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Category: Marketing and Digital

What our clients say about us when we’re not in the room

We think we’re pretty great… but don’t just take our word for it!

Here’s what our happy clients say about us:

 

“The Vertical Advantage team have proven to be a value-adding talent acquisition partner for us. In a fast-moving, candidate-driven market, we need partners who act with pace and really understand their candidate network. Trust and transparency is crucial to the success of the partnership and we have faith that the Vertical Advantage team will deliver whenever we ask for their support.”
Talent Acquisition Manager at 

 

“I have worked with Vertical Advantage for a number of years and highly recommend them. They understand my needs and business constraints, tailoring their search accordingly. This is combined with the right level and style of communication to suit my needs, enabling an efficient, yet personable approach and (most importantly for me) the right result… a great Category team. They have a refreshing, clear and straightforward approach to the recruitment process.”
Head of Category at 

 

“Spot on and professional! I have been working with Vertical Advantage since 2015. Their coverage of the FMCG/Retail sector is excellent and the calibre of candidates recommended by the team has been extremely high. I like the no-nonsense approach, their ability to quickly understand our needs and the importance of fit when hiring for Land Securities. It is so comforting to know that one quick phone call gets the ball rolling!”
HR Manager – Retail and Learning & Development – 

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In 5 Minutes, I’ll Give You The Truth About THE 10,000 HOUR RULE

Practice makes perfect.

It’s a phrase we’ve all heard before. I’d go as far as to say it’s a phrase we’ve all said before, whether to ourselves or a frustrated friend in need of a somewhat superficial boost.

However, I doubt that any of us have made quite as much money from the idea as the Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell.

It was his book, Outliers, which originally helped popularise a snazzier sounding version of ‘practice makes perfect’ back in the dark days of the recession: The 10,000 Hour Rule.

It certainly has a certain buzzword-y ring to it.

The idea behind the ‘10,000 Hour Rule’ is that deliberate, sustained practice in one specific field plays a crucial role in becoming an expert in that discipline. And since the book was published in 2008, it’s been used as a go-to theory on the sacrifice it takes to be successful.

But it’s not quite that simple.

K. Anders Ericsson, the Swedish psychologist behind the original study which coined the ‘10,000 Hour Rule’ believes Gladwell vastly oversimplified the theory, something Gladwell himself now recognises.

Quite simply, practice alone just isn’t enough nor does it exist in a vacuum. (A.k.a. There are other factors at play.)

Ask anyone who spent thousands of hours kicking a football about as a kid, yet failed to become the next Beckham.

Yet Gladwell’s thesis is actually much more nuanced than the fairly broad-strokes ‘10,000 Hour Rule’ implies.

He actually spends a large portion of the book highlighting an array of other factors which play a part in the development of what Liam Neeson might call ‘a very particular set of skills’.

Factors like access, privilege, cultural upbringing, and race, to name but a few.

Cool.

So, if practice doesn’t make perfect…what does?

As recruiters and talent developers, figuring out an answer to that certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Environment might be more important than racking up the hours
Nurturing talent is about much more than simply giving someone a ton of responsibility and letting them crack on. Practice (alone) doesn’t make perfect, nor does it exist in a vacuum, remember?

A lot of the time the first port of call is to tag ‘Digital’ on to someone’s job title and hope that suddenly makes them an expert. Unfortunately, without the relevant budget, training, technology & measurement of performance, the development or true specialists who understand an ever-changing landscape is going to be severely limited.

That’s not to say that giving a new recruit time to get to grips with a role and allowing the natural learning curve to play out is necessarily a bad thing. (Although, do keep in mind that racking up 10,000 hours will take about five working years.) In fact, it’s crucial. But it’s also not the only thing.

Expertise cannot develop without passion
Think back to your maths lessons at school (delete as appropriate, leaving behind the one you hated the most).

You might have put in plenty of hours in those lessons–although maybe not quite 10,000–but do you remember Pythagoras’ Theorem? Shakespeare’s soliloquies? The Spanish for anything beyond ‘dos cervezas, por favor’?

In short, without passion for a topic, no amount of practice time is going to turn you into an expert.

The same logic is equally applicable to employers trying to find talent to be nurtured.

In an ever-changing landscape, previous experience (even 10,000 hours of it) quickly becomes redundant if the desire to continue learning disappeared 8,596 hours ago.

So, when searching for digital & eCommerce talent for FMCG businesses, the intersection of experience between skills and sector is still relatively small, so taking a broader view than square pegs for square holes is crucial.

Without these traits, all that practice may amount to nothing than more than banging your head against a digital brick wall.

Think of it this way: 10,000 hours + passion x environment = someone on their way to success. All you have to do is find them.

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Loyalty – Is it all it is cracked up to be?

In my role as a Manager at marketing specialist recruitment firm, Vertical Advantage, I’m always on the look out for outstanding talent in CRM and loyalty for our blue chip client base.

But it’s not always easy.

This means I constantly need rich customer data which can be difficult with rapid ever-changing industry trends that are at the heart of daily discussions.

This got me thinking about how the industry has drastically evolved.

Today almost 46.5 million people, (92% of the adult population) are registered with at least one card-based loyalty programme, and the average shopper is signed up to at least three.

Acquiring new customers is way more expensive than retaining them, so loyalty is an area that should be well developed by companies interested in return business.

This all sounds inspiring, but in reality, is customer loyalty all it’s cracked up to be?

My answer … not right now – but with a little work, it could be!

Loyalty schemes have become the norm – There’s so much choice out there!

The loyalty card itself has become a commodity, younger consumers these days rarely stick with just a handful of providers.

Instead, they go towards the lowest prices, the best service, and the easiest ride – in that exact order.

It is easier than ever for consumers to be disloyal: price comparison sites, social media reviews, and higher levels of price competition thanks to online retailers, are all factors that challenge the concept of loyalty.

Why?

It takes too long to reap real rewards

It’s not that loyalty schemes can’t work – it’ just that most provide so little value.

For example:

You’re loyal to a supermarket for a year, racking up the points.

The just before Christmas you’re rewarded with a voucher worth £6.45.

So, you’re undoubtedly going to ask yourself: is it worth the effort?

Of course not!

So next year you don’t bother, right?

You won’t be the only one!

Almost £6bn-worth of points have gone unclaimed from the top 10 mainstream loyalty schemes out there, with over 20% of loyalty programme users never having redeemed their rewards.

Poor targeting is a turn-off!

To be valuable, loyalty schemes need to be both better-targeted and worth something tangible to the consumer.

Points don’t cut it anymore. People want things, not points. But the thing has to be relevant and personalised.

Case-in-point: As a dog owner I have a Pets at Home loyalty card. I signed up as the owner of a small chihuahua, only to then receive on-going promotions targeting products aimed at larger breeds of dog.

The best loyalty schemes know their customers wants and needs and use this information to target them with relevant deals.

Is Mobile being ignored?

Loyalty schemes offered by your favourite high street retailers are likely to be card based.

How often have you forgotten your loyalty card and missed out on points when shopping in your favourite retailer?

You’re not alone – a third of customers do this.

And if you do want the points you’ll need to go through the hassle of keeping the receipt and then remembering to take it back to customer services (with your card) to get them added on at a later date!

Compare this with the number of times you’ve been shopping and forgotten your mobile phone.

Point taken?

So back to the original question, Is loyalty all it’s cracked up to be!!!

We’re humans, and our shopping habits cannot be analysed by algorithms alone! I believe people are at the heart of how we solve these challenges.

Loyalty schemes manipulate and analyse transactional data on shopping habits to reveal exciting insights into buying habits and motivations.

If, as a business, you really want to make this work, you’ll need professionals who can extrapolate this data to draw out qualitative research insights like customer motivation.

What kind of loyalty professionals does your business need?

If they want to attract the right talent who understand the nation’s loyalty behaviour, recruitment services have to aim for individuals with track records in driving change and innovation in loyalty programmes.

For me, that means professionals who can really dig deep into the data when shaping loyalty campaigns.

Find how where each candidate is within the cycle: how effective have they been? How do they measure that? What was their last great innovation, and why?

Most of all, ask how they believe we should approach the loyalty space because lateral, data-driven thinking is crucial to how well they will succeed in the current climate.

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Is a recruitment business more like a noodle bar than you think?

I’ll come clean. As an economics graduate working in recruitment, I really don’t spend much time mining the ‘intellectual resources’ gathered during my degree. But a great article by Mark Ritson in Marketing Week a few months back got me thinking about elasticity of demand and supply in recruitment.

According to Ritson, a noodle bar in Singapore received a Michelin star and hit a massive boom in demand – way beyond what it could supply. This gave it an unusual opportunity: to increase prices without affecting sales volume.

Did the owner do it?

No.

According to Ritson, he is ‘hopeless at pricing’.

See, inelasticity – where price increase does not lead to a significant drop in demand – is a dream situation for most businesses, and one that may sometimes never happen.

If you’ve earned it, use it!


Inelasticity and recruitment
So consider this: in recruitment, inelasticity is a reflection of client loyalty and agency quality.

The conditions for kindling inelastic demand, mean agencies need to adhere to a meaningful value proposition.

Pricing is too often used as a negotiating tool, but it’s a mistake to define the ‘value’ of your proposition in purely monetary terms.

You owe it to your brand – the promise you make to your customers and clients – to keep the price representative of the high value they get from the product.

So the question to consider, particularly in recruitment, is:

How far does your brand let you increase profitability without damaging customer and client trust?


Stretching your elasticity
There are many factors that affect your ability to be inelastic, however these are the key ones.

Supply of candidates

Good quality, reliable candidates, relatively scarce in a particular specialism make for a more inelastic situation. Their negotiated salaries and recruitment costs can be increased without damaging demand.

Quality of service

Make it easy for clients to get great candidates, and you’ll achieve overwhelmingly positive client experiences. Client loyalty is a strong sign of service inelasticity; you can set your own prices without damaging demand.

Brand representation

Where the client brand is not properly understood, the right hire can be hard to find. The better the understanding of that brand, the less likely high prices will affect demand. In addition, all the effort you put into marketing your great recruiter brand must be reflected the price you charge.


What can we learn from this?
Rapid competition at a micro level, and uncertain political events at the macro, mean in 2017, recruitment is going to hit that price-value conversation with employers more often.

The problem is, negotiation to a lower rate really leaves three choices for recruitment agencies:

  1. Suck it up and carry on.
  2. Walk away and risk future work with that client.
  3. Adjust your service proposition to match the fee you are being asked to charge. For example, let your clients know that they will be serviced by the more junior members of staff. Just like in a hair salon!

None of these options will be good for your brand you have spent so much time and money building. If you’re a specialist, providing candidates others can’t, offering a level of service unmatched by rivals, a pricing proposition that undermines this will damage your credibility and your inelasticity.

Walking away from business never sits well, but your company’s values can sometimes be more important than potential business. As a recruitment agency, we’re not afraid to walk away from clients and PSLs when the terms don’t reflect the value we bring to a company’s hiring solutions.

What are your thoughts on pricing in recruitment?

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