Nicola: [00:00:00] Hi is Nick. And I am really, really excited today to introduce the new name of the podcast I wanted to pop on and introduce it because it’s a little bit of a, uh, shift back to where I was, but in the most brilliant way. And I, when I was in the corporate world, so I had a 16 year corporate market career and I worked in telecoms and tech companies and I put together I was a go-to market expert for a lot of that.

And then. Um, went into more commercial roles. So I Ram 2 million pound launches for these big tech and telecoms companies. And I loved what lot of what I did that. Then I moved into more of a commercial role. So looking at new product launches, pit the commercials together and my last roles ahead of commercial role.

So it felt very natural that over the last year, as I’ve very much focused on leadership and exec [00:01:00] coaching, I’ve moved naturally into more of a telecoms and a tech focus. Because I know that market. I know the challenges that women in those industry space. I know that you are likely to be the only woman in the room.

I know the more senior you get, the less women that you’ll see around you. I know at the very top, you are not likely to have many female peers. And I know at the early stage of your career, If you are in a role that’s engineering or more technical, again, you are likely to be a lone female voice in a room.

So it felt very natural when I came to the anniversary of the podcast and I wanted to think about the direction was taking to come back to that world. So the podcast is now called. Women at the top of telecoms and tech. So it’s a subtle change, but for me, it’s a really, really important one. If you are not in either of those industries, please don’t worry.

This still applies to you. Absolutely. But this is just to really demonstrate my focus, my commitment, and my [00:02:00] want to make changes in those industries where women are really, really hugely underrepresented. So maybe not so much at the junior levels, but the higher women get and the more they. To that the top table and the more that they are to be the lone voice, the more they are to feel potentially quite lonely, the more they are to feel that they are the only one speaking out on certain subjects.

They are the only ones that are challenging certain behaviors. So this to me is really just a mark and sand. These are the markets that I’m an absolute expert in. These are the ways that I can help you. And also I understand your lived experience. I know how you are feeling so that’s my very exciting news.

So just introducing the new name of the podcast. Women at the top of telecoms and tech. And I would love you to keep listening. If you’re not in that industry, everything’s still gonna be super relevant to you if you’re a woman at the top, but I would love you to share the podcast on your socials. I would love you to share an episode with a colleague or peer, if you think it’s useful to them [00:03:00] and something’s relevant, or I would love you to rate and review the podcast as we grow into this new audience.

So thank you so much for listening and thank you for being part of this. Hi, it’s Nick. Leah, just need to introduce a brilliant podcast guest that I’ve got on today. So this continues our week of interviews with women at the top and someone today that I’ve known probably for five or six years now, we were trying to remember how long and someone that’s helped me really establish my business in the early.

From someone that’s always been involving, always been really looking at what they’re doing and learning and taking more in different directions. Someone I really, um, inspired by and that’s the brilliant Helen was Pritchard is now tutor. Who’s just recently got married and Helen’s got a bit of a different approach to the tech and telecoms.

Well, because she had an online business, so she, um, has a business. That’s a LinkedIn mastermind. A great program. That again, when I first started my business, it was really [00:04:00] at the heart of my LinkedIn strategy marketing strategy that then boils into work and people more in their business to then helping them becoming directors of businesses that are starting up that are gonna just, um, make a real impact and disruptive in the marketplace.

So Helen’s always been someone that’s approached things differently. She’s always been true and honest and real, and just grown a huge amount over the last few years to get to where she is now. Um, the reason today is so relevant is cuz as I’ve been putting together white paper research, I’ve been talking to a lot of HR directors, board members and within telecoms and tech, there is a challenge around recruitment and this isn’t just around creating gender parity.

So recruiting women, this is just around. Recruiting for being organizations that are diverse, that are inclusive, that bring different lived experiences and different views of the world and perspectives to really have that innovation, but also the people that are very top talent. So really with this recruitment challenge, [00:05:00] Helen talks about it today, cuz she has new business that called candidate funnels that can really help with that.

But just some really great ideas on how to make your recruitment process for these incredibly competitive markets, how to make them more human, how to make them people feel valued, feel excited and not just like they’re just in a process and they’re not really. Any one of important. So I think this is gonna be incredibly helpful to many, many people listening today and just that switch away from joining an organization in that market, because it’s just a well known brand.

Actually what’s in it for me. Why should I join? What am I gonna get? How can I make it, how’s it gonna allow me to make a difference? So, yeah, I think this one is quite different on by apps that you loved what she had to say. And yeah, just having been through recruitment process before, know that feeling.

So this is how we can make that recruitment process more human and more inclusive. So, um, hope you enjoy it. Today’s episode. I’d love to know what you think. All my details [00:06:00] from the show notes, and you can contact Helen as well through all the details in the show. Thanks so much. Enjoy bye. Hello everyone.

And welcome to what was known as female leaders on fire podcast. Now known as women at the top of tech and telecoms, and I’m really excited today. Cause I’ve got a great guest with me today. This is someone that helped me. In some, probably quite dark times and someone that, um, I just think always is evolving and doing new things that I just always look up to and kind of see what she’s doing now has got the brilliantly, newly married as well, Helens.

So we’re, I’m about seven weeks behind you, Helen. So I’ve been, uh, seeing all your photos and just some brilliant, brilliant day. So just to introduce Helen, so. Helen, um, started out. She was a, a single, she was a single mom when she started a business and recently divorced, but she really focused in on LinkedIn.

And she’s a person that kind of helped me early on with all my LinkedIn strategy, but I’m certainly not the only one she’s helped. So she’s generated. About 2.5 million just from [00:07:00] a LinkedIn mastermind, which I highly recommend, just so that you are actually getting leads from LinkedIn, rather than just sharing random things and just commenting on random posts.

It’s very strategic and helped me a lot early on from my clients. She estimate she’s generated about 10 million pounds worth of business for them, probably a lot more now. And then through her free challenges and different things, she’s helped about 40,000 people to make more money. Love money, have a good relationship with money and be a good person.

So not be an idiot doing it as well. And she’s now a director of a few new businesses, but also one that focuses specifically on recruitment. So we are gonna talk today a little bit about her story, about how she got to where she is, what her biggest lessons. Some of the leadership skills she has, cuz she’s always doing something different and evolving, but also why is this a struggle for recruitment within tech and telecoms and yeah.

What can organizations do because the people are there. They’re just not really recruiting in the right way. So welcome Helen. Great to see you.

Helen: It’s quite the [00:08:00] introduction Cola. I’ve done my research, Helen I like that. Yeah. That’s cause I wouldn’t fill in your form, so I apologize. She would. So it’s like,

Nicola: it’s fine, Becky, and I would do it for you.

Helen: yeah. Um, so yeah, thanks for that. It’s been a it’s bit like we were saying just before we started recording, we’ve been, you know, friends for maybe five, six years, quite a long time in the entrepreneurial space, you know, so things tend to evolve, but actually, I, I think the thing that. The secret to my success, if you like, um, was doing the same thing consistently for five years.

And it’s only really been the last 12 to 18 months where I’ve really expanded that out and, and sort of leveraged everything I’ve learned and taken it into new markets, building a big online business. Like I did. The link to mastermind was a huge learning. Curve for me, obviously it just scaled really super quickly.

And like you say, I was a, you know, a single mom I’ve sort of done some social media agency type kind of business before, but coming into the online space and learning like so fast, like it [00:09:00] scaled so fast, you know, you’ve obviously seen me do it. We went from making, you know, maybe 10 grand in the launch to a hundred grand and then 200 grand.

And we were doing these huge launches and. With with, with that comes so many things that tested me in so many ways. And, and again, you’ve seen that, you know, from a, a leadership point of view and then having to lead these communities that I’ve built, you know, we’ve got 2000 people in the, in the mastermind program.

Through the pandemic, you know, having to sort of model leadership to a lot of people when they’re going to be more visible on things like LinkedIn, you know, I really had to stop being so defensive and aggressive and obsessive online because when I first went into LinkedIn, like nobody wanted to agree with me.

So when I came to LinkedIn, I said, when I was doing my LinkedIn stuff and. I was saying to people, look, this is how you can get loose on LinkedIn and you don’t have to send direct messages and you don’t have to write personalized connection requests and you don’t have to spam people with stuff, and you [00:10:00] don’t have to, you know, worry about what time to post the whole kind of market community were quite upset by that.

And particularly the LinkedIn training people, because they’ve been saying for years the opposite, you know, you, you know, you should be sending messages, you should be doing all these things. So I got a lot of, a lot of kickback when I became very successful very quickly. And I think. You know, there’s definitely an element of women getting really successful, you know, in an, in a very masculine, dominated space, which was the LinkedIn marketing world.

You know, there’s a lot of men in it. And, and I think I, I got a lot of pushback and I really try to defend myself to the death. Now I’ve got, obviously got this success behind. I’m kind of so much more chill. I don’t get into online arguments. Don’t like get into on the online debates. People don’t like me.

They don’t like my work. That’s fine. So I’ve definitely evolved as much as a human being. Um, , you know, as I have, as a business owner, you know, I’m so much more chilled now in a lot of ways. And you know, even before I met my husband, you know, [00:11:00] I’ve definitely come to the conclusion that, you know, the best revenge is success and I should just keep doing what I was doing.

Cause it was working. I’m focusing on the people that did love me and did get great results. So yeah, been a wild ride, really in a lot of ways, and I wouldn’t swap it and everything that I’ve learned, I’m bringing to the new, to the new business, you know, so I think it gives me a really interesting context into the, into the real world as I call it.

I say, we’ve got the online world and we’ve got the real world . Um, and I used to do consulting into corporate before I went off to do the online thing and, you know, five years. I used to consult into recruitment strategy and, and recruitment, marketing, and advertising. Then five years out, I’ve come back to it.

And it’s a million times worse than how I left it. It’s not, not, it’s not that it’s not changed. It’s like everything’s changed, but there’s a real. Real crisis. So the new business candidate funnels is about bringing everything I’ve learned in the online space and how to make people [00:12:00] feel like an automated process is personalized and humanized and make tech work for you to make people feel valued and respected and responded to.

And that’s how we, we make business. That’s how we make sales by making our customers feel amazing. And I really, I literally sat up in bed. One night. And I was like, Stu Stu and then he owns a Woodyard and a CCTV business. So he is not in a nice space, but I was like, Stu, I’ve got to take this to recruitment.

I’ve gotta take, instead of helping people get more business, I need to help people recruit better. And he was like, yeah, yeah, great. Whatever you, whatever you need to do. And I was like, no, but everything I’ve learned about making clients feel like they’re part of something amazing. We need to take that into the recruitment space.

So, so I’m back, but it’s, it’s again, it’s, it’s a mess. It really is. It really, really is

Nicola: you say that actually, cuz I I’ve gone back in. So when I was in, um, corporate, I worked in tech and [00:13:00] telecoms, so just big geeky launches of new brand new products and new to the world technology and all that kind of stuff.

And. Similar to you. I probably had an aversion. I thought, you know, I don’t, I don’t wanna be back there. That’s my history. It’s not my future. But actually now specifically going back to, yeah, changing the name of the podcast, working with women, drawing naturally women, to me that are at the top of those, those worlds it’s like, has the, is it actually changed very much?

In some ways, not at all, like the innovation’s always been fast paced and the new products and all that, that those things are, but actually just that’s part of the nature of the business. So that’s that or the market, but the bit that hasn’t changed is women still get talked over in meetings. Women still are the only often the only ones in a room.

Women still have to be really brave even to apply for something. Cuz they know that they’re, if they’re in a more technical role or even if they’re within marketing or product market, they’re still probably gonna be one of few. So almost they [00:14:00] have to have that, that bravery and that kind of resilience built in.

Otherwise it’s not gonna be the place for them. And it’s, it’s interesting when you go back in a different format or different way, isn’t it to the market and you. It’s actually no different in a lot of ways.

Helen: Yeah. It’s like, it’s almost stood still. And then yeah, it hasn’t in the same time. It’s really interesting because I feel like it’s almost like, you know, when someone goes away traveling and they come back and they’re like, it’s like, I’ve been in another world and I’m.

The, I love the people within these organizations. It’s not the people that are really the problem. Yeah. It’s, it’s the culture and the processes that are in place when it comes to recruitment that are the problem. And that’s what I’m trying to change. Not the people I wanna help people. I’ve got HRDs on calls with me.

They’re on their knees. Like they need help. They’re not hostile to me. They’re like, help me. I need to recruit better people because we’re doing great work and I can’t do my job. We can’t find the people. Cause it’s not that people don’t think they’ve got a problem. It’s just, they’re not [00:15:00] sure where to start when it comes to changing something so huge as we’ve always recruited this way.

Yeah. And I haven’t got the time, the energy, the resource. To do something different. So it’s not a criticism of the people at all. Yeah. It’s, it’s definitely a criticism of the culture of some companies and, you know, and, and I’m not here to try and change the whole culture, but I’m here to say, you’ve got a problem and you need to, and I post on LinkedIn today.

It’s like, The first step to fixing your recruitment problem is admitting you’ve got a recruitment problem and you have ability to change it. Cuz I think people go so external, you know, it’s the government, it’s the candidates, it’s the job sites. It’s the recruiters, you know, it’s everything but not us.

And yeah, I on a real. Mission to bring the marketing skills that I’ve got, but bring it into attracting amazing candidates because it matters. But it’s interesting what you said about getting talked to and stuff. So I’m doing this with Paul Green. So Paul Green and I met in the online space and, um, we, we are doing this together [00:16:00] as a, you know, 50, 50 co-founders of candidate funnels and he’s an ex he’s not action.

So that he’s an airline pilot, but he’s not flying currently. Um, and he’s very process driven. Yeah. So we work really well together. So I’m, I’m strategic. And everything. And he, he does a delivery. It’s that classic, visionary integrator that’s in that book, rocket fuel. And I’ll send an email and they’ll reply, just a Paul.

Really I’ll talk to Paul in the meetings and they’ll, you know, it’s really interesting. So, oh my God. It’s just,

Nicola: it’s

Helen: just unbelievable. It’s still, we laugh about it. I’m like, oh, it’s oh, I know it’s cuz you a man, you know, it doesn’t bother me particularly because we still, you know, we still do the work, but it’s like unconscious bias.

It’s you forget how prevalent it is. Every every day and everything that we do. And I don’t really focus on it, particularly myself personally, cuz I think I’ve made my own opportunities and I’ve, I’ve done amazing things. And you know, I think being a woman is definitely a [00:17:00] superpower, you know, especially, you know, being a single woman and you know, and all that and digging myself out of debt and all that stuff, all that, you know, Back story, mental health and all the rest of it.

But the online space has made me super resilient. And also, I just love the, I just love the corporate world. It’s nice. It’s it’s growing up, people doing grown up jobs a lot of the time, you know, whereas the online space and you’ll know this isn’t, it you’ve been in it with me. It’s not always like that.

You know, it’s kind of like this weird, you know, snake pit of people that are just behaving in really weird ways that live their lives through social media. And obviously I’m part of it, part of the problem, I suppose. But yeah, I do love having calls with really senior people who work hard. Who’ve got great careers, you know, who were in, like I say, the real world.

And they just, they wanna do something different and they’re open to it, you know? And that that’s the dream for me. And having those conversations really important for me. Yeah.

Nicola: And definitely the women, I work with the, the people [00:18:00] that are gonna drive change. So yeah, more resilient. I can make them the more confident I can make them the more, the more I can bring them out on themselves.

They are who they are at work as well. Be that role model. They are the women that are gonna change what’s going on in the corporate Wells. So it’s. And we talked, I talked to, um, a couple of women this week about for podcast interviews as well. And one of them was saying, I believe as a woman at the top of these type of markets, you’ve got your job and then you’ve got your job plus, and your job plus is almost being on those calls or running those workshops or.

You know, promoting articles that you’re writing on LinkedIn and just that being that voice of actually we need to drive

Helen: change here. Yeah, definitely the job plus is a definite thing. And that’s what I think almost that’s one of the things you wanna recruit for as well. And one of the things that we really focus on is when we’re doing our, our funnels is to really ask people in detail who they are as a person and what they like, what they’re interested in and what they do out of work and what they do, you know, what they do associated [00:19:00] work that isn’t.

Like part of their role and stuff like that, because it is the people who are wanting to make a difference in the industry that wanna write the papers. They wanna speak on stages. They wanna write the books, they wanna do the additional stuff that are really they’re mission led rather than yeah. Job led.

Right. So, absolutely. I mean, it’s just incredible and. The thing is that big corporations give women like that a platform, which is great. Cause, uh, again, the online basis, I see a lot of people who are great, they just haven’t got the resources to get visible, you know, and it’s, and it’s really challenging.

And I sometimes sort of fantasize, you know, what would it like to be a marketing director in a massive company? You either the unlimited budget, you know, you seen what, what, what I can do. With, you know, basically nothing from nothing, you know, and my friend, she’s a very senior, she’s very senior, a big brand.

She’s an market director and we go out for dinner. I’m like, tell me what your budget is. And she’s like, well, I’ve got like, you know, we got a hundred grand for this and then we’ve got a million for that. And then it’s just like, oh, imagine what I could do with it. [00:20:00] So they’ve got a lot of power in a lot of ways, you know, because they, they they’re particularly if they’re part of a big brand or like say they’re at the forefront of innovation.

And they, they’ve got a lot of opportunity to, to make a difference. They’ve got a good platform. So like you say, the work you do with them is really important because that amplification makes a big

Nicola: difference. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s that, that louder, their voice gets more confident, gets louder, has more impact.

It’s more listened to. Um, and then, then they’re not just the unicorn. That’s the only one in the room, cuz it’s actually, people are saying I can, why

Helen: can’t I do. Yeah, exactly. And that inspiration and again, that job plus thing is that responsibility to mentor and to encourage and give confidence to the women coming up underneath you.

Right. And behind you and, and like, say. Showing what’s possible. I mean, I get, I get called in inspiration a lot, which is, makes me a little bit uncomfortable, but I’ve been trying to get good at, you know, and my daughters actually did a, a speech at the [00:21:00] wedding and they were just like, mom, mom, you know, mum’s my inspiration.

They don’t say this in my face. You know, day to day, mom get off TikTok and I’m so bored seeing on Facebook, whatever, but. You know, they said, you know, there was three of us were living like best friends and mom worked so hard to give us everything that we needed. You know, we went to, you know, to New York and, and Dubai and, and, you know, she, she worked so hard for us and she’s like, you know, a great role model.

She’s been a mom of dad tour. So obviously we are all crying, you know, all like in tears and. And, you know, then you realize that as a woman, you know, you’ve got this responsibility. So for me, when I felt like it was really hard and I was getting a lot of grief and it was, you know, difficult, I was like, no, it’s really important for me to keep showing up because I need to show my daughters that, that resilience.

I need to show my audience that resilience. I need to show my paying clients, that level of resilience. Yeah, just keep doing it. And I think it’s the same in corporate, you know, you’ve got you. If you’re on that kind of pedestal, you know, you’ve got a responsibility to, to yeah. To, to role model for everyone who’s watching [00:22:00] home and, and in work.

Yeah. Yeah,

Nicola: definitely. Definitely. I think that’s part of, a lot of the conversation I have is it’s almost that responsibility is beyond. Is more than you is more than your role. It’s more than to the organization. It’s that all the, all the eyes that are watching you and how you’re getting on and how you are performing and how you are

Helen: doing it.

Yeah. And LinkedIn’s great to amplify that as well, right? Because you can build a really big audience on there and, and have a real impact and, and have your voice heard. And I think, again, I, I’d love to see more employers encouraging that and encouraging people to have a voice on LinkedIn and to, to really use a platform.

Cause it’s great. For grant awareness,

Nicola: you know? Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to some of the women I talked to this week recently been doing some different programs that are effectively the job plus part around. How, what do I talk about on LinkedIn? All the things that, you know, you teach around, what do I actually say?

What do I want my voice to be like, how do I want to be heard? Who do I wanna engage with? and actually seeing them take that [00:23:00] seriously and go on a program for, you know, 30 days worth of content, for example. And she’s like, it’s just changed my entire perception of it. It’s changed what I think I can do with my voice.

And I have people adding me now. I have people asking me questions coming in my inbox. I’m here on this podcast. You know, all these things that that’s part of what they see as their responsibility that I think is just amazing for them to kind of own it and yeah. Want to. Make more and more impact. So when I was talking to, when I was talking to the HR director yesterday, just for my white paper research, we got talking about part of the problem is almost like this recruitment process.

It’s almost wider than women. So I obviously, I, I help organizations close to gender pay gap. And I worked on with women who I’m consulting with their board. But it’s almost like this assumption that it’s, it’s a woman problem. It’s not, it’s effectively recruitment of diversity into those sort of markets.

So what, why do you think it’s so difficult? [00:24:00] Because the HR director was almost saying, like, we just don’t seem to have the

Helen: pool of people. It’s a resource allocation problem. So look at any major organization and look at the size of their marketing department. Yeah. And then look at their HR recruitment depart.

Normally a couple of people. Right. And they’ve got a lot of other things to do. So it’s, it’s a branding problem. It’s a PR problem. So it’s all about recruitment marketing. So how can you make your organization and the roles within it seem irresistible. Yeah. To top talent and. Putting out the same job ad on indeed or in the back of a newspaper is just not gonna quit it.

So, you know, the ons data is showing us that we’re in a huge recruitment crisis. There’s like 4,000 more jobs in people. So really good people have their pick of their jobs. So there’s a lot of. Things every step of the way, from the way that you represent your organization at that first point of [00:25:00] contact to your content, you’re putting out.

So when you put a job ad out on something like, say LinkedIn, or say, maybe you run a face, so we do a lot of Facebook ads, but, or maybe you put a job out, does it have representation of different people? Yeah. You know, do you show when you show how great your organization are wo work in, does it, does it represent.

Cross section of society. Yeah. So there’s little tiny things like that that you can look at. And we’ve got an ed and I consultant who, who works with us, um, to make sure that everything’s, you know, inclusive and yeah. And, and I think that’s really important, but people don’t, you know, organizations don’t do that.

So then it can come down to things like, so when somebody applies for job, what happens. The answer is normally nothing for a period of time. Yeah. So one of the things that we do is you put in automated funnels in, so people go straight into an interactive process that finds out all these data points about them, feeds them up loads of great content about the organization, about the hiring manager, about the people who work.

[00:26:00] So this all singing, all dancing thing that happens automatically. So somebody applies at nine o’clock at night as a lot of people do. Then they start to see all of that content straight away, you know, but they don’t have to wait until someone comes into the office the next day and sends ’em an email or rings them up or whatever.

And then when people go into the actual recruitment process itself, well, sometimes we’re talking about two, three interviews a lot of time. Remember that these are your star players. And they will be being wooed by lots of other companies at the same time. And it it’s, it’s like anything, if you, if they, if that person doesn’t feel important and humanized in that process, if they feel like they are just part of a process, they’ve gone into an ATS, they might get an email and even worse if they’re not successful, they just won’t hear.

Yeah. That’s the one thing that I. Outlaw. If I, if I was on a mission to outlaw DMing on LinkedIn, this time I’m on a mission, make sure that rejected candidates get told about it. Like at what point did we think it was okay to [00:27:00] say, if you’ve not heard from those in four weeks, assume you’ve not been successful.

Like it’s just not, okay. This is what I mean. This is like staff standard practice. Not acceptable in a candidate, rich market. You think that’s

Nicola: resource again? Do you think that’s just the time it would take to give feedback and go back to people?

Helen: I don’t think it’s feedback because you can just engage with people.

Automated email wise, you can trigger people can, you can trigger an email sequence that says, look, we’re really sorry, but you weren’t successful this time. It’s not that difficult. We’ve been doing this stuff in the online space forever and ever. But it’s, it’s almost like they haven’t really thought about email automation in a HR department because they’re still 10 years ago, we send emails, you know, , there’s not, they’ve not thought about how can we put people into automated email functions so that you can decide, right?

All these 20 people, they go into this place they’re not been successful. And it doesn’t always have to be personalized feedback, but you need to at least respect, somebody’s a human enough to send, to let them know they’re not gonna be taken. That

Nicola: clarity that actually, yeah,

Helen: that it’s Chloe show, isn’t it?

Yeah, exactly. But you know, these [00:28:00] are human beings, these aren’t CVS and job specs and per it is just, it’s. One of the first things that I do with, with an organization is go right. Let’s apply for a job. Let’s go through your application process. It’s it’s such an eyeopener because the people at the top never had to do it.

Right. Cause they’ve been there for years and they’ve, you know, probably didn’t reply . Yeah, exactly. And they don’t get a reply or the, you know, the links are broken or the job are just boring. Nothing happens for days on end. And what happens is you’ve got two real danger points. One is when, so if you think the top talent, and this is the other thing is they don’t map out their ideal candidate.

They just put a job ad and hope somebody fits it instead of actually thinking what the values, the behaviors that we’re looking for. So mag not your ideal candidate. So let’s say your number one ideal candidate sees your job a. Again, you’ve gotta put a bit of effort to get it in front of them because they’re not actively looking for a job.

They’re passive they’re they’re at home. So this is why paid advertising [00:29:00] works really well. So you can get into their phones while they’re watching, you know, love island and having a glass of wine instead of, you know, they’re not actually actively looking for a job. Um, so your ideal client, your ideal candidate, sorry.

They see this ad. They, they click to apply. There’s two massive danger points. One is what happens next. So if it’s radio silence until their CV or their application gets to a point where somebody in HR can message them back, good chance you’ll have lost them. Cuz they’re probably, if you can encourage that, if they think I’m interested looking at that job, then they’re in a danger zone and looking at others, most good candidates have got three or four on the go.

And then the other danger zone is if they, when they have applied and they’ve been successful, you’ve taught all that time and efforting, they normally go into a notice period and then we’re at the real risky. Risky section where they just get cold feet, generally decide to stay where they are or they get the counter offer.

Yeah. So what we do is we put interaction and interactive emails in, in both of those kind of danger zones so that people remain engaged. They’re being fed content about the [00:30:00] organization. They’re getting excited and interested in, in what the role’s gonna be and how they can make a difference. And it’s just, it’s a marketing.

Process it’s a sales funnel, but the job is the thing that you’re selling and the candidate is the person who’s paying it.

Nicola: And do you think, do you think there’s because of like millennial millennials and. Just that more demanding nature now of can they, I don’t. So I don’t so a myth or is this a real thing or I think I’m quite old.

So

Helen: I think it’s bit of a myth, right? Because traditionally there’s been more jobs and people, right. So it’s almost like when people are coming in and saying, well, I want this, this and this people are like, well, you don’t cuz you, this is what we’re offering this, this and this, but now we’ve got more, you know, we, we’ve got a position where people have got a choice of.

And they’re kind of like they’re in higher demand when it’s like drought candidate, drought situation, um, they do get to call the shots. You need them more than they need you now. So definitely the energy’s changed. I think the millennial thing was very [00:31:00] much a, a sort of moment in time where people stopped being taken advantage of.

As a candidate. I think that’s what it was. I think people were like, you know what? We’ve got options. We could come and work for you. We can go and join the gig economy. We go and work anywhere in the world. We can start our own business. You know, we’ve got options and a bean bags and a pool table. Isn’t gonna cut it.

We want more from our role, we wanna feel. And it’s not always money. It’s very much, you know, when we speak, sit down with a client and say like, who’s been your best hire ever, you know? And also who’s. Biggest disaster. Yeah, it’s never to do with the skills. And their qualifications, it’s always due with their values and behaviors.

So actually I think the millennial kind of thing is all about, they want more than just a salary and we’ve got this and it’s the same with like the over fifties, same with graduates. People are like, I don’t a salary in 20 days holidays, like the minimum to [00:32:00] get me there. And then after that, it’s like, how is this gonna enrich my life?

How is it gonna make me feel better? Like what, what am I gonna get out of it? And I think. There’s no such thing as bad roles or bad candidates. I think it’s always bad fit, but if you really want the right people, the right thousand behaviors, take some time to understand what they really want, how this is gonna benefit them.

Almost like what outcomes is this gonna job gonna deliver for them as a person, as a human being with a, a life and a family and hopes and dreams, you know, not just can we get a body to come and sit in the office and do this work. And that’s every role at every level. Every role at every level, there’s not just senior stuff.

This is every role. You know, you wanna get a girl in concert on reception or a boy in set reception, or, you know, any other gender , um, you know, they still wanna be coming in and feeling part of it and valued and respected and humanized. And we’ve just gotta move away from that. You’re lucky to have a job that we had in the sort of fifties and [00:33:00] sixties.

Yeah. And into. We are a forward thinking progressive company and we are prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure that when people apply for a job with us, they have an amazing experience when they come and work for us, they wanna stay. Um, and we do that by making sure we recruit the right people in the first place.

It’s always, yeah. Always comes down to the recruitment process and understanding. What is in it for them and what do you want to get out of them? And then making it a win-win instead of it being so one sided and almost arrogant of we’re a great company to work for. So you should more wanna work for

Nicola: us.

You’d be lucky to have us on your CV. And it was kind of when I was in that world, it was like, well, You’re coming from a smaller company, this huge company, you you’d be fortunate to join it. Yeah.

Helen: I mean, it’s gotta stop really? Yeah. If you want the right people, it’s gotta stop. If you want the best people, it’s gotta stop because the best people won’t be treated like that.

The, the middle of the road, people, you can probably get away with that, but the real top talent. So just want a habit. They’ve got too many other [00:34:00] options. They’ve got 10 companies just like yours to choose from. You’re not that special. Like, you know, they are gonna give you their heart and soul and the majority of their day and the majority of their.

So you wanna make sure that you are meeting your half of the bargain? Definitely.

Nicola: So for companies that are not being successful, getting those, that, those dream people in at the moment and that top talent, what can they start to look at? Where should they start to kind of challenge and question

Helen: themselves?

Yeah, well, that is, it is down to becoming introspective and just being honest and it, the way that I like to do it is to get a number of people in the room. It’s really interesting when you get a variety of opinions on the recruitment problem, right? And when you start to talk about who is the dream person for this what’s the year wants, isn’t always the person that the, the manager wants.

And it also isn’t the person that the person’s gonna be working for them once. So it’s really interesting to see things from lots of different perspectives of what people really truly want, because. That’s the number one thing I think is [00:35:00] to really focus on mapping out one real dream higher, who would have everything you could ever want this unicorn, you know, and I’m not saying that you’ll always get them, but when you actually know what you’re looking for and you really understand their motivators, then you can write a job ad for.

Until then it’s always gonna be generic. You know, you’ll recognize all of this stuff, Nicola from the work I do with clients. Right. But you can’t write a job ad to speak to your ideal candidate if you don’t know what your ideal candidate wants. So when you know that, that’s the number one thing I think, because that changes.

How people click and how people motivate themselves to actually make a decision when you talk to them and how they feel, and what’s going on in their world rather than talking about how great you are and how great your company is. That’s subtle, but very, very, you know, significant change will.

Completely change. The people that you’ll get apply in. So that’s the easiest thing. And then also being really focused on where those ads are going and not [00:36:00] always looking for the active candidates and looking instead for people who are brilliant and will come to you for the right package, the right again, who, who will, you can emotionally engage them to move and make that big decision.

They’re they’re they best candidates. The people that are usually, usually not always, but usually usually in work. And I think again, If I disrupted the LinkedIn training space by saying let’s make our LinkedIn profiles about our ideal clients and not about us. It’s like, it’s the same thing. Let’s make your job ads about your idol candidates and not about you.

Yeah. Yeah,

Nicola: absolutely. And I think that just is such a shift away. And if I do think back to when I, when I was in those, those worlds and my, my biggest steps up and my biggest changes and the most impactful in my career were the ones where someone will come to me and say, we’ve got this. I was like, oh, it’s gonna have to be really good to kind of pull me out where I am.

I’m kind of, I like a lot of it. So. And then also for me, then it was [00:37:00] going in with a different attitude of like, I don’t really need this. I’m pretty happy where I am. So you’re gonna have to pull me out of it rather than yeah. So then it’s almost like, I felt like I was interviewing them. Yeah. As well.

Like, do I actually wanna be here? Do I wanna commute this far? Do I want this role? Do I wanna work this guy? Am I inspired by the people around me.

Helen: Yeah. But then if the answers are yes, then you are the dream higher. Yeah. You know, then you’re gonna get everything that comes with that. Yeah. And you’re making that decision.

You want people to, to, to want to work at your company and to be excited. About the opportunity, different energy,

Nicola: isn’t it than someone just, oh, just take this. Cause it’ll

Helen: pay the bills and, and making someone jump through 25 hoops, you know, go through five or six interviews and people just get, just get annoyed and think, you know what?

I’m worth more than this. I’m. I’m gonna stay where I am, or I was gonna go and get a different job or do my own thing. Like good people have options and you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta work hard. And people say, oh, we can’t bang good people. And I would say you don’t, you’re not working hard enough to find them.

[00:38:00] That’s the thing. And I’m really thinking creatively about where they are. Yeah. You know that like, you know, I’ve done head hunting in the past, and sometimes it’s just going to the events where these people are, you know, and talking to people and, and asking for referrals and using your LinkedIn to look for referrals rather than the clients and stuff, rather than candidates.

And I think, again, it’s just my market and brain thinks differently to a HR or internal recruiter brain. So that’s why I like to bring the two things together. And yeah, just treat it like a campaign, a marketing campaign. Yeah.

Nicola: Yeah. And definitely, and we, you see so many of those, um, a company picks out a job ad and then obviously it’s in someone’s air and they’re like this great job.

And it’s like needs a bit more than that. Like yeah. It’s it doesn’t say much do much. Yeah. And then I think I saw something yesterday. It was why join our team. And I think it was like, Cake on a Friday, a Mo bitch and win session, like every other week, like some really like different

Helen: things. I was like, oh my [00:39:00] God, that that’s different.

The energy’s different, different, the energy’s different and it’s not fit the room, my team.

Nicola: And just like, get, pick off my chest so I can go and get all my

Helen: action. Yeah. It’s a pattern interrupt. And again, it’s good marketing. It’s a pattern interrupt. So it’s just recruitment marketing really, but it’s thinking differently and, and being bold with it.

That’s what I would say is it does. Bravery and boldness to do something different, but luckily for me, The whole process is so broken that people are kind of ready to do it now, do you know what I mean? Like kind of like this can’t really get any worse. We are really struggling to find roles or we are really struggling to find volume.

They’re the two main problems. Um, and I think people are ready now. Let’s, let’s do something different. I’d like to see the whole world recruit with candidate funnels in the future because. It’s just a better experience for everybody, you know, for the candidate and also for the client, because that it’s all automated.

So you don’t have to worry about, have we emailed that person back? It’s kind of, it’s all automated. And when it’s your turn to do something interactive and personal, like a personalized video, it’s one of the things that we put [00:40:00] in. It’ll it’ll drop into your dashboard and it’ll say you need to send a personalized video.

It’s this person who’s gone through that next stage. You know? So it’s, it actually takes off, it sounds like a lot to put in place, but actually takes off a lot of pressure long term from people who are really busy and got a lot of other stuff to do.

Nicola: Yeah. And I think the other part that I, I often see on LinkedIn is almost if there’s certain job.

So I worked with a client a couple of weeks ago, and she’s, she’s looking for a job at the moment and she’s

very,

Nicola: very senior. So for her more, it’d be more around referrals and probably head hunting and networking. But she’s saying when there’s jobs on LinkedIn, there’d be like, um, chief marketing officer.

I dunno whether that’s one for 50 K or whether that’s one for two 50 K cause the salary is a secret, like, yeah. Why would you make the salary? Like let’s not wait

Helen: board level exec

Nicola: CMO. I’m not head of marketing

Helen: role. It’s very different. Yeah. Well, again, it’s just, that’s how it’s always been done, but we can do it differently.

It’s okay. But again, you have to have boldness and bravery to do that. [00:41:00] Same as putting your prices out publicly. You know, when you, when you start out in business, it’s it, it made you uncomfortable, but that’s okay because it’s gonna save you time in the long run because you really don’t wanna be interviewing people at 50 grand level when it’s a 250 grand job.

So just it’s all about. Making it easier for you and the only people you should be physically talking to are people who are qualified and, and, and they were great and have gone through the process. And we put in interactive quizzes in, so you ask people lots of different things. So instead of having a CV, you’ve got 40 different data points on somebody’s values and behaviors.

So it makes those conversations a lot more enriched and a lot more productive than, than, than your average. You know, somebody just walks in and you’ve got a CV in front of you and you’ve got to sort of start building rapport. You’ve got a lot, lot better quality conversation. And again, this is from my online work.

You know, if I’m, if I’ve got a client, if they’re filled in a scorecard, they’ve given me loads and loads of data, I can provide a much more enriched sales call [00:42:00] basically because I already know their problems and yeah. Which areas to focus on. So when you really understand what motivates someone, you can sell the job to them in the interview.

Much more strategically than, yeah. Trying to find out in that, in that session. Yeah.

Nicola: Oh, brilliant. It’s so needed. What’s is there a final message for our audience today? Just around what they’re facing, maybe around

Helen: recruiting and just, it’s not what I’d say is like, it’s not your fault. It’s not a, it’s not a negative that there’s a problem.

It’s a positive that there’s a problem because we can fix it. That’s what I’d say. It’s like, we’re all on the same bus. We all want the same thing. We’re all trying to get. Fixing the problem of there’s loads of great talent out there. And there’s loads of great companies and we’re just trying to build a bridge to bring them together.

So we’re all on the same side. It’s not this isn’t a criticism. This is just a realization that there’s a problem and we can fix it. Love it.

Nicola: And where can, where can people find out more about all this new, great stuff you’re doing? So

Helen: candidate [00:43:00] funnels dot code UK. You can go on there and you can fill in our scorecard, which will give you the similar kind of experience that your candidates would get.

And then you’ll get your videos from me. You’ll get a, you know, personalized video. So you actually. We show you, don’t tell you what a funnel feels like. And then, and then yeah, you can come on and, and book a call and, and chat to us. And genuinely, you know, we are a very small boutique agency. There’s only two of us, you know, we’re doing a lot of the work at the moment.

So we can’t take on loads of clients, but I’m desperate to speak to people. I wanna have more conversations. I wanna really understand what’s going on so we can build solutions that don’t involve mind and ity, you know, so we’re just working really hard. Gauging what’s going on in the market. So the more conversations I can have, the better the business can be.

So I’d really appreciate get in touch with

Nicola: Helen. right. Thank you so much. It’s so good to you. This is ju thank you very

Helen: much. And best of luck with your upcoming working. Yeah, thank . Okay. Thanks [00:44:00] darling. Thanks

Nicola: so much.

If you love what I have to say, and you like to find out more about working with me, easiest way to do that is to book a, get to know you call. So there’s a link to that in the show notes, I can help you through working with your organization to help close agenda pay gap through women’s leadership program.

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Thank you for what you do, Nick, for another client who just stepped into a new exec director. Her quote was, it felt like I was wearing a coat that didn’t fit. It was a coat that was new. That didn’t quite fit me, that I didn’t feel that I was good enough for now. I step proudly stand tall and [00:47:00] proud of who I am wearing that coat of leadership.

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I can’t wait to work with you. Um, I thank you for listening.