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Transcript:

Helen: This week, I'm delighted to welcome Deborah Gray as my guest. Debbie is one of the 3 founding directors of Totum, who recruit senior professionals, including C-suite executives and non executive directors into leadership roles in business services functions at professional service firms. After five years in HR management and recruitment at the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills, Debbie spent over 15 years working as an executive search professional in partnership with different businesses nationally and internationally.

She and her co founders set up Totum in 2012 with the ethos of using flexibility to support talent attraction and retention, both for their clients and for their own team. For Debbie, real pleasure comes from knowing she's guiding the very best candidates into the right roles and in this way, is helping to drive sustainable growth in the professional services sector.



Debbie works four days a week and in 2019, she was recognised in TimeWise's Power50 Awards, celebrating effective leaders who work part time or flexibly. And in her spare time, Debbie volunteers as an Enterprise Advisor, working with the Careers Leader and other school leaders at a local school to create opportunities for young people.

Welcome to The Business of Being Brilliant, Debbie!

Debbie: Thank you so much, Helen. I'm really looking forward to our discussion today.

Helen: Yeah, likewise, it's great to have you on the show. And we're recording this in early May, we've just had the coronation and, and I'm wondering how you're finding these extra three day weekends, long bank holidays that we're enjoying in May? I'm hearing some people say, Oh, they're brilliant. And other people say, Oh, my four day work is so compressed, I can't wait for them to end. What's your view on it?

Debbie: I think, I think I'll be more in that camp. They're lovely, they're really lovely, but it does feel like we've had quite a lot of them, and we've still got one more to go, haven't we? So yeah, it does feel like things are compressed, and you have that Monday morning feeling on a Tuesday and by the time you get going, you've got another weekend.

So I'm looking forward to getting back to normal, I think.

Helen: Yeah.

Debbie: It's been wonderful. It's been wonderful. I mean, the coronation was fantastic to see, so I can't complain. It's it's all really good. Yeah.

Helen: Yeah, it's been a bit of a different experience to follow, but it would be nice if they stretched out those bank holidays a little more evenly over the year...

Debbie: Exactly. Yeah.

Helen:...Instead squishing them all into early spring!

 So on the podcast, we talk in many different ways about creating work cultures where people can flourish. And I guess for this episode, given what you do around executive recruitment and all your expertise in that, we're really focusing on that front end really, as I think of it, of our experience with an organization, the point at which someone decides yes, that sounds a great company to work for, I'm interested in that role, and hopefully lands a role successfully.

So, looking forward to chatting with you about Totum, about your career in recruitment and about how you see that recruitment market and that relationship between employer and employee evolving. Can you tell me briefly, did you always want to work in recruitment? Did you fall into recruitment? And what led you to set up your own firm? Be great to hear that.

Debbie: Yeah, sure. Yes, I fell into it. I think, I think there are a lot of people who I know in my industry who go 'yes, I fell into recruitment'. I think the string that goes throughout my career is the people focus bit. I love working with people. I love building relationships with people.

 So that's always been the core of my career. I mean, I did a biology degree which has got nothing to do with my career at all. But I started doing recruitment and HR in house, and, and then actually I met Tim and Gary. I was actually a client of theirs, and loved them as people, I loved that our ethos was very similar, our morals were very similar, and when we had this opportunity, it just felt right. My father always talked about a gut feeling and that's what it felt like.

And so we thought we'd give it a go and it was exciting and we've had such an exciting journey. We're 20 years old this year, which we can't believe, but it's been a really fantastic journey of one where we've grown from a tiny business of four of us to one where we're now over 30 people. And our position in the, in the sector is one that we, we always hoped and dreamed we would have. So it's been, it's been a great, a great 20 years.

Helen: Congratulations, that's an incredible achievement to have grown so steadily and to be celebrating your 20 year milestone. That's really amazing. And I noticed when I was introducing you, you're specific about your area of focus, it's Business services roles, primarily, obviously at senior leadership level in professional services firms. Has that focus been really important to you as an organization?

Debbie: It has, and our core was always law, partly because two of us came from law firm backgrounds, myself from Herbert Smith Freehills, as you discussed, and my colleague Gary came from Linklaters. But my colleague Tim had always worked in the legal sector, so law was, was certainly our core, but then we realized these synergies with other professional service partnerships, and it made absolute sense to branch out and work with them.

But we were always of the belief that we wanted to do business services, so we've never strayed into recruiting fee-earning roles, lawyers or accountants, we've always been very focused on business services. And, and actually it's a world that we have seen absolutely transform over the last 20 years from one which was quite back office when certainly when I was at Herbert Smith Freehills, to one where they are absolutely at the table now, helping devise strategies for these firms going forward. And it's, it's been such a brilliant journey to be part of. And we are recruiting some brilliant people for these organizations. I think for us, being a specialist, being specialist in this area is why we've got to where we are, because our clients can see that we understand them and we understand what they might be looking for.

And a lot of our work is actually consulting to these businesses about how this role might look or where it should be positioned and because of our specialism, we have that knowledge. So for us, it's been very clear. We talk about our strategy every year. We sit down and we, and we have a big strategy session now with our much bigger leadership team, which is wonderful.

And we, we always challenge ourselves on whether it's the right thing to do. And we've always decided that it is. So it feels like it's the right thing to do for us.

Helen: Yes, and really interesting to hear how you've witnessed that change in perception senior business services leaders at the executive level and their contribution to the strategy and the agenda of the organization. And also interesting to hear that you don't just take a commission or win a commission from a client about we want to hire this person for this role, but actually they're looking to you for help figure that out. What is the role? How should that be designed? What people and skills are we looking for?

And you mentioned like, obviously over the 20 years you've been in business with Totum, you've seen huge amounts of change. I was just thinking about that before we came on air about how even in the last five years, we've seen so much change in the world of work, obviously a great deal due to the pandemic accelerating changes to working patterns, but more recently cost of living crises, strikes, not so much in professional services obviously, but more in frontline facing roles, tight labor markets, even to me as someone who's not involved in recruitment, it must have been a very interesting time to be in recruitment and see that happen.

How have you noticed that? And I guess, how do you respond to that in your strategy sessions?

Debbie: Yes, it's been a really interesting time and yes, I think, the first point you mentioned about business services and how they've, how their profile has changed. It was changing definitely before the pandemic. The pandemic certainly expediated that change because I think firms realized how important these people were in the running of their businesses. And so that's been, brilliant to see. So in terms of the profile of these roles, they've just gone up and up. In terms of the challenges that, that we face and firms face, yeah, absolutely, there's so much that we have to consider now, the hybrid working, the wellbeing, now AI, there's so many different topics that are challenging.

We set up a number of networking groups in the pandemic actually, because we had so many of our clients asking us questions and we thought, well, let's get everyone together. And they've continued since then. So for the last few years, we've run these amazing network groups and within HR, with COOs, with Marketing, and people are wanting to share because everybody's having the same challenges and no one really has the answers at the minute because it's, it's still a changing world and I think, nothing is set in stone post the pandemic.

Just talking about hybrid working, for example, I think we all thought maybe a year ago that hybrid working was here to stay and perhaps it is, but actually on our networking groups, a lot of the firms are seeing a real uptick in people coming back into the office many more days a week than they were. But some are still facing challenges and some are facing challenges getting some of their most senior people back in the office. And so we're still struggling to find the balance and it'll be, I think the next 12 months, we'll see some really interesting changes.

 We also saw a lot of firms get rid of some of their space, their office space immediately after the pandemic, because the hybrid world was here to stay. And now actually, there's just not enough space for everybody to be there. So I think we're going to see some really interesting times over the next year.

 We talk about wellbeing a lot and that people taking more sick days than ever before. How, how do we tackle that? Cost of living, of course. So there are definitely some real challenges post pandemic and, and the economic market, which we'll see. I think we're lucky, the sectors that we work in yes, they're affected of course, by the economic market, but they're less affected than other sectors.

So we're still seeing a lot of recruitment happening at all ends of the spectrum, from chiefs all the way down to executives. It's still a busy market in recruitment whereas I know other sectors that, are not seeing that. So, yeah, it's an exciting time.

Helen: Yeah. It's fascinating hearing you talk about that because you get a bird's eye view of how it's all evolving. You're seeing how AI is coming into play; you're seeing how concern for people's wellbeing during the pandemic is now morphing into rising number of sick days for all sorts of different reasons and that worrying people; and also the uptick, as you say, and people coming back into the office, a lot of people, but not everybody. So really interesting perspective and that you can see those different trends evolving in real time in front of you.

And I was just reading actually in the FT this morning, there was some latest report out on the recruitment market. And it was saying that recruitment of permanent staff in London has had the steepest decline since the pandemic and it's been declining steadily for seven months or so, and I think it went on to say that was in certain industries. It sounds like happily, that's not so much in the industries and clients that, that you serve.

And I know that it's been a very tight labor market for a long time with maybe employees having the upper hand in terms of greater choice and employers fighting a bit more to, to get the right candidates in place. So thinking about helping people enjoy a work life in organizations where they feel well supported and able to work at their best, how do you go about helping somebody to find that right role that's right for them? And I know you're obviously looking after your client and trying to meet their needs at the same time. So how do you manage that balance and help guide people into the right roles, as you say?

Debbie: Our knowledge of our clients is very good. And because we're working, because, because of what we do, we work right across the business; because we recruit business services roles across the breadth of HR, finance, risk, marketing, IT, we work right across the businessand because of that, you get a very good sense of the culture of an organization.

And we also work with the top, you know, we also have the managing partners and the senior partners. So you get a very good sense and a good feel of what sort of culture that organization is and what values they uphold. And because we get to know our candidates very well as well, actually we can be very honest and say, this might be a good role, but we don't think it's the right culture and it's not the right culture fit.

And similarly, we do the same with our clients. When we're working on these senior roles, we give, we give our clients short lists of only five or six people typically and our belief is that all of those people are culturally aligned to the organization.

 And then what it's about is the chemistry and it's up to the client then to decide which of those five might be right for them based on lots of different things. But actually, culturally, we feel that they all have that alignment with that organization.

 So it makes a lot of sense to us because we know our clients well, and we get to know our candidates well.

Helen: Yes,

Debbie: And some of these candidates, some of these, sorry, I was just about to say some of these candidates we've been working with for 20 years, we've seen them right through their careers. And similarly, our clients as well; Jonathan Bond, who I know put us in touch, we've had a relationship for 15 years.

So you get to know people over a long period of time. And I think that is very much the ethos of Totum. It's about building long term relationships. It's not about the quick win and the short term win. It's about building those relationships over a period of time.

Helen: Yeah. I'm enjoying hearing you talk about that because that's one of the things I talk about in my book, The Future of Time, we tend to think about time at work as being, well, it's just how many hours I work today or this week. But one of the bits I talk about from a career point of view is thinking about the longer term and actually from a business point of view, not being driven by short term business metrics the whole time, thinking about the longer term sustainability of the business and how it's evolving. But also thinking about that from an individual's career point of view, which instead of just thinking about okay now and in the next role or even really just about them as an employee while they're with us contracted to work with us, but thinking much more long term about actually how are we starting to engage with people before they join our organization, whether that's, through apprenticeships, through work with schools and universities, et cetera, through charitable pro bono initiatives and how do we maintain that relationship afterwards, perhaps through alumni programs, or I know some law firms that go back to their alumni and have created a talent pool, say if you're looking for a couple of days a week work we'd love to have you back on a specific project to do that. Is that something that see happening as well?

Debbie: Absolutely yes we know a number of law firms who do that incredibly successfully because they know those individuals. And, I think actually networking and understanding people is the best way to get those successful fits in terms of who fits into your culture as an organization.

And I think you're absolutely right. The long term relationship piece is I just think so valuable in this world. Our sector, it's a small world and we've known that over 20 years, the number of times we've come across the same people and the relationships we've built in this world, it's, it's very small actually. And it's important to keep those good relationships going. And, as I say, these organizations are finding that from looking at their alumni.

Helen: Yeah, that's such a good reminder, whether people are listening to this with their or line manager or business leader hat on thinking about the talent they need, or for somebody listening who's thinking about their own work life, just a great reminder about benefit of maintaining those positive long term relationships because you never know when you might come full circle or want to hire someone that used to work for you or want to go back to another organization. So yeah, great point to take away from the conversation.

And have you seen a big shift in what people are prioritizing when they're considering moving into a new role? What's top of people's mind right now, or is it a very mixed picture?

Debbie: I think it's quite straightforward although there is some more clarity around it, I think, over the last few years. I think people want to feel valued. And they want to feel listened to and that they have a voice.  I think people want to feel part of a community and understand the culture and align themselves with the values of an organization. And perhaps that's something that is particularly obvious now that we work in a hybrid world at the moment. And it's something that is really challenging for firms to create that community feel still, so that their employees feel a part of something that they can buy into.

We've definitely seen financial reward moved down the pecking order in terms of what people are looking for. And we've seen things like career development and the opportunity to learn from people and flexibility or balance in a working life move up the pecking order. So there has been a shift. I think that people are more confident to vote with their feet. They are saying actually I don't align myself with, I don't believe in the culture of this organization, therefore I don't need this job enough. I'll look somewhere else and as you mentioned before, the talent pool is smaller and so candidates tend to have more choice than they used to.

Helen: yeah, that's really interesting to hear how people are thinking about some of the deeper criteria that makes them want to, to stay in an organization. And actually, that's a question that I was going to come on to, something I'm researching for possible book two is not official yet, but I'm scouting around the topic in my mind and in conversations with people about what makes us stay in an organisation.

I guess you do get to hear that given the long term nature of your relationships with many of your candidates is whatever those criteria that you just described that they weigh up as they're thinking about joining a new organization, moving into a new role; there's, there's things that are important to us when we're getting in the door, but there's also things that are important to us longer term that make us want to stay. And sometimes they shift a little bit, those things.

What do you hear from people about what makes them want to stay in an organization, longer term?

Debbie: I think it is some of those things we've just touched on. It is the opportunity to see their careers develop within an organization. And it is that alignment with the values but also people having the opportunity to have that voice and to feel listened to. People want to be heard when they're in an organization and just want to feel valued.

And I think that all those things keep somebody in an organization where people are treated well and treated fairly and can see how their career can develop and frankly, enjoy working then they tend to stay.

Helen: Yeah. And listening to that says to me their relationship with their line manager, which we all know is incredibly important from an engagement and retention point of view, it's just so crucial. Because I guess if you're in a big organization, you're going to have fairly limited in person or informal contact with people at the most senior levels.

So it will boil down quite a lot to how well you feel listened to by your immediate line manager or whoever is senior to you in, in the work that you do. So having line managers who can think about all these things and be very aware of how they manage the team and how they listen to people. I think that must be one of the biggest challenges for organizations at the moment. More and more gets pushed onto the line manager plate as well ; think about wellbeing; they've got to understand the menopause; they might need to understand things like, infertility and mental health and different home life setups. Seems a huge challenge to be a line manager these days.

Debbie: I think that's right. And I think there's two things that make it really challenging in this period of time is, is that you're often not sitting next to your team anymore. You're talking to them virtually and you don't always have all your team in the office together. I think that's incredibly challenging.

And also, a lot of managers are promoted to manager because they're very good at what they do, from a technical perspective, and they're not often given all of the training that they need to be a manager. And some people aren't great managers and that's okay, but the more senior you get, the more people you're managing and you move away from your day job and you move much more into a management role. And that suits some people and it doesn't suit others and it's recognizing that people need support because of all these millions of things you've just talked about that managers need to be thinking about, need support to manage So yeah, it's a challenging period to be a manager at the minute.

Helen: Yes. So this is quite a random question but do you ever have to, with your candidates, diplomatically point out whether they have perhaps strong enough people management skills to consider certain roles because we might all be really attracted to a particular role, but perhaps as you say, have not had that training and support to really manage the people dynamics well.

Debbie: I think that the answer is that we're honest with our candidates. So if we don't think they're right for a particular role, then we'll say why. So it could be to do with management; it's harder with managing because we don't have the opportunity to sit with these people and see them manage people.

We meet them over the course of a number of meetings over years and years and have conversations and so you get to know these people, but you don't actually physically sit with them and see that. But I think, the bottom line for us is that we're honest with people. So if they're not successful in getting a role, we're very, we make sure that they receive insightful, useful feedback so that they can learn from that. And I think that's, that's what our role is as a good recruiter is to make sure that people are understanding and learning from why they may not be successful or why we may think that a role isn't quite right. I think that's our role in this.

Helen: Yes. It's such valuable for people, isn't it, and help them think, okay, maybe that one didn't land because of X, how do I

feel about that and how might that change the next opportunity? The way I view it the next opportunity that comes up .

Debbie: Yeah.

Helen: And switching a little bit to talk about the recruitment approach generally that like the human side of the recruitment process.

I haven't gone through a formal interview process for donkeys' years. I mean, I'm saying like over 20 years easily, and back then it was quite slow and painstaking. And I remember applying to big corporates and never even hearing back, and this wasn't for career entry roles.

So what's it like now? What works well and what works less well? Does it still take forever to land a job? Are people being much quicker and slicker about it? Is it a bit more engaging as a process?

Debbie: So this is my hobby horse because it absolutely, it, it frustrates me so much that the sectors we work in people are the biggest asset these organizations can have. They're people businesses. Their clients buy people, they're not buying the technical .... Of course it has to be a standard, but we're working in this amazing industry in London, where the standard of technical ability is huge, really high.

And you just think, well, why, why don't organizations prioritize their recruitment process more? And I think some do. I think some are getting better, and there are some who still don't. And it frustrates me that sometimes some very junior people are put in charge of recruitment when they're making decisions about people that are much more senior than them, or perhaps they don't understand the roles. That just doesn't seem right. I think that a recruitment process is a way that an individual sees into that firm. It's their one lens that they can see into an organization. It's the only lens they have, initially, and that for me is how an organization should sell itself.

And there's still the old style recruitment where recruitment is viewed as ' we must test these people', 'we need to challenge these people'. And yes of course you do, but you also need to sell your business to these people because unless a candidate engages with an organization, they're not going to join it. And they have to feel that they're wanted and valued in that process. So if, as you just said, the process is very long and drawn out, or they don't get any feedback, then why are they going to want to join that organization? I wouldn't, and I've not been through a recruitment process for a long, long time either, for 25 years, but it just seems so obvious to me and us, at Totum that if you're wanting to get good people, then you need to have a really good, slick recruitment process, where you get critical feedback, useful feedback, where you're meeting a diverse set of people in that organization, where the culture and the brand of that organization is coming through to you so that you understand the business that you might be joining or want to join, where if you're made an offer, a manager or a managing partner is in touch with you to say how excited they are that you're going to be joining them. And in that way you get people to join your business. And we've got so many examples of big firms losing out to some amazing talent because they've gone to a smaller firm where they felt more valued and felt like they wanted to join it because they aligned with their culture.

And it's been shocking to some of them. And, and some of them go, is it about money? And it's like, no, actually they're getting significantly less somewhere else, but they felt valued and they felt wanted and they felt like it was somewhere that they wanted to align themselves with.

So it is something that is still not right in so many organizations and it's something that I think is so easy to get right. So I'm afraid it is a bit of my hobby horse!

Helen: And very compelling said! I totally buy that. And I'm reminded of a book I read late last year, Work Rules by Laszlo Bock, head of people operations at Google. And he really lifts the lid on all their HR processes, but it talks a lot about the recruitment approach. And there they made the decision to take recruitment responsibility away from line managers and to centralize it. And he explains why, because obviously it was a bit contentious, but he talks about just how critical each hire is to the business and how much wasted time and money goes into poor hiring decisions, poor hiring processes, and how much over the longer term that costs businesses.

And it was really, really convincing the way he lays it out. He talks about the probabilities of how long someone's going to stay and really be a high performer in your organization and how nine tenths of the time actually firms don't put enough effort in and don't find that high performer that's right for their business. Because he said there are high performers everywhere. You want to find the one that is going to perform really well in your organization. I thought that was really, really interesting take.

Debbie: It is fascinating and, and yeah, we've certainly looked at the money that firms pay or lose because they don't make the right recruitment decisions. And also something else that I don't think they realize is that it is a small world; we've talked about this. And if a candidate has a really bad experience, then they talk.

Because they talk to their friends about it; they talk to other people about it. And I don't think firms realise how impactful having a bad experience can have on the brand of their organisation. And we have seen it in, well, particularly two firms that I'm thinking about where their recruitment process was so bad; where people were never given any feedback; it went on for months and months and months; they were treated badly throughout the process. And it's become the conversation in the market because it's happened to so many people.

And I just think, goodness, you're trying to get a positive brand out there. And just because of your recruitment process and managing that process badly, you've now got a reputation which you didn't want to have. I think it's something that I just think is so easy to get right and change. It's a priority that firms I don't think realize how important it is to get the right people in business.

Some don't, some do of course, but some don't.

Helen: Yeah, yeah and the way you describe it, it makes it clear how business critical it is actually as an experience and as a process. Brilliant. It's so interesting to hear your insights and your insider view on that front end of the world of work and the recruitment service and really interesting to hear your perspectives on the importance of a long term approach; how people's priorities are evolving, both as firms hiring and as candidates thinking about joining; and how there's great opportunity to use or adopt a really slick and effective recruitment process that successfully conveys your brand and gives people a great experience of what hopefully life is going to be like if they do walk through those doors.

Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast and sharing your experience and your expertise. It's been a real pleasure talking with you, you've been a brilliant guest. Thank you.

Debbie: Thank you, Helen. I've really enjoyed it.