is that many businesses don’t value their employees in this way. Unfortunately, there are still some who believe that employees are assets to be owned and managed as needed and that the only thing necessary to inspire motivation and loyalty is a decent salary or title.

Research suggests that this is not enough. In fact, Phil Ruthven, Chairman of IBISWorld, believes that the concept of an ‘employee’ is akin to the concept of a slave or indebted labour. The most talented and driven workers of the future see themselves as independent and self-directing businesses who choose what they will do, where they will do it and what they want to be paid. These are the individuals who are ‘taking on responsibility for their own education and investing in the skills and professional development to keep adapting their skills to match [industry and business needs].’²

These are the same talented individuals who are and will continue to be in high demand. As a result, they demand more than a CPI increase and a bonus cheque at the end of the year.

During the last few years, the team at Chorus Executive and I have started to see this change in the attitudes and goals of job seekers and we have also observed that many organisations are not keeping up with the changes. The premise of this book is that people may turn up to do a job, but to get the best result for all, there needs to be an alignment of values, motivations, goals,