I sat down with Ed Andrew to chat about what he has learned in his entrepreneurial journey. A journey that has taken him from life as a barrister to building a global recruitment firm, to a fashion company, tech start-ups to his current company The Human Consultancy.
In this video, Ed generously shares his journey and several nuggets of wisdom that will be interesting for anybody looking to carve out their place in the entrepreneurial world.
I’m sure you will find this interview inspiring, so grab a coffee, a quiet corner (rare I know!) and enjoy.
Thanks for reading!
Belinda
TRANSCRIPTION:
Nuggets of Wisdom with Ed
Belinda Kerr
Welcome, everybody. I’m Belinda Kerr from the Recruitment Garage. And I’m delighted to have Ed Andrew join me today from the human consultancy. And I’ve invited him on today because he has a rich tapestry of experience and lots of insights that I think will be or I know will be really invaluable for recruitment agency owners. He’s got he’s a global Nomad. He’s lived in many different countries. He’s run a significant international recruitment business. He’s a lawyer amongst a lot of other things that he’s done as well. So it Why don’t you introduce yourself and give us a little bit of your history because it’s really interesting, and then we’ll go in and talk about the laws of the universe.
Ed Andrew
Okay, thanks, Belinda Kerr. Well, thanks, first of all, thanks very much for having me on on your program. So yes, as you correctly say, I was a barrister in England, many moons ago went into headhunting in the city in London. The I didn’t want to be there anymore. So I came to Australia and I set up a business the day after 911 knowing one person in Australia, which was Yeah, that was an interesting time. But you know, I was young and ready for the challenge. And that was basically exporting Australian and New Zealand qualified lawyers around the world. We ended up doing that in over 40 cities around the world or locations around the world and grew that into a multi million dollar business. Million dollars plus every year in profits and we also had an office in, in Delhi in India we’re the first company of our kind to do that. Then had a SAS, a tech SAS recruitment platform in London, here and in Sydney as well. Then a fashion label, which we took to Bali and lived there for a year and a half. And I’ve consulted to startups for seven years, tech startups, non tech startups around the world. Right now have an online training program for how to one, helping people to design the career and life which allows them to live their, their highest potential. And I still do a lot of startup advisory work as well. So that’s me anyway, in a nutshell.
Belinda Kerr
Amazing. And so, very, very different things that you’ve done, how have you jumped from one pot into the other and been so successful?
Ed Andrew
Well, they’re not really that different. That’s the thing. See, the thing is, in in careers, people look at the Korean side. While I just learned that skill, I sort of got to do that for the rest of my life. But if you if you really think about all the different things that you learn in life and the hobbies and passions and interests you they’re always interconnected and interlinked. So my things always been about people and information. So I started my life and and also social justice. So I started my life as a lawyer, but I really went into the wine trade. I’m not back and undervalued back in the one so I went off to be a lawyer, a barrister, that’s about people. It’s about challenge and debate and learning about people and helping them. And, you know, being a headhunter is, to me anyway, it’s about people, you know, which is basically helping people find the career that they love. It’s not about finding them a job. It’s actually about finding them a life and a lifestyle that they love. And I think there’s a big difference there. And then a tech business that’s about how we deliver or how we can how you connect people to companies without having to go through a head on so again, it’s about people’s by, can I, and that’s all about information. Where do you get an information from headhunting is all about research and information. Being a good lawyer is all about preparation and research and information. Having a fashion business again is my wife’s a designer, is about people is what do women and mothers want children what what girls want to wear, what impact allows them what makes them feel feminine, what makes them feel great when they will demonstrate everyday? Again, it’s about people. business consulting, ease, yes, very London hard core technical skills of our strategy, you know, efficiency, operational management, marketing, sales, those are technical skills. But ultimately they’re driven by people. We make products for people, mainly built by people, some by robots as well. But it’s about again, people and information. So they’re all is it really, it is one path and it’s all interconnected.
Belinda Kerr
So it’s no accident that you know, now have the human consultancy.
Ed Andrew
No, and it’s no accident and that name is a very deliberate name. And I wanted to grow a business now which was about empowering people, to you all, enabling people to empower themselves to to find the change in their life that they want. We have many people who have in America 70% of people who are disillusioned, disengaged in their workforce, that’s a very high percentage of people. And, but also, you know, what’s the reason why one person is incredibly successful, I’m very happy at their job and the person who makes them is very unhappy and they’re doing exactly the same thing. Okay, so, you know, the premise of the human consultant is about putting humanity back into careers and life. It’s how do we look as a classes as a human being? thing? What is it that you want as a person and how do we build a life around that? And obviously, that includes having to work but the funny thing about the name is okay, well that I thought human consultancy that sort of sums up exactly what I want to do. It could be a recruitment agency, lots of people, you know, use consultants in recruitment, and the domain domain name is available. I thought great, I’ll have that and then I realized why it was available is because human and consultancy human being human resources. Consultancy every every management consultancy strategy company and recruitment companies call consultancy. So to try and get number one ranking on Google for human and consultancy was now an impossible project but I didn’t get the number one ranking by doing a lot of content. So there was a very curious reason for doing it. And then a lot of technical hard work in actually making people realize it was mere
Belinda Kerr
hindsight. It’s always so good, isn’t it?
Ed Andrew
Exactly.
Belinda Kerr
They don’t really came to talk to you about given all the experience that you’ve had and different things that you’ve done, if what what advice could you give to recruitment agents? You know, like, if you look at the recruitment industry as a whole, what do you think that we could still be learning from from other industries that perhaps we just haven’t quite taken hold of yet?
Ed Andrew
Well, I think that’s an interesting one. I think that, you know, recruitment company owners genuinely are good humanists that we know that they’re in it, because they enjoy helping people, with their crews, they enjoy talking to people basically. And that’s a very social job was actually meeting people day to day and going out and doing other things. It’s about it’s about empowering people inspiring and helping them and solving real world problems. But I think, you know, one of the things that recruitment company owners particularly if you’re, you know, having had a successful desk and you’ve had all the resources and everything else around you, and you filling up on your own is you can get too carried away by, you know, the daily grind of how many jobs do I need, how many phone calls do I have to make, you know, how do I service my clients properly without thinking about okay, well, you know, if you are billing in the good old days, you know, consultants can build a million dollars a year. We’re a lot of money from that that sort of dropped down a bit. So there’s a lot of stress and pressure on setting your company up on day one p&l looks very much like a law firm does. And you know, I spent a bit of time in London a few years ago with James Caan, who’s very well known in the criminal world. So she’s just setting up I think, in in Australia. And you know, the p&l for recruitment business is very much like the p&l of a law firm, in the sense of wage bill is generally quite high. Our office costs generally can be quite low unless you want to, you know, spend too much money on a lovely office, which, frankly, in this day and age, not many people come to, and then the other cost is marketing and travel. So actually, high profit should be a high profit business. So I think the things to learn are, you’ve got to look outside of what you see on a day to day basis, look at opportunities. You’ve got to be very flexible, and how job because the market can change quite quickly that the month, the people that you’re providing can change quite quickly. It has a very, very low barrier to entry. I mean, frankly, anyone who has a laptop, it can read it, it can be a recruitment consultant. I mean, in fact, when I first started, my biggest competitor didn’t even have a computer, they had a Rolodex of all their name cards in there. So it’s got a low barrier to entry, which means it’s highly competitive. So the thing that you can do better than anybody else is customer service. And that’s what it has to be about. It’s about so your research has got to be perfect. You need to know all the right power you need to you need to be very well networked. You need to have really good research so that you find the candidates before the job comes on. You are proactive and not reactive. Because when you’re reactive, you’re always chasing your tail, much harder to be number one if you’re being reactive, much easier to be number one. When you’re being proactive. You have good research. So if you have good networking capability and you deliver the best quality customer service both your candidates and your clients which means that you know if you’re Apple will you say which industries you compare yourself to look at Apple look at the look at you know, the the Apple Store, they are giving you first quality customer service. If the machine doesn’t work, you book an appointment to the Genius Bar, you don’t pay for any of that. None of that is paid. Then the only the only computer company in the world that does that for you. They offer first class customer service. As a recruiter, you need to be offering the same level of service which means if you put an ad out, respond to people send them an email, even if it’s I’m sorry, you’re unsuccessful respond to them even as a phone call. I’ll come back to you in two weeks or let people know ledger candidates know what is happening. Let your clients know what’s happening. be professional, be ethical. It is Not easy. It is, it is very easy to be in the middle lane of a recruitment company making Okay, money. Okay? It’s actually even easier to be number one. Okay, provide you prepared to make that commitment? Because no one else is. So if you really want to be the best at your game is actually not hard. It just means you have to apply different energy to different elements for your business.
Belinda Kerr
It’s interesting, isn’t it? what you’re saying? I think sometimes people looking for the magic bullet net theme, that sort of external thing that’s going to really turn their business around. And quite often, I when I talk to you, I think you’ve already got it in you, you’re just not quite capturing what that is and doing it in the market. Whereas, you know, sometimes it can just be improving what they’re already doing, like you say if their customer services average or how can they make it exceptional, and I think sometimes that’s where people get stuck. They think they’re so busy, like you said, filling the jobs that just to sit back and think how can we do this better? So many of them just say, I just don’t know what else to do
Ed Andrew
your list of bad discipline, I think the thing is, I mean, there are two parts to that puzzle. But I think, you know, to the biggest elements is many recruiters spend a lot of their life looking over their shoulder and thinking, Oh, well, you know, the sad big company, though, that a lot of persons there, they’ve been doing it for longer than me. You know, that’s probably why they’re doing better than me. You know, the thing is, that the first thing is always be aware of your competition and worry about them. Well, they probably spending very little time even more bothering about you do what you know best and forget about what they’re doing, be aware of where they’re at, because if they make a big change, you might need to think about why have they done that? Should I be thinking about doing that is maybe next time I’ll be number one to do that, and I won’t be number two. So be aware of that. But stop worrying about what goes on in other people’s businesses because frankly, have absolutely no idea and in terms of you know, the challenges Can I do that? You know, am I capable of doing it? Of course you are. If you’ve able to build a desk, okay, you’ve got resources around, you’ve taken a bit of a risk, you’ve already taken the biggest gamble in your life, which is to step out of another recruitment business and start your own. So you’ve proved you’re capable of the biggest risk of all, everything else is easier. So when I say easy, I mean, in terms of you’ve already got yourself out of your comfort zone. So now you’re out of that comfort zone. You might as well immerse yourself in the ability to be fearless about what you’re doing. And the other thing is, don’t try and be generous to everything. You know what the easiest thing to say, if you’ve got, you know, two jobs coming in, and you’re covering two different sectors, and you’ve got too many candidates, you’re never really getting the best jobs. You’re never getting the best candidates think about, what is it that I’m an expert in? What is it when I pick up the phone to a client say, this is what I do and this is how I can help you what things are you going to say to them that no one else can do or that You can do better. And the same with a candidate. You know, we had a very disciplined business. And we had three parameters we worked around. And if a candidate didn’t meet the parameters, we would simply say, I’m sorry, you know, I suggest you talk to someone else, because we know we cannot give you the job that you’re looking for. We cannot find that for you, at this point.
Belinda Kerr
Oh, sorry, between that that’s such an interesting point. Because so many recruiters, I think, find it so hard to say, No, we can’t help you. They’re kind of I feel like I should just try but just time doesn’t really bring you or them the result and just leaves everybody a little unsatisfied.
Ed Andrew
No, and I think, you know, you know, I was in the, in the business for the best part of 15 years. And, you know, I would always say to consultants when they came to me, oh, you know, we’ve just come across this person, what do you think? And they might be someone who’s earning you know, million $2 million a year, thinking, Oh, you know, can we help them could have been such a big face like I can guarantee you that you’ll still be having that conversation. Probably in six or nine months time, whereas you could have build, you know, another 200 grand by working with people who you can help with. So you can get very carried away by that when you are, you know, if you’ve already set up your own business, the chances are you’ve spent a few years running a desk or being on there. So you sort of notice you see what else is going on. So ask yourself why if you were sitting in that business now, and you will be managed on KPIs, which I don’t like ABS still, but if you were being managed on KPIs, and then you said, Look, I’ve got this great candidate who’s coming in, you know, we might be able to help him he’s very highly paid was a bit left of center. What would your manager say? They’d say, you know, okay, give them half an hour. Maybe make a couple of phone calls after that. Forget about it.
Belinda Kerr
Soon, and that’s really interesting. And you just said something here, but you don’t like KPIs so how do you If so, if you don’t use KPIs, how do you then measure keeper keepers have a yardstick on the business? What do you do?
Ed Andrew
You know, KPIs are an interesting one for me. I always feel that we should treat everyone as an adult, you know, we’re not a kindergarten, we’re not at school anymore. And so yes, when I first started headhunting, God, you know, well over 20 years ago, we were always told, you know, make 50 phone calls a day, translate to 10 people a day get, you know, one or two interviews. And I understand the the mentality behind that, because you’ve, you know, I remember when I first my first company sitting in Sydney and the MLC Center, which for those who don’t know, Sydney, it was tallest building in Sydney, on the top floor, looking at over the harbour, talking to my friends in London thinking that it’s midwinter, and it’s hotter news for you, and it’s summer, you know, life is good. Right? I’ve really got to make some phone calls, and otherwise, I’m never gonna make any business. All right, okay, I need to make 50 phone calls. Because if I make 50 phone calls, I will speak to five or 10 people and 20% of those people will be candidates and then you know, that’s your pipeline. So I get that I’ve got Of course we all have to do that, but I don’t think Having a really strong mandated KPI is helpful because you know what happens in a recruitment business. And you’ll notice we’ll notice one day. Okay, right. So today it’s Monday, I’m going to interviews in the books, you know, I just need to make 50 calls, I need to get another five candidates in, you’re only going to do that by making phone calls. So it gives us discipline. But we also know you could make 80 phone calls today and actually not get through to one person because it just happens to be one of those days, right? Tomorrow, I could make five phone calls and have five candidates arranged five interviews. So the KPI doesn’t necessarily work. What we’re looking for is basically generating a pipeline of people. And we know if you have a whiteboard, you have Okay, well, I don’t I don’t look at phone calls. When I had a whiteboard or the business and the metrics. I’m very keen on building metrics into businesses. So we know where the Money is we know what driving a business. So the pipeline is, how many interviews are coming in? That’s the one we need to know. Okay? If the interviews drop them, why, why are we not picking the phone up, and then you get busy because you know, you’re actually maybe writing a profile or you’ve got to have a client meeting or writing proposals. So, you know, there’s an element in the week where you can’t just do everything all day long. And therefore, I don’t think KPIs are helpful because I think that it encourages someone just to make 60 phone calls a day without actually thinking about how many people do I need in my pipeline to actually get paid as a consultant and contribute to the business. And I think if you treat people like children, they will behave like children, they will leave at nine o’clock. Or if you want them, you know, I know some companies, you know, a 30 to 630. That’s a long day. I had a consultant who built a million a year she can probably do that in the first three hours of the day. Be in the office anymore.
Belinda Kerr
Amazing.
Ed Andrew
Why should I think women are more efficient than men are probably Get crucified for saying that but I do. And I think that the mothers are more efficient than everybody else on the planet. And I seriously mean that, you know, one of my I had a co founder my tape business, you know, too, and I watched him it’s like, when she’s working she is 100% focus on there is no distraction main don’t get distracted more easily.
Belinda Kerr
Yeah, that’s true. Actually on that it’s a little bit tied in with that. A lot of the people I speak to they’ve gone like you You said they’ve gone from being recruitment agency owners, they’re in their own agencies, and they get to a point where they just hit this brick wall of overwhelm and everything’s coming at them so the business is getting more demanding for cash flow they’ve got now they’ve got staff they’ve got staffing issues, all those sorts of things. What advice can you give people making that switch? And I guess more from a because your, your the human side of things. What would you say to those people to make life a little easier for themselves and but still get the results that they want?
Ed Andrew
From from making the switch from an agency to owning your own business,
Belinda Kerr
They’re already in their own business. And they’ve been doing it a little while, a little while. And you get to that point where you start off and it’s all easy, you’re making the money, you’re doing really well. And it’s quite simple. But it’s as the business matures, you start to get the complexity start to hit and so the recruiting
Ed Andrew
Yep. So basically, what happens is, is you start doing well, right? And and this happened that, you know, I still remember and it was 17 years ago silicon, but I remember by revenue and profitability for every year of the business, right, that’s because I own the business. So it goes in my pocket. So what happened is within nine months, and if this resonates really well, that within nine months, six to nine months is a horrible time and any new business because it’s the it’s the succeed fail time and time. And I had had my first employee and I was talking to a mentor thinking you know, should I shut it down? Because the market is terrible as post 911. And I’ll just give it another month. And you know, that month we made 30 grand or she’d made a placement the money came in. And that just kicked off into what was an amazing business. But I think what happened is, I realized within the first nine months, that I couldn’t do it on my own, that there’s only you can only make 50 phone calls a day, there’s only, you know, five interviews maximum. If I were going, if I’m going to New York or London, I can do maybe five or six meetings a day, realistically do them properly. So the limit on your time and then you’ve got to ride profiles and you think, Okay, well, I want to crack a new market. You know, we’re in, as I say, 40 cities or 40s locations around the world. So I’ve then got to pick up the phone to Hong Kong or Singapore or Tokyo and then go and go and spend a week of my time doing that and they can come back and then I’ve got missed the whole week. No, you can’t. You can’t build a business based on one person. If you’re if you’re in a lifestyle business where say, you know, it’s making you two 250 300 grand a year, maybe more. And that’s all you need to do because you’re, you know, your, your husband or your wife or someone else is supporting you. Or maybe you’re single, you don’t want to, you know, that’s all you need, and that’s fine, okay? But if your ambition is to grow, and to maintain that amount of income, it’s very hard to do it on your own. Okay? Because life comes with different things illness and family and desire and passion motivation. So I thought really quickly, well, I need other people in the business cannot do this on my own. And then you have to go out there and this is where you have to have absolute self belief conviction in what you’re doing. Because in order for you to convince someone else to come into your business, you need to tell them why they should leave the business they’re in currently and why you’re going to make them a much better offer. And in this beginning stage of your business, why it’s a sensible thing to jump ship. So you get to that point in business where I can’t and I might I need help. I will remember that when you bring another consultant into your business, right where the money that we earn, okay is 100% profit pretty much aside from a little bit of overheads, the consultant is owning you. You’re into your into pure profit once you put their columns in their database. So for every and then that frees you up to travel more to go and meet more clients to to spend some time so what a tip I can give to everyone if this helps you. And yeah, but you they may say I don’t have enough time or resources to there. Well, you have to work it out is once a year I would take myself off for a week if you know if you have big teams or You would have been used to doing a golf for a week and I would sit down and the blue I take a house, on the beach on the mountains or wherever you happen to be in the world to just do strategy, okay, what do I need to do for the next year? What do I want to build? Where do I want to go? And then I’d pick up the phone and talk to people and talk to, you know, probably call your colleagues or or I’m definitely interested in. So look this what I want to do, what do you think about to get through with them? Certainly come back from there. And you’ve taken a break because you’re not feeling any calls from clients. No, of course, from candidates, you’re just saying I’m away. And I’m just going to clear my head and work out what it is I need to do and that I tell you what, there are so many world class business leaders who take a break and they go away and they just spend time with themselves maybe with a mentor or a coach just to work out what it is they want to do and where they’re going. And that is precious time.
Belinda Kerr
So it Let’s change gears a little bit because I know Also apart from apart from being really interested in the human side, you’re also very interested in the tech space startups etc. So, and machine learning and AI are all kind of the words on everybody’s lips with recruitment at the moment how that ties in with your workforce planning and people. So what are your thoughts around? What have you got to say on that topic?
Ed Andrew
I’m gonna write a book on it. I’m seriously I am actually I started fleshing out my book on it’s Yes, it’s gonna be a novel based on some real events as well. But I think the term as recruiters we rely on technology and obviously, right, you know, if you’re even if you’re a one man band, you should be using a CRM a system to manage your candidates and manage your clients. You need to do that, okay, you need to understand what’s going on. And when you start hiring people, you specifically need to do that, okay? Because otherwise you cannot keep on top of everything. So we know that technology drives what we do. If you’re using marketing platforms, you might be using Facebook Because or Google ads or LinkedIn ads or wherever you’re going if you’re doing old school Boolean search, you’re using technology to do that. And your clients are using ATMs systems, they’re looking made some using maybe behavioral profiling systems is all based on technology. So as a consultant, you got to think, well, how does technology enable me to make my business more efficient? How does it enable the process to be more efficient for my client? How does it make the process become more efficient for my candidate? How do I market more efficiently using technology? So it’s there? We’ve got to start embracing it. In terms of machine learning and AI, I don’t believe yet. There is any system I’ve seen. I speak to a lot of technologists a lot of people are using the blockchain or building on the public blockchain. People who are building chat bots, and I’ve spoken to many of them on my podcast, there’s still no really truly intelligent system I’ve done believe, and truly intelligent means that if you took a A survey of 1000 people, and you ask them 10 different questions or 20 different questions and you get that data providing you’re asking good questions. Data is always about asking the right question, and also without bias. And so analyzing the data, and if you have good data analysis as well, but there was no other system who you can plug all that information into, which comes back at you and says, you ask the wrong question. This is the question you should have asked to get this information that you’re looking for. So that to me is something which becomes intelligent. Having said that, the Chinese champion go player was beat by I think Google’s DeepMind last year, and that caused a lot of ripples because I think the amount of computations he didn’t beat him, He thrashed them by Garry Kasparov getting beaten, but then the machine went in and produce I think 3000 other alternate options to win the game. Right. That is taking risks. Learning into an entirely different space
Belinda Kerr
is scary to me.
Ed Andrew
Yeah, well, yeah, my books going to be around singularity. But the point about recruitment is that let’s not be scared of this, I think, you know, will recruitment, will technology replace our jobs, it’ll certainly enable us to do our jobs better, it will take the jobs of those who are lazy away. Certainly. It will improve our ability to do the job, I think, you know, as platforms are getting a huge amount of media coverage because of the inefficiency of how many people you know, you can gain a CV, but if you know what the ATF platform is looking for, you know what keywords you just you know, how many CVs you see which are keywords banned. It’s got nothing to do with your experience. It’s just you’re spamming your your spammy keywords into your CV to gain the system, then you then the HR managers, never look at The system they’ll, they’ll let the system filter it for themselves and then just get a whole bunch of CVS which may or may not be relevant to them. So that’s where technology is meant to enable. But actually, it is not used efficiently. You’ve also got issues where the people are using technologies ask the humans, right. So you can have brilliant systems, I have a rule in the business, which is I have a system for a very specific purpose, which is to make you a better consultant, which means you make more money can get a better experience, clients get a better experience, we as a company, but remain tane our places number one, if you’re not capable of using that system, because your ego tells you too big to put up a correspondence in a verbatim conversation, you a won’t get a bonus and B you won’t have a job. And I’m very direct and black and white on that because a company is embracing technology for a reason, which is efficiency. If a consultant believes they’re too big for them, I need to go somewhere else. Okay, so machine learning. I think that one Machine Learning? Well, what I think is really interesting space is the ability of technology to tell us whether we’re asking the right question. So say we were conducting an interview. And I would ask you the questions I want, and software is analyzing this conversation. And then you get a little message in your in your ear or pops up on your screen says ask this question. That to me is interesting, because what they’re doing is analyzing the patterns that you have to extract and elicit the conversation saying, you’re maybe not asking the right question, you asked them this question.
Belinda Kerr
Yeah, that’s interesting.
Ed Andrew
Because that enhances your experience because you know, you a lot of interviewing and again, interviewing is such a critical process of headhunting and recruitment and one skill which is not often taught. Okay. You know, if many consultants because they find the pressure of time they get a CV and they look at the CV, the CV goes out without even being changed without any notes just goes out. That’s not an interview. Okay, that’s not a CV. That’s you accepting someone else telling you this is what they’ve done. You have no, there’s been no human interaction in that process. Okay. So I think, you know, there are two elements to this and the there’s, there’s a lot of conversation around around this and how it can help us and there are two camps. There’s the old school camp, he doesn’t he just doesn’t believe it. Technology is gonna never gonna take my job. It can never replace human interaction. Look, I’m a humanist, I believe in the power of our human ability to solve problems and connect, work and create communities. But we also have to recognize that we are not perfect that yes, at a senior level, people do want a headhunter on the phone to say, can you guide me through this negotiation because I can’t do Myself, I don’t have the time the experience to know how I’m going to negotiate, how do I say I want another $30,000. If I tell them that they’re just going to say me to go away, then I can do that very easily. Actually, you know, you’re a bit below market, you really want this personally, we’re in a competitive tender situation, you need to up the ante, pretend it’s harder to do that. So that human interaction is always going to stay there because you sort of want a handheld in the process, but you have to recognize that technology is there. And unless you’re on your game, it will have an impact on your business. Because your clients, particularly if you’re working with large corporates will use it.
Belinda Kerr
Yeah, it’s interesting, and I think the next three to five years are gonna be you know, the world’s gonna look a whole lot different again, isn’t it? No one can really
Ed Andrew
come in, I think, you know, 20 years ago, we know we were talking about this. I’m a firm believer that in the world of recruitment, you will always have people because it and I set up a tape business. I put a million dollars my own money into it. And we didn’t make any money. Right? I was a big, yeah. Which is a bit of an understatement. But there we go. I can say six years later. But the point is, is that we looked at all the research, and this is post, the recession in 2008. And all of our clients around the world saying, we don’t want to pay headhunters anymore. We know we’re just going to do it ourselves. And they ramped up their internal recruitment teams and a lot of head on this lost their jobs, and they went off to go work internally. And then so we built a very, you know, a marketplace. They all said, we know, we want we want the employees to engage with us directly. We don’t want to go to the third parties. So it’s been three years, a lot of money build the platform, worked with I think we had 200 enterprise level clients within nine months. Do you know? Yeah, 20,000 registrations. I’m an enormous, amazing, critically acclaimed brilliant, but they didn’t pay for it. Because what happened is the market came back and I said I always go back to them what we did, we were like the technologies that we’re going to start using it, but we’re not going to use it for the same amount. But the The point being is that this is what the market said they wanted. So we went and build it to them. But when we build it for them, it’s like are, we still sort of want it the other way. And once you get to above a 2526 27 year old who is really in the next phase of their career, they want the human engagement, the graduates and the students and the people in their low 20s. love the idea of how technology enables them, but as you get older, we still want to talk to somebody.
Belinda Kerr
That’s interesting. That’s really,
Ed Andrew
really hasn’t yet been in business. And then a number of us have had a good really good crack at this has managed to nail it. There are a few coming out who who are blending the human experience with the power of technology and I think that’s what the future is is that blend of If we want to talk to someone, can we talk to someone, but we’re happy for technology to do the rest of it?
Belinda Kerr
Yeah, I’m gonna say it is technology doing the legwork. And then the humans coming in and doing the
Ed Andrew
What recruitment consultant needs to be done a Boolean search. I mean, seriously, a software and algorithm can do millions of them in a nanosecond.
Belinda Kerr
With recruitment owners, it’s really knowing because there’s so much tech out there and so much of it is really good, but so much of it’s just a waste of time as well. It’s knowing what tech they should be using. Now as like you rightly said, you know, they’re doing their own searches, all that they know that there’s actually stuff out there that they can just plug and play, and it’ll spit it all out for them.
Ed Andrew
I think that’s, that’s the other thing. I mean, I spent nearly 100 grand building a tech platform or doing better off the work. There were some out there, you know, spending maybe 10 on someone else’s and hosting that. I think one of the lessons you learn as an entrepreneur, particularly in tech And in startup world, is when you start going use other people’s platforms, okay, let’s go and use them because, you know, they’re they’re one of the biggest caveats for new platforms as you don’t know if they’re gonna be there in a year or two. So if you’re gonna, if you’re if you’re head on, if you’re setting up a new recruitment business, or you’re looking at a new recruitment software, my advice is, go and go to business for to be there for a while. Because if you’re going to build all of your business on something, which is brand new, and for whatever reason, the business doesn’t work, you’ve got a lot of data, which you may not be able to extract in the first place. And there’s no support for it. But there is so many platforms if you’re doing contractors, and there are amazing platforms out there for you to manage a contract or workplace workforce. there’s a there’s a there’s a business in the UK, I’m not sure if there yet hear that. So I was looking at building a contract business in London a couple of years ago. I thought it was really hard to manage your cash flow, okay, because effectively if you’re clipping it You’ve got to pay them out on a bi weekly or monthly basis before the client as your bill. So you’ve got a huge cash flow shortage, there’s a business out there who factor 96% of that for you. So if you give them an invoice, they’ll pay out the invoice, which means it costs you a couple of percent of your revenue. But you can build a contract based very quickly off systems which already operate and you can use all of their systems to run your program as well. So you know, you’ve got to explore what it is that you’re doing and what systems will work for you. And allow the systems as you say, to do the donkey work for you. That’s therefore but the thing is, people inherently many people are inherently lazy. They won’t use them. You know, when we look at building a software platform when I built mine, you know, my take, guys were telling me, generally on average, people use 5% of any platform that they have.
Belinda Kerr
Two is just doing what they’ve always done. It’s just it’s habit fed by habit is Well, now that sort of, maybe fear of change or just, you know, this is this is what we’ve always done and not stopping to think what you’ve always done is not working anymore. So you’ve got to go and play this sandpit now.
Ed Andrew
What’s that? I think, what’s the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting the same result Not gonna happen. And this is the difference, you know, blend between being, number one, being at the cutting edge of what you’re doing. Number one doesn’t have to mean you’ve got 1000 employees and turning over hundreds of millions, it just means you can be number one, with only yourself, you offer the best service to everybody else. And this is a lesson which I want to share.I remember in year two of my business, you know, we were making some money and I paid myself a salary and that was the best day of my life to actually pay myself a salary and you know, in the most exciting day, I’m sure everyone else experiences that by You’ll be working with a very large client, which was always wanted to be my biggest client. And, you know, just alone for a long time. And they sent me a message saying, you know, we’re about to come to Australia and run a campaign. We’d like you to do it for us. It’s like me seriously, I mean, come on out, you know, I’ve known you for a long time and I’ve been doing the cover is there so well, actually you on your own with one other person, deliver more to us, this is a global business, deliver more to us than everybody else in the marketplace. I had no idea. And that and and, and I said, Thank you very much. They became a client for the next eight years and generated a million dollars a year in revenue to our business. But that’s about if you are really executing at the best of your ability. You’re not worrying about your competition. And you are servicing your clients and your candidates. You will be amazed where these wonderful opportunities come from.
Belinda Kerr
Yeah, and you said it there too. It’s about Thinking about what they need and solving their problems, isn’t it and making life easy for them, as opposed to getting caught up in your own world and what your problems are and you need them to feed? You
Ed Andrew
know, to give you an example of that, you know, it’s it may be it’s a one off, I don’t know, but they remember and I remember these days because when you have your own business, you remember the big wins, right? You always remember the knocks. And they this client called me on a, I think a Thursday nights to look we’re having a real problem with this particular role. We can’t find anyone. They said that pay 30% if you can find that. When I was doing research driven, hybrid contingent fees. I said sure. So I picked up the phone, spoke to someone in Melbourne who worked in London wanted to go back and by Monday evening, he had an offer and there was 35 grand in the bank. Now I’m not saying that it you know, it’s just that you know what, when you if you’ve got and that’s because the research was in place, the database was in place. I had to make a few phone calls. I had to do a little bit of primer research myself look at my database see what I saw pick up the phone make the phone call, even if it’s 630 on a Thursday night make the phone call right go back to the client even if it’s midnight that night and Seth made the phone call we can you do the interview because it’s midday in London it’s nine o’clock at night here whatever happens to be you know, do that. Because if you don’t someone else will tomorrow. That’s the biggest lesson I learned is that if you don’t don’t do it now someone else will do it tomorrow and you don’t want to be tomorrow’s person. You want to be today’s person.
Belinda Kerr
Yeah, yeah, spot on. It comes back to the you know, getting into action doesn’t know you know, time kills deals. Time kills deal.
Ed Andrew
It’s knowing that you can do it and you’ve got to have the passion and the drive and the focus. They aren’t going to do that because if you do that you will be and that says not hard to execute. You will be number one in your field.
Belinda Kerr
Yeah. Thank you for that I you’ve just got such an inspiring journey that you’ve been on, I don’t know, people who’ve sort of not jumped that’s not the right word but embraced other areas like just quite like you have and I love what you said at the beginning about what it is all about people, you know, so, and and obviously, that’s taking you to where you are now. So if people would like to or maybe just tell us a little bit about you, you’ve alluded to at the beginning, but if people are interested in the human consultancy, how can they get in touch with you or what what sort of people can you help?
Ed Andrew
Okay, well, the human consultant is very easy. It’s just the human consultancy calm. I’m at Andrea, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Twitter, etc. But the websites the best place to go the human consultancy calm and the services that I offer. So for people coaching mentoring one on one, also have an online training process. Grand Coulee abundant current life system that is for people who are wondering Is this you know, who may be stressed at work disillusioned, disenfranchised, disengaged, maybe just want to go and start set up their own business don’t know how to do that have all the complications and the fears based around how do I go and do that and never do it. So I have a course which helps people do that. It also teaches self awareness because there’s no point in going from one job to another repeating everything you’ve done before. So it’s about it’s actually about finding the right role for you creating the right role and lifestyle for you. And rewiring brain chemistry. There’s a lot in euro science and psychology in there. So that’s that sort of on a on a personal level. I do also do a lot of still start up an SME consulting to businesses which are in start up and growth stage as well. And the other side is working with organizations. In relation to sort of corporate wellness, so if we look at the career life training, it’s about how do we help businesses manage a more engaged workforce. And that is not the result of, there are two ways you can do this. One is okay, we can optimize the potential of the people work for us so that we can challenge and stretch them more and they still burn out, but we’re going to get more out of them before they burn out, which is not what I’m talking about. This is about actually be working at 95% of the time to get better results. Okay, so having a more efficient, engaged workforce who wants to be there? And so there’s one point and the other is when people begin to experience stress at work, and everyone you can have one person who is under the same stress as the person next door, one is going to approach burnout, the other one’s going to survive is looking at the factors which influence that and so that we look at organizations and the people working for them. Point of View think, how do we manage stress? How do we recognize the symptoms of stress from your co workers and yourself? How do we create a safe psychological space for them to manage that because if you are working in an industry, you can see law tags, financial services, or aviation construction where someone who is at the severe stress can have an enormous impact negatively on their clients, customers, suppliers services, if you’re a law firm or accounting firm or take from it could cost your clients millions of dollars, billions of dollars. If you’re an aviation or construction, it could cost lives. So how do you as an organization create this framework for people to know that they are under a stressful situation, how that we can manage that they can put their hand up and they can get help.
Belinda Kerr
I think we’re getting better at that we use people we used to kind of bury a lot of it under the carpet but it seems to be coming to the fore more and you know, I know
Ed Andrew
I think it is I think the biggest challenge is in people understanding that when they do put their hand up, they’re not going to be punished for doing so.
Belinda Kerr
Yeah. I mean, stress makes you sick. There’s no question it’s, it’s proven. It’s a medical.
Ed Andrew
I closed a company cost me a million bucks. Six months later I had prostate cancer, which I beat but but the point is, is that that’s not going to happen to everyone. Some people you know, will have a skin infection or they get a cough or a cold, I get pneumonia, bronchitis, laryngitis, cancer, all sorts of you know, there’s so many scientific studies on this, which is it which is in my course, because the course is about the science behind this as well. And about environmental stress, and we know that that actually environmental long term exposure to environmental stress causes a breakdown in the gray matter. in certain areas of our brain, and with practice, like meditation, we can actually regenerate that. So there’s amazing work that we can do at the moment. So that’s human consults. It’s about
Belinda Kerr
We love ourselves, don’t we?
Ed Andrew
We do. And that’s the whole the concept of the human sense is bringing humanity into careers and life.
Belinda Kerr
Brilliant. Thank you. Well, now I’ve got no idea what to call this interview. We’ve talked about. We’ve talked about people talked about recruitment. We’ve talked about tech, we’ve always talked about neuroscience, so we’re just chatting
Ed Andrew
whatever works. Got a few life lessons, my
Belinda Kerr
life lessons with it, Ed Andrew, absolutely. Thank you so much. It’s been an absolute delight to to speak with you and I’m just I’m totally inspired about what you know what you’ve been up to, but you just look so relaxed. I’ve been watching the whites in your eyes. It’s so crystal clear. You’re so healthy. I
Ed Andrew
guess that’s that’s Thank you for having me on on the on the table and uh but yes, once you’ve I can say to say once you’ve had cancer you try and live a healthy lifestyle
Belinda Kerr
so thank you again
Ed Andrew
exercise we try it doesn’t doesn’t work every day of the week, I can promise you that.
Belinda Kerr
You know, that’s saying everything in moderation it’s gotta be. I think everyone’s definition of moderation might be a bit different. But, you know, living where you are in the Hunter Valley, I’m sure you tempted there. But
Ed Andrew
we’re close fish and also for everyone listening. You know, I think what Belinda is doing is offering a fantastic program to help people own recruitment business owners to really maximize their greatest potential which is to grow the business and give yourself more freedom and lifestyle and to really help you deliver the best customer service you can so so well done. Belinda
Belinda Kerr
Aww thank you very much. I’ll take that. Thanks Ed. Well, I look forward to hearing chatting to you next time and Plus you’ve got a podcast as well that people can, can listen to if they’re interested.
Ed Andrew
Yes, that is called the ED Andrew podcast on iTunes. And SoundCloud is also on the website here because honestly, I think I’m in Episode 35 now and you’ll find a neuroscientist loss entrepreneurs psychologists, three world leaders, one person who was named the important symptom So Tim Smith leading project was the eighth wonder of the world. amazing people in bringing about change in the world for the good.
Belinda Kerr
Yeah, fascinating stuff. Oh, brilliant. Well, thank you again, and I wish you all the very best with the human consultancy and thank you for your lovely contribution today.
Ed Andrew
My pleasure, Belinda.
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