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Paul Witts

Head of People at Lithe Transformation, passionate about diversity, bringing agile into recruitment

Paul Witts is the Head of People at Lithe Transformation, a company focused on enhancing workplace practices. He is known for his passion for diversity and his efforts to integrate agile methodologies into recruitment processes. His professional background includes extensive experience in recruitment and business innovation, making him well-connected across various industries. Witts actively engages with the community through LinkedIn, sharing insights related to hiring and management practices.123

Highlights

Aug 29 · linkedin

VERY unpopular and contentious POV about the recruitment industry coming up here!

I've been seeing a lot of posts from gurus and consultancies who specialise in "helping your recruitment agency to 10x your business". Or words to that effect. Getting your consultants to sell more, how to sell more effectively, selling in the current market...

Sell! Sell! Sell!

I have a couple of questions. The first being...what do your clients actually want? How concerned is your client (or even potential client) that the person who's filling their jobs is really good at selling their services to other competitor employers in their market? What does "doing a good job" look like to an agency's clients?

Can I venture to suggests that what our clients actually want is for their jobs to be serviced by a recruitment expert who finds the best candidates in the shortest space of time, is able to present their company and their opportunity to those candidates, find a candidate's motivations and convey them, has the organisation skills to manage the process, give THEIR (as in the hiring company's) candidates the best possible experience, and be able to conduct a negotiation? Can I suggest that this is more important to our clients than how well we can sell?

The second question is...what actually is the sale? When we close a deal, what deal are we actually closing? Here's where this is going to get really unpopular! From what I see the "sale" is getting on that PSL. It's getting the company's permission to send a CV on the understanding a fee will be payable should that candidate be hired. That's the sale. 20 years ago you could float a great CV to a hiring manager and sit back and watch the magic work! Whilst that might still happen occasionally, let's be honest...those occasions are getting rarer and rarer. And only once that sale has happened to we have the opportunity to perform our fee-earning services.

So the follow-on question is...why does that have to be the same person performing both of those tasks? Recruitment consultancies need sales specialists, obviously - just like any service-based company (or product-based company for that matter). But is it time for we as an industry to be agile enough to look at what our clients want from us, and structure our operations accordingly, rather than take the lazy "it's always been like this" attitude?

Having said this, it's not a one-size-fits-all scenario - there are clearly markets where the 360-degree recruiter is the right approach. But I wonder how many agency senior managers have ever bothered to take a step back and ask the awkward question...are we structured in the best way to give our clients what they want?

That takes courage, vulnerability, and agility. How many of us are brave, vulnerable, and agile enough to do it? And I haven't even mentioned candidates yet!

Views from candidates, hiring managers/TA and recruiters very welcome!

#hiring #recruitment #recruiterlife #jobseekers #talentacquisition

Aug 27 · linkedin

Still looking! Sales Manager, Germany, e-liquids

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Paul Witts
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Location

Brighton, England, United Kingdom