What is the Best Strategy for Recruitment? | Ep 102 | Peter Stewart, Lynx Recruitment |

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:00

Good morning and welcome to another episode of Better Business better life. Today I’m joined by Peter Stewart, who is the founder of Lynx Recruitment. And Peter is based human replumbed has got around about 20 staff in his business, but has quite an interesting background actually started a real estate. So welcome to studio. Lucky to have you here.

Peter Stewart  00:16

Good morning, Debra.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:17

Yeah, Good morning. Hey, I’m keen to hear because you did not start in recruitment labor. Quite an interesting backstory. Tell us a little bit how you got to where you are today?

Peter Stewart  00:27

Yeah, so started in recruitment. So selling real estate. And yeah, just I was in Christchurch, Christchurch, New Zealand, obviously in the head, they have quite just down there are still quite young, I was pretty young. When I got into it. I think it was 19 or something when I got my real estate license. So once the earthquake happened, nobody knew I was having sales. No one knew what was happening with insurance. And we were boss at the time is good at it. So you too, yeah, it’s too much getting off, get out of here. So went to Gold Coast, did some pretty crunchy door to door sales over there, which really built character and resilience.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:08

So he did say door to door sales. You mean literally knocking on people’s doors.

Peter Stewart  01:12

They was doing solar power. riches in Australia, you think there’s easy because there’s so much sun, but they’re still very expensive. And Australians at the time, were very suspicious about government grants, because they had had multiple government grants before and go well, but yeah, and in the meantime, the archives came back to real estate. And long story short, got a job in an office at Ray White, and Remuera, up in Auckland. And yeah, they’re working for the Office for the business part as a salesperson, which was cool, because I got exposed to a lot of conversations from quite a quite a successful business person who was really dynamic and lit. I don’t think she thought that I was learning a lot from her. But I learned heaps on her. And that was that was really cool. And then long story short, a lot of my friends were getting like jobs at corporate businesses and law firms, all this stuff. And I was like, hey, get serious yet. So got a job at Hays recruitment. And yeah, first because that was.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:21

Cool. So how long was that?

Peter Stewart  02:25

10 years now? It’d be 10 years. Yeah, sure.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:27

And so you worked through a number of different recruitment. And there’s a startup recruitment company, and then backwards and forwards couple of times. Yeah.

Peter Stewart  02:34

Started a haze joined a recruitment startup. So I was their first full time recruiter. Then the business partnership, they broke up. So I went and joined another recruitment firm. And then went actually went back to the original startup. And it was great to see how that business had grown. And then eventually had that conversation with my director and said, Hey, look, I’m so sorry. But I got to do this for myself.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:59

Because he said to me, you actually send to help them build up a new market. Am I doing this for somebody else? Whoa,

Peter Stewart  03:03

a lot of my old boss, I absolutely love them. But now we still we still catch up all the time? Well, probably every couple of months ago with you. Yeah. And I’ve ever want to have a sale. Just short. Your time. It’s not great. But it’s I need to do this one day. So it’s all a bit stale as matrices, like, don’t touch my stuff. Okay, fair enough. So, so that was cool. Naively started with your own

Debra Chantry-Taylor  03:30

company. And that was that’s a big jump, right? Going from working for somebody to go like this myself. What do you what are you most proud of in terms of, you know, taking that first leap and where you are now?

Peter Stewart  03:42

I think, a we look at all the things that we’ve done? Well, I think we’ve given a lot of people we’ve exposed like, when it first started, obviously, needed to hire recruitment agents, no one experience would come and work for me, because our brand branding was very different and untraditional for no more recruitment agency. And I was unknown. Like, I didn’t really have any management experience. Anyway, I’ve been quitting a while. But it wasn’t for printing a long time. And I certainly didn’t have any management experience. And so recruiting experienced recruiters was pretty much off the table day one. So I was hiring people that had just literally just wanted to get into recruitment. And here I was showing them how to do it. So I think I’m, yeah, but look, there can I think, yeah, all the opportunities that we’ve given people to get into it have been ever really cold. Because the thermal recruitment is not just doing I’m getting the sales, it’s the skills that you learn. It’s you’re dealing with business people, you’re dealing with candidates, and you’re talking about really serious Yeah, totally career, which is really serious. The actual work that you’re doing is, is valuable, and as important, I think, as recruitment consultants probably get a bad name for a number of reasons. It is why she got called a used car salesman era. The recruitment industry event by a lady so that was that was that was cool. But you know, it’s it’s a really tough job. It’s really tough industry and yeah, you know, and it’s been awesome. And I think so It’s been cool to expose people to that not so much. But in many cases, like 90% of people that get into recruitment are not there in a year. So the industry has a massive turnover. Right? So, yeah, basically, for every 10 People that get hired and recruitment, yep. After a year, one of them will still be there.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:32

Wow. So it’s huge. Okay. It’s huge.

Peter Stewart  05:35

Yeah. So that was kind of exhausting. So the first 18 months, I hired a bunch of people as recruitment consultants who had no experience, I had no experience Mehran managing, and basically made every mistake possible, was frustrated by how it was going, because I didn’t have any but it was it was all self inflicted. So I was I was, I think my intentions were good. My execution was horrendous. But, you know, you learn by your mistakes. So. So that’s, that’s it. So. So that was cool. And then I think you have a look at what I’ve actually done. Well, what I’m really excited about. And I think the brand that we’ve come up with, and I think the way that we position ourselves in the market now is really cool. Like, yeah, look at the brand. We’ve got now the company we’ve got now the marketing that we’re doing. Yeah, how its how it’s coming across and how it’s been received. So it is really exciting and sound, build a lot of hype. And it’s actually getting to the point now, where we’re having those recruiters I was telling about before that I can never, I can never dream of all these people. They don’t want to come work for me now. Now they’re knocking on our door. Excellent, which is really cool. So that’s so that’s been? Yeah. So that that’s probably the biggest one is is is building a home for great recruiters who are really passionate about themselves want to do well want to set themselves up want to take advantage of the hardwork down and really get rewarded for it and go hard Cool. But it hasn’t always been selling either has it? Because when you started in 2018, it’s Yeah, had a really good sort of, you know, what, a year and a half, and whatnot. And then of course, the dreaded COVID hit.  Yeah, yeah. So there’s no saying even a turkey can find a tail. And so I would say Zika Turkey, but that boom market that we had pre COVID certainly covered up a lot of mistakes that I was making shortcomings at ahead, you know, around management systems or processes. We had nothing that our guys went specializing with generalists, basically making every mistake possible. But because the market was so buoyant, we were able to get away with it. Yep. And we had a couple of good, we had a couple of guys, and they were actually producing pretty good. So and we had low overheads, because they were young recruiters, they went on massive salaries. We had an old villa on College Hill Nipsey Kev, which is that so that’s another story in itself. And and then that allowed us to, basically, I can make whatever mistake I want, and I wasn’t gonna get caught out. But the moment that COVID happened, and the revenue tip was absolutely turned off. Yeah. A consultant hadn’t been trained properly. They weren’t specializing. They didn’t know the market. We, I didn’t know how to how to handle the situation. You know, and I never been pretty much know what to bid for that. And I was asking people that I thought were knew better. And they had no advice either.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:31

What what to expect? Yeah, pretty unusual for me, the people who went through all the plague and stuff are dead now. So I want you to

Peter Stewart  08:35

Be in a situation and we had grown aggressively at like, you know, I was out to prove a point. Yeah, we’d grown a lot. We had about nine staff when we’d only got 18 months, we were all permanent business. We had no temporary business, which is, you know, as a recruitment company want to have that max. So, basically, actually got caught with my pants down. So. So, so, so so

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:03

that’s okay, because my son, yeah, and that hit a lot of people. So I wouldn’t get too concerned about that. But what did you learn from that? And how did you then put into the future, your learnings for building the business back up again?

Peter Stewart  09:15

You absolutely. So I think what’s what came out of that that’s been really important is specialization. So when we were we were trying to be all things to all people, which such that we are looking back on. So it’s embarrassing. It’s such a rookie mistake. Yeah. You know, we were, we were trying to be all fit, you know, like, we’re like, we were recruiting all sorts of stuff. Like just you know, we’d have one recruiter. Yeah, if a donor he or she would be done IT administrator here, a Senior Project Manager here and accounts receivable verse in here. Yeah, it was just a mess. Yep. And then they’re all in the same industry is talking to different clients, and it was so scrappy. So having that moment where we’re forced, obviously to reduce headcount. We’re able to put people into Yeah. And the other thing too, we were like, well, we only had certain demand for certain things, which is obviously very close. So even in the middle of COVID lock downs, all this all this crazy stuff was going on. I clients were still Hey, if you’re gonna be curious about us, and we were like, oh, everyone’s trying to like no one can find people like, like, Yeah, well, there’s still an economy servers. And there’s even though people were getting made redundant, the people that were getting made redundant where they weren’t. There was people just getting rid of those changed young men. And so there was a really good demand for that. So Oh, yeah, we should be focusing less because yeah, we’re at a time so great. COVID The demand is still there. And, and so we’ll roll it specializes in that. So we really got deep into that market, got our database has sort of got things cleaned up, you know, and started messaging in a certain way. And then we yeah, we had another guy was specialized in mining. So he was doing jobs in Australia, but for Auckland, and it was qualifiers and miners, drilling, Diamond Jewelers and Australia at all places that he goes for COVID. Without that would have been touched. So.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:05

It kind of firstly, didn’t really be really clear about who that ideal target client is. And then get really specialized that and also have specific roles for different people. accountabilities for people that they had their own swimmingly, yeah, okay. Yeah,

Peter Stewart  11:17

We’re lucky because I mean, it’s almost embarrassing that we had such a Higgledy Piggledy business, and then just, you know, to have that moment where, you know, get taken out back and given a hiding, essentially, and, you know, from a business point of view, yep. Yeah, you walk out of there. Okay. Put yourself up. And yes, specialization was a massive one. And, and just looking at those skills, which, yeah, those skill sets, which the market demands from us, and understanding why they demand from us and actually understanding the value that we provide, and why we provide are not just like, you know, when they were just, We just had a century. Before the three covid. It was such a funny world market, particularly for recruitment, like it was just, it was really buoyant, like, there was a lot of, yeah, there was a lot of money in the system, I think. And then, and obviously, like, last year, there was Tokyo of what’s the house price and stuff, but like, you did not need to be a good recruiter to make good fees. Whereas last year, strangely enough, even though there was more money in this financial system. And there’s lots of objects and lots of people needed staff, it’s actually a lot harder to deliver them. So you hit to be better, right? It’s about pre COVID. Yeah, you could, you know, time again, I wish you could I remember. I mean, this should have been a red flag. And yeah, I don’t know this. People are saying, but I really go into an industry event. And there are a couple of people that had just started a company or Waikiki. And they were just gonna Yeah, it was just like a genius agent on Waikiki. Yep. Just doing whatever. And you know, like, looking back on an hour, that’s crazy. Yeah, they’d spend a whole bunch of money, like getting it set up and staffing just like so as many mistakes as I made like, yeah, I don’t know that. I mean, all that happens. Is probably fraud. You

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:13

know, and I think it’s one of things we teach our clients is, you know, you have to be very specific about who your target market is, and what you actually offer them. And you said this, about the clients you work with, when you go into a person, you asked me know, what makes you unique? A lot of companies actually struggle to tell you what makes them unique. Like, why would that person come work with you?

Peter Stewart  13:29

What’s your squat? A hard question, you know, and it’s scary to be new, unique, like it’s not itchy. Like it takes more courage to be unique and do something different than it does to do what anyone else is doing. So but you know, at the moment, we’re in a market where if you’re not unique in terms of your, so we’re doing that attracting talent to a business, you know, so I’m a business person, I’m struggling to get talent, how do I get talent to my business, you’ve got to have good points of difference, you’ve got to have a unique selling point. You know, if you’ve got a great reputation, or you’re someone or you’re doing something unique, then it’s easier. Yeah, that’s a tech startup or something really exciting. But a viewer, you know, if you’re a business, if you’re an auto electrician, you know, you and all electrician only hung out your it’s very hard for you to, you know, make yourself different, or building companies looking for carpenter. Yeah. So the, you’ve seen, I’m seeing businesses now that are really using social media to get on top of that, yeah, they’re creating Instagram pages, they’re creating followers, you know, and they’re posting videos of the guys on Friday going out for a surf or doing stuff like that, and they’ve got more barbecuing, and that’s really spot on. That’s good business. E business can do that. But my son,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:43

right, cool. So what you’re doing is you’re kind of reversing it from being a going out there looking for people to hopefully having people wanting to come and work for you. Just like they did flex, right.

Peter Stewart  14:51

Yeah. 100% Yeah, you can. So what better to attract candidates and take them for a process showing them what you’ve Gotta get really good expectations about what’s going to look like how it’s going to be, then make the recruit rather than trying to rip somebody out of somewhere else paying them, you know, mile per hour or, you know, X amount of some of the payrolls is that I’m saying? Extreme at the moment, you know, are we talking about people going from 75, grand 130 grand which is crazy. Yeah, seaters. There was one insurances that might have been, there would have been a health and safety job. So two things could be true there one at least getting a great salary, whereas, so he was probably very underpaid. So the only way to be going from health and safety admin Frodo manager, just hit that. But ahm.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:41

That money isn’t everything, right? Because we know this. I’ve got clients who’ve had, you know, fed staff for a long, long time, and they get offered a whole lot more to go work for somebody else. And they just, they don’t want to leave because they actually enjoy where they are. So it is definitely a motivator. But it’s not everything.

Peter Stewart  15:56

I think will I think time will tell on that one. And what I mean by that is because of the environment we’re in now, where inflation is a serious factor. I think there has potentially move the needle quite a lot between people really valuing that higher rate more or more in the sense that yeah, like pre COVID. Absolutely, I’d agree with you where it’s like, but, you know, like, yes, it’s offers 20 or more, but, you know, I just, I just love it here, the people are good in my lifestyle. They’re like, I don’t have that much pressure, you know, I’m not struggling my payment bills, like, I’m not struggling for groceries, but in terms of cost of living, but maybe it could be different in other parts of the world. But certainly in this country, cost of living has really been affected. So we’re starting to see people leave major cities for regions, because the cost, which at the moment is really of interest, because you can buy a house down there. You can be a young couple sitting on 50 grand, you’ve got a four bedroom house. Yeah. Right. And you can buy groceries and you can have a kid and they can run around the backyard, and it’s safe. And there’s not that much commuting like you know, an Auckland that gets you a studio apartment. If you’re lucky. You know, let’s say I’ve lost or, you know, yeah, in the cover of darkness. So that’s, that’s a major. So, but we digress. Yeah, I mean, yeah, money’s money will help you get them get people to you won’t help you keep them. Unless you’re paying way over the odds are much guys loyalty probably is for sale to a certain extent. But of all you’ve got as money. Yeah, you need to have that that special sauce? Depends what sort of business you’re into? I would say.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:34

Because we’ve talked about the whole, you know, working with them. How many of you an architecture firm?

Peter Stewart  17:38

Yep. And the people that are creative and the love the work. They do. Yeah. You know, so architect, architectural firms and engineering firms, and infrastructure versus a certain extent that are working on, let’s say, the 60 jobs in town, during the during the big towers and all this stuff, they can actually get away with paying juniors a little bit less, because they want to work on that project. Right? They want that project on there. So it’s like, you know, like a Snapchat or this fast accelerating tech startup site will give you 0.001% equity, and you and your work for us or 40 grand, and you’ll work 80 hours a week, they were willing to go on their journey. So it’s, it’s it all to me, it really depends on the person. But if someone’s in a sales driven environment, or they’re an accountant, they’re just gonna look at the numbers. Yeah, we’re Quantity Surveyors, particularly with a lot of quantity surveyors are money driven individuals, because they literally sit there all day negotiating contracts. Yeah. So Okay, fair enough. Right.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:35

Yep. So what So we talked about, you know, obviously, we’ve gotten to some surfing being able to have beers on a Friday, what other things make workplaces attractive, the working from home, things become a big thing, isn’t it? For certain jobs

Peter Stewart  18:47

flexibilities? Yeah. So yeah, we’ll say before, so I’ve been the number one search term now and seek its work from home or remote or a combination of those, you know, that’s really important. The, the things that used to people used to search the most were the obviously money, we used to be the most important factor. career progression used to be the most important factor. But since COVID, flexibility is a massive one. Some jobs I’ve done, that it’s possible they need to be on site site managers. Yeah. Because there’s a physical job that needs, you know, whatever. But there’s a lot of stuff in our economy that can be done remotely. So employers that aren’t offering some sort of flexibility, or remote working all day from home for a week or even a shortened week or whatever. Seriously, limiting the talent pool. So dry knew you might have 10 candidates available. Now that you’ve decided that they’ve got to be the nine to fiver in the middle of the city or Patreon parking. You literally might as well just put up a sign and say don’t wait for us because no one no one’s going to anyway. Yep. So remotes massive I think, being part everyone’s got different factors. You know, like if somebody’s got you know, so was someone’s someone’s got two kids bits, their world, the comfortable paying their mortgage payments, providing the kids, they want to be there for them, they want that flexibility, they’re not going to be money’s gonna be massive, but being able to be home at 330 or Wednesday for the ticket sport is far more important to them that extra five or 1015 grand that’s a young couple of trying to get into it house, that money is every time because they are going to need that salary to go to the bank for a mortgage. So that becomes a massive motivator for them. So it is different, interestingly enough, when we actually are recruiting, and we’re going through that process with candidates, and they say, you know, always said Yeah, particularly in construction, for example, it’s work, like, we’ve got five things here, you know, we’ve got money, got projects, got flexibility, got culture, if you got career advancement, like which ones are important, you can’t have all five, because they’re just this is not affect

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:53

The project triangle, isn’t it? So

Peter Stewart  20:56

Which ones are important? So I might say, Look, you know, we just had a baby, this thing’s way more expensive than we thought it was cafe, like, I need money now. I can put me on this project, or this place is gonna be big hours, the turnover is high, but you’ll get paid. Yep. So that I’m going to set that up for two years go through that. Or someone might be like, oh, you know, just, you can’t just mess it for me. You know, I love them sports. Yeah, yeah. And this is really a people person. So I can put you over here, to be honest, is that he pay as much as the next one. But the staff team is amazing. Yeah, you know, they got repeat clients, it’s a real community there, you’d be looked after, should something go wrong. They’re not transactional, and someone’s got this, and they will sacrifice a couple of dollars now, or 10, or 20, grand on salary, or whatever to go work there. So simply run, there’s definitely no soft blanket, different industries will certainly have different personality types that are also the types obviously, sort of themes.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:54

One of that we’re about to kind of go into, you know, potentially a recession we’d ever had big or long or decent will be. I’m not a big believer, I don’t think it’d be that huge, but just I don’t who knows? I’m not I haven’t got my crystal ball out. Yes. What do you see what impact is gonna have on recruitment?

Peter Stewart  22:10

More people will be? Well, I’ve been in a market now where people will literally like in some jobs, for example, they’ll just send anyone like, you know, like, we you can literally send the monkey, right. That’d be stoked. Yeah, that’d be absolutely the Tucker Hardhead way guys, and everyone would be happy. But I think when the market, that’s where we have to say, so if we get to the point where people, their p&l is getting seriously affected. And obviously wage is going to be the biggest cost for most businesses. So that’s the easiest place to make cuts. So if we see redundancies across the board, that is, so this is what we saw in COVID, that is a very, it’s a pretty wild environment. So seriously, fix confidence. That could be quite wild, if we start saying, you will get corporate restructures you’re getting it anyway, or I don’t think. So I don’t know if we can put that down to economics. But the problem this time will be the amount of disposable income that’s available. And there’s also been a lot of malinvestment, as well, if you look at some of the people that particularly and in most markets you look at there are a lot of people who have been promoted, because there are a lot of people that have been promoted, because they’re the only ones willing to put their hand up. And it’s just been needs must, it’s not been, this person’s got the skills and spirits got the experience, this person is suitable even it’s just been like we need, you know, we need a bomber seat for a certain role. And that’s just, that’s it. That’s all that’s available. So that’s where it goes bit more into, I guess it’s a bit more about merit at that point, you know, and so the cream rises to the top. So if someone’s having to do a restructure, or you know, they’re obviously going to keep their, what they perceive as their highest performing most important people, and then they’ll lose that. So in terms of for recruitment, this, there will still be parts of the market where it’s so skill short, that there will still be demands on it. But it could, it will make it it’ll make getting jobs harder, for sure. So people won’t have as much choice. They won’t have as much bargaining power. Yeah, when they go to negotiate a salary. They won’t have once again, not as many options. Only thing is the factors around recruitment at the moment ticket in New Zealand. I can’t speak for other countries, but it sounds like the the developed world is pretty much the same in all cases. We’ve had 30 years of people not doing technical trades, or the go into university and studying arts degrees or big horns marketing, which is the So it’s the best three years of your life. But unfortunately, all these degrees have no real utility in the real world. And so you’ve seen massive under investment and people don’t trades engineering it all these all these areas are super skill. Short. Accountants used to be the most accountants, they can’t keep up lawyers kind of keep up all the all these sort of traditional jobs. really struggling builders. Yeah, Spock is all this stuff. This is, you know, there’s serious issues in this country.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:30

So you’ve got that still hasn’t changed. Like we had, obviously, all that restrictions on people coming into the country when we had covid. And it hasn’t really listed. Yeah,

Peter Stewart  25:39

Yeah. So you’ve got Yes, you’ve got misallocated investment and training. Yeah, in terms of doing free university greatest, which is basically got everyone to go to this, then you’ve got no aggression, or very low immigration for the last two years of covid. We have in this country is just finding out now how reliant we were, or are on like, on migrant, on migrant workforce for just stuff like nursing, let, you know, even calculates.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:07

When nursing home staff trades. And also, I’ve gotta go, Vinyard literally had to go and pick that when they’re in that late 60s, early 70s. They thought this was a rare thing where they just have other people coming and doing it. And now they’re out there picking grapes.

Peter Stewart  26:19

That’s crazy. That’s crazy. So you kind of get new ones and they paint good rates. And then you’ve got Yes. And then you’ve got and this is the big one, which has started, people started talking about this. Now what a serious problem. We’ve got aging population, right. So you’ve got the boomers, now, they’ve got these businesses, they’re, the kids don’t want them. Because you know, the kids are saying how much work they put into this whole business and how much stress that they’ve had to take and all the rest of it. So they don’t want it, the staff don’t want it. They’re not really sellable all these businesses. And then you’ve got, you’ve just got an aging population where people are retiring. And once again, those people that are coming through, they’re not trained, and these sorts of things that are retiring, that are retiring. So I think at the moment for every five, I don’t know this for Batum, but very five trainees retiring, got to being trained up. Wow. So you know, if you just think that’s just the things like to like, you know, haitch, fick electricians that can come and fix your heat pump when it’s broken. Or guys doing the sewers, or, you know, all this sort of stuff that people don’t really think about? Yeah, there’s all the fixing the liars, the on the power breaks out all this sort of stuff. These aren’t jobs that have been. They’re not sexy, they’re not rewarded, that well financially, but they have what makes her well,  makes will go around. And yeah, we’re going to, yeah, we’re probably going to feel the effects of that. So it’s gonna be really interesting. So I guess people would have skills they will have, they will have skills that are, you know, they want to work out and get on with, they’re going to be absolutely fine. And I think that, yeah, as we go through this sort of moment, I think, yeah, there will be a rotation where they get stuck in a really well looked after. Yeah, society really starts rewarding those people financially. And even from a status point of view, you know, it’s like, we start looking at tradies. And we start looking at these guys again, because a first of all, you know, how much money they’re making, because the demand for them so high, and they’re qualified, and oh, shit, you know, all these old people have retired now. And now there’s only like, so many retired people. So hopefully, it’s, you know, us as a culture, we actually start going, Hey, these guys are awesome. Like, thank you so much, nurses, nurse, you’re better and more dangerous, isn’t it? I mean, this crazy, right? Like, and you look at, against politics here, but you look at you look at the money that gets spent in certain areas. And, and, you know, you’re there’s nurses protesting for a pay rise and stuff. They’re overworked, they’re stressed, you know? Well, the a&e is understaffed. People are waiting, like, you know, hours and hours and hours, just something’s not right. And we have a really dysfunctional labor market in this country. And yet something to get fixed overnight. So I think people depending on what people do for a living, they’ll be fine. It’s people that are in cushy middle management roles that shouldn’t conveniently be done without you, they’re going to be forced to go, how deeper cuts, I don’t think it’s going to cut that date.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:17

I don’t know what was meant by anyone at low unemployment at the moment. So I think we’re going to be probably reasonably okay.

Peter Stewart  29:22

I can’t see builders going out of work residential is going to get hit really hard, potentially. Residential valid, a lot of people have been making a lot of money in that space. And they’re all about to potentially struggle for work, but there’s so much other work that needs doing Yeah, and all the regions is all this. There’s all this schools is retired and there’s all that sort of stuff that needs building. So I’d be interested to see how that goes in their market. But yeah, that could be could be a weird year.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:48

But that’s permanent versus contract versus temp. I mean, as we go into potentially a ton of them. I tighten our belts and those who are actually doing is or opportunity to replace permanent staff with contract staff or with temporary staff.

Peter Stewart  30:01

I’m surprised New Zealand doesn’t have a massive culture of contract. So tips always be because temps always that’s sometimes the only way you can stop them into project or workforce, you know. What was the nature of the work? So short term? Teams really good lights if you’ve got something that’s really low skilled and really high turnover team scope is intense. i One of the great item full time. Yeah. Cool. So that says a really good runway,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:26

Just ended untraced legally how does that work? It’s okay. Don’t take somebody temporarily. So they’re a temp staff member. And then you offer them a full time job.

Peter Stewart  30:36

For an agent?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:37

That’s a fixed contract this contract maybe to attempt to payment is a The flexibility. I mean, there’s it’s almost like having I liken it to in the old it days, you know, you’d have servers off site, you could ramp up or ramp down as and when you needed them. Yes, that’s what your contract staff actually gives up to to do is bringing people as a mechanism for certain particular skill sets. And then they’re gone when you don’t need them anymore. Yeah,

Peter Stewart  30:40

Better choice. Fixed terms? So you don’t see fixed term was more like white collar? I would say so. So you probably should probably divide them. So blue collar you’ve got like, temps so yeah, yeah. So we might have somebody ring up and say, Hey, we’ve got a building site, we’re getting to the end, we need site cleanup, and therefore laborers, and they just go around bones what it was for two weeks. That’s cool. So that’s Tim. Now there might be something that it’s amazing that they go, Hey, we want to go give us Yeah, he turned up here every day. He was format early. Yeah, he’s got a great attitude. Yeah, it was just it was awesome. Everyone loved him. Like we want them on our team, like, what would have got to pay it? You know, and that’s awesome. That’s good tips. Great. Fixed term contract is probably more like, yeah, might be more likely. Yeah, something like it or, you know, like, or banking or maternity covers a common one, you know, someone’s like, or just a job that needs doing like, hey, we need you in here for six months to build our HR system, we currently don’t have an HR system, we need an HR system, go get an HR expert, fixed in three months, six months, nine months, whatever. Yeah, that’s cool. And then permanent is obviously in New Zealand, in the last world for the last 10 years, really, other than that dip and covid, six months sort of thing where things are a little bit uncertain. It’s always been permanent. But if you go to other markets in the world, particularly the UK contract is a lot more, sort of, it’s a more educated marketplace around that, as far as we’ve looked at parts of it contracts more. Yeah, a lot more used back then. Yeah. Even at the senior levels, you know, so we might see more of that in New Zealand. I’m surprised we don’t now, I think that I guess there’s a cost associated with it. So something like construction, for example, if you need a quantity surveyor, for a project and the project’s 12 months, but you know, after that 12 months, you’ve got a ton of work coming through. Yeah, because there’s massive demand for what these guys do at the moment. You’re just like, well, we just get to accelerate, they may have been there in our team, they’re in our culture, the downside of contract? Of course, it comes in gets a lot of your IP. It’s not there for a while. Yeah, I can walk out of all your systems and post through, you know, yeah, you know, so there is a rest there. And, you know, they’re not really they’re not my that integrate with the team, the culture, you’re trying to build it. So it depends on the job, really. But yeah, more established markets like the UK, like, there’s heaps of contractors, because on project base, it’s like, yeah, we’re doing this project. So it just makes sense. But once again, there’s a lot more financially, it’s a lot more costs. Yeah, a lot more costs. So yeah, yeah, there’s, there’s pros and cons. But we might see a more contract rich environment in New Zealand. If things do get an economy get unstable. Certainly people will be like, Oh, shit, you know, we’ve got this job, it’s gonna six more months, can we get someone contract? And there’ll be guys that people were available to do it. Whereas right now, a lot of the only other thing with that though, a lot of employers will want full time, right? So when the market starts going down, what will happen we’ll start getting guys hit us up, go, Oh, hey, you know, I’ve been contracting, don’t really work at the moment wouldn’t want, you know, got to cut all the way it’s. So I want to sell it, I want to sell your job now. So that’s where the market kind of goes two separate ways. But the employers actually wanting contract, and the contract is actually wanting security. So you’ve got all of a sudden you’ve got this weird dichotomy where it’s like, there wasn’t happening before because he the contract could have made way more money but then they got he didn’t want to pay it because it’s I’ve got so much work. I don’t want to pay a contract. I want to full time staff, because I’ve got this and then all of a sudden that paradigm changes with both parties want something different to be

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:38

Interesting. I’d like three top tips. So let’s just say we’ve got people listening in who are thinking about recruiting the three top tips you would say for when you’re considering recruiting how do you make a recruiters job easier? How do you make sure you get the right people to do like jobs, etc.

Peter Stewart  34:53

Yeah so, there’s a couple of things. I think the first thing is you’ve got to actually decide what it is you want and need. Yep. So it Yeah, get quite, you know, first thing is put together a job spec. Yep. And you’d be surprised how little thought often goes into this, like, what are you actually trying to do? So we’ll go see a client, like, what do you want? But are we need? Yeah, we need this or what for? Well, they don’t. And they’ve ever done this, how how’s the performance can be measured? And that these are the things need to be thinking about. Yeah, what are the what are the duties? What are the expectations? So you know, as the hiring manager, how’s the performance going to be measured? A lot of the times when we’re actually going through the initial phases with the employer, they can’t answer those questions. So as a whole, and then what you actually find is, you just say, system, the rain because you just need to, you just stated this, oh, no, sometimes, hey, what you’re what, or you’re bringing a knife to a gunfight, hey, you need something a lot more established, it’s going to cost a lot more so to tell you, but you know, you I know you’re trying to spend 80, this is going to be a 150 higher, to get what you what you want out of it. So that’s really important.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:59

So we use a thing called the accountability chart where you actually kind of say, This is what the role of that person is, and they have specific measurables that this is, this is what we’re going to hold you accountable for in that role. So that’s the first step is making sure you really understand what you want and need as it fits the overall structure. But the people around you.

Peter Stewart  36:14

Haven’t seen, you know, they might be like, oh, you know, we need a quiet sweat. So I would say don’t Oh, we’ve got this $40 million project coming up. And so what do you want to spin? It’s like this. This is this. This is serious role, you know, this is gonna be this project is going to be a business that turns over $40 million over the next 18 months. And you want to put a junior on it. Yeah, so I’m sorry to tell you about this is we get to spend so yeah. So there’s defining it really important. Then there’s the marketing. Right? So attraction. So you’ve got two options. Here you are the head hunt, user recruiter headhunting firm. Going to go and actively find candidates, tap them on the shoulder, so to speak. Tell them what’s so great about your company is why this change? Oh, you’ve got the other option, which is attract. So you do the marketing, you put on job boards, all that sort of stuff, LinkedIn, networking, all that kind of thing. Yep. To create a shortlist. And so there’s so there’s that. So I think.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:08

The most clients do a mixture of both, or is it?

Peter Stewart  37:11

Well, they actually as a team , if they kind of work well, because if you’re trying to hit hunt at the same time, you’re running a campaign. The candidates gonna think a couple of things to be fair, there are obviously no one’s No, no and see this ad to the ad. Or they might think, Oh, I didn’t know about there. That’s really cool. Thanks for telling me, I don’t want to miss out on that. So the advertising will create some sort of foro.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:36

Deadline as well, right with a deadline to actually apply.

Peter Stewart  37:40

Recruitment. A big part of benefit is for a recruiter as you need to, or even successfully recruiting. Staff member I’ll take the recruit out of it just you’re a person and your business haha, so on the needs to be level of urgency. And that process if you want to attract good talent and capture them? Yep. So don’t any sales fight, right? Yeah, if you want to get your client to sign up to contract, there needs to be a level of urgency on their site. So you need to set some dates around at what you’re actually what the purposes of you can, what the marketing will allow you to do is to create a competitive environment, where which will then put you in control the process, because right now the tail end and I was in the developed world, the, the, you know, the towers wagging the dog in terms of Yeah, employers trying to get talent. Yeah, it’s absolutely the other way around. It’s talent choosing what employer they want to work for. So So yeah, so that marketing will help you create a large talent pool. And then and then you feel free, of course, is obviously get them over the line, you know, getting negotiating that deal, how that needs to look, find it, but also finding out what they’re wanting out of it. So they’ve, this is what I like about attraction, because if someone’s looking for a job, you know, they’re motivated, they’re looking and there’s a reason for them looking. The view you’re on tap somebody out there, it’s, it’s fine. It’s fantastic. And obviously that’s miss a part of how the world spends Yeah, but you’re then having to go forward and go hey, this is what’s great about us. You’re having to sort of you’re reaching you know, you’re like this this is what’s great about us this you should come work here yeah, this is the best company ever. So

Debra Chantry-Taylor  39:20

And switch from what your new male and I used to to switch to something new.

Peter Stewart  39:23

Yeah. And you do run the risk of potentially and obviously in a hell of a lot of us in the last five years is where companies will oversell an opportunity. They will oversell Yes, they will oversell what their culture looks like they oversell what they do, man, like and then we’ll have or they’ll say, oh, yeah, we’re gonna give you equity. We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that. And then six months later, I said all the time, they will work can hurry up and say I’ve been promised all that stuff. That’s not happened. So expectations need to be clear, and it’s we’re doing the marketing which really helped because then you’re getting people that are looking You know, and I tell to the people that are actually actively in the marketplace looking for new opportunities, you say, Hey, here’s what we’ve got this how great it is, as computer environment, lots of people are applying for this, we’ve got a deadline, I think you’re going to increase your chances of getting a successful hire a lot more than going out and saying, and reaching someone out of a business who may or may not be looking. And it’s we and then the other problem then is we counteroffers right? So let’s say you’re, you know, you’re looking pay 100 someone’s like, I’ve done 120 So you say cool, I’ll pay you 120 Then has that hasn’t boy goes Well, shit, if I gotta, I gotta go pay recruiter 20 grand and lose this guy. So as far as productivity Have you started? Give me 150? I’ll give you an assist any, any they’ve got their relationship there, there’s suddenly offer silence like, Yeah, I can’t believe you’re leaving, like when you’re telling you that, you know, and it’s, it’s really, really tricky. So I think if you can to find what you need, do some great marketing, get a video, download the company’s owners get a video done. And then, and then yeah, make sure that, you know, we’re possible, make sure the expectations are really good. Make sure everyone’s on track. They know what’s expected of them. You know, if they can do a situation where you know, they come and meet some of the team members before a contract does, you know, like, we try and we are possible, we will try and yeah, we’re recruiting someone for links will shut down the road. There’s a bar down the road, we’ll go over a couple of drinks. So then, yeah, there’s some of the guy whoever’s around like, yeah, they have the whole whole thing. Me too. But yeah, we have some of the guys turn up for a drink. And there’s something about meeting them in that non formal setting. You just I don’t know, you just see this whole other side of that. It’s really bizarre. Yeah. Because we’re here on this. Yeah. Arranged marriage that you’re about to intervento. Yeah. So we had

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:45

Our best behavior. We’re kind of trying to

Peter Stewart  41:48

Minimize a year or two out you spend two hours with someone. So first interview, second review, which is rare in this market. Sight tests, maybe? References maybe? I mean, you like right, we’re gonna wait to get the next five years actually kind of insane. When you think about it. We have, you know, this big contract script because you can kind of meet someone fits

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:06

Dating for your marriage?

Peter Stewart  42:08

Well, that’s right. Like you go on to arrange dates, and then decide you want to get married. So it’s pretty wild when you think about it. So but yeah, those are the big, big pray to get around for gear.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:18

If you’re gonna measure detract, and advance a bit of both, and getting Oh, yeah, sure.

Peter Stewart  42:23

Rose is only going to be 20 candidates available in New Zealand. And that is what I see you’re gonna you’re gonna have to go out there and forcefully get your message across, or Yeah, and market saw that you are the pay more or you train more, right? Was your two options? Sure.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:39

Now recruiters get a bad rap. Why is that?

Peter Stewart  42:44

So the number one thing I think that we hear is our you know, apply for the job non combat to me. So it’s there’s a lack of comms or the other in the middle of a process and it drops out. So it’s a communication things probably boy, you know, apply for this job. And no one told me the, I guess, the unfortunate reality is, like recruitment companies, businesses at the end of the day, so they have financial targets. So every recruiter that works for recruitment company will have a target that he needs to hit so quickly, in New Zealand, it’s going to be somewhere around $20,000 per month. It’s hard to reach that target of you’re spinning your days, politely leading people down. So this is I mean, I mean, you know, this is something that people aren’t gonna want to hear. And, but it’s true. It’s the reality and the other thing too, I think most recruiters because recruiters are sitting there. And I probably sound like I’m making excuses for accreditors. And to be quite frank, I’m able to sit here and take the hat for the recruitment industry. It’s been good to me so like if you know uh, you know, recruiters face so much rejection on a daily basis. Yeah, it’s almost like one of those things where there’s like, a circle of trauma there repeating itself was like, the recruiters I gave it to the candidates and then the candidates, I came back to recruiters and the clients aren’t creators. know, everyone’s, everyone’s kind of bullshitting each other like, no one’s really like, you know, like, it’s a bit of a funny environment. In the perfect world, you would get an application successful ring the person said, Allah, thank you so much for your application. You’re not successful today. This is why have I got anything else on file differently? You know, let’s catch up for coffee or give you some advice. You just would not. Theory job mother’s like we need like, it’s a commercial base. You’ve got to go out there and make money. If you need career counseling, you need a CV servicing or you need help with your career and the direction and getting a role. There are other services for that recruitment agencies but a specialist recruitment agency is not that nice.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  44:55

Now you’re the matchmaker. You’re not there to actually work on

Peter Stewart  45:00

As for us, you know, nine times out of ten What were those specialists? Right? So someone’s coming to us for a quantity surveyor. Yeah, if somebody comes through, and they’ve got absolutely no experience in construction, or even accounting. Yeah. We can’t know, I think we have a moral obligation to go back to them. Yeah, I think. Fair enough. We’re trying that laughs but I don’t say so. So that’s probably the number one thing and then once again, it all comes down to those financial targets, like, that’s going to create the behavior. So you know, the, the incentive has been a recruitment console. Estimate deals. This is the same for real estate agent. Anybody in sales, any study any business, you know, so I think we’re recruitment because it’s quite a personal thing. It’s a job. And rejections really tough. So, yeah, as recruiters we get rejected all day, so we very facts go very quickly. A lot of people that we come across, haven’t had any massive rejection in their life like they’ve never, you know, then, yeah, yeah, they get rejected, or they’re not being got better, or whatever. They take really, personally, quite emotional about it. And yeah, I guess, fit emails like that, and cover one star reviews on go houses stuff, there was just, it was just Oh, via the realm of possibility for us to give that person the time. And I would love to, I’d love to have a customer care team of 50 people that were like talking to our clients. So when other candidates, everyone had been pro experience, how do we make the experience better? What do we do? We don’t have that resource. I wish we did. But maybe one day will be big enough, or we will have that kind of resource. And we won’t

Debra Chantry-Taylor  46:39

miss a different way of doing it, perhaps I mean, another way of doing it, but anyway, and

Peter Stewart  46:42

then and then some recruiters to be quite frank, I just just quite not, aren’t say dodgy, but like, there’s some pretty unscrupulous stuff. So isn’t it for the money? You know? And once again, it comes with the territory as as someone’s super money hungry? Yep, you are in a position where you you can you can you know, that you could place Canada into a client. And then three months later, you know, hey, what’s going on? Look at this other job. And we hear clients all the time will tell us Oh, you know, we, you know, we’ve spent X amount of dollars with this agency, six months later at the mouth, place them somewhere else. So that’s an unscrupulous. Yeah, there’s no way to resize that story. Just quality, because quite often, I can’t like you will get a call from Canada is I mean, it’s like sounds like, what’s been promised hasn’t been delivered. The culture sucks, that projects completely bought, you know, I mean, there’s all these things that obviously the employer wasn’t saying, the employer just said, Hey, look, we’ve got a bit of a battle here. We’re gonna pay you well, we need you help us get through this. Yeah, that’s a challenge. Yeah. Once again, it’s kind of it’s just getting people under the right pretense. Yeah.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  47:58

So what’s your ideal client look like? Who do you love working with?

Peter Stewart  48:01

So for us, it’s, it’s we’re dealing with some bigger clients now. But I do love working for SMA. It’s like companies that are growing 20 To 20 to 50 staff, maybe even more, you know, where we’re dealing with the owners direct. Yeah, that’s really, really cool. Because then we can build the relationship, understand the, the business of, you know, oh, one client, I didn’t get to recruit as much these days. But I had a client that must have been two or three years in recruitment, meet up with them for another client. And basically, they went for real gross bit, and I was like, the recruit of choice. And I recruited all these people, so I’d go into their office. Again, office. Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh, they spit. Yeah, these people. They’re like, you know, I got the front, you know, and it’s a slow, like, you know, how to get Tim you’ve built? Yeah, yeah. And that’s really cold. So, so businesses where we can have that sort of impact, and really help move the needle, and the organization. That’s cool. Don’t always get that it’s quite rare to get that opportunity these days. But that’s that’s what we really like,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  49:08

Midsize businesses out there that are you know, family owned, or privately. Yeah, definitely talked about starting to move the needle.

Peter Stewart  49:14

Yeah. I’ve always fought, you know, like, we can be like a champion for small businesses and help them compete for great talent that might otherwise be taken up by bigger companies. I kind of almost feel that that cycle is like a better version of Robin Hood. Sort of. So yeah, we can we can talk about the pros and cons of poaching. Yeah, we can quote someone really great for big corporate and put them into a small business and it transforms that small business develops all the people in that small business helps their careers. Do I mention it takes a phone from 20 to 50. Let’s go that’s a you’re making a huge impact, right? Yeah, this is about the fee like the fees limit fee wherever. Yeah. So you know, given the choice, that sort of business it would love to be able to help but yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  49:57

so if somebody is just sitting here listening and wants to get in contact with You had to do that do that.

Peter Stewart  50:01

Just yeah, we’ve sought links to criminal code on XID. Yep. Or just email will be Peter Atlas criminal code on Z. And, yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  50:08

Awesome. I really appreciate you being really honest about some of this stuff. I think sometimes we bullshit ourselves around some of the stuff that’s going on. So I appreciate your honesty and sharing that stuff. Just to recap, so the three things you can do, make sure you know what you want, and how that first of all measured, use a mixture of attraction which is you going out there and actually putting your best foot forward and ensuring that your business has the best possible possible light with some headhunting if required, and then you need somebody actually help you get them over the line and make sure that what you’re offering is what can actually deliver and that both parties are happy purchasing. Well, thank you so much for coming in. Appreciate it. Look forward to kind of following you with interest and and seeing where this this recession the other our word goes, will it be big will it be done? Will it be short, shallow, who knows? But yeah,

Peter Stewart  50:52

You’re gonna be wrong. That’s all I can tell you. It’s guaranteed

Debra Chantry-Taylor  50:56

Thanks, Appreciate your time.