The Advocate Group’s Post

🙌 She signed her offer! From Kickoff to Offer Signed: 9 weeks What worked for this Dir. of Marketing client's job search: 👉 Getting back to basics. This client had been at one company for over a decade. She'd been there from early stages through cycles of rapid growth, and she'd seen it all. Ultimately she knew she wanted to go back to early stage where she could bring all her learnings to do it all over again—but better :) That required being really thoughtful about which stories she told on her resume and in her interviews. Startups wouldn't relate to most of her recent experience leading teams at scale and focusing primarily on cost-cutting initiatives, but she also needed to share at least a few recent experiences to show relevance and her growth as a leader. After we went through her Experience Inventory, we broke down her experience into 3 primary "stages". That allowed her to focus on telling a balance of stories from each that would speak to her startup creativity, her growth stage experimentation mindset, and her late stage understanding of trade offs and downstream impact. She wound up with a handful of interviews, but one clear opportunity where the stage was right, the space was right, and the team was right. And she got the job! I say this all the time, but I love this work 😍 This is exactly what we do with our private clients and our group clients inside Inevitable Offers. I truly believe everyone can find success in their search when they understand their value in the market, position themselves for that value, and build genuine connections with hiring teams along the way.

Early in 2023, I had the good fortune of connecting with The Spearhead Group, Inc.- a rapidly growing leader in packaging innovation for the #spirits and adult beverage industry. After half a dozen successful searches and the foundation of a true #partnership (both personal and professional), I was lucky enough to visit the team’s HQ in Yardley, PA last week.   It was March 14th (3.14- “Pi(e) Day”), so obviously I brought the team several custom-made pies with purple cream to match their brand’s signature logo. I toured the facility’s R&D labs, product development offices, and got to shake the hands of so many individuals I’ve been lucky enough to communicate with over the past 14 months. Observing team members, that Protis Global helped place, in action and listening to them describe their roles with such enthusiasm was nothing short of surreal.   At the end of the workday, we headed to a nearby tavern for cocktails, food, and genuine conversation about work and life. This is what it’s all about!     At Protis Global, we are so much more than just a #search firm that helps #recruit talent for any given role. My team’s undying passion to comprehensively understand our partners’ culture, motivations, needs, and goals is what justifies an organization’s investment to enlist our services and abilities. 2024 is a year of strategic and thoughtful hiring. Make every hire count!   Those of you who know me would agree- I am a “geek” when it comes to the adult beverage industry- I LOVE this business and passionately speak about it daily. Why not let me and the incredible team at Protis Global support your organization’s #growth by investing in a long-term partnership with us? You won’t regret your decision.

Just had a fantastic call this early morning with my friend Cameron Clunies-Ross. We discussed the ins and outs of scaling an agency business and he dropped some incredible wisdom that I'm excited to share with you. 💡 1. Value First: Cameron emphasized the importance of delivering value before selling to clients. Sharing insights, and case studies, and highlighting opportunities they might have missed can be the game-changer in building trust and long-term partnerships. It's about proving your worth and expertise. ���️ 2. Building Meaningful Relationships: In the agency world, relationships matter immensely. It's not just about transactions; it's about creating genuine connections with your clients. Building trust and rapport can lead to fruitful, long-lasting collaborations. 🎯 3. Know Your Niche: Instead of offering everything to everyone, Cameron advises focusing on your niche. Know what you offer to your target market and excel in it. It's about being a specialist rather than a generalist at the start of our business. That's where we'll find our unique value. 🌱 4. Building Careers from the Ground Up: Cameron underscored the significance of creating career opportunities within your agency from the grassroots level. This means hiring young, enthusiastic employees and giving them the chance to grow with your agency. 🧐 5. Character Over Skills: Rather than just focusing on their existing skills, Cameron urged to pay close attention to the character of these young hires. Are they eager to learn, adaptable, and passionate about what they do? Skills can be taught, but character traits are often more challenging to change. These insights from our chat are pure gold! Thanks, Cameron, for sharing your invaluable perspective!

I found myself at a crossroads while hiring for my marketing team. After a rigorous interview process, it boiled down to two exceptionally qualified candidates. Both had the potential to excel, but there was a catch: one had slightly better skills with direct experience in our niche, while the other brought an unbeatable can-do attitude to the table. The decision wasn't easy, but it reminded me of that saying: “You don't hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” ― Herb Kelleher. So, I chose the latter, banking on their positive disposition over direct experience. And let me tell you, I wasn't disappointed. That choice quickly became a shining star on our team. This experience reinforced a crucial lesson for me, especially relevant in the world of startups: While skills are essential, the right attitude can be the real game-changer. In a landscape where adaptability, cultural fit, and the willingness to learn are invaluable, sometimes the best investment is in someone who may not have the perfect skill set but possesses the right mindset to grow, adapt, and ultimately thrive. As we navigate the complexities of building effective teams, let's not overlook the power of attitude. It's not just about filling a role; it's about fostering a culture of growth, resilience, and positivity that propels everyone forward. #HiringDecisions #TeamBuilding #StartupCulture #MarketingLeadership

We're lucky enough to be commencing the launch of an agency for a recruiter we've been chatting to for about 2-3 years now. Each recruiter is slightly different when it comes to their background but here's a brief overview of this recruiter. Market focus ➡️ Engineering & Manufacturing Years of exp' ➡️ 9 years Number of employers ➡️ 2 (one for 6 years, the mouse recent for just coming up to 3) Years thinking about the idea ➡️ Crica 3 years now History ⬇️ So they'd first thought about the idea prior to making the leap to their current employer. Like so many recruiters do after 5-6 years with one employer, they start tentatively exploring the idea. But for 101 reasons it didn't prove to be the right time & they took a role with another employer. & for this recruiter, that turned out to be the right move. With the experiences, hurdles, challenges & variety that working for another employer has brought them - it's really set them up to feel ready to "one day" launch their own agency. Catalyst 💥 They've billed 67k in March &, as a result, they were called into a meeting at the start of April with their line manager who proceeded to tell them that their commission structure was changing as of, well, now. Talk about a kick in the teeth 😅 It's very rare that one cataclysmic event will push someone to launch their own agency but what history has always shown us is that there's always a straw that breaks the (entrepreneurial) camels back 🐫 This was the one for them & since then we've been busy launching their agency in the background. They're due to go live at the start of June & we can't wait 🚀 #recruitmentstartup #recruitmentinvestment #recruitmentbusinesssupport #recruitmentbusinesssetup #businesstips #recruitmentstartuptips

Last week I joined Alan Furley's seminar on 'building your seed stage team', and made a LOT of notes. With his kind permission, here are my 5 favourite pieces of advice he shared: ⭐ Companies often only look at people who are actively looking for work. However, 87% of people are open to new work if presented with the right opportunity - hire the best 𝗜𝗡 the market, rather than the best ON the market. ⭐ Startups are a special kind of company; make sure candidates are up 𝗙𝗢𝗥 it, rather than just up TO it. ⭐ Candidates are 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 by the founders - the impression you make is often the clincher in getting a candidate on board. ⭐ Get 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 on your interview panel for the skills you're looking for - eg. if you're hiring for creativity, agree on what that looks like for the company. ⭐ Create a page on your 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 dedicated to hiring - display your mission and values so candidates can see what your story is. This is a great chance to show what you do, but also how you do it and who you do it with. Thank you, Alan Furley, for an excellent seminar! #recruitment #hiring

This is a real pinch me moment 🤯 I’m absolutely BLOWN away to see Tangent profiled as one of the lead pieces in The Sun today 🙌🏾 Distributed nationally across both digital and print, our story and impact is being read by MILLIONS of people ❗❗❗ It’s incredibly exciting to have the UKs most read newspaper backing our vision of creating a world where the social contexts we are born into DO NOT determine our career outcomes. We have countless stories of jobseekers from low socioeconomic backgrounds that we’ve supported, but one of our earliest successes was Robert ✨ Moving to London from a small town in Wales and having not gone to university, Robert didn’t have a network of people in Tech. He’d spend HOURS sending off applications on job boards but would never hear back ❌ All that changed when we joined Tangent 📈 He quickly submitted his video pitch and in a very short time, was in the recruitment process for Multiverse’s Sales Academy. A few interviews later, he’d been offered the role and started on a £30,000+ salary 💥 Now that’s social mobility in action 💪🏾 We’re really just at the beginning of our journey, and there’s still SO much to do, but today I’m going to take some time to rest, reflect and celebrate the milestones we’ve hit 🙂 Onwards 🚀 #SocialMobility #SocialImpact #Startups

"Once I started doing this, everything changed..." While I was catching up with Career Attraction + CreateNext Group clients yesterday, a CEO we are working with shared this with me... after he told me he missed my post yesterday (sorry, took a day off :)). We were talking specifically about making the shift from looking for a job to uncovering problems to solve. And, the next critical step of co-creating solutions for those problems. After working with more than 16,000 clients over the last 15 years, this one adjustment has the most profound, cascading results. Moreover, it's a non-negotiable at the senior executive and C-Suite level. Why? I'm glad you asked. Here are just a few of the things we discussed... 1) You cannot assume that anyone complicit in creating the problem(s) at hand  can also properly diagnose them, much less solve them. 2) In diagnosing, you can uncover more opportunities for growth, expansion and adjustment within an organization. Forget about a job description...get to the truth of what's going on (or not). 3) The process of co-creation (after achieving agreement on the problem) allows everyone in the conversation to experience a taste of what it's like to work together. 4) You are also creating an emotional experience that is unique. Consciously (and subconsciously) you build something everyone else "interviewing" is competing against. 5) To the "interview" point...this is a conversation that can happen without the formal definition of a job. It's an exploration. It's a chat. It's organic, if you allow it to be. 6) When anyone sees themselves in the solution being presented, they immediately have more buy in. You're developing an advocate. 7) The solution dictates the employment terms (FT, consulting, advisory, etc.) versus the other way around. This opens everyone's aperture for opportunities, exponentially. And, sometimes, you uncover that there is no fit: bullet dodged. Higher quality conversations can change everything, if you let them. It starts by being intentional in the experience you create with others. And that decision comes from adjusting your mindset and how you see (and approach) ALL conversations... because, regardless of the storyline the media feeds you about the economy, hiring, etc... there are ALWAYS problems to be solved. Give it a try and watch everything shift. Choose wisely.

Is industry expertise critical when you hire an executive manager to your company? Quite often when we look for senior as well as lower level managers to our companies and teams we put industry expertise as c critical criteria in candidate selection. I was definitely doing that in my previous roles. And I know that many of us do. Even if such a criteria is not stated in job description we still keep it in our mind. Definitely your candidate must meet certain criteria depending on the role and the context. Normally it’s proper education, positive managerial experience, adequate mindset and so on. But is industry expertise really the must be for our candidates? Or can it be a downside? As already noted context certainly matters. You can not put a pilot into a plane unless he is properly trained, fit and has certain flight hours experience. But is it always the same in the business? Expertise can certainly bring benefits. But sometimes expertise which is mostly based on previous experiences can be a blocker and create blinders on your eyes.  This can be especially critical for new projects and products. Two recent examples where experience was a downside: - Young entrepreneur made and education start up which was a major success story and is rapidly growing now. The idea he had, would have never come to industry professionals, since it was never made like this before and experts new that this just does not work like that. Luckily entrepreneur was not a professional from education industry and he did not that his idea will not work. And it worked better than could be even expected; - Second example comes from my own experience when I recently created and further succcesfully divested a food industry startup, where together with my non food-industry partner we created a unique product, which industry giants failed to create, thanks to their expertise. So should we always rely on expertise and look for it in our candidates? And what do you think? 

As a candidate one is always tempted to take up the offer on the table. However it is very important to research the role, and the company, before you sign on the dotted line. In that context, I am resharing a very thoughtful forward I received in my alumni group some time back. As someone who has suffered because of not conducting proper due-diligence before taking up roles, I found this post quite enlightening. <credits: unknown> "Talk to ex-employees before you join a startup. It is obvious, but most people don't do this. Partly because they're shy and partly because they're lazy. It can be a game-changing way of evaluating your job offers if you do this. Do this because it can give you an insider's perspective hidden behind job interviews. You can also talk openly with ex-employees as they don't have vested interests in you joining that startup. You're likely to hear a lot of harsh truths about the startup from these employees. Ex-employees may carry grudges, and therefore, a good conversation should have a healthy mix of both facts and opinions. Facts should cover operating style, biz/team KPIs, decision evaluation criteria, execution velocity, customer CSAT/NPS, etc. Opinions could include discussions on team caliber, ethics, product quality, management style, employee treatment, team allocation, CEO's style, honesty/ethics, work culture/hours, etc. Have this discussion and frame your own thoughts. Follow this up with a chat with your hiring manager/founder on these topics. Evaluate your offer based on how satisfied you are with the answers." #startups #team #people #hiring #job #culture #ethics #work