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Joanne Lockwood: ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites.
Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 173 with title
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion Starts With Recruiters. And I have the absolute honour and
Joanne Lockwood: privilege to welcome Jo. Major Jo is transforming the recruitment
Joanne Lockwood: industry by equipping professionals with the tools and mindset
Joanne Lockwood: to embed equity and inclusion at every stage of the hiring process.
Joanne Lockwood: When I asked Jo to describe her superpower, she said it is inspiring
Joanne Lockwood: recruiters to care more deeply and to think differently
Joanne Lockwood: about people. Hi, Jo, welcome to the show.
Jo Major: Hi, Jo, thank you so much for having me. I should say welcome
Joanne Lockwood: back because we did actually record this episode with two
Joanne Lockwood: months ago and silly me, I was in
Joanne Lockwood: the cutting room studio and I cut too deep
Joanne Lockwood: on the track and erased you and I gave you a rather
Joanne Lockwood: sheepish email back and said, I'm really sorry, do you forgive me? And you've
Joanne Lockwood: said anything to have another chat with you, that's fine. Yes, exactly. This
Jo Major: is a privilege to get to do do this all over again.
Joanne Lockwood: Another conversation, and it's been so long since we actually recorded that I
Joanne Lockwood: really don't remember the conversation. So it's a ideal opportunity to
Joanne Lockwood: maybe update our thinking based on some of
Joanne Lockwood: the BS that's going on in the world right now and some of the challenges
Joanne Lockwood: that recruiters are still facing. What a difference a month makes,
Jo Major: right? It is, yeah. I mean, what difference breakfast
Joanne Lockwood: makes on one day? You know, you start by eating your bowl of cereal and
Joanne Lockwood: then by the time you finished it, you're no longer enfranchised in the
Joanne Lockwood: country. Yeah, stuff happens really
Joanne Lockwood: rapidly. We live in very, very interesting times.
Joanne Lockwood: So you hang out predominantly in the recruitment space and
Joanne Lockwood: it's mainly what, I guess agency recruiters rather than in house. Is it?
Jo Major: It's more of a mix now. But when I launched the business, my
Jo Major: mission was to support the recruitment industry
Jo Major: just because of the responsibility I felt and
Jo Major: saw that the recruitment industry had and also
Jo Major: the power it has given, how much it's responsible
Jo Major: for in terms of the job markets and moving people around.
Jo Major: So that. Yeah, that's where it all started. And that's my sweet
Jo Major: spot as well. Having been an agency recruiter for such a long time,
Jo Major: over 17 years, it felt like a sensible move to start in
Jo Major: a space where I was familiar and I also could use myself
Jo Major: as that kind of case study because I'd. Although I was
Jo Major: an ethical recruiter, those ethics had been built in me from day
Jo Major: one. I didn't really understand anything about inclusion and accessibility
Jo Major: and equity. It was just that kind of natural part of
Jo Major: me that wanted to do the right thing by humans and for humans
Jo Major: to have a good experience of me, but without that kind of that
Jo Major: technical knowledge and. And confidence.
Jo Major: That makes sense. Yeah, no, it does. And I did work in the
Joanne Lockwood: recruitment sector as well as, you know, and I see so many
Joanne Lockwood: just talk about agency recruiters here wanting to be
Joanne Lockwood: ethical. They wanted to do the right thing, they wanted to
Joanne Lockwood: create opportunities for everybody because, let's be honest, it
Joanne Lockwood: makes good business sense as well, you know, broaden your. Yeah, it's hard
Joanne Lockwood: finding good talent to give to clients on your slate of
Joanne Lockwood: options. So it does make sense. But I still get frustrated
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes. It is a bit performative. It's almost like a tick. Yes.
Joanne Lockwood: We're a diverse and inclusive recruitment organisation.
Joanne Lockwood: It seems to be a bit of. A trend that, doesn't it? It does, yeah,
Jo Major: yeah, yeah. Some of them are. I think the will is that,
Jo Major: and I think a lot of them have taken more of
Jo Major: an interest in D and
Jo Major: I because they've been held accountable for it from
Jo Major: their clients. It's not unusual for a recruitment business to approach
Jo Major: me, as I'm sure you've experienced this as well, when something's gone
Jo Major: wrong when it comes to the commercial side of it, they've been kicked
Jo Major: off a preferred supplier list or they've been
Jo Major: rejected for, you know, for a big retained project that
Jo Major: they were going for because they've not been able to demonstrate their experience, inclusive
Jo Major: recruitment competency and capability. There
Jo Major: is a. There is a lot of. There's a lot of talk. There is some
Jo Major: box ticking stuff. Unfortunately, you know, we get as much box ticking in
Jo Major: the recruitment industry as we do in the employer space. I think one of the
Jo Major: biggest challenges is the
Jo Major: capacity and the resources to be able to actually
Jo Major: change the hiring model that recruiters use. And I think
Jo Major: if you look at, you know, the metrics that recruiters are measured
Jo Major: on the environment that they've got to, you know, got to
Jo Major: work in, given a, you know, for example, from a, from a time
Jo Major: perspective, it's not supportive of a proper
Jo Major: inclusive recruitment process unless you're doing or operating
Jo Major: a retained model. It's very, very different to class
Jo Major: recruiters who are their successes measured and their
Jo Major: performance is rewarded based on time to hire and speed and it
Jo Major: may be minimal human resources, you know, and
Jo Major: maximum output and then asking them to then integrate
Jo Major: inclusion and accessibility and equity into that process, to change
Jo Major: the way they hire, to change the way that they make
Jo Major: decisions, to change, to add extra layers into that
Jo Major: process. This is difficult for them to kind of understand
Jo Major: because they've got all these other responsibilities going on around them and
Jo Major: they're like, we need to slow things down and they're like that. That doesn't make
Jo Major: sense to us. We need to speed things up. I get it, I get that.
Joanne Lockwood: One of the questions I often when I'm having conversations, not just with recruiters, other
Joanne Lockwood: organisations, is what are you doing for yourselves? You are trying
Joanne Lockwood: to offer these services to your clients,
Joanne Lockwood: but look in the mirror yourself to start with. What are your own
Joanne Lockwood: processes? What does your demographic look like? How can you evidence?
Joanne Lockwood: Because if you're trying to show a better way to your client
Joanne Lockwood: and you're not matching that, that lacks the authenticity, doesn't it? I think sometimes
Joanne Lockwood: we're recruits themselves are very narrow demographic.
Jo Major: Yeah, absolutely. I think representation is a real challenge for the
Jo Major: recruitment industry. It never fails to fascinate me as to
Jo Major: why we have such a, you know, a
Jo Major: diverse talent pool as an industry and yet we are pretty. We
Jo Major: can be one dimensional as an industry ourselves and we don't. We
Jo Major: are not representing the communities that we're here to serve
Jo Major: and to recruit, recruit for as our clients and to place.
Jo Major: And I think that creates a lot of invisible
Jo Major: barriers for the recruitment industry and our success. You know, we often
Jo Major: wonder why certain roles, certain areas, certain certain
Jo Major: areas of expertise are hard for us to recruit. And it's like, well,
Jo Major: do your recruiters reflect the talent pool that you're wanting to bring
Jo Major: into the organisation? Usually
Jo Major: that's a hard no. And I think that
Jo Major: we've moved on from an industry where the
Jo Major: key factor that we looked for in skillset was the
Jo Major: ability to sell. And I think now that what we're
Jo Major: working with is the ability to develop relationships,
Jo Major: to have the expertise of hiring strategy,
Jo Major: a market Job marketing strategy, to be able
Jo Major: to think strategically, to understand how a business
Jo Major: operates, to understand how all those pestle factors impact
Jo Major: our clients and our industry and the movement of candidates. And I
Jo Major: think that now more than ever we need true business partners
Jo Major: and true talent consultants who properly
Jo Major: consult. Because I, I think we're moving away while tech's replacing
Jo Major: recruitment as a process. And if we, you know, this, this continual, if
Jo Major: we're continually selling the basics, I think that's where we're really
Jo Major: gonna struggle. And I, I don't want the recruitment industry to
Jo Major: just be a place for young
Jo Major: homogenous groups. It should be a career for
Jo Major: everybody. There's no barriers to getting into it. So why do we all look the
Jo Major: same? And I think a lot of that is down to the, the working environment
Jo Major: and the culture and the stereotype that we've buil.
Joanne Lockwood: I remember a friend of mine who, you know, Bill Borman always said to me,
Joanne Lockwood: nobody leaves school to aspire to be a recruiter.
Joanne Lockwood: It's one of those careers you kind of, Most people, I don't want
Joanne Lockwood: to stereotype. Most people drop into, they got a salesy background, they've got this
Joanne Lockwood: background or they somehow get into recruitment. Somehow.
Joanne Lockwood: Is that part of the problem? People naturally gravitate
Joanne Lockwood: and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Recruiters
Joanne Lockwood: attract recruiters in their image and it's how to break that image down.
Jo Major: Yeah. Isn't it sad that such an interesting
Jo Major: career path is seen as something that you fall into? You
Jo Major: know, why do people not choose to go into recruitment when
Jo Major: recruitment itself can be an incredible profession and an
Jo Major: incredible career? And it's like I said, it's something that you don't
Jo Major: necessarily, you know, the barriers to it, the entry and
Jo Major: the entry levels to it are relatively straightforward to get
Jo Major: into. So. But I think it's because we built this
Jo Major: caricature of ourselves and in reality, who want,
Jo Major: who would ever want to step into that as a role? And
Jo Major: it's my belief as well that we're seen as a temp, as a stepping stone,
Jo Major: you know, a role that I might do for a temporary amount of time.
Jo Major: And it's like why, why, why has it become so
Jo Major: transactional? Why have we created this career
Jo Major: opportunity where you come in and then you go out and you, you
Jo Major: know, when you tend to come in at a certain point in your life and
Jo Major: you tend to leave at certain point in your life, you know, why, why are
Jo Major: we not professionalising the recruitment industry enough so it actually
Jo Major: becomes a, you know, a genuine career option?
Jo Major: And I think A lot of it is, like I said, this sales caricature when
Jo Major: my belief has always been that, you know, we. Yes, it is sales
Jo Major: to a degree, but it's also a lot more technical. You know,
Jo Major: you can sell a concept. Can you sell human beings
Jo Major: with their own minds and their own behaviours and their own, their own
Jo Major: agendas? That's really difficult. Yeah, because it's.
Joanne Lockwood: If you talk about sales, you know, the high street sales would be
Joanne Lockwood: cars, used or brand new cars. You've got estate
Joanne Lockwood: agents, letting agents, those are the sort of caricatures that pop into your head.
Joanne Lockwood: But we've got to realise that people are not inanimate objects, are they? They're all
Joanne Lockwood: unique, they're all different in the same way. A second hand car I guess is
Joanne Lockwood: unique to a, to that car. You're trying to find a
Joanne Lockwood: fit with it. But humans are different. I think often do. We think as
Joanne Lockwood: recruiters there's a whole evolution. You
Joanne Lockwood: know, I look at the recruitment industry, the sourcing people who source they are
Joanne Lockwood: technical geniuses with searching and the deep research and
Joanne Lockwood: investigators. It's a unique skill in their own just sourcing,
Joanne Lockwood: finding candidates, finding opportunities for people. Then you've got
Joanne Lockwood: workforce planning, you've got OD teams, you've got
Joanne Lockwood: talent management, talent development. All that kind of fits
Joanne Lockwood: under the TA banner if you like. In a big
Joanne Lockwood: organisation, agency recruits is just a small element of that.
Joanne Lockwood: It's the combination of sourcing, placing and
Joanne Lockwood: evaluating candidates, isn't it? But in a whole strategy, Chris, are far
Joanne Lockwood: more than that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think
Jo Major: I'm seeing. It's interesting, isn't it? Which I'm just reflecting on what you just said
Jo Major: then. It's like you have like a, you've got a
Jo Major: very, very interesting dynamic career
Jo Major: path as an internal recruiter because there are so many moving
Jo Major: parts to it. And yet as an agency recruiter
Jo Major: I feel that there's just, you know, there is just one, one pathway.
Jo Major: I mean some would argue you could do client facing or you could
Jo Major: do candidate facing or you can manage people or you don't have to manage
Jo Major: people, you can build out divisions. But it's strange how we just see it maybe
Jo Major: as this like one dimensional role instead of actually
Jo Major: investing in the professional developer development
Jo Major: of our recruiters to go from that, you know, that
Jo Major: job specification piece to the recruitment,
Jo Major: marketing, talent attraction, you know, through to the,
Jo Major: you know, to the, to the filling of the roles. And actually why are we
Jo Major: not, how on earth are we not sitting down with recruiters and talking to Them
Jo Major: about organisational design, workforce planning,
Jo Major: dynamic employer brand development, EVP development
Jo Major: and all of that. All of that human stuff, all of that. The
Jo Major: things that are instrumental in attracting and
Jo Major: retaining great people. Why do we. Why are we still just
Jo Major: plugging into the very basics of what a recruiter does?
Joanne Lockwood: You mentioned earlier about the consultative approach. That's where
Joanne Lockwood: every agency recruiter wants to be. They want to be seen as a value add,
Joanne Lockwood: not just a shifter. Yeah. Oh, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: we add value. We do this. I think what you just said there is what
Joanne Lockwood: a lot of agencies, and I'm not criticising anybody here is what they're not doing
Joanne Lockwood: is they're not interfacing to the business at a strategic level.
Joanne Lockwood: They're just fulfilling a hiring manager's desire. I want
Joanne Lockwood: this without asking why or can we help? Or can we.
Joanne Lockwood: Can we understand your brand values better? So we can. We can look at the
Joanne Lockwood: candidate profile, as you say, the evp, the recruit marketing based
Joanne Lockwood: on who you are, rather than just putting out this bland.
Joanne Lockwood: I want a Java developer, I want a DevOps programme or whatever
Joanne Lockwood: it may be without understanding the context of the brand.
Jo Major: I think a lot of it has got. We've also got to think about, like,
Jo Major: who's created this and I do think it is. It's the fact that
Jo Major: recruitment agencies are devalued, I think, by a lot of
Jo Major: clients that, you know, paying them an awful lot of money just to source
Jo Major: CVs. Essentially. It's not unusual for me to sit
Jo Major: down with recruiters and for them to, you know, we talk about the, you know,
Jo Major: the job brief stage and for them to not even be able
Jo Major: to have a meeting with a client about the job, let
Jo Major: alone meet the hiring manager, let alone get more than 10
Jo Major: minutes with them. And yeah, that client's paying for a service.
Jo Major: The payer, you know, they could be paying anything from 5, 10, 15
Jo Major: to. Depends on what rates are. And yet
Jo Major: the relationship between the recruiter and the client
Jo Major: is. Said it before, is so transactional,
Jo Major: you might as well. Well, you will be able to. You might as well just
Jo Major: feed in a command into a piece of recruitment technology
Jo Major: and pay it 10k. And this is. And I do think
Jo Major: the recruiters have got. They've got. We need to think
Jo Major: about how do we actually change the perception of
Jo Major: where we fit in to the talent attraction strategy. It's.
Jo Major: We can say that we are. We add value and we're trusted
Jo Major: partners and splash all that stuff across the, you know, our websites, but
Jo Major: that won't be happening with each and every role that we've got in.
Jo Major: There'll be a degree of that, but not with all of them. So how do
Jo Major: we change that relationship between hiring manager and
Jo Major: client and recruiter and for us to truly be seen as business
Jo Major: partners? I believe it's when we start to evolve and change our services and
Jo Major: what we actually do and what we actually consult on. Because taking
Jo Major: a job brief over a five minute conversation with a client
Jo Major: is not consultation, it's not advisory
Jo Major: work, it's not expertise. It's something that could be picked up
Jo Major: like that by recruitment technology and it's my belief that it will be.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, certainly you look at some of the ATSs and some of the AI integrations
Joanne Lockwood: out there, the platforms are doing a lot of this work for you. And
Joanne Lockwood: Even the way LinkedIn is changing its recruitment platform within LinkedIn
Joanne Lockwood: it's making it more easy to self serve, more easy for candidates to
Joanne Lockwood: amplify themselves and look at fit better. And yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: think we're seeing an evolution where if not careful agencies will just be
Joanne Lockwood: a, it will just be going back to being a bucket shop if they can't
Joanne Lockwood: elevate into that consulting. Do the hiring teams want that? Does the
Joanne Lockwood: in house hiring manager actually want the agency
Joanne Lockwood: to consult or are they forcing them into that transactional
Joanne Lockwood: relationship? It's a good question, isn't it? It's almost like we've got to do a
Jo Major: PR job on a lot of the industry and change this perception.
Jo Major: I think it will take recruiters talking to hiring
Jo Major: managers about something different and this is
Jo Major: where I feel that I really try to push the
Jo Major: whole DE&I and inclusive hiring
Jo Major: expertise as your USP. For us to actually
Jo Major: keep on top of trends, for us to truly understand
Jo Major: all the factors that are influence that, that are influencing
Jo Major: our clients hiring decisions, the stuff that's truly keeping them
Jo Major: awake at night. Because I sometimes listen to, you know, go to the conferences
Jo Major: and nobody ever really talks about what's keeping clients awake at night. And
Jo Major: when they do it's like where did you get that from? Because that's not an
Jo Major: a deep dive survey. It's understanding trends and understand actually
Jo Major: sitting down with an organisation at the beginning of the year and asking them a
Jo Major: question about where they want to be from a diversity and demographic
Jo Major: perspective. What, where it, what's their weak points in their hiring
Jo Major: strategy? What upskilling do their hiring managers need? What about,
Jo Major: you know, without even being invited to do it, doing a,
Jo Major: you know, an audit of their website and their careers page,
Jo Major: you can easily access your client's job descriptions at the click of a
Jo Major: button and critiquing them and rebuilding
Jo Major: them and saying, I know you've not asked me to do this,
Jo Major: but I've done it and I'd really like to have a chat with you about
Jo Major: the results. It's that kind of like proactive. And for some reason
Jo Major: recruiters are terrified of stepping into
Jo Major: EDNI and recruitment because they think it's political. We
Jo Major: know it's political, but they see it as this conversation that they've not been invited
Jo Major: to. They don't see it as an enhancement of their
Jo Major: service capability. And that for me is, you know, is,
Jo Major: is, is wild. You know, if TA is saying we
Jo Major: can't make decisions on CVs because
Jo Major: candidates are using technology far too much and
Jo Major: Instead of having five CVs that fit the bill, we
Jo Major: have 500 CVs that are a perfect match of the
Jo Major: JD. And we don't, we cannot shortlist. Why are
Jo Major: the recruiters in that conversation going in and going, shall
Jo Major: we have a conversation around how we can change the sifting
Jo Major: process? What can we do to. Why don't
Jo Major: we do a pilot where we take the CV out of the process? Let's look
Jo Major: at the other things that we can do to help you with this. And I
Jo Major: don't know whether or not they just feel that it's out of their capability or
Jo Major: it's, you know, I think there is this tendency to stick
Jo Major: to what we've done over the last 10, 20, 30 years instead of
Jo Major: really ramping it up and being at the same level as the tech
Jo Major: providers trying to kick us out.
Jo Major: I'm going down rabbit hole with this, but.
Joanne Lockwood: You'Ve probably must have worked more hiring managers than I have in my time at
Joanne Lockwood: Are we, Are we setting this hiring manager up
Joanne Lockwood: as some sort of super expert on talent management
Joanne Lockwood: branding diversity? Often a hiring manager in my
Joanne Lockwood: experience has been a department head or someone in a department who
Joanne Lockwood: has an empty seat or wants to grow his team or her team
Joanne Lockwood: or their team, and they may not
Joanne Lockwood: hire daily, they may hire once or twice a year or maybe every
Joanne Lockwood: other year. They're not necessarily match fit in the hiring process.
Joanne Lockwood: Should, should our agencies, should our external recruiters be
Joanne Lockwood: interfacing at a different level in organisation? Interfacing with the DNI team, interface with the
Joanne Lockwood: HR team, interfacing with marketing and branding or a general
Joanne Lockwood: talent overview team and encouraging the
Joanne Lockwood: organisation to maybe have professional hirers? And
Joanne Lockwood: that's a TA business partner, for one of a better way of describing it, where
Joanne Lockwood: people are professional recruiters. In house as well. Because I think too
Joanne Lockwood: often the hiring manager is an amateur hirer. They're a professional
Joanne Lockwood: person but an amateur. Hire a recruiter, right. Their job isn't a recruiter and
Jo Major: they, you know, you're right, you get, they're often given that role that
Jo Major: you know, through promotional or hiring in and not actually
Jo Major: given the skill set. And so the ideal scenario
Jo Major: for me would be to, you know, to even just
Jo Major: send check the basic capacity of hiring managers and see
Jo Major: that as an opportunity to, you know, as recruiters we
Jo Major: claim that we are experts in interviewing. What can
Jo Major: we do to share that expertise and also just
Jo Major: being able to audit the capability of the TA team and seeing
Jo Major: whether or not we can bring in our professional services that way. There's
Jo Major: often pain points, there's often, you know, gaping holes in a,
Jo Major: in our clients recruitment and TA playbook and again
Jo Major: we pride ourselves on being recruitment and TA experts.
Jo Major: What are we doing to be able to seek to identify where
Jo Major: help may be needed and then adapting our services accordingly and
Jo Major: moving towards offering a whole suite of professional services
Jo Major: that go beyond just advertising a role, emailing out the
Jo Major: database and going through the recruitment process. Not to simplify
Jo Major: the hiring process because I know it's a lot more than that and I don't
Jo Major: want people throwing rocks at me after they've listened to the test. But I get,
Jo Major: you know, I get it's more than that but I think that we're not even
Jo Major: having the conversation Joanne around. This is what
Jo Major: we do and these are our capabilities. Have you ever thought about
Jo Major: working with us in a slightly different way? Is it worth
Jo Major: exploring? Is that nudging into the RPO space where we are trying to
Joanne Lockwood: be the outsourced partner on this rather than an
Joanne Lockwood: arm's length agency that is that, is that the blurring
Joanne Lockwood: occurring there? I mean maybe we will see more capability
Jo Major: building through, you know, in that RPO offering.
Jo Major: I've heard, you know, I've heard noise around
Jo Major: that being, you know, being, being a thing. But then I
Jo Major: guess, you know, an RPO model's not, it's not what.
Jo Major: They're really good on paper, right? They're really good on
Jo Major: paper and they work for some organisations but they
Jo Major: often don't deliver on their promises. It's not this transformational
Jo Major: silver bullet that we always expect it to be. And I don't think you
Jo Major: necessarily need, you know, an all singing, all dancing kind of like
Jo Major: RPO model. I just think it's about just in
Jo Major: its most basic form, just thinking about
Jo Major: what level of expertise You've got in your organisation what's
Jo Major: missing, bringing it in and then packaging it up. So
Jo Major: you are almost that one stop shop
Jo Major: for everything modern recruitment needs.
Jo Major: You know, you've got. You know, you've got tech capability.
Jo Major: You know, recruiters, I feel, need to be recruitment technology
Jo Major: experts. Right. I know if some recruitment businesses who are not, you
Jo Major: know, where things like ChatGPT are getting banned and they're not
Jo Major: allowed to use things like Otter AI, and they're actually being moved away
Jo Major: from recruitment technology instead of embracing it. If it was.
Jo Major: If I ran a recruitment business today, I'd be sending all my recruiters out,
Jo Major: I'd be getting them trained fully on the. They'd know
Jo Major: everything about the future impact of AI and recruitment technology.
Jo Major: I would be wanting them to be the people who have conversations
Jo Major: about where clients can go to and talk to them about that stuff. Not every
Jo Major: recruiter, it's not realistic, but a person within the organisation
Jo Major: whose side hustle is AI and technology in
Jo Major: recruitment. Yeah, I agree. I think if you're not using things like
Joanne Lockwood: Otter Read Fathom to capture your meetings,
Joanne Lockwood: your conversations, and then using AI to process the
Joanne Lockwood: client requirements, process the candidate requirements,
Joanne Lockwood: summarising conversations, keeping meeting notes. If you're not doing that
Joanne Lockwood: consistently, then how can you offer that consultative service?
Joanne Lockwood: Because you're just relying on that individual point of contact to make
Joanne Lockwood: adequate notes. I know people are parochial. If
Joanne Lockwood: I kept all this and I make it too transparent, then I'm expendable.
Joanne Lockwood: I always look at the other way, that the more you should do it, the
Joanne Lockwood: more you embed yourself because you become a trusted person inside rather than a. Rather
Jo Major: than a. Yeah, but we've spoken a lot, haven't we, about
Jo Major: how we feel about using technology and AI and whatnot.
Jo Major: And I just think that, you know, in its simplest form,
Jo Major: it helps to. Could help to transform the
Jo Major: recruitment process and free people up to do the important stuff, which is the human.
Jo Major: And I just think this goes, you know, hand in hand with a whole range
Jo Major: of different roles that I think should be within a recruitment
Jo Major: industry from. I mentioned it before,
Jo Major: advisory on things like career pages and
Jo Major: employee value propositions and, you know, all those things that we tend to look at
Jo Major: when we may be doing a retained search,
Jo Major: actually looking at that retained model and thinking
Jo Major: like, what can we have? Just as a. You know, we might still
Jo Major: be running contingent, I don't think for long, but
Jo Major: what can we have on our suite of product offerings for that particular
Jo Major: client's social media? You know, we.
Jo Major: We've probably got People within our organisation that are absolute
Jo Major: experts in tech that I probably don't use from a social media
Jo Major: perspective, you know, and they're, they're absolutely, they've got an incredible
Jo Major: amount of followers on TikTok and they can create content in five seconds.
Jo Major: You know, if you're working with an SME who don't necessarily have that
Jo Major: capability within their TA team, that is a, for me that is just an absolute
Jo Major: no brainer to be able to say, look, we've got a, got a social media
Jo Major: expert. It focuses on candidate engagement through
Jo Major: TikTok. We want to show you some of the campaigns that we pull
Jo Major: together for some of our clients, you know, and have that in the cell.
Jo Major: I'm getting carried away with my ideas here but
Jo Major: here's our tech person, here's our social media
Jo Major: person, here is our
Jo Major: Edna, you know, inclusive, accessible hiring person, here is our
Jo Major: skills based, you know, interview training
Jo Major: expert, you know, and you've just got this suite of people that just go beyond
Jo Major: salespeople, job fillers, contingent recruitment.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm with you though. I completely agree that you need to meet
Joanne Lockwood: candidates where they're at in the medium of format and the messaging that they're going
Joanne Lockwood: to respond to. And if you look at best recruitment marketing it is using things
Joanne Lockwood: like Snapchat, TikTok, these modern social media tools to get
Joanne Lockwood: into markets where traditional, you know, putting an advert at the Times
Joanne Lockwood: may be good if you want to hire a board level non exec
Joanne Lockwood: director in a specific sector because they sit there on a Sunday morning
Joanne Lockwood: reading the vacancies but the average person doesn't
Joanne Lockwood: look at the evening paper anymore or even in specialist job boards.
Joanne Lockwood: They're on TikTok, they're on these things and if you want to penetrate
Joanne Lockwood: intermediate psyche, those are where you need to be. And if you're not doing that
Joanne Lockwood: now, you're missing out on that talent because somebody else is, you're
Joanne Lockwood: not there, you know that somebody else is definitely doing that. It's getting people to
Joanne Lockwood: broaden their thinking here in terms of where do I have to go to
Joanne Lockwood: find the fish I'm looking for. I can't just put it in the pond over
Joanne Lockwood: here. I've got to think about the entire landscape now.
Jo Major: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's why we need to be
Jo Major: instead of just constantly hanging out in our echo
Jo Major: chamber as an industry. That's why we need to be like stepping out and
Jo Major: actually spending time outside our industry,
Jo Major: just really, really understanding how
Jo Major: marketing's changing, how tech's changing.
Jo Major: I did a piece. I think it might have been after Weeds Birken
Jo Major: last time. It's just something that I'm really interested is the different
Jo Major: generational attitudes, but between buying and
Jo Major: selling. And I'd been asked to do a talk at a conference
Jo Major: and I thought, you know what? I've done this conference several years in a
Jo Major: row. I don't want to talk about the usual stuff. I want to do something
Jo Major: that people won't be expecting. And I know that it's a real
Jo Major: pain point of the industry at the moment, you know, to
Jo Major: retain, especially early careers talent, you know, to get them selling in
Jo Major: a way that is deemed success for us as
Jo Major: older generations. So I did a load of research into it. I came up with
Jo Major: this, with this, with this session on understanding, you know,
Jo Major: buyer and seller behaviour between all five different generations, actually. And
Jo Major: it was fascinating and it went down really well. And off the back of it,
Jo Major: I developed a workshop. And it just really, really
Jo Major: kind of almost just surprised
Jo Major: me in a way because I'm not
Jo Major: some, you know, I'm not some amazing brain that's
Jo Major: just thinking outside the box constantly. I just think about basic stuff.
Jo Major: And it really surprised me that it was so different and it was like.
Jo Major: And we'd never. Actually, nobody else was really,
Jo Major: really talking about it and that we were still profiling
Jo Major: clients as though they were boomers or
Jo Major: Gen Z xs, you know what I mean? And it's just like, that's me.
Joanne Lockwood: Gen Xer. Yeah, Gen Xer. Yeah, me too. And it's like,
Jo Major: I think sometimes we need this diversity of thought.
Jo Major: We need to, as an industry, hang out a lot more with our clients
Jo Major: and we actually need to get on, you know, to smash
Jo Major: down this echo chamber of people. The industry's telling the industry what
Jo Major: it needs to do. This is wild. This is group. This is a
Jo Major: large scale group think case study.
Jo Major: And I think those that are doing incredibly well
Jo Major: are the ones that have got that board that are full of,
Jo Major: you know, are not full of recruitment industry folk, you know, who
Jo Major: have their advisors from their client base
Jo Major: who hang out with their clients. You know,
Jo Major: I still find it unbelievable that some of the big
Jo Major: conferences that we see, we never see clients on stage. Jo,
Jo Major: why do we never see leading TA experts
Jo Major: on our stages? At the Recruitment Expo, for example, Let. Me just turn this
Joanne Lockwood: around. You talked about getting a client. A client is
Joanne Lockwood: the person paying the money, which is the company you're providing the
Joanne Lockwood: resource to. Well, I always get frustrated there's not enough
Joanne Lockwood: work in helping develop candidates.
Jo Major: You know, as soon as you said. That I was like people I know
Joanne Lockwood: all happen to be women in this particular case are what I would call now
Joanne Lockwood: long term unemployed six months plus going on 12.
Joanne Lockwood: One of them has picked up an entry, Enrol, a short 10 week contract,
Joanne Lockwood: fixed term contract in the middle of their now back end on the market. And
Joanne Lockwood: I see their frustration on LinkedIn. I see them just thanklessly posting that
Joanne Lockwood: They've applied for 400 jobs this week. They've done this, they've done that, they've had
Joanne Lockwood: interviews, they're not getting callbacks. If you keep doing the same thing, you're going to
Joanne Lockwood: get the same result. If you're not being hired after six months,
Joanne Lockwood: you have to start looking in the mirror and saying actually it's about what can
Joanne Lockwood: I do differently? No one's really investing in people
Joanne Lockwood: to make them either more marketable, upskill them, make them more match fit,
Joanne Lockwood: job ready or even help them explore different opportunities. Do you
Joanne Lockwood: think recruiters should also look to the talent
Joanne Lockwood: and coach them more? You know, because I've always, whenever I've been in the market
Joanne Lockwood: I sort of said to the recruiter, what more could I do? What is
Joanne Lockwood: wrong with my cv? What is wrong with my submission, my cover
Joanne Lockwood: letter? They go, yeah, it's all right, it's not my, yeah, almost saying it's not
Joanne Lockwood: my job to coach you sort of thing. You've got to do the hard work
Joanne Lockwood: yourself. So who is going to coach those people to get them into work?
Jo Major: I think it's a very, very, very interest of job centre.
Jo Major: Crikey, can you imagine? We would be in trouble. Careers, coach,
Joanne Lockwood: whatever we. It's a very, very interesting point and I'm really glad
Jo Major: that you brought it up. And you know, potentially I don't talk about
Jo Major: this enough. It reminds me of I've actually got
Jo Major: an ex recruiter, ex hr, moved into HR
Jo Major: equipment and Nair's now set up on her own incredible
Jo Major: woman called Faith Phillips Jones and she's set up her own this
Jo Major: exact. Because this is missing. She set up a coaching company
Jo Major: to work with senior HR professionals.
Jo Major: You know, the majority of them tend to be, to be women and she's taking
Jo Major: them through that process where she's looking at, she's not just looking at the cv,
Jo Major: she's looking at their personal brand, their social media activity, their
Jo Major: interview techniques, really kind of critiquing like their
Jo Major: jobs, how they're looking at their job search, how they're
Jo Major: managing their job search, who they're talking to, who they're not talking to. And
Jo Major: I Absolutely. Think, you know, it's. She's external to an
Jo Major: agency and making a business out of that. And the interesting thing is people
Jo Major: are prepared to. Even when they're not in work or when they're
Jo Major: gearing up for a move, they're prepared. Prepared to put in that personal
Jo Major: investment. And maybe there's this just.
Jo Major: It goes back to that, the metrics that we work on as a recruitment
Jo Major: industry, where we see ourselves making
Jo Major: money out of the small percentage of candidates that we can
Jo Major: place and the clients, rather than actually
Jo Major: thinking about this other area, potentially untapped area of
Jo Major: professional services for candidates, because there's definitely a market
Jo Major: for it. But maybe it's because of, you know,
Jo Major: we don't necessarily see the value or it might go back to. It might go
Jo Major: into that kind of grey area of we don't charge clients,
Jo Major: candidates for our service, you know, and we're governed on that. But it, you know,
Jo Major: I don't see enough of it even just from a, you know, from a. Just
Jo Major: a candidate support, apart from the basics. Read this downloadable. Watch this
Jo Major: video. And actually, if we are seeing
Jo Major: what I'm predicting is large gaps of unemployment for
Jo Major: particular demographics, there's an
Jo Major: opportunity for us to really step in there and coach that group because
Jo Major: that should be part of our responsibility as well.
Joanne Lockwood: What's there now? You look at the local colleges,
Joanne Lockwood: the training programmes, the government initiatives, which tends to be
Joanne Lockwood: where it's free because you've got no job, you haven't got huge
Joanne Lockwood: sums of money to invest, you've spent your redundancy money quite
Joanne Lockwood: quickly, or if you had any in the first place, and you're living hand to
Joanne Lockwood: mouth, you're on benefits almost, and the job centre or the
Joanne Lockwood: benefits want you to be actively seeking a role, taking whatever's going.
Joanne Lockwood: You think, well, I don't want to work in a checkout, but I have to
Joanne Lockwood: take this job, which means I can't then invest my time in finding out. It's
Joanne Lockwood: chicken and eggs. The government want you to be in work and not
Joanne Lockwood: paying you benefits and you then hold out because you want your
Joanne Lockwood: ideal role. And sometimes you think, hang on a minute, I'm not going to get
Joanne Lockwood: this. So you've got to think about your career pivoting, what you can do quickly,
Joanne Lockwood: haven't you? And it's people need career coaching, I think, and they're not
Joanne Lockwood: getting it. Not getting it. And being an entrepreneur myself,
Joanne Lockwood: I always say to people, are you sure you're sure you want to work for
Joanne Lockwood: somebody else? The amount of effort you Put into trying to find that role. You
Joanne Lockwood: could have started a business and you could be earning 300 quid a day.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, you must be able to earn 300 quid a day at doing something. I
Joanne Lockwood: think, oh no, I couldn't work. I gotta, I gotta work for somebody else. I
Joanne Lockwood: want someone to feed me, I want somebody. I don't want the risk, I don't
Joanne Lockwood: want stress. Okay, go for it. In a year's time we'll
Joanne Lockwood: have this conversation. I can say the same to you. You could start a business
Joanne Lockwood: by now and done this on your own. I know, I know. You've got to
Joanne Lockwood: try and encourage people to think differently. You know, if you take a, let's say
Joanne Lockwood: people earn 40,000 a year. If you're not earning £40,000
Joanne Lockwood: for one year, that's what I was. My math. Three and a half thousand a
Joanne Lockwood: month, whatever it is, how long is it going to take you to recover that
Joanne Lockwood: three and a half thousand a month over the next 10 years of your career?
Joanne Lockwood: It's going to be ages. So are you better off compromising
Joanne Lockwood: your charge what you need to earn and get in and then
Joanne Lockwood: grow your career again? Re baseline yourself
Joanne Lockwood: £500? £500amonth cut is not actually a
Joanne Lockwood: 500amonth cut. It's two and a half thousand pound you've earned.
Joanne Lockwood: So you're always thinking, I'm worth more than that. And it's helping
Joanne Lockwood: people become more realistic about their own expectations, isn't it? Without devaluing them.
Jo Major: Yeah, absolutely. And it's a conversation that I always
Jo Major: have as well with people that I've, you know, that I've seen especially,
Jo Major: especially more experienced candidates because this is, it seems
Jo Major: to be that kind of, you know, over 50 zone where that
Jo Major: I'm seeing the biggest challenge with, you know, if there's much, much harder,
Jo Major: especially, you know, maybe it's just my, you know, my people
Jo Major: I'm surrounded by, but especially women. And these are people who have the
Jo Major: skillset to be able to be going out there and setting up tomorrow and the
Jo Major: networks to be doing it as well. But I think it is challenging. You
Jo Major: become institutionalised into the world of employment, don't you? And it takes an
Jo Major: awful lot for you to believe that you've got the capability to run your own
Jo Major: business. And I always say to them, crikey, if I can do it, if I
Jo Major: can do it, then you can do it. And you, you could be,
Jo Major: for every month that you spend waiting to get a job for somebody
Jo Major: else to employ you, you could be doing Your own thing. And you could be.
Jo Major: All that marketing you're doing to market yourself as a candidate, you could be marketing
Jo Major: yourself as a, as a, a career coach. If you spent a year trying
Joanne Lockwood: to find a role, you know how to be a career coach, you just need
Joanne Lockwood: to look in the mirror and apply that career coaching to yourself. So you've been
Joanne Lockwood: through that pain. I think there's lots of opportunities out there
Joanne Lockwood: and I'm not saying everyone's cut out to be an entrepreneur. It doesn't suit everybody.
Joanne Lockwood: And I'm not trying to. I don't want to give that. If I can. You
Joanne Lockwood: can sort of privileged sort of mindset thing. Yes. Yeah, you're right.
Jo Major: Yeah. But we have to be honest to people and say, look, actually
Joanne Lockwood: it's not that you're not employable, you're just not packaged.
Jo Major: Yeah, and we should. Exactly. And that is in the package,
Jo Major: whether we like it or not, that, you know, it, it can have a, you
Jo Major: know, a massive impact. If you're somebody that has neglected,
Jo Major: say, your LinkedIn profile for the last 10 years and all, you
Jo Major: know, and let's face it, that, that, that is
Jo Major: the window to you and it is for a lot of
Jo Major: industries. If you're not on that, if you're not on, you know, you can't expect
Jo Major: somebody to find you if you've not got an active profile, you know, on
Jo Major: LinkedIn. And I do think there is definitely some, the scope for
Jo Major: recruiters, recruitment agencies to take responsibility
Jo Major: definitely for that coaching and give that investment. And in the same way
Jo Major: that I think that we should be where we see, you know,
Jo Major: hiring strategy that focuses on the potential, a
Jo Major: lot of the potential on young people. We should be taking this approach
Jo Major: of seeing the potential of people over the age of 50
Jo Major: and, you know, and really looking at, like, how can we,
Jo Major: how can we take people from the world of work and from
Jo Major: different industries and how can we help them to realise their
Jo Major: potential by investing for all that time. The vacancies are
Jo Major: empty and we're focused, you know, we're scratching our heads wondering how the
Jo Major: heck we retain our Gen Z's and our alphas. We could be
Jo Major: investing in the reinvention of this talent pool here.
Jo Major: And you know that they, they, they
Jo Major: could be the future of our business rather than, as, you know, as,
Jo Major: like I say, continually trying to reinvent the reel
Jo Major: around wheel around early careers. Perhaps we need kind of like a
Jo Major: rethink on that. But it is, it's scary. It's worrying me massively
Jo Major: that this increase in people over the age of 50 day
Jo Major: that I'm seeing really struggle to get back into full time work.
Joanne Lockwood: It's interesting to say that I spoke at a LinkedIn Talent Connect conference,
Joanne Lockwood: I think it was back in April this year and one of the
Joanne Lockwood: keynoters there, I can't remember her name or her company but I remember what
Joanne Lockwood: she said basically is that we are globally the
Joanne Lockwood: population. We're not having as many babies as we once were. In order to grow
Joanne Lockwood: the population globally you need to have something like two babies per woman.
Joanne Lockwood: I think we're now at 1 or 0.75 babies per woman
Joanne Lockwood: now. Globally our newer generations, our Gen Zs and our Gen
Joanne Lockwood: Alphas are smaller than our millennials and our Gen Xs.
Joanne Lockwood: We will be millennials will turn 50 in
Joanne Lockwood: 2032 or 2030, something like that. So
Joanne Lockwood: at that point there over 50s will become the bulk
Joanne Lockwood: of our population or working population. So our population
Joanne Lockwood: is ageing. We can't retire at 65 anymore. We're going
Joanne Lockwood: to be working to 75. Retirement was designed to be
Joanne Lockwood: something where you can't work anymore. Not to I've worked hard all my life,
Joanne Lockwood: now I want to give up and have a rest. It was meant to be
Joanne Lockwood: retirement pensions were all designed abound. You have to retire because you
Joanne Lockwood: have no more capability. So I think we're going to be pushed back into that
Joanne Lockwood: world where for the majority you're going to have to keep working as long as
Joanne Lockwood: you can. So that means we're going to end up with a workforce that's between
Joanne Lockwood: 25 and 75 as being our biggest
Joanne Lockwood: area. Why do we focus on early careers? Because
Joanne Lockwood: we're investing. We'll get more out of them. They'll stay here for longer. Well if
Joanne Lockwood: you're 55 you might want to work for a company for 5, 10
Joanne Lockwood: years. You're more likely to stay longer than, than a 20 year
Joanne Lockwood: old who wants to career acceleration So I don't think we're look we're
Joanne Lockwood: giving the elder generation or the Gen X and the millennials
Joanne Lockwood: the credit where it's due. There are lived experience,
Joanne Lockwood: capability, retraining opportunities and
Joanne Lockwood: they've still got 10 years on them. So why? Because it boils down the
Jo Major: reason why I guess connects in with what we do. It's bias and
Jo Major: stereotyping and a lack of like education
Jo Major: and maybe we need to, we need to completely do a thing, you know,
Jo Major: a complete turnaround of our future talent programmes.
Jo Major: Maybe we are like looking, putting all our
Jo Major: eggs into a basket where we're missing like this Massive
Jo Major: opportunity. And also, you know, we maybe as, as businesses we've got
Jo Major: a social responsibility because if we, if the biggest
Jo Major: generation in the workforce or you know, you know, we all, we all, we're all
Jo Major: turning, we're ageing at the same time, you know, that is a lot
Jo Major: of economically inactive people in the uk.
Jo Major: If we don't get on top of, I think changing our mentality and
Jo Major: attitude towards mature workers. Mature?
Jo Major: Is that even the right word? Experienced worker? Vintage, Vintage,
Joanne Lockwood: Classic. Yeah, I don't know. Classic. I mean
Jo Major: I'd employ me at my age, I mean, crikey, I mean, I think we said
Jo Major: this last time, there is no I would employ the 25 year old me.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean I was a nightmare Even as a 40 year old me and you
Joanne Lockwood: know, partying, drinking too much, socialising, gaming the system.
Joanne Lockwood: I turned 60 back in January so I, I'm a vintage worker. I'm in that
Joanne Lockwood: sort of right in that sweet spot of opportunity and I know that as a
Joanne Lockwood: 60 year old woman who's trans, I'm way down
Joanne Lockwood: on the employability scale now. So running my own business, really the only option
Joanne Lockwood: I have because I can't walk into a, a hundred grand a year
Joanne Lockwood: job, whatever I want, they're just not there and I wouldn't be
Joanne Lockwood: considered, I'm not. If I was 35 maybe, yeah. But yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: we've got to start looking at it. That's such a
Jo Major: missed opportunity, isn't it? It's a wild scenario to be in,
Jo Major: you know that and I think that's why there's so much work to
Jo Major: do, you know, in, in this area and we,
Jo Major: we really need to get on top of what I see and accept experience as
Jo Major: the, one of the most commonly accepted forms
Jo Major: of discrimination and prejudice. Age discrimination. It is, yeah,
Jo Major: ageism. I mean I know as someone who's
Joanne Lockwood: of my age that my, my day, my working day is
Joanne Lockwood: different than it was when I was 20. My brain operates in different
Joanne Lockwood: ways. It has activity at certain points, it does thinking at other points, it gets
Joanne Lockwood: really creative at other points. But I've learned how to structure my day better,
Joanne Lockwood: how to do things and have conversations and I'm more mature and more rational,
Joanne Lockwood: more able to mentor. So I think we just have to look at that
Joanne Lockwood: again, that career arc and that career curve, how you want to describe it and
Joanne Lockwood: say where do people who have lived experience, are more mature,
Joanne Lockwood: have a change in the way their brain works, their needs?
Joanne Lockwood: We're not trying to buy houses, have families, what we're now trying to do is
Joanne Lockwood: consolidate and stability. So we're looking for different things in our careers as
Joanne Lockwood: well. And so we're not necessarily go getty growth people,
Joanne Lockwood: we're maybe bedrock, we're maybe staying.
Jo Major: This is the thing that keeps a business together is that bedrock of
Jo Major: people that I call us call them the steady eddies. I thought it was being
Jo Major: a steady eddie, but maybe a wild steady Eddie. But
Jo Major: yeah, we need these people in our
Jo Major: organisations to, to. And
Jo Major: I think we just need to grow the confidence of recruiters
Jo Major: and to be able to have really sensible conversations with clients when
Jo Major: the focus is on, you know, is on age, whether
Jo Major: that's direct or whether it's coded language, you know,
Jo Major: and I think there's a big, big part, you know, we need to be brave
Jo Major: enough to be able to push back. And I know that, I know that that's
Jo Major: not happening and it's that one thing I think applies to
Jo Major: all of us because we all age. I'm going to
Joanne Lockwood: stereotype hiring managers now. In my head I'm thinking 30 to
Joanne Lockwood: 35 year old junior manager in a department
Joanne Lockwood: and being 30, 35, they're likely to be less age
Joanne Lockwood: inclusive. Just purely, they might be more age biassed against somebody who is over
Joanne Lockwood: 50 because of their own maybe imposter syndrome, their own sort of
Joanne Lockwood: confidence. They wouldn't want someone to come in who is much older than them for
Joanne Lockwood: feeling they'd be undermined or et cetera. There's a hell of a lot of
Joanne Lockwood: bias going on in that, in that higher manager's sort of mind around older
Joanne Lockwood: candidates. They would rather see someone junior to them in age and experience
Joanne Lockwood: than someone who's more senior in age and experience. And does that,
Joanne Lockwood: do they feel threatened, do you think? I think
Jo Major: I've always come from the mindset of always hire people that are better than you,
Jo Major: you do a much better job. But yeah, I think there is, Yeah, I think
Jo Major: there is a. It's all down, isn't it, to a lack of exposure to,
Jo Major: you know, to age diversity and, you know, the stereotype
Jo Major: as well. And I think there's got to be, there's got to be some investment
Jo Major: in training and culture of an organisation. You
Jo Major: know, it's not that just because you're of a, of a, of a certain
Jo Major: age and experience, you know, make a decision to come in at a
Jo Major: certain level because you've made a decision to come in at a certain level, you're
Jo Major: not going to, you don't. Who joins an organisation going,
Jo Major: I'm taking your job, I'm going To sneak in through the back door and I'm
Jo Major: going to take your job, I'm going to be better than you. I mean, who'd
Jo Major: have the energy for that? I know, I know, yeah. And that
Joanne Lockwood: pressure, that pressure to deliver that. But often it's a
Jo Major: lack of confidence in the manager and it's like, you know,
Jo Major: how do we get rid of that? How do we enable them to see
Jo Major: the positives of an age diverse team? How do we get them to,
Jo Major: you know, to, to learn how to manage and communicate
Jo Major: with, you know, different generations in their, in their, in
Jo Major: their team? And that's why I'm just like, I'm a little bit obsessed about generational
Jo Major: workforces at the moment because it's just, I think it's got the
Jo Major: power to, to, to solve a lot of organisational
Jo Major: problems, staffing problems and social challenges as well.
Jo Major: And maybe it's on my mind because I'm massively conscious
Jo Major: of my own age and you know, it
Jo Major: shouldn't be, I shouldn't have to think, should I write? Okay, things don't go right
Jo Major: with diversity and recruitment. My only option is to go and work in Morrisons.
Jo Major: I'm working in Morrisons. It's lovely but you know, I don't, I could
Jo Major: bring really, really bring my skills elsewhere but then would I get,
Jo Major: would I get a job with a startup for example?
Jo Major: I mean I'd have to probably put a bit more Botox and filler in Jo,
Jo Major: and pretend I'm certain of the younger. I mean what I would
Joanne Lockwood: probably do is take the thought if I can get a job in
Joanne Lockwood: Morrisons doing a very
Joanne Lockwood: worthwhile role that gives me an entry into their career structure
Joanne Lockwood: and then explore what options there were. So rather than claiming benefits
Joanne Lockwood: I can get minimum wage doing something I can for doing a part time role
Joanne Lockwood: there. Suddenly I've got an in in their career structure and their career development.
Joanne Lockwood: So maybe I, maybe I think more technically I'm looking for a foothold in an
Joanne Lockwood: organisation that I want to grow in. Maybe I, I then forge a second career
Joanne Lockwood: in retail and become talent management or use my IT skills or
Joanne Lockwood: get into it somehow. So I think we need to as say coach our,
Joanne Lockwood: our candidates as to how they can use what they have got
Joanne Lockwood: to, to leverage opportunities that are not ideal but a foothold. And I
Joanne Lockwood: remember a friend of mine ran a recruitment business 20 years ago and
Joanne Lockwood: it all went wrong. He went bankrupt and he ended up working for
Joanne Lockwood: whatever it was, the Department of Social Security. So he was working on that desk
Joanne Lockwood: processing people's Benefit claims. And over
Joanne Lockwood: the last 20 years, he's now grown as a civil servant and he's now a
Joanne Lockwood: senior manager in the civil service in the heart of government.
Joanne Lockwood: But he navigated that career growth himself from
Joanne Lockwood: whatever that junior role is in December. I can't remember what the grades are now,
Joanne Lockwood: but it was basically a second level upgrade. And sometimes you
Joanne Lockwood: just gotta take your pride off the shelf. And I was gonna say a lot
Jo Major: of it. This potentially down to your pride and your ego, isn't it?
Jo Major: And also this, you know, this social hierarchy of
Jo Major: careers and jobs, you know yourself, don't you? I know that. I mean,
Jo Major: I'm not dismissing work at Morrisons. I genuinely sometimes
Jo Major: go there and I love the vibe so much and be like, this would be
Jo Major: a joy to work here. It's just so community based and I just
Jo Major: love talking to people and it'd be great. But I also know me,
Jo Major: I know I might go in at, you know, I might be going at the
Jo Major: kind of like shop floor level. I mean my, my roots are in retail, but
Jo Major: I might go in at that level. But then I know what I'm like, I
Jo Major: won't be able to stop myself. You know, I'd be putting my ideas forward,
Jo Major: I'd be suggesting different ideas and I'd be,
Jo Major: you know, probably in rooms that I shouldn't be in, you know, stuff. And I
Jo Major: think, yeah, it's partly, it's a two way thing, isn't it? It's getting
Jo Major: people to like rethink, you know, doing a whole
Jo Major: 360 in your career. And it might mean you have to start at a different
Jo Major: level and you've got to leave your ego at the door and not think about
Jo Major: that and also just focus on like what that could, what doors that could open
Jo Major: up and then making sure that it works both ways, you know,
Jo Major: with the employer and hiring managers. And they're a lot more open
Jo Major: to a broader, more diverse range of candidates and talent.
Joanne Lockwood: If you're not careful, it's too easy to
Joanne Lockwood: become unfit in your, in your working career. You know, if
Joanne Lockwood: you're out of work or you're not out of work, you're looking for work
Joanne Lockwood: for a whole year, you'll lose that sort of social
Joanne Lockwood: interaction, you lose that sort of employee kind of vibe
Joanne Lockwood: about you and you become less employable the more it goes on.
Joanne Lockwood: And I think, yeah, confidence and other things. And also the world changes
Joanne Lockwood: a lot in a year. You look at AI and all the other things that
Joanne Lockwood: change in a year, system upgrades, whatever process you're Using
Joanne Lockwood: you become quickly you erode your value
Joanne Lockwood: by being out of the work environment for a while as well. And
Joanne Lockwood: I remember my father in law, he was a
Joanne Lockwood: firefighter for most of his career. I think he retired in his
Joanne Lockwood: 50s and he wasn't looking to hang his hat up. And he went to the
Joanne Lockwood: local supermarket, I think it was at Asda before it was
Joanne Lockwood: Asda. And he knocked on the door, the manager and said, look, I'd like to
Joanne Lockwood: be your backpacker on the checkouts. You know, you don't have a backpacker. I
Joanne Lockwood: noticed that sometimes you get the scalps or you get other people along at certain
Joanne Lockwood: times of the year and they pack bags. As a shopper myself, I really like
Joanne Lockwood: going to the checkouts where there are backpackers. I'd like to be your permanent backpacker.
Joanne Lockwood: And they went, okay, so he gave him a trial and before long he
Joanne Lockwood: was kind of embedded in their culture. He was the cheeky chappie, he was the,
Joanne Lockwood: the people used to queue up, just have a conversation with him. He used to
Joanne Lockwood: help him put the bag in the trolley, take it out to the car for
Joanne Lockwood: them. So it's that real value add service he used to do. And then
Joanne Lockwood: he ended up moving to, I think it was to Morrisons or another supermarket and
Joanne Lockwood: took his services there as well. And I think that's all died off
Joanne Lockwood: since COVID and other things and health and safety and bag and stuff.
Joanne Lockwood: He, yeah, he created his own career
Joanne Lockwood: as a backpacker and he had a great time as a 55
Joanne Lockwood: to 65 year old. He got him out of the house, gave him purpose. And
Joanne Lockwood: I think that's what we're talking about here is giving people passion and purpose, giving
Joanne Lockwood: them a worthwhile. Because that's what a role gives you, is you
Joanne Lockwood: need to feel you contribute to society in some way. You're not just sat on
Joanne Lockwood: sofa, you get up in the morning, I've got something to live for. That's, that's
Joanne Lockwood: what employment gives you. Yeah, it does, it does. And let's face it, the
Jo Major: job, searching for a job can chip away, it can
Jo Major: chip away from your, you know, your self esteem and your confidence
Jo Major: and rejection and the lack of communication. It
Jo Major: can, you know, you, you can leave your current role there, you
Jo Major: know, from an emotional and mental health perspective and then, you know, and be much,
Jo Major: much lower down on the scale as, as the months go by.
Jo Major: But I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, I think from
Jo Major: really thinking about this, it's very much, there's a lot of work to do.
Jo Major: And I think from a, both a candidate and from a client perspective and, you
Jo Major: know, going back to the role of, of
Jo Major: agencies and actually I would ask the
Jo Major: recruitment industry, what are you actively doing to
Jo Major: create communities within that more mature, more
Jo Major: vintage workforce? You know, I know recruitment
Jo Major: businesses that spend money on upskilling early careers, talent
Jo Major: and giving them qualifications in technology and
Jo Major: et cetera, that could, that, that, that blueprint could be
Jo Major: transferred to any community. I've
Joanne Lockwood: seen organisations b. Marie, other organisations talk about
Joanne Lockwood: talent academies. So you, you, you know, if you're trying to recruit
Joanne Lockwood: into, you need more people in this sort of sector or this part of your
Joanne Lockwood: business. Bring people into an academy, develop them like
Joanne Lockwood: a mature apprenticeship. You pay people properly, you pay people to
Joanne Lockwood: learn. So you're giving them a decent wage, a living wage, not
Joanne Lockwood: treating them as 2 pound 50 people, you're treating them as 15 pound, 20 people
Joanne Lockwood: and then help them develop their career. And then what you're doing is you're not.
Joanne Lockwood: Not developing people for your organisation, you're developing better people
Joanne Lockwood: in the community. So you may bring on 50 people in your talent
Joanne Lockwood: development programme each year and you only want 10 of those yourself, but you've got
Joanne Lockwood: 40 people there you've put into the community. If you and other
Joanne Lockwood: organisations network locally and you pool your
Joanne Lockwood: talent development programmes and you co sponsor with some
Joanne Lockwood: NHS trusts or with some infrastructure, public services or the organisation,
Joanne Lockwood: then you're providing a valuable community service benefit. Not just
Joanne Lockwood: apprenticeships, but mature workforce. I think someone
Joanne Lockwood: needs to take responsibility for that, that kind of community
Joanne Lockwood: engagement. I think, and also really, really
Jo Major: have their eye on the data as well and really understand
Jo Major: where people go and how long people stay. And I
Jo Major: think that you could track your return on your investment and
Jo Major: very, very easily in this particular area, with this community,
Jo Major: Without a doubt, I've been. Retention, retention, retention. Yeah, yeah. If you
Joanne Lockwood: just look at retraining, cost, retention, empty seat stability, lost
Joanne Lockwood: knowledge that walks out the door when it leaves, all these kind of things. Have
Jo Major: you seen, I mean, when you just said something then about like, you know, almost
Jo Major: like an apprenticeship model for people looking to transition
Jo Major: in their careers, you know, and I'm wondering, have you seen, have you,
Jo Major: have you seen that happen anywhere? I've seen organisations doing it. I know
Joanne Lockwood: I've been to a lot of conferences where they put people on the stage and
Joanne Lockwood: they talk about their own internal talent development,
Joanne Lockwood: looking at alumni programmes, people who did work there, they keep in touch. Ten
Joanne Lockwood: years later, where are you? You left to start a family. How's that going
Joanne Lockwood: big career pivots, returning mothers, returning fathers, returning people
Joanne Lockwood: in their workplace, in their 45, 50 bracket. So I think
Joanne Lockwood: I have seen organisations start to focus on this later years
Joanne Lockwood: talent development, mid career pivoting. So, yeah, it's being thought about.
Joanne Lockwood: And I think when we talk about diversity in recruitment, which is what your organisation
Joanne Lockwood: is, we can't just try and solve our bit of the problem. We've got to
Joanne Lockwood: solve the pipeline problem as well and nurture that.
Joanne Lockwood: Otherwise all we're doing is. I hear so many people tell me it's so difficult
Joanne Lockwood: to find, it's so difficult to find a great black lawyer.
Joanne Lockwood: I said, well, you ask a black lawyer where to find a great black lawyer,
Joanne Lockwood: he'll know or they'll know. If you ask a white lawyer where you find a
Joanne Lockwood: great black lawyer, they may not know. So you've got to ask the people who
Joanne Lockwood: are in those communities. So if you're not reaching deep and reaching out,
Joanne Lockwood: you're missing out on opportunity. And I think we all want to develop talent, we
Joanne Lockwood: all want to create the best workforce. How can we be more innovative about creating
Joanne Lockwood: those talent pipelines in our communities and not just expect the talent to
Joanne Lockwood: walk through the door? It doesn't. Or if it does, we don't recognise it. Yeah,
Jo Major: yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't. It never, if it was that
Jo Major: easy, our organisations would be fully representative of
Jo Major: everybody in our communities. Right. And it's, I think that's where
Jo Major: it lies is the fact that there has to be an investment. There needs to
Jo Major: be resources and it needs to be, there needs to be, you
Jo Major: know, it needs to be treated as a long term project. It's not just
Jo Major: a, you know, you can't just put your, I always joke, you can't
Jo Major: expect to put your job description through a gender decoder and
Jo Major: then all of a sudden having your door being banged down by loads of like
Jo Major: senior women wanting to work for your organisation. And you know, in some of it,
Jo Major: I, I, you know, I've, I've worked with businesses where they're a particular
Jo Major: employer. I'm thinking about where they're absolutely
Jo Major: laser focused on women. And yet when, you know, I
Jo Major: deliver the idea around, okay, this would be a long term
Jo Major: strategy. It's almost, we just need more money, you know, we just,
Jo Major: you know, and I can, I can, I can tell the responses, I've just
Jo Major: given you a lot of work to do and that's going to be really difficult.
Jo Major: But gender decoders, as useful as they may be,
Jo Major: they don't change the world. Jo, it's been absolutely
Joanne Lockwood: fascinating chatting to you again and I really enjoyed this conversation.
Joanne Lockwood: So we spun it around from diversity and recruitment, from an agency
Joanne Lockwood: perspective, an in house perspective and also the talent development of what we as
Joanne Lockwood: talent professionals, if you like, can do to reach out to nurture better talent. So
Joanne Lockwood: I've really enjoyed this. It's been fascinating. Thank you. How can people get a hold
Joanne Lockwood: of you? LinkedIn is the place that I tend to hang out. So Jo Major,
Jo Major: you'll find me with various opinions about a lot of things. And
Joanne Lockwood: I follow you and yes, your opinions are great and I love, I love seeing
Joanne Lockwood: your posts. So yeah, do follow Jo. She is amazing. Thank
Jo Major: you so much and right back at you. In a way, is it wrong that
Jo Major: I'm kind of thinking, just don't be too sharp on the editing, I might want
Jo Major: to come back. I always welcome guests back. If you listen to
Joanne Lockwood: this or yourself, there's a process. You click on the button says Apply,
Joanne Lockwood: you fill the form in, you get a link back in your inbox, you
Joanne Lockwood: click on it, you book an appointment. Let's do it. And so yeah, always. And
Joanne Lockwood: maybe what we do, we'll do a live stream sometime. Just, we'll just get on
Joanne Lockwood: LinkedIn and just do a live stream and we'll just do this live rather than
Joanne Lockwood: recording. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love that. Thank you
Joanne Lockwood: and thank you. Take care. See you later.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express
Joanne Lockwood: my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending
Joanne Lockwood: your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion.
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