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Month: March 2020

How to identify company culture via video call

With the FMCG recruitment market showing no signs of slowing, and most interviews having moved to virtual/video calls, the way candidates assess a new employer needs to evolve to keep up – it is likely you will be making a career choice without having met anyone in person or having been into the office.

Previously meeting the teams, seeing the working environment, getting a ‘feel’ for the culture was all done in person, but with the current climate and video calls dominating processes for the foreseeable:

How do you decide whether or not an employer is ‘right’ for you?

First off, one of the most obvious (but easy) mistakes to make is to directly ask “what is the culture like”. This will likely land you a standard answer about corporate values and EVP.

In-person, when you walk around an office, meet people and chat to employees it is easier for you to get a sense of atmosphere and culture to cut through the ‘company line’ – but how do you do that over video?

The most important thing to do is to ask evidence-based questions. Think about what it is you really want to know and ask a specific question around that topic.

E.g. “what examples can you give me of employees that have progressed through the business?”

This will give you real-life scenarios to help with your decision-making process and is far more useful than the company values being churned out to you as an answer.

1) Ask some ‘non-work’ (but appropriate) questions to gauge personality. We had a candidate recently ask the hiring manager who their dream dinner party guest would be and the answer sparked a really good conversation between both parties – both are keen to progress to the final round and it gave a good insight into how they would interact in the role.

2) Read the Glassdoor reviews (but take them with a pinch of salt!) and be prepared to talk through the feedback with the hiring manager/HR team. If there are negative reviews these don’t need to be a deal-breaker – but they are worth discussing/exploring with the business directly to find out why someone felt that way.

3) Ask for a peer to peer call with someone who works at the level you will be joining at. Understand their journey and, where possible, have an honesty chat. What’s the best thing about working there? What’s the worst thing about working there? What are their frustrations? What do they enjoy the most? There will be loads of insights they will be able to give you to help with your decision making process.

4) Ask your network – think about who you know that has worked there and do some digging – you still need to form your own opinion but it doesn’t hurt to have a few sources on the inside.

5) Ask your recruiter (or Vertical Advantage!). In most cases, we will have worked with clients for years and will know them well. We can give an honest insight into attrition, what their staff say and our experiences with them. There’s a lot of value we can add with this.

Although there is a lot of change in the market currently, there is still a real appetite from clients to hire. I’m incredibly proud of how quickly and calmly our industry has adapted to new technologies and ways of interviewing as it’s important to keep a steady flow of new talent coming.

Please do keep an eye out for our content every couple of days, next up is my colleague  Andy Davies who will be advising on how you can still hire talent and find good people whilst not using recruitment agencies (yes, you read that correctly!)

For access to all our content, please take a look at our blog and / or follow us on LinkedIn.

If you think we can help advise you with your strategy or help you in finding talent during this time, please do reach out to me on siobhan@vertical-advantage.com or give me a call on 07985 541 882.

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FMCG Hiring and the Coronavirus

Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen a marked shift in the FMCG & Consumer industry in the UK that in truth seems to be changing on a near-daily basis.

As one of the industries most in the eye of the storm, we have the privilege of supplying head office staff to over 30 of the top 50 businesses and as a consequence speak with many candidates and clients alike with privileged access to the decision-makers at the most senior level.

 

Here’s a quick overview of some of the policies taken:

Working from home / office:

Up until the middle of last week, most were taking an approach of isolating those who had been abroad or reported a temperature in the previous 14 days. From there we have seen businesses evolve predominantly into 2 / 3 main camps:

  1. A) Work from home indefinitely;
    B) Work from home for the next 2 weeks & take a view then;
    C) Work in 2/3 split shifts with groups of people rotating time in the office and time from home;

 

New starters:
Where people have been due to start this week, most businesses have made provisions to get them a laptop sent to them and engage people through Zoom / Skype for their on-boarding. Others have been slower to react here but have paid the new staff and promised to get them actively working ASAP as soon as IT is enabled etc. One top 10 Global FMCG business has made a provision for new starters to be met on their first day by their new line manager and then to have all the equipment needed to move to a home-based environment – planning the new starter/onboarding strategy is going to be key here.

We have had isolated cases of offers being withdrawn but these have tended to be with restaurant or hotel groups, not traditional consumer businesses or agencies / consultancies that support them.

 

Interviews:
Up until Friday businesses hadn’t made the call to switch to video / zoom interviews but now this is pretty much standard across the board for the first stage with 2nd / final interviews either to be conducted face to face or via Skype also – the view here is probably split 50/50 between our clients but we’d expect that figure to shift towards everything being done virtually as the days pass.

 

Offers:
Our blue-chip clients are all comfortable at this stage making offers / moving processes forwards with SMEs being a little more varied in confidence however those with business models aligned to e-commerce or the FMCG space should take some solace in the fact things could potentially be a lot worse (e.g. travel, hospitality etc).

Hopefully, this helps a little when aligning what steps and actions your business has taken or could take.

I’ll issue an update over the next couple of weeks but please do keep an eye out for our content every couple of days where my colleague Siobhan Nutt aims to #dosomething for candidates by giving our top tips for a video interview and how to genuinely assess culture via a video call without asking ‘what’s the culture like?’

For access to all our content, please take a look at our website www-vertical-advantage.com/engage and / or follow us on LinkedIn.

If you think we can help advise you with your strategy or help you in finding talent during this time, please do reach out to me on david@vertical-advantage.com or give me a call on 07792544887.

 

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Blue Chip vs SME: What’s best to progress your career

As a sales and marketing manager with experience working with both blue-chip businesses and SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), I’ve seen the best (and worst!) of both worlds.

While blue chips are historically able to weather recessions and withstand market shifts — crucial in this unstable, post-Brexit moment! — SMEs tend to offer job seekers a breadth of experience that blue chips can’t rival.

In fact, we’re currently seeing a real swell of later-career candidates moving towards SMEs, as opposed to the traditional blue chips that traditionally tempt the best talent.

Why do most people make the move to SMEs?

In my experience, there are typically three factors at the core of a decision to throw in the corporate towel at a Blue Chip and shift over to an SME:

  1. Agility: the perceived ability of an SME to react quicker to market conditions.
  2. Autonomy: the perceived lack of red tape and freedom to take true ownership of decisions.
  3. Impact: the desire to be, shall we say, a big fish in a small pond.

But that doesn’t mean you should write-off blue chips entirely! While many blue chips can actually offer jobseekers all of the above — as well as the opportunity for career progression, international moves, and cross-discipline training — some SMEs struggle to do just that. Let’s just say I’ve heard some real horror stories! (But let’s save those for another day…)

In short, it’s often not about the company size, it’s about the company.

(Related: See what exciting Sales and Marketing opportunities we have at Vertical Advantage now)

 

So, as a job seeker, what do I need to take into consideration before deciding between a blue-chip or an SME?

First of all, don’t assume anything about the company based on its status. SMEs don’t guarantee autonomy, nor do blue chips automatically turn you into a mere corporate cog!

Instead, test your assumptions at interview. For example, many SMEs will have their founders heavily involved in the day-to-day running of the company, which can go one of two ways:

  1. They want people with experience, who can take the metaphorical ball and run with it, or…
  2. They’re so attached to their ‘baby’ that they can’t relinquish control! (And they might be suffering from the dreaded ‘ugly baby syndrome’, rendering them absolutely immune to criticism.)

Neither one is better or worse than the other, but it’s crucial to consider which approach will suit you. As always, asking incisive questions at interview will be your biggest asset when it comes to figuring this out.

Similarly, remember that SMEs can often be risk-averse, reluctant to rush to market and fail. Meanwhile, blue chips can typically swallow such failures and bounce back. Depending on your preferences, the security of a blue-chip could definitely play in your favour.

It’s also key to remember that you can make just as much of an impact at a blue-chip business as you can with an SME.

Plus, if you’re impatient, the time it takes to land large clients at an SME can be frustrating; meanwhile, at a blue-chip, often you can hit the ground running. I recently moved to an SME having spent 7 years in a blue-chip, and this is definitely something which impacted me! I’d expected my previous clients to bring me all their recruiting needs, but that just wasn’t the case and it took time to re-establish my client base and sort trading terms etc.

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