Golden Nugget #123 | The Industry-Led Recruitment Model: Org Design, Hyper-Niche Markets & How To Structure An RPO with Alex Woodhead

Talk to me about, 'cause you was really passionate about this.

Tell me about this sort of go-to-market strategy of like industry-led model, 'cause this seemed quite foundational.

There's obviously a lot that probably goes into you achieving your big goal, but you felt really quite passionate about this when you explained it to me.

So tell me about the way that you see this differently in terms of the in- being industry-led versus skill location-led.

Hmm.

This isn't the answer to everything in recruitment, by the way.

Um-

It's not a silver bullet.

It's not a s- it's not a silver bullet, and it, it is also entirely dependent on the market that you're working in and selecting.

Certain markets in the world, they are that specific that you, in order to develop and grow that market, you need to be only working within that channel.

So the example I usually give to people is automotive, and I suppose may- this is maybe a bit of an exec search approach, but if you wanna work with Ferrari, you need to tell them you work with Porsche.

Ferrari aren't gonna care if you're working with an IT consultancy or a bank that are located two minutes down the road.

Also, if you're working with a bank two minutes down the road, and you're trying to get an engineering leadership position for Ferrari, y- it's just y- y- you haven't got the sell.

You haven't got the expertise.

You haven't got the knowledge.

People relocate all over the world for those sorts of roles.

Basically, the industries that we've selected, in my opinion, the only way to be successful in all of those industries is to live and breathe and only do those industries and nothing else.

So can I not do that if I'm typically niche though? Like I do X skill-

In what sense though?

'Cause typically, like people would be like, "I'm very ni-- I'm, I have an...

I'm a niche market.

I do-

Yeah, but what's the-

... financial controllers in aerospace companies."

Right.

Well, first of all, I'd say, "Who does that?"

[laughs]

Secondly, I'd be like, "That's not" -

No, but I'm, as an, as an example.

Secondly, I'd be like, "That's not a good market."

[laughs] But you know when people say, "I'm, I'm niche.

I have a niche focus"?

Yeah, yeah.

What's the niche?

I'm just trying to understand the main difference here.

It's like anything in recruitment.

It's like saying you're niche, like what does that even mean?

Okay.

One person's niche could be entirely different to s- another person's niche.

Mm-hmm.

So we call ourselves, again, it's just a hyper niche, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like this great word.

It's entire differences.

My fundamental belief is every single desk that a person does, every single business unit a team creates, or every single m- like strategy for a company, you have to be doing something where you can be the best in the world.

Mm-hmm.

At that.

So let's bring that down to an individual contributor.

If as an individual contributor, you're saying, I can...

I interview people doing this all the time.

I do AI in the US.

Yes, but any board.

Any industry, any industry in the world.

How are you possibly gonna be the best in the world at that? AI slash that, that is just far too big.

It's far, far too big.

So you nee- you've got, you've got to distill things down significantly.

And again, where I've seen the most success is this is a strategy piece, and these are these little things that people don't even think about, but I think about, and I, I spent ages on, on how to do this.

So how we, how we set up the business.

So some businesses...

So what do you, what do you put at the top, right? Is the top perm contract delivery? Is the top US, Europe, UK? I'm look- I'm talking about an org chart here on all of those different things.

Mm.

Or is the top industries? And then after industries, then do you split into regions, or then do you split into different service offerings, perm contracts, et cetera? How do you split all these things down? And again, we played around with all of this at Strative, and I saw what works the best.

When I was there, it was all industry focused.

Within those industries, we had managing directors for each of those industries.

That managing director was an absolute SME in that industry.

Let's just say it's energy storage, for example, which is a highly specific thing.

Energy storage technology is the same in the US as it, as it is in Europe.

Different clients, but it's the same thing.

You're still buying and selling off the same things.

Your teams are still made up the same way in terms of different skill disciplines of cell chemistry, BMS, and all of those different things.

So if the MD is the person at the top of that industry down, then after that, do we then split into perm contract delivery, RPO, or do we split into regions after that? And all of those little things, it's quite hard to...

'Cause it's-

Mm

... 'cause it's a very big org chart.

Those things are incredibly important.

My old firm changed that after I left, which again, I don't know if it's worked better or not.

I don't know.

The reason why I think it works better this way is because my and our way of doing business is the c- the client always comes first.

And I felt like that setup and strategy gave the clients the best possible experience because there was always a person ensuring that client was having different service offerings approached into them in the right way, and it wasn't too much.

There wasn't inner conflict between the perm team and the contract team and all of those different things.

And that's because you put industry at the top?

Yeah.

Okay.

It's a little thing that people don't think about, but how you organize your recruitment team, sales team, whatever you wanna call it, is so important.

Mm.

So, so, so important.

And again, I'm speaking from experience.

I've trialed different things and in our business and in my experience, this is what works best, and that's why, why we have the different six business units.

So that's one thing around that.

The sec- as I said, the second thing is just expertise.

Even within aerospace, an aircraft is entirely different to a satellite.

So again, we split aerospace and space, or even a defense client that's developing a military aircraft.

Again, it's very, very different.

All of these things are totally different, and I think in order to really s- understand the size of the opportunity in each of those, these areas, we need 100% focus in that area.

And that's all your people do in one of those?

Yeah.

We have different skill disciplines that feed into that.

Well, that's gonna be my next thing.

Yeah.

So like if I'm industry down-