Chris Simmance:
Thanks for your service, Guy. And I’m really pleased to have Alexis on the podcast from her digital. How are you doing today, mate? Hey,
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah, good thanks yourself.
Chris Simmance:
not so bad at all. Not so bad at all for those listening. Uh, I’ve known Alexis for almost 12, 13 ish years now. Um, unless I’m getting this mixed up, I was the first person you ever placed in an agency and you were the first, uh, recruiter I ever worked with to place me in an agency, so that’s how far back I think, uh, are linked. connection at least goes.
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah, I always remember those days. I think it was, you were very good at mobile SEO if I can remember correctly.
Chris Simmance:
something along those lines. I mean, mate, I’m a chameleon.
Alexis Wilkie:
Thank you.
Chris Simmance:
So for those who don’t know you, give us a shout out. So who are you? What do you do? And then what do you do specifically with agencies?
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah. So my name is Alexis, associate director at herd digital, which is a recruitment agency, as the name suggests, specializing in digital marketing. The main areas we recruit for are the UK and Germany across SEO, paid search, paid social, programmatic display, client services, and then organic social.
Chris Simmance:
to not many areas at all. Ha ha.
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah. It’s grown a bit from the SEO days, but I am before getting into recruitment. I used to work for an SEO agency called add people. Um, selling SEO and paid search. And then one of my friends called me up. He worked for a recruitment agency called energize and like, we need someone who can sell, who knows what SEO is, and it just was a really good fit. Um,
Chris Simmance:
And so you’ve been working in the recruitment space for more than a decade now in the agency side as well. What would you say has been one of the mainstays, like a staple thing that hasn’t changed? Because this industry changes daily almost.
Alexis Wilkie:
Well, it’s a good question. Um, I would say the one thing that hasn’t changed is the reasons why people move jobs. Um,
Chris Simmance:
Mm, okay.
Alexis Wilkie:
of course there’s lots of different reasons that people move, but what we try to focus on is quotation that the best candidates who aren’t always actively looking for a job because they’re being well looked after
Chris Simmance:
Hmm
Alexis Wilkie:
and the normal reasons that people would look to move are either they want to leave a bad manager. They’re not being given the progression that they’re expecting.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alexis Wilkie:
Salary or training. They’re the main reasons. One thing that has changed probably is the flexibility, hybrid working or remote. But other than that, it’s training, progression, salary and bad managers.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah. And that’s, I can completely relate to that knowing all the agencies that I speak to and work with on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, the amount of, um, things that you can put down to those factors and those, those things have stayed the same, uh, for, for absolutely ages. I’m guessing as well that, um, as a, as a, as a sector we swing from, um, forgive the way this sounds, you’ll probably have a better way of putting it, but an employer’s market to an employee’s market and backwards and forwards. And it all kind of, I guess, depends on economies or what, what usually drives that kind of thing.
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah, we use the term candidate driven or client driven.
Chris Simmance:
There we go.
Alexis Wilkie:
Um, I would actually argue that it’s always been candidate driven.
Chris Simmance:
Hmm, okay.
Alexis Wilkie:
Even, even like the start of this year and the end of last year slowed down a lot. So we were doing business development, reaching out to companies and offering our services. But one thing that didn’t change was there was, there was always roles available for good quality candidates.
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Alexis Wilkie:
And the difference when it’s, I guess the closest we’ve been to it being client driven was last year at the start of last year or the end of the year before, when it was very busy, like we had clients literally calling us up going, how do we get to the top of the queue? Fees went up, everything was fantastic. It was the dream. But there was also lots of candidates looking for new jobs.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alexis Wilkie:
So it was the perfect storm really, but it’s very candidate focused.
Chris Simmance:
So there’s the supply and demand on both sides then isn’t it? There’s the demand from, as you’re putting it, hang on, clients versus the supply of candidates, but then when there is a moment where there’s a huge supply of candidates and not a large supply of clients because of economic factors or whatever else. I suspect there’ll be a knock on in 18 months time or so around how AI is developed and things like that in different roles. And that probably drives a lot of the speed at which you need to work, I guess.
Alexis Wilkie:
I would say it’s the speed, but it’s more the, it’s a quality thing. So I would say the number of placements that we’re making hasn’t really changed. For what we are seeing is that clients are being a lot more selective about who they hire and who they don’t hire. And
Chris Simmance:
Mmm.
Alexis Wilkie:
there’s also a lot more resistance from clients now to pay the salaries that the candidates are asking. Cause there’s like.
Chris Simmance:
I mean, they were high when I was running an agency. They’re flipping high now.
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah, it’s crazy. Um, but there’s, there’s a knock on impact as well that I don’t know. Keep one role, for example, could be if you’re looking to hire a PPC account manager and agency, go back to when I started agreeing 10 years ago, you’d get someone who had three and a half, four years experience. Now you’re getting agency hiring, agency hiring, agency hiring people with 18 months to two years of experience on a higher salary,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Alexis Wilkie:
but
Chris Simmance:
yeah.
Alexis Wilkie:
also.
Chris Simmance:
I mean, the, um, that, that I’d say that that’s probably coming from fast growth, young agencies more than like mainstays that have been there for a long while. Um, probably because they’re growing quicker than, than they can keep up with their own team and things like that. But you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s an ever growing and ever changing landscape at the minute for sure.
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
bit rude, but well timed because I was just talking about fast growing agencies. Hey, how about that? And
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
so Alexis, what is it that you love most about working with agencies in particular?
Alexis Wilkie:
I would say this sounds a little bit cheesy, but it’s quite rewarding seeing people that you place in a job progress their careers.
Chris Simmance:
Yep, that is cheesy.
Alexis Wilkie:
But it’s true. Well, like what, one thing that you can definitely see on LinkedIn is people that you place in an agency, typically they’ll get a promotion 12 to 18 months down the line
Chris Simmance:
Mmm.
Alexis Wilkie:
and you can see their career progress. Whereas when I work with, cause I do recruit for in-house companies as well, the volume is agencies. they’re not necessarily able to offer the long-term or short-term progression that you might get in an agency.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alexis Wilkie:
There’s that, and then I’m just generally interested in what the agencies do.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned at the beginning that you, you know, you work with a lot of, you work with agencies that do a lot of different disciplines and things like that. Um, presumably the, the kind of the, the ever changing nature of stuff means that you kind of need to keep your finger on the pulse for not just the industry from an employment point of view, but also from like, what is changing, what are the technologies or the tools or the next acronym. I wouldn’t be surprised if you know, if you look back through your records, it’s probably about six years ago, you started hiring for an inverted commerce, digital PR roles, versus five to 10 years ago, you were hiring for content marketing roles, and so on and so forth. And I suspect that it must, it must be kind of hard to keep up on two fronts, isn’t it? You’re keeping up on, on the industry, but also the, the specifics of the sector at the same time.
Alexis Wilkie:
Definitely, especially SEO. There’s some crazy
Chris Simmance:
Heh.
Alexis Wilkie:
SEO job titles out there. I think companies do it just to keep people like me guessing.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alexis Wilkie:
So if you want to keep your staff, come up with the strangest job title ever, because a lazy recruiter won’t find your team on LinkedIn.
Chris Simmance:
I won’t say that again.
Alexis Wilkie:
A lazy recruiter won’t find your team on LinkedIn. So say, for example, there’s an SEO account manager job. The most obvious thing that you’ll do when you’re doing a search is go onto LinkedIn. got
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Alexis Wilkie:
the LinkedIn recruiter account and search for people whose job title is SEO account manager or senior SEO account executive
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alexis Wilkie:
looking for a step up. But I don’t know SEO wizard, for example, probably isn’t going to be in my Boolean search.
Chris Simmance:
If you’re listening to this, please don’t call any of your team wizards or gurus or ninjas, but I get the point.
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah, I probably wouldn’t be adding them to my list anyway if they did that.
Chris Simmance:
So in all of your experience in the last decade plus, what’s your, what do you think separates some of the best agencies from the rest?
Alexis Wilkie:
best agencies at what they do or to work
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Alexis Wilkie:
for.
Chris Simmance:
so you decide what the best looks like, you know, it could be a two person boutique agency or a hundred person one that, you know, pays your mortgage and your fees, it could be any of those. And so what, what do you think like separates the, the decent good agencies from, from the rest? Cause there are like 20 odd thousand of them in, in the UK, according
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
to LinkedIn that is.
Alexis Wilkie:
say if we focus on for me what the best would be is the best place for people to have come from and that means because the best way to recruit for your business in my opinion is to be not to be a great place to go to but it’d be a great place to have come from if other people have good things to say about you.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, that’s a good point, yeah, okay.
Alexis Wilkie:
And what that means is that you treat people with respect.
Chris Simmance:
Mmm.
Alexis Wilkie:
You’re very open and honest with them. There’s some agencies out there that no matter what I do, I cannot get people to leave. Honestly.
Chris Simmance:
I mean, sorry that you can’t get them to leave, but well done agencies that have staff that have batted away Alexis charms.
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
Because to be honest, if you’ve got an agency where there’s staff that almost, they will ignore any kind of advance from a recruiter. They’re A. happy, they’d probably be relatively well compensated, either based on the market or based on the area they’re in. But see, they’re probably in that, like you say, they’re quite well respected. They’re treated well. And that isn’t bean bags and pizza Fridays. That’s actual proper leadership and proper treatment in a business. And I think you can certainly tell, you must be able to spot this a mile away when you start talking to new potential clients, the ones that are, that would treat people as a commodity or unit of labour versus the ones that would need that unit of labour, but would treat that unit of labour as a human being.
Alexis Wilkie:
There’s a big difference, isn’t there?
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alexis Wilkie:
You’re not just a number.
Chris Simmance:
And, and, and in agencies, I’m, you know, one thing that we need to always remember is that capacity and, um, resource planning is insanely important in an agency in order for you to grow and a big part of your strategy should be dictated on how much work someone can take on, um, without obviously over, over stressing them. Um, but that doesn’t mean that you need to treat them like a unit of labor. and make them have a number to, to stick to all of the time and all that sort of stuff, because yeah, you need to know capacity planning, but you don’t need to um, make them fill out a, a timesheet for the time they changed the title tag or something like that. It’s, it’s just not, it’s not a legal firm kind of set up. Um, in, in general, what, what would you say? Like there must be some kind of, uh, absolute like red flags when you’re talking to, to agency leaders. You know, they want to come in, they want to hire someone as quickly as possible. What, what are the typical things that you normally hear that you’re like, I’m gonna have to work at this person down gently.
Alexis Wilkie:
I would say… One thing is how they speak to me,
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alexis Wilkie:
or maybe even a better question is if they speak to me.
Chris Simmance:
Okay.
Alexis Wilkie:
So we often get inbound inquiries or people referred to us when they’re looking to hire. And I’m pretty sure if you, if you were working in a, any role at any type of agency, you wouldn’t want to start doing any work for them until you’ve took a full brief and digested
Chris Simmance:
And then.
Alexis Wilkie:
the brief and had a good conversation. But if, um, if you want to get the most out of your recruiters. Don’t just send them a job spec. Have a conversation with them about why you’re hiring, how they, how they can tell the story of your agency, what you’re looking for, because I’ve had clients come to me with roles and they’ve like, we’ve had three recruiters on this for three months and they haven’t filled it. I’ve looked at the job spec. I’ve then spoken to the agency and found out that what they’re looking for isn’t written in the job description. And of course it makes sense. That’s why you’re not filling it. Because. You’ve got three recruits looking for the wrong thing.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah. And, and there’s, there, there’s a risk there, I suppose, from, so an agency that’s got a plan and they know what they’re doing, they’ve got, uh, um, at the very least two years kind of planned out by numbers point of view, they should know, I know we, we get five more leads in, we sell three more clients, every three clients, we need a new member of staff. So we’ve got these leads in, we need to start looking for someone six months before we need them kind of thing. And the agency leaders that come to you that probably don’t talk to you, the ones that are probably sent the same brief out to six or seven different companies. Um, agency leaders, if you are, if you, if, if you do that, you’re going to get lower quality people, um, find a, find a recruitment partner that you can trust and that you can rely on that actually does take care in the agency and what it means, like what you’re trying to do, um, because you’ll get way, you’ll get way less candidates, but there’ll be much better quality and it’s that quality over quantity, isn’t it Alexis?
Alexis Wilkie:
Definitely, if I was an agency leader looking to hire for my team, I would work with one recruiter and I would either work with them on an exclusive basis or a retained basis where
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alexis Wilkie:
you make an upfront payment that shows you value their time for one. But you’ll get so much more commitment from that recruiter to fill your vacancy, but also be very honest with them and say, you’ve got two weeks or three weeks to get a shortlist or a strong pipeline of candidates. Otherwise, I’m going to brief it to another agency.
Chris Simmance:
Hmm. And, and, and if, um, if an agency leader’s listening right now and they’re thinking, right, okay, I’ve got the job spec, I know what I need to do. I’m going to pick an, uh, one recruiter. And what kind of, um, what’s one of the first things that a candidate looks at when you send them one of those JDs or a brief, what is it that a candidate would first kind of go, aha, this sounds great. Apart from salary, because, because anyone’s going to make that up if they want to.
Alexis Wilkie:
To be honest, if someone comes to me looking for a new job and they raise salaries, the main reason for leaving, I’m more than likely going to have a conversation with them about how they should go and ask for a pay rise because they’ll take
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alexis Wilkie:
a counter offer anyway.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alexis Wilkie:
Where possible, we actually don’t like using job descriptions because it’s like selling to someone before you know what they want.
Chris Simmance:
Mmm.
Alexis Wilkie:
But I guess what you’re asking is what the candidates want to know before they decide if they should apply for a job.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, so you know, they you’ve presented them with whatever specifically you would normally present them and they’ve got three options in front of them and they don’t really want to interview three times in a row, but there’s something there that they’re looking at and all three of those options have something at what is it that what is there the first thing they look for beyond the salary?
Alexis Wilkie:
It comes back to what’s not changed in the last 10 years, progression, training, maybe work life balance
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Alexis Wilkie:
is another one. And then, because if you look, I keep coming back to PPC or SEO and manage a job. On paper, the responsibilities are the same, whether you work at a big network agency or an independent agency,
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alexis Wilkie:
what normally influences whether someone applies for a job or even better accepts a job is the people that they meet, do they like them? Can they trust them with their career? Another thing will be potentially the clients, although I always say to candidates, don’t join an agency because of one client because they can change at any time. Well, are they excited about the clients? Kind of a bit cheesy, but the story of the agency, are they buying into what you’re trying to do and your purpose? And then real life balance. They’re the main things that I’d focus on, but the other thing on the job descriptions that I would add is… One of my old clients, right, when I used to work for another recruitment agency, used to have on their job description, what you’d expect on their normal specs, a bit about the company, a bit about the role, the requirements. But then on the back page, they actually had mapped out what we expect from you and what you can expect from us in the next 12 months. And it was really good. I got lots of positive feedback on that.
Chris Simmance:
That’s awesome. Um, yeah. And I think, I think, um, if, if you’re a potential candidate and you’re looking for something, you’re not looking necessarily for, um, again, a number of holidays per year beyond the standard minimum, um, you, you aren’t just looking for, um, uh, salary whilst that is very important, you’re looking for those key indicators that this will be a place I can be comfortable and do a great job. Um, and as long as you, as an agency leader, covering those bases well, you know, there’s, there’s hours of conversation we can have around internal net promoter score. There’s loads of things we can talk about around the notorious glass door and things like that. But you should be getting your staff, your current staff to give glass door reviews right now, for example, don’t wait until they’ve left, wait and get the get the reviews in now they you can edit them later if they want to change their mind and things like that. But it’s good if you’re trying to grow and you’ve got a team that want a team to grow with them, then it’s within their interests to promote the agency as much
Alexis Wilkie:
Sally.
Chris Simmance:
as the leaders. So do whatever you can as a team to bring in more like-minded great people. It’s really, really important. So Alexis, you’ve got a herd digital blue and white magic wand that’s just been popped into your office. You can only use it once though and whatever you use that magic wand for. It changes across every agency in the world right now. So what one thing would you use that wand on?
Alexis Wilkie:
I’m going to be a bit selfish and talk about how it would benefit me,
Chris Simmance:
Go.
Alexis Wilkie:
but the return, it benefits the agencies as well. And that’s how you work with recruiters. So imagine if you’re selling SEO as a service,
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alexis Wilkie:
but your clients will only pay you when you get traffic to their website that converts into a sale or when you get to the top of page one or pay you for the links, you could be, it’s quite risky. You’d be investing a lot of time and effort. with no guarantee of a return on that income. So what I’m trying to do with some of my clients at the moment is we’re on more of a partnership model where it’s either retained, where typically retained recruitment means that an employer will pay a third of the fee upfront, a third on submission of a shortlist, and a third once the candidate has started. Other options to be a bit more flexible is just. Just make an upfront payment of one or two grand to show your commitment to using us to fill the vacancy.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah. Well, like you say, you wouldn’t do that if it, you wouldn’t have, uh, um, as you wouldn’t expect your clients to not pay you until, um, someone had come in the door, um, from a, from a, an SEO point of view or a PPC point of view, you wouldn’t do all of the upfront work for, for a client almost, unless, you know, unless you’re crazy, you wouldn’t do all the work upfront. Um, and then give, ask for the money. Um, you can. do the work and bill, and then you have your guarantees and your contracts and all those sorts of things if you do it properly. But yeah, and show that you value the time and the effort of the recruiter and kind of goes a bit back to stick to one recruiter that you know and trust and you’ve got a relationship with.
Alexis Wilkie:
Yeah. And the data backs up with when we work on a retained or a minimum and exclusive basis, we fill 90% of the roles that we’re briefed on.
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Alexis Wilkie:
Whereas if we’re in competition with another agency, it goes down to 30% one in three roles. So
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, that’s…
Alexis Wilkie:
that’s a lot of doing a lot of work for free. Um, but I don’t know. think it’s better for everyone involved if everyone’s committed. But one other thing that naturally a lot of agencies want to do is avoid recruitment fees because they’re expensive
Chris Simmance:
Hahaha
Alexis Wilkie:
and no, it’s like the necessary evil. But one of my other clients was going to try and fill a role directly. We’ve placed the last six people that they’ve hired when they’ve tried to fill it directly. And I said, you could spend two weeks messaging a lot of people on LinkedIn and you might fill it. But imagine if I spent the next two weeks and filled it for you and you spent two weeks reaching out to potential clients and you got a new business. So that’s, that’s my pitch for what it’s worth, but it’s because it’s better for everyone involved is treat your clients how you’d want your clients to treat you.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah. And that, and that’s the, the right mindset. I think Alexis wonderful talking to you as always. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And if you’re an agency leader looking for that one special man that can place, can place the, um, uh, the best of the best in your agency, then you need to be speaking to Alexis at her digital.
Alexis Wilkie:
Thanks very much. Chat to you soon.