Category: Recruiters

‘Gizza job’ and fresh hope on the horizon

Recent news does not make great reading as the ONS reports that there have been 819,000 job losses in the UK since the start of the pandemic. You can read the article, ‘Hospitality worst affected as unemployment rises again‘ here. It is now a case of when, not if, this number exceeds one million as we head into the critical trading period for most consumer businesses, with significant swathes of the country in tier 3 lockdown. The sectors most significantly hit by unemployment are hospitality and retail, which ultimately supports many of Red Tiger Talent’s clients.

Some of you may not know about this blog’s title ‘Gizza job’ which references a phrase commonly used in 1980’s Liverpool based series Boys from the Blackstuff, a desperate plea from those on the dole. Whilst the current economic downturn is certainly showing a two year high in unemployment rate (at around 5%) it is nowhere near that seen in the early 1980s (when in 1982 it peaked at 13%). 

This current unemployment is disproportionately hitting the working class and younger workers.  Red Tiger Talent contributed in a very small way by taking a decision against a backdrop of zero recruitment revenue, to add a new member to our team with our apprentice Meg in September. We also work with a freelancer to help with marketing strategy and campaigns, an area of business that we could have put on hold to save money. We could see that in order to get through this we needed to invest and to free up some of our time for what we do best.

Take Me Out

It is fair to say that Red Tiger Talent’s recruitment income dropped off a cliff for the last six months as a direct result of the pandemic.  In February 2020, nearly halfway through our financial year, Paul and I reset a stretch target that would have resulted in our best year yet by a country mile.  This was after four years of hard work to firmly establish ourselves as the trusted recruitment partner for clients and candidates in the UK analytics market. Needless to say, we didn’t get anywhere near our original target.

I often refer to our experience in March 2020 as a bit like going on the dating show Take Me Out.  Red Tiger Talent had many lights illuminated (not potential dates, but active roles) and then in an instant they were all switched off as our clients rightly put their recruitment plans on hold. In my mind this included the comedy noise as one by one every opportunity disappeared.

This quieter period was a bit of a godsend, Paul and I could drop down the pace of life a bit, supporting our families through the pandemic, and work-wise we were able to divert time to improving our database, and develop new propositions, notably Training and Coaching; more on that later.

Recruitment freezes are finally thawing

Since November 2020, Red Tiger Talent (recruitment) has never been busier.  We have been inundated with live roles and the pipeline into 2021 looks very healthy.  After a period of inactivity we have a number of new people starting roles in the first quarter of 2021. 

I think the phrase to describe the general sentiment of businesses is ‘cautiously optimistic’ – those of our clients that have had recruitment freezes are now able to recruit for specific roles where there is need.  Businesses are also very conscious of the impact increased workload has on existing teams who are typically having to work remotely.

Being an analytics professional gives me extra cause for optimism – never before have we had such a perfect storm of significant structural changes in the way people shop/eat/play/work in a business world where most are looking to data and analytics to provide the insight needed to emerge on the other side.

We mustn’t underestimate the news of a vaccine rollout has positively impacted on business and consumer sentiment.  This has given renewed optimism that the end of the current restrictions will happen sometime in 2021. 

We are also finding that candidates are more optimistic.  Early in the pandemic, a number of potential candidates had an understandable reluctance to move roles due to the uncertainty in the market.  We are now seeing a number of candidates re-ignite their quest for a fresh challenge as they don’t want to allow this pandemic to stall their career progression any further.

Training to expand your skills

We identified a need for training in Microsoft Excel; this incredible versatile piece of software is used across many departments, but few people have had formal training on the extent of its capabilities. We have now trained over 200 people on Excel for Analytics, from absolute beginners to experts, and every participant has learnt something new.

The feedback speaks for itself and we will be rolling out our 2021 training schedule early next year.

Coaching to stand out from the crowd

To use a sporting analogy, consider you are a runner and your objective is purely to win the race.  If you are the only competitor in the race then you may not require any help in ensuring that you meet your objective of winning. The only chance of you not meeting your objective is if you failed to complete the race.

If you are in a competitive field of 10 runners then surely you would try everything in your power to ensure that you win the race?  Fail to prepare and prepare to fail. The most successful professional athletes have specific coaches for different areas that can impact performance e.g. fitness coach, conditioning coach, mental coach, sprint coach etc.

This is the reason why we created Red Tiger Coaching. Our proven coaching ethos is to support people on their career pathway with timely, cost effective support to ensure they stand out from the crowd at the various stages of the job search process.  If you are interested in finding out more please get in touch.

Steps towards a brighter future

Hopefully this blog has provided you with optimism from both a candidate and hiring managers perspective.

If you are one of the unfortunate people who have been or are likely to be impacted by redundancy then we can offer the following tips:

  1. Don’t panic and take time to reflect – think about your previous career successes and what motivates you.   Defining roles that are likely to trigger these motivations can be beneficial; in the application or interview stage it will be easier to sell yourself, and when you are successful you will find yourself motivated in your role.
  2. Plan and set yourself targets before you execute on your search – it is important that you divide up your daily tasks in order to keep things fresh.  Whilst the end goal is to get a new job, set yourself small weekly/daily/monthly targets along the way e.g. job applications per week, new connections on LinkedIn, identification of new businesses that you would like to work for, refresh your CV.  These ‘marginal’ gains will make a difference in the long run.
  3. Stand out from the crowd – this is a wide topic and worthy of multiple blogs but its everything from the application process (application form, CV, cover letter), the interview process, to unlocking the ‘hidden’ job market (i.e. circumventing those roles that have large amounts of applicants).
  4. Consider using a coach – ‘You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow, this opportunity comes once in a lifetime’ (sorry Eminem!).  Our coaches make a tangible difference and our solutions range from a couple of hours help to a three month transition engagement – speak to us if you are interested in finding out more.

If you or your business are recruiting:

  1. Be prepared to be inundated – with many people chasing relatively few roles you will tend to get a wide diversity and large volume of people applying. Whether they are the right candidates remains to be seen.  Some candidates, in full on panic mode, are adopting the mud-slinging approach – if you throw enough at the wall then something will inevitably stick.  You will receive applications where you really have to question whether the applicant actually read the job specification!
  2. Don’t underestimate the time required – Reviewing CVs can be time consuming, and soul destroying if you have a large pile to review!  Similarly, sitting through a number of interviews which are short of the mark is extremely frustrating.  Think about your filtering process in order to ensure that it’s only a handful of quality candidates that make it to a face to face (or video call in the new world!) stage.
  3. Consider using a specialist agency – Recruiters, like Red Tiger Talent, will help by reducing your workload and providing a selection of vetted, qualified candidates that go straight to interview (blatant plug!).

We’ve written loads of other blogs about many of the subjects discussed here so take a look around for tips on interview techniques and interviewing, updating your LinkedIn profile and How to stand out from the crowd, to name just a few.

We hope that our predictions are correct and that the employment market will continue to improve. And we also hope that you are all ready and raring to embrace that change, whether you are a business or an employee.

We’d love to hear from you even just for a chat to hear how things are going for you. If you would like to talk to us about anything you’ve read here, please give me a call on 07979 756 257 or email steve@redtigerconsulting.co.uk for a no obligation chat about your options and how we might be able to help you.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Cash is King

Is it just me or does anyone else feel like we’re in limbo at the moment? We are slowly adjusting to a post (high levels of..) COVID world where the shackles of lockdown are gradually being released (unless you live in Leicestershire).

It’s an ever changing situation; only yesterday I completed a consumer survey where I stated that I didn’t intend to go comparison goods shopping anytime soon. Then today I am planning on taking my kids up to Cheshire Oaks for the afternoon. It was originally going to be a trip to Chester city centre but a few shops that my kids wish to go to are temporarily closed. The same shop is open out of town, presumably an indication that some brands are staggering their opening strategy depending on in town/out of town stores. It could be a space determinant or it could be to see how traditional city centres, with a greater reliance on public transport as a means for people to get in and out play out in terms of (footfall) recovery.

Depeche Mode Enjoy
Depeche Mode Enjoy

The chart below is a recent snapshot from Red Tiger Talent’s accounting system. It makes for stark viewing and is likely to be reflective of other consumer led and consulting businesses. The blue bars are cash in, and the grey bars are cash out. January 2020 showed a spike in our costs where the business paid out Dividends to the directors, a move typical of smaller limited companies where monthly, quarterly or six monthly payments are seen as a more flexible and tax efficient means with which to reward business profitability. Late February was looking pretty good: we had cash coming in from placements made over the previous 3 months and we were actively working on a healthy number of recruitment roles. Events in early March reminded me of the voting in Paddy McGuiness’s dating show Take Me Out – we had a number of lights on (assignments) and in the space of a few days all of our lights had gone out with recruitment being put on hold – the only thing missing was the comedy noise of all our lights being switched off at once!

On the cost side, we at Red Tiger run a very tight ship, with fairly minimal overheads and no extra costs associated with expensive city centre offices or headcount. In fact, COVID-19 forced us to temporarily pause our search for an Apprentice (more on that later).

Our second biggest business expense is usually travel and entertainment which dropped right down since mid-March as we, like a lot of people, have been fulfilling all of our business obligations from home. There must be so many larger businesses with significant office and headcount costs which could not be immediately switched off when lockdown happened. These businesses have been carrying these costs and eating into their cash reserves while income is still waiting to recover. In all my businesses we have worked on the basis of a ‘going bust’ date that is subject to various scenarios on income and costs. This was one of the first exercises we did post COVID-19 and it was useful as it gave us comfort that as a direct result of retaining some of our profits within the business we would have enough (if we controlled our costs) to see us through to beyond a pessimistic economic recovery in early 2021.

The peak of cash in May 2020 was not some unexpected recruitment income, but a cash injection courtesy of the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS). We decided to get this loan just in case and will start to pay back in 12 months’ time with the hope that we will never need to use it. That said, it has given us the confidence to once again push ahead with finding an apprentice, the thinking being that we should have a good pick of quality candidates (with less competition from other hirers) and if the successful candidate joins in September we expect them to hit the ground running in the new year. I would just urge as many businesses as possible to follow our lead and try to be bullish in switching on your recruitment – you could steal a march on your competitors and there are going to be plenty of quality candidates available. It is certainly turning from a sellers’ market (candidate) to a buyer’s market (company) in recruitment.

July 2020 is looking a little better for Red Tiger Talent, and whilst it certainly isn’t back to former glories, we are due some extra income from successful placements in lockdown, as well as payment of outstanding invoices on COVID-19 extended credit terms. We will not be getting overly excited though as we are used to the recruitment lag. A lot of the work is done in the run up to placement, then a delay of 1-3 months when notice periods are typically served,. We then receive our fees 30 days (if we are lucky) after the successful candidate starts, which means we have a good view on (lack of) recruitment income 2-3 months out. Where we stand today we know that we are not currently in line to bill any clients for placements in July or August.

I am sure that this is a similar situation to a lot of other businesses. My call to action is for everyone to get out and spend. Spend like there is another lockdown imminent around the corner. Support all local businesses because we won’t appreciate them when they are gone! I feel we all have a collective responsibility to get the economy moving again, and I appreciate that the natural inclination where there is an extended period of uncertainty, redundancy and global recession on the horizon is to reign in our spending behaviour.

The quicker the recovery, the quicker we can get back to the ‘new normal’.

Seize the moment and savour our ‘freedom’ for as long as it lasts. But please remember to obey the 2 metre 1 metre rule and stay alert.

Photo by Anna Dziubinska on Unsplash

The impact of Covid-19 on the Working Population

We are now into the 3rd week of coronavirus (Covid-19) headlines here in the UK and it has been dominating everyone’s lives for the last few weeks.

Over the weekend the dinner table conversation was never far from coronavirus – the impact of the disease, from news of stockpiling to speculation on what the future holds. Topics like Brexit and the election seem like distant memories now. People I have spoken to seem varied in their approach.

It might look pretty but the future is looking uncertain in the face of Covid-19

Some are determined to ignore news or advice and carry on regardless. One gent in the men’s toilets over the weekend failed to even wash his hands!

Others are imposing complete self-isolation. The UK Government will be imposing stricter social distancing measures over the coming days and weeks in order to allow the health service to cope with the likely spike in infections.

This is a two-part blog, the first being an up to date account of how the virus is affecting our business in recruitment. This will be followed by a second blog on how the virus is affecting businesses and the workforce in general.

Part 1: Impact on Recruitment 

Everything was fine until a couple of weeks ago when the true impacts of the virus started to be felt in Red Tiger Talent’s recruitment world. My brother and I were meant to be going to a conference in Amsterdam in order to keep up to speed with the latest location planning technology – that was cancelled. Not really a significant impact on our recruiting activities but it was a sure-fire sign of things to come.

Candidate uncertainty 

Last week changes seemed to gather even more pace – we had a candidate cancel a final interview as a direct result of the virus and their situation on the job market doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future. We have also had a number of active candidates inform us that they are going to stand firm in their current roles for the time being.

We’re already seeing a change in recruitment and interview processes

This week has started with a candidate coming forward asking if there are any opportunities for them. Nothing strange in that at first glance – but it is after a significant period of them being an independent consultant. Their fear and main driver to moving back into the corporate world is that the longer-term economic impact (likely global recession) will be particularly challenging as a consultant and they felt a need to get back into permanent, more stable, employment.

Our thoughts are also with some of the candidates who are currently serving their notice and are due to be starting new roles in the next few months. We are ensuring that the lines of communication are well and truly open between the client and candidate to ensure that the candidates are well aware of what policies are in place with their new company and that they are still able to start on the agreed date. Fortunately, all of our placements are going ahead and measures will be in place to onboard within the restrictions that are likely.

Client procrastination 

The virus is also affecting our clients in a number of ways. Firstly, those clients who are actively recruiting may struggle to either find candidates or once found, struggle to find ways to appropriately assess their suitability.

We all know that meeting face to face is the best way to assess a candidate, something that is currently not encouraged and would be largely classed as a non-essential business activity. It is refreshing to see that some of our clients, with a very clear need to continue recruiting, are carrying on regardless. They are also thinking laterally about the interview process and embracing technology that can support the assessment in times of limited face to face contact.

Secondly, some businesses, particularly those in the consultancy space, seem to be ‘battening down the hatches’ in readiness for a prolonged period of reduced activity after a period of sustained growth. One interview scheduled for this week has been cancelled for ‘cost control’ reasons – there is little point in interviewing people if there is a reluctance to add head count until we are through the uncertainty.

Coping with the new regime 

This dovetails nicely with the second part of this blog which looks at the business impacts of the virus. What is clear is that this crisis will force changes in behaviours as a result. Those that succeed in the coming months will be those who can break from the shackles of ‘normal’ business operations and adapt to new behaviours required to survive in the new regime.

It will not be long before Red Tiger Talent place our first candidate without the need for them to meet the hiring manager face to face. This already happens on assignments where the candidates and the company are significant distances apart, where it isn’t practical for the candidate to travel. We have a candidate due to start a new role in mid April and their employer is already planning for how to get them onboard regardless of the ongoing lockdown situation.

Assessment of candidates is a critical part in the recruitment process, and we are certainly seeing greater flexibility from some businesses in order to continue to assess talent in the market. Only today we have instructed candidates that their face to face final interviews have not been cancelled but been switched to skype calls. Where there is a will there’s a way.

There is no doubt that recruitment activity levels will be relatively slow for Red Tiger Talent for the foreseeable future – depending on which crystal ball you look at, improvements could start slowly in September or worst case, this hiatus could carry on well into 2021. Red Tiger Talent are fortunate in some respects that we have had a really strong start to the first 6 months of our financial year and, whilst (pre coronavirus) we were on for a record breaking full year, the impact of the social isolation will inevitably limit our revenue for the foreseeable future. A small price to pay if it helps, as anticipated, to allow our NHS to cope with the increased pressure on services as a direct result of this virus.

We all need to our bit to halt the spread of this virus and limit its affect on our nation

Like many of our clients who are putting their expansion on hold for now we have also made the difficult decision to delay the taking on of an apprentice in order to keep our outgoings to a minimum. This, pre coronavirus, was an indication that we were feeling positive about our growth in the market and the next logical step was to get some operational support.

For Red Tiger will also have to adapt – we have a three point plan to build strong foundations over the next few months:

  • Cost control – less recruitment activity will certainly mean saving on travel and subsistence, but we will also be scrutinising every cost in order to ensure we remain in a cash positive position 
  • More conversations  – We will use the space in our calendar to engage with more candidates (existing and new) in order to ensure we are ready to support our clients once restrictions are lifted 
  • Diversification – With recruitment freezes and remote working going to be the norm for the foreseeable future we will promote our other services that may be delivered remotely, specifically: 
    • Consultancy – if clients need some temporary, remote resource to deliver location planning, GIS or data analytics project we are potentially available 
    • Training – this is a great time for people to use spare capacity in their working day to ensure 

We’d love to hear from you, whether you have a vacancy to advertise, are looking for a job or may be interested in talking to us about our consultancy or training services.

Together we can all succeed in isolation!

Please call us for a chat: Paul 44(0)7918 653 877 / Steve +44(0)7979 756 257 Or email us on: info@redtigerconsulting.co.uk

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Salary Survey: why is it important to our industry?

This blog has been written as a reflection on the recent 2020 Salary Survey that Red Tiger Talent have been working on throughout December 2019 and January 2020 (with support from The Society for Location Analysis – www.thesla.org). It outlines the journey we have been on, what is happening next, and also highlights some of the challenges and misconceptions we have found along the way.

In the Beginning 

In the very beginning (April 2002), a group of work colleagues, clients and I decided that the Location Planning Industry needed some sort of official representation. The Society of Property Researchers (www.sprweb.com) is a vibrant membership organisation but it is dominated by wider research professionals working in real estate agencies, property companies and pension funds. We felt that there wasn’t a body that truly represented the interests of ‘location planners’ and so the SLA was conceived after a ‘committee’ meeting in the Red Lion pub in Wendover.

I consider myself a location planner (with over 25 years’ experience) and The SLA really gave a focus and a sense of belonging to myself and my fellow practitioners. Through a healthy mix of networking and informative presentations this group grew to become the well-respected society that it is today. Throughout my working career I have had both a personal and professional frustration that there hasn’t been a robust salary benchmarking survey of our industry. Location Planners are often seen as very niche skills in larger businesses – and businesses themselves often struggle to find appropriate benchmark comparisons internally. Typically, we are compared to different niche skills in other departments in order to determine salary benchmarks, which aren’t always fit for purpose.

We appreciate the time it takes to respond. Without you guys there would be no survey
2016 Salary Survey

A Salary Survey initiative needs resource and in mid 2015, when in the early stages of my next venture, Red Tiger Talent, I started the planning for what would ultimately become the inaugural 2016 Salary & Remuneration Survey for Location Planning Practitioners. This proved to be an ideal vehicle with which to launch Red Tiger Talent – a recruitment agency focusing on Location Planning, Customer Insight and Property Research.

2018 Salary Survey

The 2016 Survey boasted 140 responses and we managed to grow to 180 responses for the 2018 Survey. The 2020 Survey will draw upon 217 responses, a true reflection of the growing recognition of the value of our initiative and our ever-expanding network of practitioners. One of the other interesting things about the 2020 Survey is that we had 90 partial completions (started but didn’t finish) – we have all been there, we start something but get distracted and never get back to it. There is no way of identifying how many of those went on to complete the survey but even if 50% of those didn’t that would have increased our sample to 262 respondents.

The Sceptics 

In my 25 years of employment it is fair to say that there are varying attitudes to revealing something as personal as your salary. There is a reason why the 2011 Census decided to omit questions on salary from the survey. Some people offer their salary uninvited during a casual conversation, whilst others wouldn’t want to reveal such information to their own partner. I recall as a teenager asking my Dad what he earnt, and he flatly refused, on account of it being very personal and frankly, none of my business.

In my 4 years of being a Recruitment Consultant, current salary (and expected salary in their next role) forms part of my standard question set, and whilst I do sometimes feel uncomfortable asking the question, particularly to people I know, it is a necessary part of the recruitment filter process. Most people oblige – I would say it is one person in a hundred who flatly refuses to reveal their salary. That is their personal choice but it certainly doesn’t help me in providing career guidance and finding them a role. What I would say is that we use a candidates’ current/expected salary to filter suitable roles we send (no point in bombarding candidates with roles that are £20k short of what they are currently on) and it also allows us to manage both the candidate and our client’s expectation on salary. It works both ways, some candidates can be totally unrealistic about their next hike in salary.

Our salary survey is anonymous, but with the range of questions we ask in the survey, in theory, we could reverse engineer responses to identify likely individuals. A couple of people have raised that concern directly and my answer back to them is threefold:

  • The nature of my primary job in recruitment is to know people’s current salaries so I would estimate that 70%-80% of people on our database have shared that information with Paul or I in a direct conversation anyway. 
  • I personally don’t have time (or inclination) to work through 217 responses to try to ‘guess who?’.  My effort is focused on looking at various crosstabs and comparing the time-series we now have between 2016 and 2020. 
  • Critical to the ongoing success of the Salary Survey (and our reputation as recruiters) is trust – more on this later. 

The Effort 

The financial cost of executing the survey is fairly minimal. With the exception of the licence costs for the survey platform, the majority of the cost is in terms of time and effort. This can be summarised into 5 key stages:

  1. Planning  – Planning for the 2020 Survey started in October 2019 with various email exchanges and a face to face with Jonathan Reynolds, the Chairman of the SLA. These discussions focus on shaping the question set, considering new themes to address, agreeing on survey timings and confirming tasks involved with marketing the survey. There is always a balance to be had with the question set, ensuring consistency with previous years’, seeking new insights on relevant issues for the current year, and also keeping it within 5 minutes to complete. I am very conscious of how stretched for time a lot of practitioners are and it is important that we ask as few questions as possible in order to glean the most useful output.
  2. Designing – The next stage in the process is designing/testing of the survey and creation of the marketing collateral (logos, words, images) in time for its launch in early January 2020. It is absolutely critical that the survey works and makes sense from a user’s perspective as we potentially only have one chance for completion when the respondent clicks on the survey link.
  3. Promoting – Promotion for the latest survey started in late December 2019 and carried on up to the end of January 2020. Promotion was done in coordination with The SLA and was a combination of e-shots, Social media (Twitter) and use of LinkedIn. In total we estimate around 1,000 emails were sent (personal and automated) and we posted 20 twitter items. LinkedIn activity amounted to 19 posts which generated 2,700 impressions. Alongside that, particularly as deadline day approached, Paul and I worked through our list of contacts to check if they had completed it. This was done via a mixture of calls, texts, LinkedIn messages and personal emails. We stopped short of hanging around outside the places you live and work to check if you had completed it!
  4. Analysis – We are now at this stage with the 2020 survey, which started with a thorough review of the respondent data. This review checks for any obvious errors, for example, people filling in the survey from irrelevant professions (working behind a bar or on a supermarket checkout doesn’t count as a location planner) and people putting their annual salary as £25.6. This review also involves adding some calculated fields (e.g. whether respondents live and work within the same region) and re-classifying data (e.g. allocating Government Office Regions to London & the South East, and the Rest of the UK). The next stage in the analysis is to replicate the cross tabs from previous surveys in order to see what the updated statistics show. This data is provided in the Key Tables which will be released in early March 2020. The final part of the analysis is to look at some of the new questions introduced this year, in this case it is focused around the types of job titles people have, recent changes in role, and whether respondents have a clear career development plan.
  5. Reporting  – The final part of our output is to pull the cross tabs into visuals (usually in the form of infographics and charts) and write some narrative around the findings. Add in an introduction by Jonathan Reynolds and I and we have the formal report. This is then made available to download and is emailed to anyone who has already requested a copy of the survey. Incidentally, the 2020 Survey has received record levels of requests for a copy of the survey which demonstrates its usefulness to the community. If you would like a copy emailed directly to you feel free to email survey@redtigerconsulting.co.uk to be added to the list. The report will be officially launched at an SLA event (TBC) and I am sure we will be showing a few slides with the headline findings. I am certainly interested to see how things have changed over the last 2 years – particularly with the backdrop of increased political uncertainty and the ongoing restructure of the UK retail industry which has certainly seen an impact in terms of team sizes and structure.

The Trust 

I mentioned this before but thought it was worthy of a section in its own right.  Critical to our continued success as a Recruiter and for the ongoing success of the Survey is trust.  Our whole ethos has been about long term relationships with candidates and clients and that has to be built on a strong foundation of trust. 

Candidates trust us to a certain degree with their careers, we pride ourselves on our practical advice which positions our candidates at the centre rather than shareholders or profits.  We are sometimes in situations where there are significant sensitivities (particularly with regards their current employer) and we never disclose details of conversations or their availability to prospective employers without their permission. 

Respondents to the Survey trust us as guardians of their anonymous data, they trust that we are not going to use it for means other than its intended purpose (GDPR) which is in an aggregate, anonymous form that protects individuals.  This is why we deliberately omit any small samples (>3 respondents) from any individual cross tab cells we publish.  It is also why we take great care in ensuring this data is securely stored in a single location (with dual factor authentication) and is never passed on in its raw form to representatives outside of the Red Tiger Talent team. 

This data, along with the data we collect on a daily basis after conversations with candidates and clients is our crown jewels – it is our life blood.   

One contact (who shall remain anonymous!) demonstrates that trust perfectly.  They had informed me that they had completed the survey but had made a critical error on the salary question.   After the completion deadline had passed, I phoned them up and explored further what the error was and gave them the opportunity to provide me with the correct information (this was one of the c20% that I hadn’t had a recent conversation with about their salary).  They started their response with ‘I wouldn’t normally, but as it’s you I am happy to’.  This sums up the trust that we strive to build with the community.  

The Reward 

It is fair to say, that for me, the Salary Survey is a labour of love and the effort (and ultimately opportunity cost for a small enterprise like Red Tiger) for doing it is paid over countless times by the personal reward of knowing it does make a difference to my industry.  Over the years we have done the survey we have had a number of emails from candidates (and HR/Hiring Managers) thanking us for the information and how useful it was to help their particular purpose. 

It is neatly summed up by a recent respondent who took time to leave the following comment: 

“Very useful to see the results – please continue running this survey!” 

The Future 

Following completion of the 2020 Survey project we will take a moment to reflect and document what we would do differently next time.  We are always looking for new ideas, not only in terms of subjects covered, but ways to collect the data, promote the survey and also in ways of delivering the results.  If anyone has any further suggestions, improvements or comments feel free to let us know – your opinions are really valued. 

In the meantime, we will look forward to revisiting the whole process in late 2021 when we start planning for the 2022 Survey and set our targets high in terms of number of responses. 

Images: Header Photo by fauxels from Pexels

Sweetest Perception

Have you ever been approached about a role at a company and been put off by your perception of that business?  I certainly think that as you progress through any career you do tend to get bogged down with mis-informed or outdated perceptions of potential employers.  This blog talks about exploring how those perceptions may have been created and how, if you scratch underneath the surface, things may not always appear as they first seem.

I can speak from personal experience – back in June 2008 I was head of Client Services at PB MapInfo (now Pitney Bowes), responsible for the provision of location planning consultancy to large retail, leisure and service businesses across the UK.  I got approached for a Head of Property Consultancy role at CACI, one of our main competitors.  At that stage I didn’t pursue the opportunity as I’d already lined up a role at Deloitte, but a year later, I was considering my options and the CACI role was still unfilled.

First impressions

The first time the recruiter came knocking I was not willing to entertain CACI for a number of reasons. Firstly, I wanted to try working for one of the big 4 management consultancies and I had the offer of a role, secondly my no compete contract at PB MapInfo would have made it trickier if I had moved directly to a competitor (at the time Deloitte was not seen as a competitor to PB MapInfo), and last, but by no means least, I had built up a perception of CACI that would prove to be outdated and mis-informed.

My first direct experience of CACI was back in the Rank Group days when Odeon Cinemas and Mecca Bingo used to have an InSite system and used CACI’s ACORN geodemographic.  I recall us meeting with our new CACI ‘Account Manager’ and he didn’t endear himself to us with his hard sell tactics and lack of understanding of the Rank business.  I believe he was a surf board salesman prior to his role at CACI, enough said.

Client conflab

Working for consultancies means that you do often get snippets of information about competitors from clients.  ‘Clients’ being the operative word – remember they are likely to have biased loyalties, otherwise they wouldn’t be your client.  Some clients do mix and match suppliers’ but others prefer a one stop shop.   Clients can vent about previous bad experiences with a competitor, or relay their perceptions based on someone else’s experience, or in fact reiterate their justifications in choosing you in the pitch process.  I don’t recall any specific stories about CACI but needless to say in any business there are good and bad client experiences, hopefully the good outweigh the bad.  Perceptions can be formed in the strangest of ways, I recall winning some work ahead of Experian and the client cited one of the reasons he went with us (hopefully not the only reason) was due to Experian playing a significant part in the rejection of his recent mortgage application.

The arch enemy

A hatred of competitors happens in the fictional and commercial worlds. Take Game of Thrones, where hatred is created between houses (companies) based on things that may (or may not) have happened generations ago – loyalties are tested and new alliances (such as with the Starks and the Wildlings – apologies if you are keeping out of the GoT bubble!) are being forged as part of the new world order. It was the same at PB MapInfo (and I assume elsewhere) where sales practices would engender a battle mode mentality, particularly in competitive pitches, where we would emphasise our strengths and magnify competitive weaknesses – often based on perception and conjecture, rather than fact.   In the earlier example from Rank our perception of CACI was formed by the sales representative and was not representative of the capability of the whole CACI team.

Putting aside perceptions

Fast forward to June 2009, in the middle of the global economic recession, and I had been approached about the still vacant Head of Property role at CACI.   Things were not really working out for me at Deloitte, my competitive perception of CACI had waned somewhat, and so it seemed like an opportune time to at least have a conversation.  Prior to agreeing to an interview with who would become my future boss I embarked on some research.  This was twofold, firstly, I spoke to a couple of contacts whom I could trust to give me an objective, honest opinion of CACI, and secondly, I scoured LinkedIn to get a flavour of who currently worked at CACI, their mix of experience/skills within the team and an idea of length of service.

Back then we didn’t have employer review sites like Glass Door which is another source of feedback.  How much weight you put to those responses has to be questioned as I’m sure contributors to such services are more likely to be disgruntled ex-employees than those with a positive story. Existing employees don’t tend to put up reviews. 

Needless to say I am very pleased I put my perceptions aside and progressed my application for the role at CACI.  I spent 7 very happy years at CACI, worked with a large number of very talented individuals, and I’m really glad I gave the role an opportunity.  If you have passed on opportunities due to perception of the company there are a few things that I would suggest:

  • Validate and question such perceptions of a new potential employer – be aware that businesses do change, bad managers move on and people may have a very blinkered view of a company.
  • Triangulate your research – use LinkedIn to look at the structure of the team you are potentially going to join, look at factors such as churn, length of service.  Find time to speak to current or past employees to get a more up to date picture of the business. Look at resources such as Glass Door but remember that the negatives may be over-amplified compared to the positives.
  • Don’t reject outright – if you have any concerns it may be worth having an informal meet over coffee rather than formally applying for the role. That way you can ask questions directly and try and address any concerns you have about the company/role.  Plus you can form a judgement first hand with one of the representatives of the hiring company.

As recruiters we sometimes come up with resistance from candidates about a company because of an outdated or mis-informed perception.  As I have outlined in this blog post it is certainly worth exploring the origins of such perceptions and ensure a balanced up to date view is established before rejecting such an opportunity. That opportunity may be your pathway to success.