Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Recruitment and Remote Work in the Age of AI

Insights from Jonathan Taylor Miller on Maintaining Balance, Authenticity, and Cultural Fit in Recruitment

Recruitment and work models are undergoing significant transformations in today’s rapidly changing business environment. During an enlightening discussion on the “Applied Intelligence” podcast episode hosted by Imteaz Ahamed, guest Jonathan Taylor Miller shared invaluable insights on various topics ranging from balancing remote and in-office work to the critical role of cultural fit in recruitment. This blog post delves into the key points discussed in the episode, providing a comprehensive look at navigating the evolving landscape of recruitment and remote work.

The Importance of Balancing Remote and In-Office Work In recent years, remote work has become a staple in many organizations, offering employees flexibility and autonomy. However, Imteaz Ahamed and Jonathan emphasize maintaining a healthy balance between remote and in-office work. Imteaz points out that physical interaction in the office is crucial, especially for early-career employees, as it provides opportunities for mentorship, learning business etiquette, and building relationships. Yet, it’s essential to recognize that different career levels may require varying degrees of remote work flexibility. Jonathan supports this view, emphasizing that employees should have a choice in their working arrangements. This balanced approach ensures productivity and caters to individual preferences and needs.

Productivity Habits and Work-Life Balance Jonathan shares his productivity habits, which include a one-week rule for tasks, underscoring the importance of time management. He highlights the value he places on spending quality time with his family and interacting with animals, indicating a unique approach to work-life balance. His ability to customize his business to fit his desired lifestyle exemplifies the importance of prioritizing personal well-being alongside professional success.

The Role of Authenticity in Business Relationships One of Jonathan’s core beliefs is staying true to oneself. He suggests that being authentic, even if it means being disliked by some, can attract like-minded individuals and strengthen business relationships. In his experience, putting his authentic self out there has not negatively affected his business but has instead fostered deeper, more genuine connections.

Evolving with AI and Technology In the age of AI, staying relevant and adaptable is crucial to avoid becoming obsolete. Jonathan and Imteaz discuss the limitations of AI in recruitment, particularly in assessing cultural fit. While LinkedIn plays a pivotal role in Jonathan’s work, he acknowledges that AI cannot fully understand and integrate the human nuances essential for recruitment. Jonathan underscores the need for businesses to embrace technological advancements while valuing human connection and cultural understanding. This balanced approach ensures that companies remain innovative and relevant in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Diversity in Hiring

Beyond Corporate Marketing The conversation also touches upon the often superficial nature of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Jonathan criticizes businesses that claim to promote diversity but fail to genuinely live out these values, resulting in a disengaged workforce and higher turnover. Imteaz supports this sentiment, advocating for diverse hiring to foster innovation. Both agree that achieving true diversity requires strategic buy-in from the top down and a shift in hiring manager attitudes. Jonathan emphasizes that most managers are slow to adopt diverse hiring practices and often exhibit age biases, limiting their organization’s potential for growth and innovation.

The Million Dollar Questions in Recruitment

Cultural Fit and Company Values Understanding a company’s culture and value system and assessing candidates for cultural fit are pivotal in recruitment. Jonathan refers to these as the “million dollar questions” that can significantly impact employee retention and success. He leverages his network and knowledge to discern a company’s culture and uses this information to recruit candidates who align with these values. By focusing on cultural fit over merely assessing skill sets or salary bands, Jonathan ensures that his recruitment processes add value to his client’s businesses, saving them time and emphasizing quality over quantity.

Conclusion

Navigating the Future of Work In conclusion, the insights shared by Jonathan Taylor Miller on the “Applied Intelligence” podcast offer a valuable perspective on navigating the future of work and recruitment. Balancing remote and in-office work, valuing authenticity in business relationships, evolving with AI, fostering genuine diversity, and prioritizing cultural fit are crucial elements in this journey. As businesses and individuals adapt to these changes, focusing on human connection, understanding, and authenticity will be vital to achieving long-term success and relevance in an ever-evolving world.

Hosted by: Imteaz Ahamed

Video Transcript

Jonathan [00:00:02]:

Welcome to applied intelligence, a conversation at the intersection of people, technology and getting stuff done. Now here’s your host, MtS Ahmet.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:00:18]:

Welcome, everyone to applied intelligence. I have Jonathan Taylor Miller with me today. Jonathan heads up the Taylor Miller group. In terms of recruitment. We’re going to have a conversation today in terms of recruitment and what it means in terms of the age of AI. And the question that I always love to begin my podcast with is, what’s your story, how did you get here? And if your autobiography had five chapters, what would they be? And, yeah, welcome to the show.

Jonathan [00:00:44]:aa

Thank you very much. Thank you. It’s lovely to be on. Really good. Thank you. So watch my story. It’s pretty, pretty simple. You know, I grew up in Warrington, which was kind of a new town development.

Jonathan [00:00:58]:

My parents were very. I mean, look, I had a great childhood, but my parents were both teachers. They were both, you work, you save, you work, you save. You don’t take risks out of that environment. The goal was always go to university, have an amazing career, but very much within that lane. So that’s kind of what I did. I love junior. I did it twice.

Jonathan [00:01:21]:

I went to Glasgow for the first section and did sociology, which I quickly realized coming out of university was a completely useless degree to obtain anything. So then had the genius idea that I’d go do HR. So I went and did a master’s in HR at Leeds. And then probably while I was doing that, did absolutely no research into any of this. But while I was doing it, I realized that I was probably going to spend. If I went to work in HR, I would probably spend the rest of my career being a service to a business without having any real influence on the result. And as much as I love people in HR, you never see any studios who started off their career in HR. You know, it’s all sales, sales and sales and sales.

Jonathan [00:02:08]:

So randomly, I just decided to get into recruitment and found for some reason that I absolutely loved it. I mean, I still do. And my recruitment career has been literally a game of two halves, because for the first ten years, I worked for the people. I did the whole staff as a grad. Loads of cold calling some of the phones, pick up your client, do all that type of stuff that you want to do, all in the FMCG space. I’ve only ever worked in the FMCG space, and I made it up to a director at that business. I was running multiple teams across different countries, kind of like, was that right? I need to go somewhere else and do something else. Joined a business.

Jonathan [00:02:49]:

That was a disaster. So I. Look, this is probably why I can empathize with a lot of people when I’m talking to them about making job moves, because I made a very silly decision and joined the wrong business. What was completely wrong time, didn’t do any research, didn’t do anything. It was just purely born out of the fact that I wanted to go somewhere else. And what you do when you want to go somewhere else because you’re unhappy where you are, you don’t focus on. You want to get out of joining something, you just focus on leaving something. So you see so many people make these mistakes of this job and it’s wrong.

Jonathan [00:03:25]:

Yeah. So I lasted there for about a year, went to work for a multi million pound engineering recruitment company who specialized in oil and gas, and they wanted to build an FMCG division. So I went to that up, went to work for them, and then I just had this kind of light bulb moment one day of, look, my goal of my life, which is to live the way I do now, which is in a forest, you know, we’ve got. I’ve got chickens, I’ve got horses, I’ve got cats, I’ve got dogs. I’m pretty much off grid. Bar electricity. That was never going to happen. That was never going to happen.

Jonathan [00:03:59]:

If I followed the corporate route of X, Y and Z, I was never going to get them. So I decided ten years ago, ten years in November, I decided. Sorry, last November, I decided to go, Mary and, yeah, it was interesting. It was really, really interesting. I was really lucky. Loads of clients came with me and said, jonathan will work with you. And that was amazing. But unfortunately, at that point in my life, I knew nothing about running a business.

Jonathan [00:04:28]:

I knew nothing about finance, particularly. I knew nothing about marketing. I knew none of these things. So I got myself into a complete mess. I’m not going to lie, it was a complete disaster. I ran out of cash after about six months and I ended up having to work in the. In the post office. I worked in the post office for a year, doing 60 hours a week, doing six in the evening till six in the morning, sorting parcels, going home, getting about 2 hours sleep, getting up, doing some recruitment, and just eat, sleep, repeat.

Jonathan [00:05:00]:

Eat, sleep, repeat until I made the business work in terms of cash flow. And it was really funny because while I was doing all this, I had the call with his bloke and he said to me, look, dom, I said, I’m, you know, I want to. I need a new job. And I was like, right, okay. So what’s up? And he said, well, I’ve started this business. It’s about, it’s an app and it’s about recommending restaurants. And I’m not going to say the geographical area, but it was a bit weird, even though I thought there’s no legs in it. And he said, I’ve done it for four months now and, you know, we’ve run out of money, so I need to go get a job back in the corporate world.

Jonathan [00:05:32]:

And little did he know that at the time I was speaking to him, I’d had probably 2 hours sleep. I was absolutely on my backside. My feet were killing because I’ve been pushing cages around all night. And it just gave me the thing that I. One of the key lessons that I will always take in life is that if you want something enough, you will make it work. Because at that point, it was a bit like a sliding doors moment for me because I could have been that guy who I was talking to, he was going back into corporate world, who would have said, well, I never got the life I wanted because I didn’t do it. Whereas I’ve really put the graft in to make sure that that happened. So story wise, I’d say, yeah, it’s been a bit of a.

Jonathan [00:06:15]:

It’s been a bit of a roller coaster. It’s been a bit of a journey. It’s taught me a lot. It’s taught me a lot about people. It’s taught me a lot about people who, particularly people who reach out and help you, because when you run your own, when you make a move into sort of an area like that, you are completely on your own. You have no network. I, and particularly because of my upbringing, I never knew anyone who ran their own business. So it wasn’t like I could phone my dad and say, dad, what would you do in this situation? Dad, do you know really good accountant that.

Jonathan [00:06:47]:

Do you know where someone who’s really good at market, you know, someone who can make me a website. I couldn’t do any of those things. Do you know what I mean? I couldn’t do any of those things. Wow. I just kind of had to figure it all out. And I love it, and I love the challenge of it, but when I look back at it, it’s like, yeah, but it is true. You can do anything. You can be anything.

Jonathan [00:07:06]:

You can get to wherever you want in life. I mean, I’m really lucky. I’m kind of where I want to be. You’ve got to put the effort in to want it how did you pull.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:07:16]:

Yourself out of those dark places when it felt too hard?

Jonathan [00:07:19]:

You focus on where you want to be. You focus on. You have to focus on. It’s not forever. And I could have easily, at any point, I could have easily picked up the phone and gone and got a job as a talent acquisition person or gone and got a job in recruitment doing exactly what I was doing. But you just have to go now. The end point is that. The end point is that.

Jonathan [00:07:42]:

And if you want that, you have to just roll your sleeves up. There is sometimes, there is no. There is no magic pill, there is no silver bullet. There is no anything other than just work. If you want something, just work. And it will come. And it did. And I remember the day of.

Jonathan [00:08:00]:

Right, I don’t need to go to the post office anymore. I’ve got enough cash in the bank for the next six months. I don’t have to go and do that. And it was lovely. It was really good. And I’m not. I’ll never. I met some amazing people there.

Jonathan [00:08:12]:

I made some really good friends I’m still in touch with now. But, you know, that was the kick for me. I thought, I don’t want to do this, but I also don’t want to go back and do what I’m doing. You have to make this work because if you want that life, you want the chickens and the horses and the whatever that is, whatever your end goal out of it is, you have to work to get there. And I think something that, that is something I will be making sure. I’ve got two daughters and that’s something I’ll be making sure that I will instill pretty hard into them is that particularly in an age of. It is a very, you know, consumer driven, not much attention Spanish. You can be an influencer.

Jonathan [00:08:49]:

You can. And look, being an influencer is work. People don’t get anything for nothing. But it is a very. There is a sort of mentality now of you can achieve these things without getting this. And I think that is probably because of what people see on social media all the time. But yeah, they will understand the value of work. They will understand of working for something and getting to where they need to be in life.

Jonathan [00:09:13]:

That comes sometimes a bit of a trade off of could have weighed your arse.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:09:17]:

So, drawing a parallel with, in terms of all of the disasters that you’ve kind of had to manage, as well as the changes within the recruitment and HR industry coming off the back of things like LinkedIn launching, how do you think in that change when recruitment and talent acquisition kind of changed, when LinkedIn kind of blew up. What parallels do you see with what’s happening right now with AI companies popping up left, right and center trying to say that they can do all of these things with the automation, like what are the key challenges that CPG companies and your customers are kind of seeing right now when it comes to this sort of stuff?

Jonathan [00:09:51]:

Well, they can’t. I’m going to be straight. AI is not at a point yet when it can do this. Yeah, LinkedIn is brilliant for me. I make all my money out of LinkedIn. I spend all day on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is someone for me where you don’t even have to own a database because LinkedIn is effectively alive. It is a live database that updates itself.

Jonathan [00:10:10]:

Yeah. So as long as you pay your recruit license, you recruit fee and maximize everything out of that, you do it for me, it will store all your data, it will store your messages, it will store anything you don’t need. So for someone like me, once AI is able to assist me with recruitment, it will be fantastic because you don’t then need to be a big corporate, you don’t need that. I think what you will see is you will get a lot of smaller firms, a lot of more one man bands like me who step up and say, you know what, if I’m smart, if I’m really clever with this, I will use this technology to enable me to do my job a lot better. Now in some areas it might be, you might be able to do that because if you are say doing contract recruitment where it doesn’t really matter about cultural fit, it doesn’t really matter about all of these things. You are just looking for x to y for 6912 months. The ability now to search through a lot of CV’s to the ability to get through a lot of stuff is amazing. It can, yeah.

Jonathan [00:11:14]:

As in anything. It can chew through a hell of a lot of data for you incredibly quickly and give you the results that you want. But in terms of can I tell you about if a person from a cultural fit is right for this business? No, it can’t do that. And that for me is I’ve had sleepless night. Of course I have. I’m not that though, you know, he’s going to destroy my business. Am I going to end up back in the post office or probably, probably, probably won’t be a post office, that’ll be an Amazon warehouse, you know.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:11:44]:

Yeah.

Jonathan [00:11:45]:

But I think until AI comes up with an issue of being able to solve that problem, then I’m nothing massively concerned about what I do. And it will get, you know, I can use it. I already on LinkedIn to do assisted searches. I mean, it speeds up my day. So, yeah, it’s a great tool, but it can’t get the end point of. Yeah. So I’m a Miller. I’d give you a really good example.

Jonathan [00:12:09]:

Right. I had an offer for a candidate this morning, right? That was a candidate. I put so the brief runner job, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I put one person in and that one person has got the job. Right. And that’s all. All I did. Because they knew from the businesses that they worked, I knew from speaking to the person, I knew from the setup of their, of their organization that they would be right for that job.

Jonathan [00:12:34]:

And they’re set up for the business that they’re going into. I knew that. So I was like, well, I don’t need any more. I just need to do this. I need to make sure this AI can’t do that. AI can’t do that. And I don’t think because in order to find out if someone’s the right cultural fit, you have to have a conversation with someone. There aren’t any.

Jonathan [00:12:50]:

I can’t give you ten questions that is going to say, what is this person the right cultural fit for this business? I can’t give you 20 questions. You have a conversation with them, a bit like this. You probe them around certain areas, you then probe against their answers to get that out. Yeah. AI isn’t at a place where a, you can do it, and b, and this might be different for future generations, but certainly if I said to one of the people I’m trying to place in a job, yeah. I need you to go and talk to this AI for half an hour to an hour. Yeah, just go now. Do you know what I mean? They just turn around to me and say, no, I’m not doing that.

Jonathan [00:13:26]:

People, people do not have a trust of. People do not have a trust of that yet. That will be, they want to speak to a person. So.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:13:35]:

And I think this is the point. People are missing. Right. Like, in terms of your role in recruitment and the business that you run, all of the process driven things have become a lot faster simply because of LinkedIn, simply because of all of the tools that we have. AI is just another tool that’s helping you get faster at doing the mundane, boring, process driven stuff. When it comes to that placement that you just made this morning that’s come off the back of years of experience years of relationships, years of understanding multiple company cultures, etcetera. And you knew that person and you just placed them right now for an AI system to learn all of that stuff, and then for the hiring manager to have that level of trust in that AI. Right now, I don’t see it happening at all.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:14:24]:

So I think there’s still the major thing that AI I don’t see impacting anytime soon is human relationships and human connection. So I think with all of the work and future that we have when it comes to the future of work, I think humans need to get better at human connection and fostering relationships and focusing on that element rather than thinking that all work is just process and automation, and AI is going to kind of take it all over. So just leaning on this point, when it comes to understanding a company’s culture and values before placing a person, how do you approach that? And how do you kind of understand a company’s culture? And then similarly, when you’re looking at candidates, how do you assess them to see if they have that fit?

Jonathan [00:15:12]:

That is the million dollar, I mean, that is the million dollar question. First of all, you’ve got to, you’ve got to drag out companies. So this, again, this is another thing that I find absolutely bizarre. Right. So I will go and get any job brief for any client. Yeah. And the job brief say it’s an hour. Yeah, I’ll get 50 minutes of them talking to me about, this is the job, this is what they want someone to do.

Jonathan [00:15:40]:

This is what we’ve got going on. This is how we need to do it. These are the people you need to find us. And it’s always the same. It’s always robot, but not a robot. There’s always a template of we want someone to be the next CEO, we want someone who’s got ten to be the next CEO. You get ten minutes at the end when I go where they say, is there anything else you want to know, Jonathan?

Imteaz Ahamed [00:16:00]:

And I’m like, well, actually there is.

Jonathan [00:16:02]:

What’s the culture of the business like? And for me, that is the most bizarre thing because the culture of the business is the most important. The culture of the business is what makes the person. You get that, right? Yeah, it’s what makes people stay. It’s what means that they get promoted, and it was what means that they’re really successful. And it means that it’s a really successful match for the client, and it really means it’s a really successful match for the candidate, which is the fundamental, crucial bit of any recruiting process. I can find you x amount of people who’ve all got the same skill set. Yeah, there’s always going to be x amount of people with the same skill set, but there’s going to be less that fit your culture. So the first big point is you have to pull it out of them sometimes, like with a pair of players to get them to talk about culture.

Jonathan [00:16:48]:

And I’m, I’m lucky enough that because I’ve done this for 20 years now and I talk to, you know, I spend my life either messaging people on LinkedIn or talking to people. And because I know inherently what a culture of a business is like now, because you don’t get the culture of the business from someone saying to me, you know, we’re all about flexible, working out this, we’re all about blah, blah, blah. Again, if you ask people what the culture is, they will just drop stuff from their website from there. Well, these are all our key values. And you get, I understand the culture of a business from my network, from knowing what that business is like, from knowing what they’re doing, from knowing how they’re performing, to knowing the individual line managers within businesses to be able to understand that. Yeah. And then how do I make sure a candidate is a fit? Well, look, there’s one, there’s one easy, there’s one really easy metric, and then an easy metric you can use to just filter all of this down is go. If they want someone from that.

Jonathan [00:17:51]:

If the culture of the business is x. Yeah. You go and find someone from a business who works at a similar culture because there is, you know, like, if you look at, like Mars after Mars is most successful external recruiter for the past ten years in the UK. And I’d say most of the people I’ve got from Unilever because they have a similar culture. So it’s really easy to go X to. Yeah. You’re taking from that outside. If you’re taking from outside of that environment.

Jonathan [00:18:20]:

Yeah. So if I were, say, if I was working for a business and speaks to a candidate from who’s at the opposite call, what you’re asking them what you’re flagging into then is stuff all, you know, why do you want to leave? Do you like the culture of where you work? Yes, no. Yes, no. And then you filter it down that way. There is no. You take from a candidate perspective, you take your lead from what the candidate is saying, because it doesn’t matter how good they are, it doesn’t matter if they can change the world, if they’re not going to fit in the culture, right? They’re never going to. They’re never going to stay ever. And I’m really proud of the fact that if you were to go, go my LinkedIn and go and see all the people I’ve placed over the years, and they’ve all got, you know, they’re all trading on at least three promotions within their core business.

Jonathan [00:19:04]:

That’s how I know it works. That’s how I know. And that’s probably, I’d say why I’ve been successful is because I place my first emphasis on any hiring process, on getting the cultural fit right. And I don’t think a lot of people do that. I think a lot of people will do it. It will be very transactional and be more about, well, is it the right skill set? Does it fit within this salary bandage? Da da da da da. And they don’t do that. And it has to be a bit, you gotta be a bit pushy as well, because the companies don’t want to really tell you about the stuff that’s bad within the business or the stuff that doesn’t.

Jonathan [00:19:44]:

Maybe they don’t want to, you know, this is not a, we don’t buy all this data. We actually don’t do this actually off to get down and dirty and do all this work. And it said, well, that’s the stuff I need to know.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:19:54]:

So in terms of driving your success, and, you know, it’s very impressive, your LinkedIn following of over 30,000 people. By the way, how do you think, in terms of building your reputation, both in the offline world and in the online world, what do you think drives that success, like, from speaking to you, Jonathan, I think a part of this is authenticity in terms of the way that you tell your stories and the way that you’re building your relationships. But what else is it that you do that makes the work that you do so special?

Jonathan [00:20:26]:

I think I’m really straight. I think I’m. And I would say I am pretty much. I wouldn’t say filter free, because, you know, everyone has to have a filter. To some point, you have to have a filter. Yes, but I think I. I’ve reached a point in my life where I am very comfortable with who I am. I’m very comfortable with what I do.

Jonathan [00:20:47]:

I’m very comfortable with the business I run. And I think that allows me a certain, I won’t say flexibility, but that sort of mode allows me to be very truthful to people. I don’t care if I’m speaking to the CCO or you know, a sales exec or whatever I will tell them all the same message. I might wrap it up slightly but I will tell them all the same message. And I think that’s probably what I think people find quite refreshing is that I am able to do it in such a way. And then I think the second part is if you go and work for. So if and I know, and I know this because I worked in corporate recruitment it’s that they will all have KPI’s. You want to send this many CV’s, you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that, you’ve got to do that.

Jonathan [00:21:34]:

Because there if you look at way, the way that they operate it is very numbers driven. It is very. You have to do so in order to make a placement you’ve got to send this many cv’s, you’ve got to do this many interviews a week, you’ve got to do this many phone calls, you got to do this, you got to do that, you’ve got to do the other. So what you end up doing is you don’t value at right. You can’t be bombed stuff because it is very much the case of well we’ve got to stick, you know my manager says I need to stick three cv’s into this job and get three interviews out of it to make it successful. Yeah. Now the whole point of me being in a. The whole point I feel of me doing what I’m doing for a client is that I will save them time, right? And the time is if I can give you one candidate instead of three why would I give you three? And that for me it’s a big thing and I think people are.

Jonathan [00:22:28]:

I think there’s probably some metrics behind it to say that, you know, a lot of your micro page or whatever you know they don’t want to do that so they’ll shove everything on it. And then also I think along with that is that takes and I’d say when I dealing with clients that is the first thing that takes them a while to get the head round is the fact that look I’m here to save you time. Like I am here to save you time. You will get the CV’s when you get the CV’s and that’s it. Tell me, interview them, offer them. You know it’s very. It’s very rare I work on a role that I don’t place. It’s very rare because of the way I do it.

Jonathan [00:23:06]:

It’s just very straightforward and very you know, I’ll add value to your business. I’ll add value by saving you time. That allows you to get on with what you want to do. And I’ll add value because the person want to place in your business will probably get promoted three times.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:23:21]:

So it’s all about quality over quantity.

Jonathan [00:23:23]:

It’s never about quantity. And that’s why I don’t think, you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier about AI, AI isn’t at the point yet when it can deliver that. It can deliver the quality. Right. It’s at a point where it can crunch you through number, crunch you through 300 CB’s that have applied for this scrum, master, whatever, whatever, whatever job. It’s at the point where it can do that. What it can’t do is then provide the quality at the end, which is why for now, is not going to steal my job.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:23:55]:

Talking about diversity and inclusion, you’re an advisory board member and 100 allies. How do you advocate for diversity and inclusion in recruitment? And what impact have you seen from these efforts?

Jonathan [00:24:09]:

So I would say my. And this is. I’m really glad you’ve asked me this question because I think this is something that I find incredibly paradoxical between in businesses, is that as a recruiter, and I’ve been really candid with you now, as a recruiter, you can have an incredibly tiny impact in this space. Which is when I. Which is why when I saw they were setting up 100 allies, I was really keen to get involved and, you know, fortunate. I’ve been fortunate enough to be right onto the advisory board of that because I can say what I want. My message can be what? Be what it is. But I think there is a disconnect between what companies say and what they actually do.

Jonathan [00:24:51]:

So if you go onto any big CPG company website, it will say all the right things, all about diversity. But when you actually get down to the nuts, Baltimore, do they live and breathe that? No. Although. Are there in house recruiters trained in recruiting in a diverse way? No. Right. They are. And if I’m honest with you, it’s the line managers more than the recruiters, because the in house recruit. So the talent acquisition person.

Jonathan [00:25:19]:

Yeah. They are there to deliver a service to their line manager. Right. And their line manager wants. Their line manager comes to, says, I want to. I want this person. I need someone to fill this. Yeah.

Jonathan [00:25:29]:

And they’re always like, I need someone who’s done it before. I need someone who doesn’t want any training to. Minimum training. Yeah. I want them to be capable of being the next year. So what happens is that they constantly fish from the same pool. So while the company can say it’s committed to diversity, it’s not. And that is a really blunt and really truthful answer.

Jonathan [00:25:55]:

They are not committed to diversity because there is no diversity in any of their hermit practices at all. It is. Just get me what I’ve had before. Get me a junior version of me. Yeah. I mean, I saw. And it was really bad. I saw.

Jonathan [00:26:10]:

I’m not going to shame anyone because, you know, I’m not. That’s not.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:26:14]:

This is widespread. It’s not exclusive to anyone. Right?

Jonathan [00:26:17]:

No, no, no, it’s not. It’s right across the board. But I saw a picture on LinkedIn a few weeks ago and it was. And I need to be careful how I say that, but it was the celebration of some form of achievement. Yeah. And I looked at the picture and the first thing I thought is everyone in this picture is white. Yeah. Probably 70% of them are males.

Jonathan [00:26:41]:

They’ve probably all got a degree. They’ve probably all been a grad. They’ve been a grad scheme. Now, I know that this is a company that has diversity all over its website. Yep. And many of these companies will win, you know, they’ll win awards for their diversity policy and. But in reality, it’s nothing. Which is why when I saw the opportunity to join 100 allies, I really wanted to do it.

Jonathan [00:27:09]:

And I’ve, you know, I’ve put some, you know, put some efforts into this. And we’re having a huge launch, I think, in. In October, start October, because I think in order to really change diversity, the diversity of thought and diversity of hiring and, you know, diversity of experience within the industry, you are going to fundamentally have to change things within businesses. You can’t just put stuff on a website and say, we are now diverse. We now have this policy. We now have this policy because if you don’t do it in practice, it means absolutely nothing. I mean, I was talking to, you know, this is how. I mean, look, this is how even.

Jonathan [00:27:48]:

Even in insights. Right. This is how narrow the field is. Yeah. So say I get a job for a insights from. For example, I’m using insights as an example. This could apply to any other sector or any other function, but insights is a really good example. So I’ll get a job from an insight.

Jonathan [00:28:06]:

Insight as well. And one of the questions you’ll ask them during the process, well, would you take anyone from, you know, an agency, a data agency, business? And the answer is always no. The answer is always. The answer is always no. The answer others is, well, not always, but I. 90% of the time the answer is always no. The answer is no. We want someone from another big CPG business who’s done this before.

Jonathan [00:28:29]:

So if you are, that shows you how narrow diversity is, that they won’t even consider someone. Never mind that. Never mind anything else. Never mind. Before we even get down to that, that track. Yeah, but they won’t even take someone who could do the job from a sector that they’re working in because they’ve not worked for a client before. So then when you start to look at the building blocks of this and how ingrained it is within businesses, that’s when you start to see, well, actually, how are these. Unless you do fundamental training with hybrid managers, with the C suite, with all of this stuff, how are you ever going to get a diversity policy in that works? You are fundamentally going to have to go in and change attitudes because it is, at the end of the day, you can have all the diversity policy you want, but it’s the hiring manager that makes the decision on who is hired.

Jonathan [00:29:25]:

So therefore, that is the person that needs to be educated, reformulated, reprogrammed, whatever you want to call it, because that is the person that is going to gatekeep whether that business will be a diverse business or, speaking from experience, the.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:29:42]:

Most innovative teams that I’ve ever been a part of, I’ve had a previous hiring manager who would have on purpose hire outside of CPG to fill roles, mainly because we’re like, we need to think about things differently. We need to think differently to what our competitors would actually do. And if your competitors are only hiring CPG people or FMCG people, and you’re doing exactly the same thing, you’re not going to get new ideas. You’re going to get what everybody they’ve always done, and you’re most likely going to recycle ideas from three or four years ago that didn’t work somewhere else and magical is going to work now. It’s amazing how it almost feels like a lot of DEI initiatives are corporate marketing to say that we’re doing the right things, but in reality, not that much has changed, unfortunately. And there’s only, like, very small pockets where we’re seeing the real shift actually happening. And I agree with you, it has to be from the business side and or the hiring manager side, because I think the recruiters within an organization are enacting what the business is asking them to do, fill this particular role like, outside of getting, I guess, a people strategy from the top down to ensure that we have a divergence or we have diversity. To really do diversity, you need business.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:30:58]:

Buy in, top down, buy in. And that it needs to be a people, an overall people strategy that recruiters are a part of or the HR team is part of, rather than just receiving a brief right at the end of the hiring process and then just go find me more people that look like this.

Jonathan [00:31:15]:

I would say that the manager you probably worked for then, that has created this diverse team, it’s an outlier because most of them aren’t like that. Most of them are not. Most of them are forward thinking in to go right, well, we need to get somewhere else. And what you find is that particularly what I find, because, you know, CPG businesses, they’re all slow adopters of tech anyway. They always have been and they always will be. So what you then find is you find like, no one is going at any pace because everyone is like, well, I’m going to get someone from here to do this, but they’ve never done it either, really, to any extent. And then there is also an age thing of, well, we don’t want to take that person because they’re clearly too young to do that. And you’re like, yeah, but you don’t understand that they’ve used that tech for whatever amount attorney, so really good at it and they’re going to be way better than you’re ever going to be.

Jonathan [00:32:08]:

So you need to sort of go, yeah, let’s just kind of up this. I mean, I saw, I saw, I was doing some post for LinkedIn yesterday about what you achieve in life by certain goals and just basically saying, look, don’t beat yourself up, because, you know, what’s the point? You know, everyone achieves things at different times. And one of the. One of the things I saw was the fact that the average new direct in the UK is 50 fahrenheit. And to me, that’s just criminal. It’s like, how is that? How is that? How are you ever going to keep on top of what you need, particularly when the world’s changing so fast, when you’ve got at the moment, you know, you’ve got. We’ve not just got AI, we’ve got completely new ways of selling through TikTok, through Instagram, through all of this stuff. You’ve got a generation that has completely different values.

Jonathan [00:32:59]:

And we look at. Look at the state that Unilever’s at the moment, he’s trying to divest itself of everything in that Unilever venture team is trying to buy up any new up and coming brand that it thinks might be valuable in the next 20 years. And you kind of think you’ve got all that going on if you’re only making people a director at 55, where are all these people who understand what’s going on now and what their generation are going to want to buy for the next ten years? What the hell did we do with all of them?

Imteaz Ahamed [00:33:27]:

That’s an amazing point. Coming back to perception versus reality, one of the things about Gen Z is they really look at the difference between what you say and what you do. And as an employer, if you have all of this positive messaging around Dei, you’re not actually doing it. The next generation of workforce is really going to call you out for it and they’re going to be disengaged with you, and they’re going to keep flipping and switching companies and not stay with you in the long term as well. So again, coming back to authenticity, you got to walk the walk. You can’t just keep talking about it.

Jonathan [00:34:04]:

Well, I. So I have, and again, not name a name. I’ve noticed that over the past five years, there’s been a huge trend of businesses that I could never extract people from. Yeah. They would never want to leave because they were, you know, they were perceived as being the best out there to work there. Now, some of these big. Some of these businesses are now on a massive soldier because they’re not. They’re putting the stuff up on the website, they breathe it, and then the people get in there and they find that out and then they’re like, well, I’m gone.

Jonathan [00:34:39]:

When they go work somewhere that actually lives and breathes what they say they’re living, breathing. It’s interesting, I think, to see how the landscape is going to change, because I think there’s. I think there’s a few. I think there’s a few big CPG businesses that are functioning at the moment in what I would say is a huge bubble of, we’ve always done it this way, we’re always going to do it this way. Yeah, we might change some brands out, we might swap some brands in, we might do this, we might do that. But I don’t think they understand that what they’re building currently is completely, a, they’re building a very disengaged workforce and b, the talent that they would want to usually attract is not going to come and work for them. And I don’t think they understand that within a few years that company can go for. But if you don’t get these things right from your moral point of view, you should be.

Jonathan [00:35:36]:

That is, anyway. But if you don’t get these things right from a business point of view, you ain’t gonna be there. It’s nuts.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:35:43]:

It’s really crazy. Shifting gears a bit, balancing a high pressure business like recruitment with living in the forest, out in the woods with your animals. That sounds kind of one, fun, two, unique. How do you manage work like balance, given all these things that you do?

Jonathan [00:36:03]:

I have a very random work life balance, I would say. So. My work schedule is really, really erratic. So I’ll work all day. But then I’m very clear on the fact that whatever time it is after 05:00 we eat as a family. We always eat as a family. Doesn’t matter what. I have to physically not be here for us to eat, not eat as a fun.

Jonathan [00:36:28]:

We will always eat as a family. We will always, you know, I will always do a bedtime story. I always do a shower, whatever needs to be. Then I’ll go out and mess around with the animals and, you know, do the feeding, collect the eggs, water, whatever that is. And then, you know, most nights I wait till midnight. Yeah, and I only wait till midnight on a Sunday. I wait till midnight probably five days a week, not on a Friday. I’d say the only day I don’t do any work is Saturday.

Jonathan [00:36:55]:

And again, I think that goes back to the fact that if you want something, you got to put it working. Do you know what I mean? I want, this is the lifestyle I want. So I built probably my business around the lifestyle I wanted to achieve because I could hire people. I’ve got enough contacts. I can get enough business. I can go and hire people if I want. That’s not really an issue. But I don’t want to.

Jonathan [00:37:19]:

I don’t want to be driving somewhere, to be in an office every day telling people what to do. You know, I was a manager before. I hated it. I was terrible at it. I love doing recruitment. I love talking to people. So I really like my job, and I really like my life. I don’t really ever want to mess for that.

Jonathan [00:37:39]:

So, you know, but you have to. You work out a structure. And again, this is why I’m lucky that I don’t, I don’t exist in a corporate environment because I couldn’t do what I do if I existed in a corporate environment. And in some ways, it was really funny because during COVID everyone would start working in the same way as me. And I was like, oh, you finally caught up. Yeah, I’ve been doing this for years. You don’t need to see the benefits of it. To me, I’ve been doing this for years.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:38:04]:

Yeah. So I had a corporate, I had a remote team for five years before COVID and Covid was just like, oh, so we’re just going to keep doing what we’ve always done. So wasn’t much of a switch for me either, but I think for many other people it was.

Jonathan [00:38:23]:

Yeah, but I think the irony is now is the companies now are pulling people out of that and, you know, they’re being a lot more hardcore. What, you back in the office four days a week, five days a week, three days a week. There seems to be. There seems to be a huge crackdown on it. It was the business in the states where they said, we will not hire you, we will not promote you if you work. Is it Dell will not promote you if you work remotely as a tech. As a tech company? I think you might. I think it might have even been dealt because I remember laughing about it going, so you’re a business that is going to sell me stuff that enables to wear remotely, but you actually don’t want your employees? No, but I think they’re employees and I really love this.

Jonathan [00:39:08]:

Their employees made a stand and said, we’re not going to accept that. Because they were like, if you don’t come back to the office, won’t promote you. Yeah. And I think over 50% of their employees surround us. Well, no, and they’ve actually overturned. Now, the thing of we won’t promote you, which I think is really good, is, you know, you’ve got to stand up for. You aren’t for sure.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:39:27]:

But I do think specifically when you’re at the start of your career, coming into the office and physically interacting with other people is very important. Like, I remember at the beginning when I was a grad, I thought I knew it all. Coming fresh out of university, doing very well at university, all this stuff. And then I got a dose of reality, you know, cut down to size into the corporate world. But I really needed that right now. You know, if you work in a remote space and you don’t get that mentorship and you don’t necessarily understand business etiquette, relationship building in the physical world, I think you’re going to struggle as well. So I think there needs to be a balance at, you know, multiple levels of your career. But I don’t 100% remote personally, not for me, but there needs to be a balanced approach to this as well.

Jonathan [00:40:20]:

No, I agree with you on that. And I was talking to someone this about this today because they were talking, they were saying, look, we need to do some stuff and change the culture, the business and stuff. You are going to have to, even if it is for x amount of months or a year or twelve months, you’re going to have to hire people to bring them in and make them be in the office a little bit more because you cannot build the culture of a business. Everyone is 100% remote.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:40:45]:

Yeah.

Jonathan [00:40:46]:

There is no culture in a business. So there has to be a healthy balance. There has to be a healthy, you know, the watercolor conversations. There has to be a, there has to be a healthy balance. But I think it’s getting the balance rapidly and also making the way I’ve seen it handled is it’s not great. You want to make people feel like they have the choice, not just do this or get another job, don’t do this, don’t go. You know what I mean? That’s not the way to do it. You know, you know, their parents, you know, everyone’s an adult.

Jonathan [00:41:16]:

We should kind of be able to have these conversations, pretty open book and just say, well, love what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:41:22]:

On a personal front, what habits and productivity hacks make you or make your life easier.

Jonathan [00:41:29]:

So these are things that I’ve had to become really, really brief and I mean really ruthless about site I, because there’s a one, one round chicken ran flock. What? Around? Right. I actually get really busy doing this. It for one. So I have to be really, really, really focused on stuff. And look, all of my, all of my recruitment is on success only. So I don’t charge retainers, I don’t do any of this. So it’s get some nuts and bolts.

Jonathan [00:41:59]:

I’ve got to put people in jobs, otherwise the chickens aren’t getting fed. It’s as simple as what we might be eating at. You know, you’ve got a, you’ve got to have some base rules. So I’m pretty clear about what I do. And I, you know, there’s some stuff like, so I have a one week rule. I have a. Unless someone’s got a lot draconian, there are always exceptions. But pretty much I have a one week, one week rule of anything that I do with anyone in it is if it takes you more than a week to do something, you’re not that asked about it.

Jonathan [00:42:31]:

So it takes you more than a week to write your cv bar, it takes you more than a week to spend it. To send me a job spec buy. If you can’t write a presentation for a job interview in a week, bar, because I just think if you want something enough, you know, and I get told, oh, that’s currently. Listen, too busy. I’m too busy. I’m too busy and I’m like, no, if you want something enough, you will make the time to do it. If it is that important to you, you will make the time to do it. So I use that barometer as is this worthwhile me doing, because it, you know, I’m very, I very much, look, if you put the effort and I’ll match your effort, I will help you get that job.

Jonathan [00:43:09]:

I would, I will get you the right person. I’ll do all of this. But I’ve got to understand that it’s your priority. So my one, my one week rule is very clear. Look, it. Sometimes it does ill or whatever as a personal thing, it’s going to change. Like. But, um, yeah, pretty.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:43:25]:

Essentially that.

Jonathan [00:43:26]:

Yeah, no, it’s water version. Yeah, it’s how much do you want it? And, you know, I spoke to someone on the end of last week and they were like, well, you know, I’ve really busy and I went with bought, we’ve got some stuff, you know, we bought some new furniture for house and, you know, I’m not going to do everything. We get time to my cv and I was really blunt with it and I can be pretty blunt sometimes. And I just said, well, look, let’s be honest. If you, if you want it, you’ll stop putting your jeans in a wardrobe for an hour and sort your cv out. If you don’t want it, you’ll, you’ll carry on sorting your jeans out and that’s, that’s life. And you know what? I’ve never heard from him since. And I thought, but, you know, I failed the job.

Jonathan [00:44:05]:

So I kind of just think, well, I want to deal with people who want it. You know, I want to deal with people who that is a priority for. So that is, that is really, really key. And I think sometimes when I tell people, because I do tell people, I tell people it all the time, I’m pretty, yeah, I’ve got bean on it, Instagram for got six. I’m pretty straightforward. And I think when I tell people that there are big shots, but I’m like, well, it is what it is. The rule is something, if you want something, you’ll make a chance to do it. So.

Jonathan [00:44:36]:

And then I think next is very much. I’m a big believer in the valuation of type at a really, really expensive currency, right. Because it is the only thing I can make more money. I can make whatever. Yeah, you can always make more of something. Can’t make more of time. Every day my currency of time gets less and less and less and less and less. I really figure if people want to waste my time, they get rid of it, because I’m only interested in people deal with dealing people who value it.

Jonathan [00:45:08]:

And it’s exactly the same to me, though. If I’m a deal with you, I will value your time. I will give you my 100%. I will do this. But you have to surround yourself in life. The people that a, value what you say, but b, more importantly, they value your time because the most precious thing that you’ve got. So I get a really bugbear of, one of my biggest bugbears is, but in time to speak to someone or something like that and they just don’t show up or, you know, whatever, I’m just like, we’ll see them because you don’t value it. You don’t value me, you don’t value the job, you don’t value the conversation.

Jonathan [00:45:41]:

See you later. It’s one strike. It’s pretty much, unless someone’s got a decent excuse, it’s pretty much one strike out and just go. Because there’s always someone who wants to talk about something and that person might be really engaged and really keen about what you’ve got to say. So. Yeah, and I think other ones is evolution, evolution, evolution, evolution. You go back to talking about AI if, and it does, this doesn’t matter how big or small or whatever size you are, but if you do not evolve, what you’re doing, how you do it, and sometimes evolution to me is painful because particularly a lot of stuff around social media, I’m a lot greater. But if you don’t evolve, you’re gone.

Jonathan [00:46:22]:

You are like, you are gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. And that will come back to any, it’ll come back to a brand, it will come back to a business, it will come back to a value stream, it will come back to anything you are. You very quickly, you can very quickly become obsolete. You know, if I look at phases of my evolution, the business in terms of what areas recruited and they’ve changed, how I do it, how I adapt and how I respond is completely changed. And you have to be. And I think the big thing, another really big thing for me, which I use as a massive filter is me. And I know probably sounds really weird but it is just what I am really comfortable in who I am. And I saw this phrase always bashes around in my head which is I’d rather be disliked for who I am than be liked for somebody that I’m not.

Jonathan [00:47:17]:

Yeah, huge believer in this because I think if you are you and you are you too true to yourself in terms of what you put out there in the universe, how you, how you are and stuff like that, you will attract the people that, what work would you. You’ll attract the people that want to spend time with you. You will attract the people who just want to do stuff with you. All the people that you. That don’t just won’t even approach you. So then you immediately get this filter off which you know what, I don’t have to deal with all that stuff that maybe people think I’m a bit nuts or a bit weird. You don’t have to deal with all that anymore because you only end up speaking to the people who value what you’ve got to say. I want to be in your orbit.

Jonathan [00:48:08]:

So for me since I started being annex this is something I’ve always been comfortable doing. You know, there was always this big fear of well if I say this, if I do that, if I truth bomb in this way, if I give my opinion in this way, you know, am I going to have people who say well we don’t work with you? And I kind of think well as long as I’m, I’m not saying offensive. I’m not saying anything offensive. I’m not being anything offensive. I’m just being authentically me. And I kind of think well that’s all worry.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:48:38]:

Sure.

Jonathan [00:48:39]:

And that for me was probably a massive penny drop moment in the fact that look, you can be who you want. You will attract the people that you want to work with and the people don’t want to work with you. I mean look, since I started putting pinches of me holding a chicken up on the Internet, yeah, I’ve not lost one client. I’m not turned around and said to anyone that said I don’t want to speak to you. I’ve not had anyone ask me if I’m in say, right, I’ve not had any of those things. What I’ve found is a lot of people say to me, yes, alright, quite like what you’re doing video out where you’re saying it and all those things. Yeah. The problem is a ton of people out there who don’t want to work me don’t want to speak to me but I’ll leave a good into my orbitz so it cares.

Jonathan [00:49:22]:

And then I think linked to that and this is from roasted port, but I keep bashing it, I keep saying it all the time on my like social media read just click and do it right. At some point I’ll probably guess, well, hopefully if ever make it that big, I’ll get a cease and desist letter from Nike. That’s my goal then to write to me and say, jonathan, you cannot say just booking it.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:49:47]:

I think I know some people at night, they could reach out to you.

Jonathan [00:49:51]:

Because I’m sure content and all that. And again, you can link this back to what we were talking about right at the start with AI and CPG companies and this general fear there is. You get a paralysis of analysis of what if I do this? What’s going to be the endpoint? What if I do that? What’s going to be the endpoint, what’s going to be the worst that can happen? And you know what? Nothing really, nothing bad is that going to happen? So just, just fucking do it. Just get on with it. So I mean, just do it. Just like stop messing about, stop thinking about it. Whatever it is, a post, a bit of tech you think, you know, introduce into your business, whatever that thing might be a person you’re thinking asking out about on a date, just do it. Just fucking do it.

Jonathan [00:50:41]:

Because if you do, apart from the cease and desist later, I’ll probably get to nothing really bad is going to happen in life and you’ll probably end up being a little bit better for doing it.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:50:51]:

Love it. Jonathan, it’s been an absolute pleasure speaking to you today. And how can people reach out to you if they want to find out more about you?

Jonathan [00:51:02]:

Best things always LinkedIn or probably WhatsApp or just send me a DM on Instagram, don’t email me because my inbox is flooded with emails from people trying to sell me a to improve retreat.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:51:24]:

I love it. Love it. Joyce. And again, thank you so much for being on the show today. I wish you all the very best and all the, all of Jonathan’s links to his social media and all the wonderful things that he does will be in the show notes as well. Thank you so much.

Jonathan [00:51:39]:

Thanks, buddy. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

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