This is a guest post from Caroline Vooght Business Unit Director at Expion Search & Selection, as part of our Recruiting Weekly Series. Caroline shares her thoughts on the personal touch to learning.
Learning’s personal. Isn’t it? I think so, but I think that ‘personal’ means different things to different people. What does it mean to you?
I recently conducted a survey into the digital needs of both candidates, active and passive, and recruitment tendencies of clients, both HR/Talent Acquisition and Hiring Managers. One thing that shone through was their need for a personal touch. Every person wants to be treated as an individual.
And that’s where the L&D process can get tricky to personalise. There are some key trends that we’ve seen at Expion that are worth taking note of if you’re looking to hire, train, retain and develop your team.
- Career progression is more important than ever. In this market people don’t just want a job, they want to see how they can progress, and want to see evidence of this from their future employers
- We all know people want flexibility. Be clear on what your offering is, and don’t waver for one if you won’t for others. Noses can get very out of joint if things are deemed unfair
- Make your onboarding awesome. Love that new employee like you would a valued member of the team. Treat them well and they’ll treat your clients and candidates well
- Salaries and bonus schemes have become harder to compare. No, this isn’t employers trying to mystify the package on offer, every business has a different cost structure. Make sure you understand what you’re offering and how competitive it is to a future employee, and to those who are already part of the business. A great learning opportunity can be more valuable than just a salary.
But back to learning. I’ve always thought that the hardest job in recruitment is a recruitment manager. You have to look after your team, alongside your clients, and lead from the front. There’s been much spoken about the biggest billers don’t make the best managers and I think that’s true.
What’s different these days is the support that’s available to help your team learn. Goodness me, if there had been this when I set up a team 10+ years ago, I wonder what would have happened. So here’s what I’d tell my younger self:
You don’t have to do it all yourself. Outsource and seek experts to guide and support. There are some high quality mentoring schemes available, such as APSCO’s Empower Me https://www.apsco.org/training/empowerme-mentoring-programme.aspx and Recruitment Mentors, set up by the brilliant Hishem Azzouz alongside his very successful podcasts https://www.recruitmentmentors.com/.
Now, this isn’t you failing at supporting your team, in fact different voices can have a really powerful effect on the mind and the ways people learn is different. That’s how you personalise your approach – mentoring might be brilliant for one person, whereas a structured training programme will suit someone else better. The CIPD have an overview on learning styles you can find here https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/people/development/learning-methods-factsheet#gref
Think about whether your team need training, coaching or mentoring. They are different things and are required at different times. The harsh reality of the recruitment industry is that many people fail. And if they fail, they need to fail fast according to Greg Savage (The Savage Truth). He states that the way to train is with little, bite sized chunks of learning with constant assessment, review and checking.
I wholeheartedly agree with this as it’s what I did when I set up my team between 2005 and 2008. What made the biggest difference in that situation was the support of the wider team. I’d have used mentors if it had occurred to me at the time (and they were more readily available) but the team around me fulfilled that. They were open to learning from each other. Allowing new team members to sit in on interviews, attend client visits and listen to calls (yes, the good AND the bad) all had a big impact. Far more than them sitting with me or in a training room listening to ‘theory’ and scenarios and carrying out role plays (who likes them anyway?).
All newbies need to experience success. And they need help to do so. Rewind to 2000 and new recruiters were flung a phone and a yellow pages and told to ‘hit the phone’. We do better now, and I believe when someone joins a business, help them out. Share vacancies and candidates for them to work on and with. They learn more that way. They feel loved.
What if they muck it up? Well, that’s your job as the manager to support them and maintain a watching brief over things to retain the relationship with all parties.
Help them grow. Personal Branding wasn’t really a thing in the noughties but it certainly is now. There are some great businesses supporting with this. Klowt and Hoxo Media both offer great support in this area, and there will be others. Andrew MacAskill also covers a lot of this in his Executive Career Jump club which gets great reviews and his LinkedIn Live every Thursday lunchtime offers anyone job seeking an amazing forum to ask questions and gain support.
What ever your approach, I don’t think you should ever stop learning, or support others to do so. I’ve absolutely loved learning new skills in recent years, and it’s boosted my confidence, capability, and passion for recruitment.
I’m a recruiter with 20+ years of experience. I’ve built and led recruitment teams and developed my own skills to include digital marketing and employer branding. I’m a mentor, and I also volunteer in schools to support students with interviews skills and CV writing.
