So let’s start with the good news. The legal market is very much back to normal. The Covid-induced recruitment freeze in many of the world’s most profitable firms is well and truly over. If you’re looking to move-onward and upwards in a law firm, opportunity knocks, and that applies even if you are looking to relocate internationally. We’ve already placed a number of lawyers around the world in the first quarter of the year (while many remained in lockdown). You work in a sector with a unique demographic. Lawyers are often cautious and thoughtful. As a collective you are, quite rightly, loathe to make unnecessary change. You work in an environment that rewards longevity, not simply in terms of financial remuneration, but also in the development of long-term relationships and trust. The law is also particularly hierarchical. All this means that you, as a candidate, hold all the cards. Firms are constantly searching for people at the right level, who are ready to make a long-term commitment. All being well, this could be your final career move. In which case, I sense you wondering – what’s the catch? The answer is simply that because you are in such demand, you will, inevitably, be inundated with ‘legal recruiters’ pestering you with ‘opportunities’. As flattering as that may feel at first, it soon becomes a blight. There is a fine line between providing a service and becoming a pest, and we know that many recruiters fall on the wrong side. Irritation follows and, inevitably, so does a lack of trust. And sadly, for a firm like ours, who go about things very differently, candidates understandably begin to feel the same way about the entire recruitment industry. My simple request is not to tar us all with the same brush! We understand the complexity of what you do, the narrow specialisms within which you operate, and the truth that you will only be interested in the perfect new role, which is why we’ve built our legal team to work completely differently to the herd. We have based our approach on some very simple principles: We can’t be good at what we do without understanding what you do. We may not be lawyers, but we spend a huge amount of time understanding your world, by reading widely, networking and using analytics. That breadth of research stretches across sectors and regions, from the Cayman Islands to the Channel Islands, from London to Hong Kong and from Dubai to Singapore. We put you first. That means understanding your career plan, your ambitions, your particular strengths and your lifestyle priorities. We know much more about each law firm than the fact that they have a need for someone like you. Whether they are based in the UK, the Middle East or Asia, onshore or offshore, the Magic Circle or Silver Circle, US, International or boutique, we dig deep to understand their culture, their plans and their track record. That means we can decline the vast majority of opportunities on your behalf without wasting a second of your time. If we think there is a perfect match, we’ll let you know but we won’t push it. We’re here to advise and support you, not to sell. We’d rather you never moved than you made the wrong decision. Ultimately, we don’t want to push anything to you at all. We want to help support your move to the right firm, in the right place at the right time. We want you to know that your dream opportunity does exist, and that we’ll find it, however long that takes. The only place to start is by getting to know you. As a successful candidate kindly wrote to us recently: “You actually took the time to go through my cv and past experience; you asked all the right questions to understand what I was looking for before putting forward suggested roles and you were always very responsive.” Whether you wish to simply make contact, require guidance, advice or sound us out on the market or for your future career plans and goals – do get in touch! Gemma Whiteside gemma@walkerlovell.com
There was a joke that used to do the rounds in recruitment circles: Q: “What do you call a recruitment consultant who doesn’t always negotiate the best salary?” A: “An ex-recruitment consultant.” And there was some truth in that. Ambitious people have always worked hard and wanted to be rewarded. A new job created an opportunity to push those rewards higher. And ‘rewards’ remained a euphemism for ‘money’. The time of maximum opportunity for candidates is, of course, when client demand exceeds supply. Which is where we find ourselves in so many sectors right now. The reasons for this are unsurprising: Financially secure companies that implemented freezes during lockdown are now hiring again Markets that slowed during the pandemic are picking-up With the dynamic shifting in favour of the candidate, we’ve witnessed some unusual events recently: Candidates have been taking interviews with multiple job offers with other firms already on the table. b The speed of the recruitment process has accelerated. A law firm we work with, and which typically meets candidates on a number of occasions, has recently made an offer after a single interview on Zoom. Clients engaging in long processes are losing candidates. One of our most experienced recruiters has said that she has never known so many candidates hold-off sending CVs to great businesses looking to recruit simply because they have already received so much interest in hiring them.  And all evidence suggests that this is just the start, with international travel still limited and some furlough schemes still in operation. In this environment, it would be very easy for us to rub our hands gleefully and encourage clients to pay record-breaking salaries to secure their hires as quickly as possible. Our view, however, is different. If there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us, it’s that there is more to life than a paycheque. We have spent huge periods of time unable to socialise or to go to work. We’ve had significant barriers drawn around our personal freedom, which has given many of us a chance to reassess our priorities. And for many people, the outcome of Covid will be to reassess their priorities. Some want to spend more time at home. Others wish to adjust their work/life balance. Many want to pursue dreams that they hadn’t previously considered viable in the ‘old’ world of 2019. So although we will always ensure that clients are offering fair remuneration, we are encouraging clients and candidates to seek the right cultural fit. Some companies are already changing working patterns and offering a four and a half-day week ending at Friday lunchtime. Others are pushing their passion for sustainability, developing relationships with other businesses who share their primary goal of making the world a greener, cleaner place. One of our clients is throwing itself into supporting the local community, encouraging staff to spend half a day each week working at local schools or on community projects. Another has a ‘bring your dog to work day’! These are not opportunistic announcements. I believe they are symbolic of our times. Never before has it been more important for firms to walk the walk and demonstrate that their brand reflects their culture. And in that spirit, with demand for good candidates growing, there’s never been a better opportunity for people to find a place to work that reflects their priorities and worldview. So our advice to clients who are desperate to recruit new people is to sell your culture as well as your pay structure. Recruiting like-minded people is the key to developing a stronger brand for your team and your clients. As for candidates, it’s completely natural to look for a well-paid role. But we believe there’s more to life than that. And on the basis that work takes up a huge proportion of your waking life, please don’t forget that the people you work with and the environment your work within will have a huge impact on your wellbeing long after the initial thrill of your new salary has sunk-in!
A long time ago two of my friends started talking about global warming. It was an interesting chat that moved between the cause of forest fires in Australia, the floods in the UK and what, if anything, the government could do about it all. I listened for a while and then asked what they knew about the European Green Deal and the impact that the circular economy in the worlds of agriculture, energy and beyond could have on the climate. One of my friends looked at me in surprise and said “I didn’t know you’d ever worked in that area”. That’s the thing about recruitment. On a really superficial level, it’s just about putting people in touch with each other. But to do that well, you really need to understand the world they work in and its future trends. And in the world of Agri, it’s impossible to place people effectively without a clear insight into the ever-more important role of sustainability. The context is startling. For a century, the majority of manufactured fertiliser products are still based on mineral deposits and fossil fuels. This means that helping crops grow is, simultaneously, raising emission levels. The European Commission, which is ahead of the game in this area, has set a goal of a 30% reduction of non-renewable resources in fertilizer production. The aim is to turn this goal into a series of business opportunities (in the same way that the automotive industry will benefit from the switch to electric cars) So the Agri industry has a huge incentive to fight climate change by regenerating and restoring, aiming to keep resources in circulation for as long as possible. The quest is for a ‘Circular Economy’ which, effectively, is a perfect circle of recycling, where the agricultural system becomes emissions-free. And, backed-up by incentives, it’s working. Bio-waste management is an entire sector focused on replacing chemical fertilizers with bio-based products. Nutrients are being recycled back into the soil. Lime, limestone and dolomite are amongst the natural minerals being used in agriculture and forestry to correct soil acidity and to add nutrients that contain magnesium and calcium. Some of the innovative thinking in this area is really inspiring. Much of the CO2 being produced by the mineral fertilizer industry is being purified and sold for use in sparkling water and in cleaning products. From my perspective, what’s particularly interesting is that agri-related innovation isn’t just taking place inside the industry. Increasingly, sectors are overlapping, swapping ideas and raw materials in their quest to create a wider ‘circle’. For example, the EU’s fertiliser industry is now using over five million tonnes of sulphur annually that is sourced from waste at oil and gas refineries. Ductor, a Finnish-Swiss biotechnology company, is a great case study for this increasing breadth of thinking. Ductor is managing organic waste and produces sustainable, organic fertilizers and has many projects in North America and Europe. In addition to focusing on the 4 Rs that is often referred to by the fertilizer industry it also focuses on two more Rs; Recycling nutrients and Rejuvenating the soils. Ductor can use high nitrogen waste streams like Chicken Litter, and its projects in Norway focuses on the use of fish waste and fish sludge to produce biomethane, organic nitrogen liquids and NPKs, specifically positioned to enhance soil health and fertility. Ductor is able to demonstrate the new circular economy in practice and has a simple, practical solution that will help to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The transition to sustainable agriculture is driven by new technologies, research and innovation. This quest for a cleaner, greener planet is touching the entire industrial value chain, from production to consumption, remanufacturing, waste management and secondary raw materials. This ‘new agriculture’ will not only slow down climate change but also provide sustainable economic rewards. Which brings me back to my friends. I may never have worked in Agri, but it’s impossible to find creative answers to recruitment challenges unless you are fascinated in the industry that is recruiting. It might be that the perfect candidate for a role in Agri is currently working in the oil industry, in the same way, that there are natural synergies between the worlds of limestone and car battery production. The Circular Economy is only one (fascinating) part of Agri. We also recruit across commodities, trading, operations and production. Please do connect to share your own ideas and to discuss how we might be able to help. Rebecca Topping
I’m sure I wasn’t alone in watching open-mouthed as Italy’s Lamont Marcell Jacobs won the Olympic 100 meters in Tokyo. And not just because he was the first European to do so since 1992. What was even more surprising was that four years ago, Jacobs was a long-jumper. Realising that his run-up was more powerful than his jumping, he decided to switch to the track. And within four years his fellow-athletes were shocked too. If you love the Olympics, you may remember Rebecca Romero, a gold medal winning track cyclist in Rio. It was quite some achievement, particularly when she had switched from rowing! Romero was lauded for her ability to cross disciplines so smoothly, but perhaps we shouldn’t have been quite so astonished. Both sports require an ability to operate at the athlete’s aerobic capacity for long periods. One of the biggest barriers to success is the discomfort felt when exercising for long periods at their very max. Team GB saw that Romero has the core skills necessary to cycle fast. As a result they committed to helping her make the switch. Perhaps the most agile athlete of them all was American track and field star Lauryn Williams. In 2004 she won a silver medal in the 100 meters in Athens. Eight years later she took-home gold in the sprint relay in London. Injury then appeared to have put paid to her Olympic career. Williams had other ideas. She analysed the qualities required for different disciplines that would put less stress on her injury. The result was to switch from the summer to the winter games. And at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Williams took silver with Elana Meyers in the two-woman bobsleigh race. In two years she had transformed herself from track athlete to ice queen. What all of these Olympians have in common is their agility. They analysed their strengths and potential, and then adapted successfully to a new discipline. For me, they aren’t just inspiring human stories, but they offer practical benefits for the world of recruitment. It is so easy to recruit someone who has done that job before in another organisation. You know what you’re getting. You remove risk from the equation. You take the ‘safe’ option. But there’s also a more creative approach. A more agile, creative way of finding great candidates by looking at their core strengths and adapting them to new opportunities and sectors. And it’s an approach we’ve been honing for some time. We helped a brilliant candidate with a background in commercial construction switch to data centre management. His brilliant, transferable leadership skills were equally relevant in both sectors and we were confident he could quickly pick-up the technical side. He has settled brilliantly into the role and now adds ‘data centres’ to his CV! We’ve found equally adaptable candidates across food and nutrition and across the supply and demand sides in mining, minerals and materials. We recently helped an animal nutrition engineer into limestone and another from limestone into steel. Each of these appointments has added real energy and innovation to their new business. They may not have done the job before, but they bring with them a whole new take on the world and the ability to challenge sector norms. The result has been to take successful candidates out of one sector and to make them gold medal candidates in another. Human beings have so much untapped potential. As recruitment consultants, we see a crucial part of our job as to help untap it.
Samir is a phenomenal tech analyst with excellent communication skills. He’s bilingual and has worked in London, Dubai and New York. As you might expect, he’s not short of job offers. Two years ago, he was approached by a number of agencies trying to place him in international roles. Samir was willing to relocate. He knew that wherever he ended up, he’d spend five days each week in a modern, impersonal office block. His office, its desk space and even its meeting rooms would be almost indistinguishable. That was pre-pandemic. As a potential employer, things are a little less clear now. ‘Agility’ is key – with Samir keen to embrace a way of life that doesn’t oblige him to spend his entire working week at the same desk in the same office. He can back this up with numbers as he just beat his 2020 target by 30% despite sending the entire year working from his kitchen! So how will employers who, understandably, want their office to remain a beating heart for their business, encourage Samir to take-on the commute and spend time with the team? At Walker Lovell we spend much of the working week chatting. To our clients. To candidates. To industry experts. And to each other. It’s how we do the vast majority of our research and how we judge which way the recruitment wind will blow next week and next year. Right now, the short-term focus is all about the return to ‘normal’ life. What will businesses demand from their teams? What will employees expect? Will vaccine passports provide a pathway to safe business travel? When will relocations begin again in earnests? But our take on things is that these are relatively superficial changes. The pandemic will, hopefully, move on. But it’s impact on our lives is altogether more permanent. We believe that the gradual changes to working life that embraced ‘dress down Fridays’ and ‘flexi-working’ have fast forwarded. The balance between work and life has never been more topical. And yet, as employers, we want our teams to be together. We want assurance. We want certainty about where our people are and what they are doing. We want to create a team spirit and a creative hub that just isn’t the same on a Zoom call. Our view is that the answer is in a company’s culture. Mental health has never been this crucial to the choices employees are making. We see candidates looking beyond job title and salary and citing ‘happiness’ as their key professional driver. This was already happening pre-Covid, but 2020 has accelerated the understanding of what’s possible and what’s aspirational. For us, this means challenging the core assumption that coming to the office is a grind. Rather than asking ‘how much time does a happy employee spend at home?’ , we prefer to ask ‘how do we ensure that the office is a place where our people really want to be?’. We believe the answer is in company culture. In the creation of an environment that makes it fun to go to work. Where the boundaries between home and office begin to blur. At Walker Lovell, we have seen the extraordinary effect that an emphasis on fun can bring to work. Pre-pandemic, we shortened the team’s hours. We finished work at two pm on a Friday, inviting everyone to finish the week in the pub – always ending before the school run began. We preached a message that it wasn’t enough to be well rewarded for success; it was more important to have the time to enjoy those rewards. We ceased to celebrate individual success and started to mark the team’s achievements with group trips and activities. We did it because we, the founders, had previously worked for an appalling boss. We were unmotivated, deeply depressed, and, as a result, not as productive as we knew we should be. So we formed a company determined to be different. But not even we could have forecast the effect it would have. Recruitment is notorious for the speed at which its employees move around. Ours haven’t. It’s a career that doesn’t really require an office – in theory everything can be done online and meetings can take place in cafes and hotels. But our staff can’t wait to come back in. They say it’s because work is fun. We build teams around a very simple principle. If you wake up on a Monday morning and work seems like a drag, then it’s time to consider your future. We don’t want work to drag. Ever. Our culture doesn’t allow it. And we’re pretty certain that, in the ‘new normal’ companies who want someone of Samir’s character to come into the office every day will have to entice him there because, ultimately, it’s offers the sort of enjoyment and atmosphere that trumps anything he experiences when he works from home. Dan Topping dan@walkerlovell.com
So let’s start with the good news. The legal market is very much back to normal. The Covid-induced recruitment freeze in many of the world’s most profitable firms is well and truly over. If you’re looking to move-onward and upwards in a law firm, opportunity knocks, and that applies even if you are looking to relocate internationally. We’ve already placed a number of lawyers around the world in the first quarter of the year (while many remained in lockdown). You work in a sector with a unique demographic. Lawyers are often cautious and thoughtful. As a collective you are, quite rightly, loathe to make unnecessary change. You work in an environment that rewards longevity, not simply in terms of financial remuneration, but also in the development of long-term relationships and trust. The law is also particularly hierarchical. All this means that you, as a candidate, hold all the cards. Firms are constantly searching for people at the right level, who are ready to make a long-term commitment. All being well, this could be your final career move. In which case, I sense you wondering – what’s the catch? The answer is simply that because you are in such demand, you will, inevitably, be inundated with ‘legal recruiters’ pestering you with ‘opportunities’. As flattering as that may feel at first, it soon becomes a blight. There is a fine line between providing a service and becoming a pest, and we know that many recruiters fall on the wrong side. Irritation follows and, inevitably, so does a lack of trust. And sadly, for a firm like ours, who go about things very differently, candidates understandably begin to feel the same way about the entire recruitment industry. My simple request is not to tar us all with the same brush! We understand the complexity of what you do, the narrow specialisms within which you operate, and the truth that you will only be interested in the perfect new role, which is why we’ve built our legal team to work completely differently to the herd. We have based our approach on some very simple principles: We can’t be good at what we do without understanding what you do. We may not be lawyers, but we spend a huge amount of time understanding your world, by reading widely, networking and using analytics. That breadth of research stretches across sectors and regions, from the Cayman Islands to the Channel Islands, from London to Hong Kong and from Dubai to Singapore. We put you first. That means understanding your career plan, your ambitions, your particular strengths and your lifestyle priorities. We know much more about each law firm than the fact that they have a need for someone like you. Whether they are based in the UK, the Middle East or Asia, onshore or offshore, the Magic Circle or Silver Circle, US, International or boutique, we dig deep to understand their culture, their plans and their track record. That means we can decline the vast majority of opportunities on your behalf without wasting a second of your time. If we think there is a perfect match, we’ll let you know but we won’t push it. We’re here to advise and support you, not to sell. We’d rather you never moved than you made the wrong decision. Ultimately, we don’t want to push anything to you at all. We want to help support your move to the right firm, in the right place at the right time. We want you to know that your dream opportunity does exist, and that we’ll find it, however long that takes. The only place to start is by getting to know you. As a successful candidate kindly wrote to us recently: “You actually took the time to go through my cv and past experience; you asked all the right questions to understand what I was looking for before putting forward suggested roles and you were always very responsive.” Whether you wish to simply make contact, require guidance, advice or sound us out on the market or for your future career plans and goals – do get in touch! Gemma Whiteside gemma@walkerlovell.com
There was a joke that used to do the rounds in recruitment circles: Q: “What do you call a recruitment consultant who doesn’t always negotiate the best salary?” A: “An ex-recruitment consultant.” And there was some truth in that. Ambitious people have always worked hard and wanted to be rewarded. A new job created an opportunity to push those rewards higher. And ‘rewards’ remained a euphemism for ‘money’. The time of maximum opportunity for candidates is, of course, when client demand exceeds supply. Which is where we find ourselves in so many sectors right now. The reasons for this are unsurprising: Financially secure companies that implemented freezes during lockdown are now hiring again Markets that slowed during the pandemic are picking-up With the dynamic shifting in favour of the candidate, we’ve witnessed some unusual events recently: Candidates have been taking interviews with multiple job offers with other firms already on the table. b The speed of the recruitment process has accelerated. A law firm we work with, and which typically meets candidates on a number of occasions, has recently made an offer after a single interview on Zoom. Clients engaging in long processes are losing candidates. One of our most experienced recruiters has said that she has never known so many candidates hold-off sending CVs to great businesses looking to recruit simply because they have already received so much interest in hiring them.  And all evidence suggests that this is just the start, with international travel still limited and some furlough schemes still in operation. In this environment, it would be very easy for us to rub our hands gleefully and encourage clients to pay record-breaking salaries to secure their hires as quickly as possible. Our view, however, is different. If there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us, it’s that there is more to life than a paycheque. We have spent huge periods of time unable to socialise or to go to work. We’ve had significant barriers drawn around our personal freedom, which has given many of us a chance to reassess our priorities. And for many people, the outcome of Covid will be to reassess their priorities. Some want to spend more time at home. Others wish to adjust their work/life balance. Many want to pursue dreams that they hadn’t previously considered viable in the ‘old’ world of 2019. So although we will always ensure that clients are offering fair remuneration, we are encouraging clients and candidates to seek the right cultural fit. Some companies are already changing working patterns and offering a four and a half-day week ending at Friday lunchtime. Others are pushing their passion for sustainability, developing relationships with other businesses who share their primary goal of making the world a greener, cleaner place. One of our clients is throwing itself into supporting the local community, encouraging staff to spend half a day each week working at local schools or on community projects. Another has a ‘bring your dog to work day’! These are not opportunistic announcements. I believe they are symbolic of our times. Never before has it been more important for firms to walk the walk and demonstrate that their brand reflects their culture. And in that spirit, with demand for good candidates growing, there’s never been a better opportunity for people to find a place to work that reflects their priorities and worldview. So our advice to clients who are desperate to recruit new people is to sell your culture as well as your pay structure. Recruiting like-minded people is the key to developing a stronger brand for your team and your clients. As for candidates, it’s completely natural to look for a well-paid role. But we believe there’s more to life than that. And on the basis that work takes up a huge proportion of your waking life, please don’t forget that the people you work with and the environment your work within will have a huge impact on your wellbeing long after the initial thrill of your new salary has sunk-in!
A long time ago two of my friends started talking about global warming. It was an interesting chat that moved between the cause of forest fires in Australia, the floods in the UK and what, if anything, the government could do about it all. I listened for a while and then asked what they knew about the European Green Deal and the impact that the circular economy in the worlds of agriculture, energy and beyond could have on the climate. One of my friends looked at me in surprise and said “I didn’t know you’d ever worked in that area”. That’s the thing about recruitment. On a really superficial level, it’s just about putting people in touch with each other. But to do that well, you really need to understand the world they work in and its future trends. And in the world of Agri, it’s impossible to place people effectively without a clear insight into the ever-more important role of sustainability. The context is startling. For a century, the majority of manufactured fertiliser products are still based on mineral deposits and fossil fuels. This means that helping crops grow is, simultaneously, raising emission levels. The European Commission, which is ahead of the game in this area, has set a goal of a 30% reduction of non-renewable resources in fertilizer production. The aim is to turn this goal into a series of business opportunities (in the same way that the automotive industry will benefit from the switch to electric cars) So the Agri industry has a huge incentive to fight climate change by regenerating and restoring, aiming to keep resources in circulation for as long as possible. The quest is for a ‘Circular Economy’ which, effectively, is a perfect circle of recycling, where the agricultural system becomes emissions-free. And, backed-up by incentives, it’s working. Bio-waste management is an entire sector focused on replacing chemical fertilizers with bio-based products. Nutrients are being recycled back into the soil. Lime, limestone and dolomite are amongst the natural minerals being used in agriculture and forestry to correct soil acidity and to add nutrients that contain magnesium and calcium. Some of the innovative thinking in this area is really inspiring. Much of the CO2 being produced by the mineral fertilizer industry is being purified and sold for use in sparkling water and in cleaning products. From my perspective, what’s particularly interesting is that agri-related innovation isn’t just taking place inside the industry. Increasingly, sectors are overlapping, swapping ideas and raw materials in their quest to create a wider ‘circle’. For example, the EU’s fertiliser industry is now using over five million tonnes of sulphur annually that is sourced from waste at oil and gas refineries. Ductor, a Finnish-Swiss biotechnology company, is a great case study for this increasing breadth of thinking. Ductor is managing organic waste and produces sustainable, organic fertilizers and has many projects in North America and Europe. In addition to focusing on the 4 Rs that is often referred to by the fertilizer industry it also focuses on two more Rs; Recycling nutrients and Rejuvenating the soils. Ductor can use high nitrogen waste streams like Chicken Litter, and its projects in Norway focuses on the use of fish waste and fish sludge to produce biomethane, organic nitrogen liquids and NPKs, specifically positioned to enhance soil health and fertility. Ductor is able to demonstrate the new circular economy in practice and has a simple, practical solution that will help to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The transition to sustainable agriculture is driven by new technologies, research and innovation. This quest for a cleaner, greener planet is touching the entire industrial value chain, from production to consumption, remanufacturing, waste management and secondary raw materials. This ‘new agriculture’ will not only slow down climate change but also provide sustainable economic rewards. Which brings me back to my friends. I may never have worked in Agri, but it’s impossible to find creative answers to recruitment challenges unless you are fascinated in the industry that is recruiting. It might be that the perfect candidate for a role in Agri is currently working in the oil industry, in the same way, that there are natural synergies between the worlds of limestone and car battery production. The Circular Economy is only one (fascinating) part of Agri. We also recruit across commodities, trading, operations and production. Please do connect to share your own ideas and to discuss how we might be able to help. Rebecca Topping
I’m sure I wasn’t alone in watching open-mouthed as Italy’s Lamont Marcell Jacobs won the Olympic 100 meters in Tokyo. And not just because he was the first European to do so since 1992. What was even more surprising was that four years ago, Jacobs was a long-jumper. Realising that his run-up was more powerful than his jumping, he decided to switch to the track. And within four years his fellow-athletes were shocked too. If you love the Olympics, you may remember Rebecca Romero, a gold medal winning track cyclist in Rio. It was quite some achievement, particularly when she had switched from rowing! Romero was lauded for her ability to cross disciplines so smoothly, but perhaps we shouldn’t have been quite so astonished. Both sports require an ability to operate at the athlete’s aerobic capacity for long periods. One of the biggest barriers to success is the discomfort felt when exercising for long periods at their very max. Team GB saw that Romero has the core skills necessary to cycle fast. As a result they committed to helping her make the switch. Perhaps the most agile athlete of them all was American track and field star Lauryn Williams. In 2004 she won a silver medal in the 100 meters in Athens. Eight years later she took-home gold in the sprint relay in London. Injury then appeared to have put paid to her Olympic career. Williams had other ideas. She analysed the qualities required for different disciplines that would put less stress on her injury. The result was to switch from the summer to the winter games. And at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Williams took silver with Elana Meyers in the two-woman bobsleigh race. In two years she had transformed herself from track athlete to ice queen. What all of these Olympians have in common is their agility. They analysed their strengths and potential, and then adapted successfully to a new discipline. For me, they aren’t just inspiring human stories, but they offer practical benefits for the world of recruitment. It is so easy to recruit someone who has done that job before in another organisation. You know what you’re getting. You remove risk from the equation. You take the ‘safe’ option. But there’s also a more creative approach. A more agile, creative way of finding great candidates by looking at their core strengths and adapting them to new opportunities and sectors. And it’s an approach we’ve been honing for some time. We helped a brilliant candidate with a background in commercial construction switch to data centre management. His brilliant, transferable leadership skills were equally relevant in both sectors and we were confident he could quickly pick-up the technical side. He has settled brilliantly into the role and now adds ‘data centres’ to his CV! We’ve found equally adaptable candidates across food and nutrition and across the supply and demand sides in mining, minerals and materials. We recently helped an animal nutrition engineer into limestone and another from limestone into steel. Each of these appointments has added real energy and innovation to their new business. They may not have done the job before, but they bring with them a whole new take on the world and the ability to challenge sector norms. The result has been to take successful candidates out of one sector and to make them gold medal candidates in another. Human beings have so much untapped potential. As recruitment consultants, we see a crucial part of our job as to help untap it.
Samir is a phenomenal tech analyst with excellent communication skills. He’s bilingual and has worked in London, Dubai and New York. As you might expect, he’s not short of job offers. Two years ago, he was approached by a number of agencies trying to place him in international roles. Samir was willing to relocate. He knew that wherever he ended up, he’d spend five days each week in a modern, impersonal office block. His office, its desk space and even its meeting rooms would be almost indistinguishable. That was pre-pandemic. As a potential employer, things are a little less clear now. ‘Agility’ is key – with Samir keen to embrace a way of life that doesn’t oblige him to spend his entire working week at the same desk in the same office. He can back this up with numbers as he just beat his 2020 target by 30% despite sending the entire year working from his kitchen! So how will employers who, understandably, want their office to remain a beating heart for their business, encourage Samir to take-on the commute and spend time with the team? At Walker Lovell we spend much of the working week chatting. To our clients. To candidates. To industry experts. And to each other. It’s how we do the vast majority of our research and how we judge which way the recruitment wind will blow next week and next year. Right now, the short-term focus is all about the return to ‘normal’ life. What will businesses demand from their teams? What will employees expect? Will vaccine passports provide a pathway to safe business travel? When will relocations begin again in earnests? But our take on things is that these are relatively superficial changes. The pandemic will, hopefully, move on. But it’s impact on our lives is altogether more permanent. We believe that the gradual changes to working life that embraced ‘dress down Fridays’ and ‘flexi-working’ have fast forwarded. The balance between work and life has never been more topical. And yet, as employers, we want our teams to be together. We want assurance. We want certainty about where our people are and what they are doing. We want to create a team spirit and a creative hub that just isn’t the same on a Zoom call. Our view is that the answer is in a company’s culture. Mental health has never been this crucial to the choices employees are making. We see candidates looking beyond job title and salary and citing ‘happiness’ as their key professional driver. This was already happening pre-Covid, but 2020 has accelerated the understanding of what’s possible and what’s aspirational. For us, this means challenging the core assumption that coming to the office is a grind. Rather than asking ‘how much time does a happy employee spend at home?’ , we prefer to ask ‘how do we ensure that the office is a place where our people really want to be?’. We believe the answer is in company culture. In the creation of an environment that makes it fun to go to work. Where the boundaries between home and office begin to blur. At Walker Lovell, we have seen the extraordinary effect that an emphasis on fun can bring to work. Pre-pandemic, we shortened the team’s hours. We finished work at two pm on a Friday, inviting everyone to finish the week in the pub – always ending before the school run began. We preached a message that it wasn’t enough to be well rewarded for success; it was more important to have the time to enjoy those rewards. We ceased to celebrate individual success and started to mark the team’s achievements with group trips and activities. We did it because we, the founders, had previously worked for an appalling boss. We were unmotivated, deeply depressed, and, as a result, not as productive as we knew we should be. So we formed a company determined to be different. But not even we could have forecast the effect it would have. Recruitment is notorious for the speed at which its employees move around. Ours haven’t. It’s a career that doesn’t really require an office – in theory everything can be done online and meetings can take place in cafes and hotels. But our staff can’t wait to come back in. They say it’s because work is fun. We build teams around a very simple principle. If you wake up on a Monday morning and work seems like a drag, then it’s time to consider your future. We don’t want work to drag. Ever. Our culture doesn’t allow it. And we’re pretty certain that, in the ‘new normal’ companies who want someone of Samir’s character to come into the office every day will have to entice him there because, ultimately, it’s offers the sort of enjoyment and atmosphere that trumps anything he experiences when he works from home. Dan Topping dan@walkerlovell.com
