Talent Talks with Tom Hacquoil

Welcome to Talent Talks, quick fire questions to get to know leaders in recruitment. I'm Tom, Founder and CEO here at Pinpoint. And today I'm joined by Felix Mitchell Founder and co-CEO at Instant Impact. We're super proud to work with Felix and the team Instant Impact. They're both a partner and a customer of ours. We've worked together quite a lot, both in the past and will do in the future that they're building the world's go to SME talent solutions partner. And on a personal note, the team Felix has assembled is just off the scale awesome in terms of quality. We've dealt with loads of them and it's a rare thing. So congratulations on that, sir. As a final aside, Felix is just much better at podcasting than I am, and when you're finished here, you should immediately go and listen to his podcast, "We need to talk about HR". Felix. Thanks for joining me today. You ready for 10 questions?

I am ready for 10 questions, Tom. Thanks so much for having me on. And thanks for your kind words, particularly about the team. I agree with you.

As you should. Yeah, it's a rare thing. And congratulations. Cool. Let's dig in. If you weren't in the talent space, what would you be doing?

I would have to, I'd have to be a founder. I think maybe you probably agree with me. I think once you've, once you've had a taste of this sweet medicine, you never go back. I definitely couldn't work for anyone else. I think I'd also have to be a founder in the professional services space. I love the world of tech. As we are always making sure that we're first adopters of new technology and that we're leading our industry in terms of how we use technology, but I've got a special place in my heart for professional services, I think that improving the way that a particular business line is delivered is something that I'm really passionate about. So probably something in the very tech enabled accounting, legal marketing world.

Sure. No. Awesome. Makes loads of sense. I think given that context, give me 60 seconds on why you founded Instant Impact in the first place then.

Yeah. I'm going to answer this in two sections. So first of all, when we founded the first iteration of Instant Impact, we were an early career recruitment company. My co founder and I were just leaving university and we wanted to set up a business. We had a bunch of different ideas. We were looking at different parts of the world that we could see that were broken. And early career recruitment was what we settled on. It was 2011. It was very tough for our peers and friends to find work. And everyone was going to PwC, McKinsey, Goldmans, and the roles there were shrinking. We found an incredible world that was blooming all around the UK of startups, scale up businesses. So that's where we focused to begin with. As the business grew, as the economy in the UK matured we ended up pivoting or iterating a couple of times. And the second answer to your question is where we've ended up now, which is really around helping our clients to solve their challenging long term talent acquisition problems. And the reason we've settled there is that we think that talent functions are not living up to their full potential. And that with the right awesome onsite team, the right technology, the right supporting infrastructure around them, the right data and the right talent transformation. We think that talent functions and our embedded talent functions can be engines of growth in an organisation rather than what they too often are, which is administrative functions and so there's a big gap there and that's what we're really excited about.

No, look awesome. And obviously rings super true for our perspective on the world, right? Trying to shift this kind of notional cost center to more of a strategic function within the business is crucial and I think you guys have been transformational on helping people do that. I think there's lots of ways obviously you come in and work with organisations to make a big difference, I think we're always super interested in candidate experience and what that looks like and obviously in a very positive, but realistic way. Lots of the organisations we meet for the first time as an ATS provider will self identify as offering a terrible candidate experience, but don't really feel well equipped or well educated enough to solve that problem. I think help us understand that. What's the sort of number one thing you think companies should be doing to deliver a better candidate experience.

Number one theme is transparency and I think one of the looking for a job is a very uncertain, very fraught time in someone's life, whether they're in a role that they don't like at the moment, or whether they're on the open market wondering how they're going to pay their mortgage next year. No one's expecting live up to the moment updates, but I think we can definitely look at a minimum expectation there, which is keeping your candidates updated as you go through the process, continual comms. And I think that's where powerful technology like Pinpoint comes in, right? A lot of that can be automated. A lot of that can make use of clever AI. Doesn't need to be recruiters doing that or hiring managers doing that so that's the one piece, comms through the process to maintain transparency, being super clear and crystal clear on expectation management and that's for how often they're going to be communicated to what the process looks like, what level of what's going to happen at each interview, all of that sort of stuff. What kind of candidate you're looking for, and then finally, and this would be the final cherry on the top of the transparency cake, even though it doesn't seem like it's asking that much, give feedback as to why decisions have been made. Why have they not been successful in this process? What can they work on in the future? Those sorts of questions. So I think really transparency is that key point. And I don't think it's too much to ask for.

No, hear you loud and clear. And that's the thing. I think we're always interested in trying to toe the line between automation and a potential degradation in quality and experience. But I think it's difficult because sometimes if the choice is not doing something at all or automating some version of it to create that transparency, it's better than nothing. There's just a lot of challenge that we see organisations have when they try and up their game in terms of the frequency of communication and the quality of that communication. But either way the clear message is everybody needs to be doing better there, yeah?

Yeah, look, comms are, comms saying there's no update is better than no comms at all. And to your point, tiny iterations get you where you need to go much faster than nothing.

Yeah. Look, no news is still news, right? And that's the thing. I, yeah, couldn't agree with you more. Thinking more about talent teams, right? We talked a little bit about candidates, thinking about talent teams themselves. How should they be measuring success?

That is a fantastic question. I think the most important thing is to tie the metric that the talent teams are focused on to what the company actually cares about. Now, I think the ultimate guiding purpose of a TA team or a talent team generally should be increasing the quality of talent in an organisation. So you've got to have some kind of measure and metric for that. I think that should be the ultimate in team wide focus on what they're targeted on and what they're tracking. And then the other element is that they should always be incentivised by whatever the key metric the company cares about the most. And it could be revenue. It could be profit. It could be speed to new product development. But all supporting or enablement functions, TA, HR, finance, they should all be pointing in the same direction. So it should be North Star of the company and then North Star of improving talent within the organisation. I love that. Draw a straight line rather than a dotted one between the talent team and the North Star metric for the business as a whole, right? Absolutely and you can build out all of the classic, SLAs and KPIs off the back of that.

But a lot of that stuff is just vanity metrics at the end of the day, right? As you say, if it's not moving the needle for the business, it's not really doing anything at all. And yeah, no, hear you loud and clear.

And Tom, I actually think that the wrong SLAs, the wrong metrics, can be hugely detrimental to the business. To a business like ours where it gives us a false sense of security that we're delivering what our client wants us to deliver. Whereas actually it's not, we're using the wrong SLAs, we're convinced we're doing a great job next thing, it's contract renewal time and the client's saying actually we wanted something completely different. So I think SLAs can be as dangerous to a relationship as they can be helpful. And that's true whether you're an outsourced or external provider like we are, or you're an internal function, you've always got to make sure that you're aligned to the business and you've always got to keep checking back in. Is it still right? Is it still right? Is it still right? Because things are changing so quickly right now.

Yeah, look you're so right and I think that there is a danger often of trying to have organisations take like best practice one size fits all metrics and apply them to their business and actually you optimise and measure completely the wrong thing right that kind of John Doerr's 'Measure What Matters' concept makes a great deal of sense and I think that rings completely true. If we go wildcard a second, how would your colleagues at Instant Impact describe you?

Me personally?

You personally, yeah.

I'll I'll start maybe with the positives. I think energetic, energetic and creative I think are the two positives. I think the negatives would be somewhat frenetic. I'm definitely a bit of a magpie which puts me in good stead when I'm out there looking for new tech, thinking of new solutions, but I think can be quite frustrating for for some people in the organisation. Luckily, I've got my co-CEO, Rob, who keeps me in a box on some of those more crazy ideas. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's probably a, I think that's probably right.

Look, I love that. And frankly I heard everything that you just said is a positive rather than a pros and cons list. But yeah makes sense and mirrors my own experience talking to you, which is always good. Back to recruitment. I think when we think about challenges the industry is facing right now, right? Can you narrow down to what you think is like the sort of single biggest challenge facing recruitment leaders in 2024?

I think the single biggest challenge facing us is pretty consistent across most, most businesses, most functions. We're in a world of permanent change and I think where it brings particular challenge to recruiters and recruitment businesses are that we're in a very high activity. So if you speak to any recruiter, whether an internal or agency or RPO, and you ask them how they are, they're always going to say, I'm absolutely slammed. I'm really busy. Yeah. Unless they're at risk of redundancy as, as unfortunately has been the case recently. So in that world where they're constantly on the hamster wheel, it can be very difficult to carve out time to think, okay where's my function going? Where's my job going? Where can I improve? Where can I sharpen the sword on how I'm working? And I think that to be able to cope with this world around us right now where the walls are constantly shifting the line of what's possible with technology is constantly changing. The expectations on talent functions, on HR functions are increasing. I think month on month being that reactive is really dangerous.

No, I hear you loud and clear. And I guess to that point, how are you guys dealing with that Instant Impact? What's the sort of mitigative measures that you're putting in place to tackle some of that kind of velocity and pace that you're referencing?

There are a couple of things. First of all, we're putting a lot of time and effort into changing as an organisation. We brought in a new operations director who's heading up an ops function for us looking at technology, our processes, and that's going to be process of continual change. We see change not as a destination, but as a feeling of momentum. So that's gonna be something that we're constantly working towards. For our clients we take a slightly different approach. So we actually have a member of the team, our Clients Services Directors, and they're responsible for ultimately making sure that we're delivering on recruitment, but they don't recruit, they don't touch recruitment. They don't talk to candidates themselves. They're responsible for management of the team and the talent transformation programs that we put in for our clients and that ensures that there's always change going on at our clients. It's not a blueprint, we're not pulling it out of a box. We're looking at what's most important for our clients. Where are the future bottlenecks? Where's process, where's technology getting in the way of that? Do we have enough headspace and enough senior headspace to really look at the change that's required in the TA function? So that's how we deal with it on a client level.

Makes a lot of sense. It's just the simple stuff's often the hard stuff to execute, right? It's the sort of same thing we were talking about when we were talking about candidate experience. It's doing something every day, every week, every month is going to get you to where you need to get to. Yeah. No, makes a huge amount of sense. I think stepping back a second and taking another wildcard question. I think if you could go back and offer your younger self some like top quality career advice, what would you say?

I would say follow your strengths. Don't try and patch your weaknesses. I think stepping into the role that I'm in now and that I'm lucky enough to take with my co-CEO. We really do share the role and we've shared the role to our strengths that have been our natural strengths since we set the business up together 13 years ago. I am taking an external focus. I love talking to people. I love experimenting with new things. I love coming up with new solutions, new technologies. That's my role. His role is more around aligning the whole business to that straight line you were talking about before, making sure all departments or functions or personnel are pointing in the same direction. Previously in our working relationship we've done too much mismatching, and I'll do a bit of that internal stuff Rob. Or, I'll take this networking meeting Felix. And actually we're much, much happier now that we're just working on what we're naturally good at. So I would tell my younger self to really lean into that. That would be one piece of advice. The other would be to take my mental health more seriously and take a structured, as structured approach to that as I do to my physical health. I'm a big believer in Headspace, the app, I'll try a few times a few times a week. I have really pushed myself to be open and transparent with my colleagues and with my family and friends around how I'm feeling. Of course, that's a bit of an art. It's a bit of a practice. But it's made a huge difference as I've got older. And I think I've really been able to bring down my anxiety and my stress levels by being thoughtful about that.

Look love that love the quality and the transparency of that answer I think to me those two things, the sort of the mental health piece and the focus on leaning into the strengths, are very tightly correlated, right? And I think if you get the first one the second one kind of doesn't completely follow, but like it certainly makes that journey a lot easier. We do this thing internally called energy audits, which is built very much on the concept of what you talked about in that first instance, which is every now and again, as a team, we'll just look at our calendars and we'll, this is really retro, but we'll literally print off a week's calendar and we're just green pen, red pen, orange pen. And you're highlighting in green, the stuff you did in the week that gave you energy and that you enjoyed and that you felt like you did a great job with. The stuff in red, you highlight that you absolutely despise. And then the orange stuff you're highlighting that you're ambivalent about doing, but don't love. It's actually fascinating when you put that out as a leadership team or as a partnership or how, whatever the structure of your team looks like and see where there's overlap. And often there's very easy pockets where. Yeah, Tom hates this, Felix loves that, let's just swap. It's so easy and actually, sometimes I think it takes a lot to overcome the guilt of only doing the stuff you enjoy, as if it's like a requirement that you have to spend half the week doing stuff you hate doing. And I think yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. I love that. Thank you.

You're totally right Tom. And I yeah, there is this feeling like work should feel like work. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah and it's just you know the more I progress the less I think that's true. And just anyone listening to this, I know I'm supposed to be the one getting interviewed here, but Pinpoint do such awesome stuff internally. They've got so many cool little quirks in their internal culture. If anyone hasn't heard about things like that and the way that they think about Tours of Service, it's just great, Tom. I think you're doing some really awesome stuff.

You're very welcome on this and all other podcasts, Felix. Thank you for that feedback. Yeah, I'm super proud of that. And just to be crystal clear, much of these great concepts you're referencing are not mine, they are stolen and wonderful nevertheless. And I couldn't encourage them. And I'm sure we'll get an opportunity to talk about them more in another capacity, but thank you for calling that out. Two questions to go. So you work with teams. of all shapes and sizes, I think what are you seeing in terms of patterns across those teams that you think everybody else should be doing? So what are the best teams in talent that you're working with always doing?

The best thing that talent teams can do and do is to spend as much time as possible thinking in the future. And to see any role that's purely reactive as a failure of process and a failure of forward thinking. Any talent challenge is solvable in a year. Pretty much any is really easy. If you've got a year to solve a talent bottleneck you can do it. Six months much more straightforward than if you're given what's normally the case is, I should have hired this person a week ago. And where you're having those I should have hired those people a week ago Too many recruitment or TA functions say oh man, these hiring managers don't give me any notice around this. Yeah. But it's not their fault. It's not their accountability, bringing talent into the organisation. It's the talent teams responsibility. So you've got to think into the future, forecasting, planning, challenging your hiring managers and stakeholders. That's your responsibility. Not the hiring managers.

I love that. And I actually think A, I think you're completely right. And I love that you're comfortable calling that out because it's not necessarily, and I wouldn't say it's an unpopular opinion, but you're shining a light on underperformance, which I think absolutely needs to be done. But I think one of the things I've seen in teams that have flipped the coin there. And they've gone from this kind of very reactive, unaccountable thing, wants to blame the hiring manager, to a team that's very proactive. And as you just said, it's challenging hiring managers on their talent requirements and trying to forecast better when that happens, all of a sudden, the rest of the business sort of falls into line and starts thinking that way as well. And it's super encouraging for me when you see teams go through that transition and they say, Oh, I had a conversation with Bob, the hiring manager the other day, and he actually called out that in six months, this is happening and he's probably going to need these three people and it needs like this and this is a challenge. The whole business lifts up in terms of quality if the talent team can take the lead on proaction versus reaction, right?

Absolutely.

Last question again, you guys work with loads and loads of different folks. What are you hearing from your clients that you think other people in TA should know about but probably don't?

This is a little anecdotal and a bit touch and feel Tom, but we're coming out of a long time of corporate discomfort and low risk appetite. I think we're starting to feel a bit of a thaw on that. We're starting to see competition for high quality recruiters go up. Yep. Which is a really good indicator that companies are going to start recruiting again close to the rates that they were months ago. I've always been a little bit cautious about that because I'm aware there's a high likelihood of what we call hopium creeping into that. I think the other learning that I would encourage other TA folks to, to learn is the importance of good communications. And I think one of the things that we have learnt and continue to learn is high performing TA functions. There's no point about having high performance if you don't communicate that to your stakeholders internally. And on the flip side of that, there's no point about having great communications if the performance isn't there. So it's really important to see those two sides of the same coin and to the point around accountability we were talking about before, it's your job to frame your success. Internally, people aren't just gonna spend their time digging into Pinpoint and wondering how the TA function is doing and comparing it to how they did last year. That's a story you're gonna have to tell yourself.

And there's a skill involved in that storytelling that's markedly different from the skills you might normally have in the role you're doing, right? And I think, yeah, you're right, but that stretch is always worthwhile and I think people sometimes feel like if they have to prove the value they're adding they're not adding enough value. But actually it just doesn't work like that in reality and it's very much worth shining a light on the stuff you're doing. I think love that I'd also just anecdotally say that some hopium, is very welcomed and yeah, I think I know you say yourself that it's anecdotal but this is how people build a picture of what the macro environment looks like. Lots of little micro and macro signals from different folks at different places in the industry. And so encouraging that you're seeing that. And I think mirrors what we're seeing in hiring volume and take up in scale across the rest of the industry. And yeah, let's all hope for that. I think Felix, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. We've made it through all 10 questions and appreciate you taking some time to hang out with me today.

No, what a win. I really enjoyed it. Tom have a fantastic rest of your day.

Thanks Felix. You can all follow Felix on LinkedIn and via his podcast We Need To Talk About HR, both of which will be linked in the notes. If you'd like to join me on Talent Talks, please do get in touch and have a fantastic day.

Thank you very much.