How to recruit great people in a candidate’s market – Anna Jay from Public Leaders Appointments

Recruitment and executive search specialist Anna Jay shares insights on how employers can attract the right candidates in the post-pandemic jobs market. 

Drawing on her 20 years’ experience, she explores the role of technology and artificial intelligence in the recruitment process and how the Covid pandemic has changed employees’ priorities. She also discusses the growing focus on purpose and ethical leadership.

Anna is founder and managing director of Public Leaders Appointments, a boutique executive search firm specialising in the public and third sectors, and a founding board member of Cornwall Women’s Fund, which aims to support women and girls in Cornwall.

Transcript

Mark Greaves:

Today I'm delighted to be joined by Anna Jay, managing Director of Public Leaders Appointments, a leading recruitment specialist. I'm Mark Greaves from PKF Francis Clark, and I'll be your host. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get updates and notifications on when our latest episodes are available. Hi Anna, how are you today?

Anna Jay:

Very well, thanks, Mark. Good to speak to you today.

Mark Greaves:

And good to speak to you. Perhaps we could start with just describing what Public Leaders Appointments actually does.

Anna Jay:

Okay, so Public Leaders Appointments, I established at about six and a half years ago. I work with organisations predominantly in the not-for-profit and public sectors, and at the public private interface. I advise and lead on senior and board level appointments.

Mark Greaves:

Oh, you've done that before, that was very concise at that moment. I understand you celebrated 20 years in the industry recently.

Anna Jay:

I did indeed. So I started my journey with executive search exactly 20 years ago in January, recruiting to... Well, actually leading in a PA office environment, working with public sector executive search and interim management. So yeah, 20 years in the industry.

Mark Greaves:

Was there a particular reason you started with that focus in the public sector?

Anna Jay:

Interestingly, probably not. I'd worked in recruitment previously. I'd started in high street recruitment as many people do, and recruited across all areas and all sectors. I then did something very different for a little while and was approached by a recruiter to go into executive search. At that stage, I was a little apprehensive about going back into recruitment because I was not motivated by the hard-nosed sales element. But actually what enticed me was the fact that I was joining an organisation not as a recruiter, but in a kind of administrative, PA, office management type capacity, and the organisation that I was approached to join was in the public sector. I've always been very community and public minded, so actually that is what enticed me at that stage.

Mark Greaves:

But you then went to the Cayman Islands after a short period of that, to the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of hard nose professional recruitment?

Anna Jay:

Yeah, that was kind of by chance. So I spent nine years with the company that I worked with, worked up accidentally from a administrative role through to being a consultant and leading public sector practice across the Midlands and Wales, changing life circumstances, and I guess there are worse places to move than the Cayman Islands if you are moving away from where you've been living for many years.

I was purely by chance, went to visit some family friends, met somebody at, I think it was at a drinks party with family friends who owned or ran a recruitment agency there, and that was my penultimate day in Cayman. Went for coffee within the next day just by just make chit-chat, talking about recruitment, et cetera. No agenda whatsoever. I flew back to the UK and then two days later I got a call asking if I'd like to go and work there. So all happened very, very quickly. Handed my notice in, packed my life up and flew over to Cayman and lived there for... Gosh, 18 months, two years or so. So was recruiting lawyers to offshore law firms across all the offshore jurisdictions. So very, very different.

Mark Greaves:

Well, it pays to have friends that you can go visit in these fancy places, I think these are the less than eight of that. So how did that contrast, because that's a real contrast between recruiting from abroad, persuading them to come to the Cayman Islands, et cetera. That's a whole new contrast, isn't it?

Anna Jay:

Oh, absolutely, and I think that the moving from public to private sector was a baptism of fire, completely different sector. So legal recruitment as opposed to chief execs, directors, et cetera, within the public sector. I did spend a lot of time in my three months in the run-up basically pestering my brother, my uncle, and everybody else I knew in the legal industry. Just trying to understand, my knowledge was incredibly basic. So really genning up on the difference between litigation, corporate law and all the intricacies in between.

Yeah, very different. And I think that in terms of how you recruit people, the motivations are very different. Recruiting somebody to a role in the public sector where they're leading on children's services or public protection, whatever that might be, that's a very different beast to recruiting people to legal roles. And equally, there are obviously the upsides of trying to convince people to move to the Caribbean and move to somewhere where it's tax haven, lifestyles very different, et cetera. I think that one of the areas that I worked in and many of the roles that I recruited to, we were trying to attract people at a certain level, a certain number of years qualification. And actually I did it quite sensibly in that I looked at people's lifestyles as well as their jobs.

Obviously they had to fulfill a certain criteria, but looking at people, doing my research, if they're at a certain age and stage of their career, living in London, working for a Magic Circle firm, they're probably thinking of moving out of the center of London, maybe starting a family, have started a family, long commute into London from wherever they are now, working incredibly long hours. So part of it was obviously the work that they'd be doing, amazing work. Work life balance, much better in Cayman, clearly. All year round sunshine, not battling with going into the office when it's dark and leaving the office when it's dark. It was that work element and obviously obviously the lifestyle as well. It's not for everybody. So we ended up flying people over at last stages, so that they could come and meet various individuals and firms and see what the lifestyle was before they made that commitment because it is a huge life-changing commitment.

Mark Greaves:

I suppose this has some echoes with today's society in terms of that more focus on that work life balance. So we might come back to that later. But then after a little while in the Cayman Lions, you then went back into London, back into the public sector, I sense a thread of change here at [inaudible 00:05:55] your career. What did you find about that? Was that a shock to the system going back? I suppose the weather would've been a shock to the system.

Anna Jay:

Well, I moved back in January, so it certainly was. It was about over a hundred degrees or something in Cayman, so moving back to the UK certainly was, and I'd been living in Birmingham for many years. I'd never really had any aspirations to live in London. I knew that Cayman, I thoroughly enjoyed it from a personal and professional perspective, but I knew it wasn't a forever home for me. And an ex-colleague had moved firm, was leading the public sector practice for very reputable organisation called Arches and Barrick Partners, they're subsidiary and basically enticed me to go and work for them. Some of my ex-colleagues also worked there.

So I took the brave step to move into the big city of London, which was actually pretty terrifying for me, more so than moving to Cayman. But I moved there and led, rather than the interim side, I led on the executive search side of the permanent appointments across local government, both in the southeast, southwest and nationally. So very, very different. I almost thought my currency maybe had waned a bit in terms of having not been in the public sector for a couple of years, but those relationships that you develop are very strong. There are people that you know and I still know now having known them for 20 years and appointed them 20 years ago into roles, who I'm still very much in contact with. So picking that back up again wasn't too hard. More the lifestyle change was a bit of a shock.

Mark Greaves:

Then just to continue on the theme of change, which we might be an underlying theme here at that stage. After a while there you ended up with a connection with the west country coming down and having a look at the Eden project.

Anna Jay:

That's right. So I had started visiting Cornwall quite regularly and by that stage I'd moved out of local government or doing a little bit of local government, but more so the charitable sector. And I was spending more time visiting Cornwall and my firm at the time said, "The writing's on the wall, we can see we might lose you, so how can we make this work?" So I was very fortunate in that they allowed me to commute up weekly. So I moved down here and did a weekly commute for some time, which was fairly challenging, but a wonderful opportunity to have. And during that time, I actually decided I wanted to move into the not-for-profit sector. So I started exploring opportunities, looking at what might be out there and what well areas my skills would be transferable into. And I think that my whole career has been about working with people and relationship management, relationship building, and so trying to think of an area that might resonate with.

Quite by chance on one of my flights back on a, I think Thursday or Friday night in the queue for the plane at Gatwick, I bumped into the then managing director of Eden. We started talking about things that were happening at Eden. By the time I got off the flight, he'd had a bit of a brainwave and said, "Oh, we are recruiting to a new role, which is major donor manager, which is effectively managing fundraising with major donors and philanthropists." I went through a competitive process and was appointed to Eden. So that was just a wonderful opportunity, really amazing,

Mark Greaves:

Obviously very big presence in the southwest. I suppose another underlying theme here is you running into people in restaurants or airports or that type of stuff. And then being unafraid to talk to them and eventually you must be doing such a good job that they're offering you a job after one short conversation or one short flight. So what was your role within Eden? What was the differences on that? Because running for the fun side of things as opposed to recruitment.

Anna Jay:

It was completely different. So effectively it's based on the same premise of managing relationships, developing relationships, stewarding those people who you are working with. I spent a certain amount of time at Eden. It's the first time they had really made a foray into the major donor side of fundraising. During my time there, I actually spent quite a lot of time just building foundations, building some of those relationships, putting together cases for support and developing that, I guess the basis for philanthropic giving.

When I moved on from there handed on the bat, and I then subsequently recruited somebody into a more senior role and I realized that that role needed probably to be at more senior level. I was delighted to be approached by them to say, "Could you help us to develop the role? And then could you recruit to it?" After I'd left, so that was wonderful. So completely different area for me. Huge baptism of fire, really enjoyed it. A great first foray into the world of charities and not-for-profit organisations and one that I'll never forget, and I'm currently working with Eden at the moment, however many years later, seven, eight years later, leading some really high profile appointments for them. So it's been a wonderful journey.

Mark Greaves:

You must have done something right then at that stage. So then after this varied career, shall we say, they started your own business down here. What gave you that spark to want to do that?

Anna Jay:

It's not something in all honesty that I'd ever considered previously. After leaving Eden, one of my old clients asked me to go and work with them back up in London. So I found myself doing a weekly commute again, albeit for only two or three days a week, but went to work as their interim director of fundraising and comms for a national charity. As that was coming to an end and I had recruited my successor thinking about what next, wasn't too terrified about that, but I was thinking about do I go back into a search firm? What should I be considering next? And actually people that I had known within my network, either I had appointed as chief execs or directors or people that I had recruited for previously started contacting me and saying, "Where are you? We've been missing you. We need some help. Can you help us with one appointment?" Then it became two and so on.

So actually it's through the support and belief from people that I've developed relationships over the years that I quite by chance, if you like, set up on my own. The work started coming in quite quickly. I thought, "Well, I can do a bit of part-time. If I do it four days a week, I've got other time to offer some of the voluntary things that I do down in Cornwall." But quite quickly it became a full-time job. And I've been, as I said earlier, I've been up and running now for six and a half years.

Mark Greaves:

Excellent on that. Now obviously you picked an interesting time to come back at that stage into recruitment, although it's been an underlying theme for you. The recruitment crisis that we've talked about on this podcast and more generally for the last few years has been one of the key critical issues for businesses. Do you see that easing at all over the next year or two?

Anna Jay:

I think it really depends on the sector. Obviously there are a dearth of people in many areas. I think that what we are seeing is many more people actually going out on their own like I have. I know that I am quite regularly... I think less regularly now that people know that I'm established as a business, but for the first three or four years, very regularly approached by my old firms competitors, et cetera, to go and work for them. And I do a bit of associate work, but I think there are so many more people that for many reasons have established on their own. And that's not just in my market, it's in many markets. And we might talk a bit about Covid and the impact that Covid has had, but I know that that really highlighted that. And so many people who were either made redundant or actually made different live choices have gone off and set up on their own.

So I think that that's had a huge impact on the recruitment market. I think that organisations, and again highlighted by Covid, organisations, the culture, the opportunities and things like that are very important to employees now. And I think that through Covid, people understood a bit about obviously pressures, but equally work-life balance, hybrid working, cultures of organisations, development opportunities. That has become more and more important to individuals. IA think now that organisations are stepping up to that some more quickly than others, I think that that's having a massive impact on the recruitment and retention of individuals. But clearly one of the key things for organisations is training development, recognising potential in people. And I think that historically in different markets, at different times when it's been an employer's market, they've had their choice of experience very experienced, over experienced people quite often. Now it's much more about identifying people's potential and investing in people's futures.

So I think that there is a crisis, absolutely. I don't see it shifting in the way that there are suddenly going to be many more people for organisations. They're not going to appear out of nowhere, particularly with issues exiting the EU and all the implications that had. And I just think that organisations need to be more aware of looking after people and that's what's going to attract people to their organisation.

Mark Greaves:

I want to come back to that looking after and the retention side of things, but I just want to pick up on, you mentioned about culture there, and obviously in recruiting people it can be quite difficult to make sure that there's that culture match. And from an employer perspective about communicating the culture of the organisation to potential recruits. How could an organisation... What are some of the success stories you've seen where organisations have managed to properly communicate the culture, both to ensure a cultural fit, but also to attract the employees?

Anna Jay:

I think some of it is really basic. A lot of the organisations that I work with, whether I'm actually recruiting for them at a very senior level or even if I've just got a very strong relationship with them and we are talking about what's happening across the organisation and say, we're struggling with these roles or we're struggling in this area. And I sit and talk to them about looking at their website, looking at how they advertise jobs. And it's as basic as a lot of organisations just stick an advert out, a very basic ad, this is the role, these are the core skills we are looking for. Submit a very complicated application form to us and then we'll review it. We may come back to you, we may not. And I think that that articulation and that investment in articulating what an organisation is like is so important.

It is a candidate's market in every sector. So candidates want to know about the organisation, whether they're approached by somebody in the organisation or a recruiter or they just see it on a website. They want to see more than just, "We are recruiting for X. You need to have Y." The pulling together of, for example, a candidate brief. So a document which is attached, and actually only a small part of that document will probably be about the specific role requirements. The document ought to be about, this is who we are, this is what we do, this is our mission, our vision, our values, this is what we offer our employees. Sometimes what's in it for you? That's a section that I often put in there. So whether that's a physical brief that you put together or whether it's on a microsite for an organisation, employers need to invest that time.

And once you've done it once, obviously you need to tailor it for each opportunity that you're recruiting to. But once you've done it once that will be seen out in the market, people will then start referring people to this organisation because they've seen. So it could start with something as small as an advertising campaign locally. It could be a big national advertising campaign where an organisation's brand, their ethos, their mission is really well known, and then people want to go and work for them. But equally, it could be through a recruitment campaign and people can identify and really identify with that organisation and see what they're about.

In terms of the process and getting people to understand the culture in that fit, it's not always about complete alignment with a culture. I don't really like the word fit because I don't think people would need to go and fit with a certain culture. In order for organisations to work, whether that's at board level, filtering down through the organisation, you need people who are different. You need diversity, and that's not just tick box diversity, that's diversity of thought, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different ages, stages in life, different experiences, and that's kind of what needs to be tested.

You asked about an example of where I've seen that working and an example of how I've helped an organisation through that, if that's useful, is a national charity I've done quite a lot of work with at board level. And then at senior level, I developed a really strong relationship with their head of HR, and we were talking about ways... They were disability charities. So we were talking about accessibility for people at all ends of the spectrum in terms of recruitment. And she was talking to me about how they struggle to recruit people who engage with some of the individuals that they support.

Now, the people that they're trying to recruit don't have to have any kind of experience. They could be a senior executive, they could have worked at a corner shop, they could be anything in between. They could have not worked at all, but what they need to have is the personal experience of this disability. So I said to her, "The process that you are using at the moment is a CV or a cover letter or an application form. You don't need any of that." There are tools that I sometimes use through interviews or presentations, AI tools or online tools where you can ask people to do basically a video presentation or a recorded presentation or a recorded cover letter.

So for those people who get terrified by writing something down, they're not very eloquent in a written word, they've never had to do anything like that before. They can make the choice and they can actually record a short video and what you've got, the sense of then is that person going to be able to engage properly with the people that they are supporting through their organisation? And it completely turned around how they recruited and actually the people that they recruited and the success rate that they had.

Mark Greaves:

I hesitate to follow up too much on the diversity word because it's a bit of a controversial term at the moment, but I just want to bring together a couple of things you were talking about there in terms of differences in approach, et cetera, and is there a generational difference out there when you are actually targeting people? Is there a generation where different things will excite different generations?

Anna Jay:

I think so. I mean people, the younger generation, and I don't don't know where that starts and finishes now. I think I'm probably not the younger generation anymore, although I hate to say it. I think obviously people at different levels in their career and different ages and stages in life are much more well-equipped to deal with technology. It's much more part of everybody's daily life now. People who are younger than me, a lot younger or even a little younger are much more adept in technology, et cetera. So they expect for a lot of the engagement to be via technology. So I think one of the tools that I use, and I suggested that this organisation implement is used by Google and others to recruit. They have thousands of applications to go through. So when they get to a certain stage, actually a short two-minute video is how they then disseminate between who they want on board or who they want to take forward for interview.

That is the norm now for many organisations and people at certain stage in life. Equally, for me doing executive search, my work is around individual engagement, personal engagement, it's around a 2, 3, 4 stage conversation before somebody even applies. So there might be a use of technology for me in terms of a campaign or to approach people, but actually for me it's about personal engagement and conversations, multiple conversations. I think that application processes, so many organisations still use an application process where you have to go onto a website and even for senior roles and where you have to submit a CV and a cover letter, but then you also have to fill in a very clunky application form and there's just no point in it. If you need people's details, you can get them further on down the line, but it puts so many people off. Clunky processes really dissuade people from applying.

Mark Greaves:

Well, you mentioned about AI earlier, talk about clunky processes there. There's also a bit of a controversy about using versions of AI in the recruitment process and whether they're algorithms or biased or depends on what they've been trained on, but how do you see AI in the future actually being used positively in the recruitment process?

Anna Jay:

Yeah, I think there are obviously huge benefits to using AI. Ultimately lots of organisations use AI because it saves money. It takes away from having individuals doing quite repetitive tasks, going through applications where actually there could be bias, whether it's conscious or unconscious bias from individuals. There are lots of application websites or jobs platforms which use AI, whether it's a filtering. Which I think perhaps in my opinion is not as sensible, particularly in the area that I work. But I think that the positive thing is actually removing people's personal information, so it anonymizes people. So there can be no bias there. So names, addresses, there's only a certain degree of the things you can remove from an application until it just becomes irrelevant because you do need to have specific information on there. But I think that there is that automated processes can be really useful, can free up individual's, time in organisations, employees' times to do the more creative things, the more either strategic or creative.

So if an initial sifting kind of process or filtering process is done by AI, but for me, that has to be quite basic. I think once you start trying to implement AI at much more senior, for senior roles or for niche roles, I think that becomes quite challenging. So I have different views. I don't use AI at all in that respect. Everything I do, I do myself, my searching, my sifting, my interviewing, but there's a place for it. And I can absolutely recognise that for employees with hundreds or thousands or even more employees, there has to be a better way than getting individuals sitting in a darkened room going through thousands of applications.

Mark Greaves:

I think that was a nice phraseology in the middle there that people are not quite there with yet in that AI can replace tasks. And it can do some tasks very efficiently, therefore freeing up people's time to spend on more creative in your words roles. And I think that's a misunderstanding at the moment. AI doesn't necessarily replace roles. It helps doing tasks, and I think we'll need to adapt to that as a society going forward. I want to pick up one specific thing. There's a big buzz around at the moment in terms of B Corp status, number of organisations trying to go for it, rules being tightened up, et cetera. You gave a presentation at Oxford University on ethical leadership. How did that come around and what was your main topic? What did you cover during it?

Anna Jay:

It came around through a connection that I made when I was at Eden, actually. A wonderful chap who I'm very much still in contact with, and he and I just formed a brilliant relationship. He was head of corporate responsibility for a huge fund manager and fund management company who did a huge amount for not-for-profit organisations, particularly in communities sector, community connection sector. He and I remain in contact. We were talking about some of the work that he does with Oxford University, and he invited me to speak at a lecture in their lecture series called The Only Way is Ethics, and they invite people from all across Oxford University. So for whatever discipline, whatever level stage you are at, I think I presented not long after lockdowns ended. So I was there in person, but there were people that had logged on and dialed into the lecture from around the world.

What did I talk about? Well, I think the purpose of the talks and the lecture series was to open up people's understanding and the possibilities for them. And to talk about choices that they can make in their careers, wherever that might be. I think what I talked about is not trying to necessarily promote my background and my passion is individuals, people particularly supporting organisations that support people who are disadvantaged, et cetera. So the charitable sector as a whole, and I wasn't necessarily pushing for people. I was not saying that if you want to be ethical, if you want to do good, then you must go into the charitable sector or the not-for-profit sector, but actually you can make ethical decisions in your careers and change organisations from inside out. Whether that is going to work for a huge oil and gas company where you actually are affecting change and being part of an organisation where yes, you do something that not everybody might agree is a good thing, for example, but actually affecting that change.

And with CSR, SG, et cetera, and B Corp status, so many organisations are so focused now on the purpose whether people, planet, et cetera, and not just purpose and profit. And I think that that's a wonderful place to be in the world now. Some organisations do it because they truly believe it's the right thing to do. Others are doing it for perhaps different reasons, but actually being part of an organisation and being part of that change is really important. So that's sort of what I spoke about and talked a bit about my career, how I got, as we've just talked about, how I got to where I am and working for corporates and whether that sits well with you or not and the change you can affect if you're in that environment.

Mark Greaves:

Well done. Oxford University does Tau, slightly odd phraseology at that particular moment. I'd probably pick up a couple of things within that in terms of that change from within, I think there's been that coincidence of timing. The pandemic and one of the positives has come out of the pandemic is people reassessing their lives, but also there's a generational thing and people having to pay much more attention to, whether it's B Corp or triple bottom line or whatever the phrase is, as part of the recruitment cycle. They desperately need people to be coming in and that helps in actually giving them a level of distinctiveness and a level of differentiation, which certainly the younger generation are tying into. I want to pick up one or two other things. You are a founding board member of Cornwall Women's Fund. What's that and why are you involved?

Anna Jay:

Okay, so Cornwall Women's Fund was established and launched in January 2020. So perfect timing just before the pandemic hit. We were established basically with the aim of supporting women and girls across Cornwall. So our missionary basically invest, improve, and inspire. So we are a giving circle. We are not just a fund which we give out from, we are trying to create a circle of individuals, not just women and girls. We have all sorts of people from Cornwall and otherwise that support us and have the same belief in supporting people across Cornwall. There's a huge disparity, which we identified myself and a small number of other women and a lack of sometimes ambition for women and girls in Cornwall, and I know this has been talked about on previous sessions, but the lack of opportunity. So many people historically have left Cornwall, they've gone to school, they've had to leave for university, and then they've not come back.

A lot of people have since come back, particularly during or post Covid, but I think that that has led to a lack of sometimes role models for big business or for senior level, those aspirational roles for women. So yes, basically we raise funds from individuals and we asked people to give as little or as much as they can. We were very fortunate to be given an initial donation of 20,000 pounds, which was wonderful. We so far raised just over 50,000 pounds time back into the Oxford connection. We realized after about the first year that there was so much need in Cornwall. So when we opened our first grants for applications, they were just so diverse in what they were asking for money for that actually, we realized that we needed to better understand the need of women and girls in Cornwall.

So I went back to my connections at Oxford and was very fortunate to have a huge piece of research done. We gave access to connections with lots of people in Cornwall, so either people who use services, people who are community workers, people who achieve executive charities and community projects. And they did an amazing piece of research for us, which identified four key themes. And now every year we have one of those themes, whether it... Last year it was employment, employability and skills. This year it's women and girls mental health. There's another strand around digital and digital inclusion. So yeah, we're very fortunate to have that and that's kind of where it snowballed from.

Mark Greaves:

Ideal at that stage. Now, we've talked about entrepreneurialism and starting your own business in Cornwall and that type of stuff. What one piece of advice would you give to a female out there who's considering starting up on their own as a business?

Anna Jay:

I think that it's make the most of the people that are out there. Your networks are the most important thing to you. So that's not just potential investors, potential customers, potential suppliers, it's about the people that are out there and who can support you. I have been so fortunate to develop such an amazing network of individuals across Cornwall and further afield for many, many years. But equally since I've established my business in particularly over the past couple of years. Across Cornwall, there are some amazing formal and informal networking networks and some very formal organisations which support and incubate growth.

Cornwall, the increase in small businesses and entrepreneurial organisations over the past few years across in Cornwall is just phenomenal. There are some very formal organisations which can support that, either with finance or advice or mentoring, but equally just some wonderful people out there. Tap into those networks. It could be that you know somebody who does something completely different, that they've been on a similar journey or they've been in the corporate world and led on growth and strategy development and organisational design, who you can tap into. So I think that it's networks I think is the most important thing.

Mark Greaves:

Especially restaurants in the Cayman Islands or airports flying back from London, perhaps at that stage.

Anna Jay:

That does help. If people can tap into those sorts of things, then yes.

Mark Greaves:

Well, thank you so much, Anna, for sharing your story with us and our listeners, and I hope our listeners have enjoyed it as much as I have. Fascinating to hear a little bit more about recruitment from both sides and the issues and potential future of those issues. And thank you to our audience for listening to our latest episode of Business Noodles. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to get updates and notifications on when our latest episodes are available.