(Re) Growing Pains - Rebuilding following the Pandemic
I am no expert, but would wager that ALL businesses around the world have been affected in one way or another by the pandemic.
Whether you have thrived and flourished, as take away services and online retail have, or been horribly and dangerously impacted with awful consequences, like restaurants and cinemas, zoos or the travel industry, there would have been some noticeable shift for the better or the worse.
My business focused on helping folk move from one country to another – like so many others, literally ground to a halt in March 2020. I am not singing a sorry tale of woe – we were far from the worst off folk in the world. But nonetheless – silence fell over the whole business for a good six months.
I had at that point spent almost 5 years building from the grassroots upwards, and had reached a period where things had started going really well. We were making more money, year on year, and investing it into hiring and developing our team. We had hit a pinnacle, in our own small way, and had a big (for us), busy and brilliant team in place, and were set for continued growth over the coming years.
Then the guillotine dropped and things changed immediately.
Relocation, Relocation, Relocation
I managed (with the UK government’s help) to keep everyone employed that wanted to be – but gradually as weeks turned into months, people moved on. London experienced an exodus of talent and several of my team moved away – to be ‘safer’ in less cramped circumstances. After all – what is the use of living in one of the world’s most vibrant cities, when you can’t see it? Or use the things it has to offer?
One moved home to Scotland to be nearer family, and have more access to the Great Outdoors. One chucked the towel in and moved with her family to Mexico – if you are going to down tools and stop working, you may as well do so in the sunshine, right? I don’t blame them for this and would have loved to do something similar.
Far from feeling sorry for myself, I was observing with horror and empathy as things unfolded around us. We were all hearing horror stories of individuals and employers struggling in many ways. And even outside the internal workings of my business, in its immediate surroundings, I was hearing awful tales. I had a candidate based in South Africa who had accepted a role in Canada. He had resigned from his job, pulled his kids out of school, his wife had left work and they had given up their home. They were more or less on the way to the airport when Canada shut her borders. And there were similar stories of displacement around the world.
Bouncebackability
We were not the worst off – but still, as our primary function is relocation, things were looking pretty dire.
With a skeleton staff of core, talented individuals, we battened down the hatches and did our best to weather the storm.
Thankfully, bit by bit and country by country, things started to move again. Borders opened up – and employers figured out solutions such as starting people working from their home countries, remotely, as things stabilised.
In our specialist market, Mergers & Acquisitions, things suddenly flew into life again. Corporate / Private Equity investors, who had been paused just as I had, waiting to see what was going to happen, had pockets full of cash that had been earmarked for expansion through acquisition. And it was burning holes.
Great news for me, as whilst Advisory firms had been scaling down and saving money, they had reduced team sizes, and suddenly needed to rebuild with fresh talent.
We’re Hiring! (And so is everyone else….)
This was of course a breath of fresh air for Global Pathways. However, the same was also happening across the recruitment industry. So whilst I had a good team of support staff, with Operations and Research taken care of, I was suddenly busier with hands-on recruiting than I have ever been before in my career. Great news, you might think. And I would agree! There certainly are worse problems to have.
The recruitment industry had to rebuild its capabilities overnight, and this meant a war on talent. When our clients are all looking to hire and we can’t hire ourselves, this is a significant threat to our business and industry! (for all you SWOT analysts out there!)
Experienced recruiters are currently hard to find – and experienced billers with solid track records have been able to almost command a salary of their choosing over the last year or so, as the industry scrabbles to make some hay whilst the sun shines…
Social Media to the rescue
I have engaged a number of ‘Rec to Recs’ – recruiters for the recruitment world – to help me regrow my team. But applications have been sparse and low in quality. I have tried using my personal network – but all of my recruiter friends and ex-colleagues are in the same boat looking for talent, and any recommendations they may have, they are exploring themselves.
Finally, after months of struggling and holding the recruiting fort down by myself, I have managed to rebuild a great team of people. We have doubled in size in the last quarter and I am extremely grateful to have some colleagues on hand to help manage the unprecedented workload. My focus now is to bed them in, get them up to speed on how we do things and make sure that our output quality remains top-notch. I finally found most of them through professional networking so the Power of Social Media is not to be underestimated in this candidate-short market!
We are now very optimistic about the future and would welcome interest from any experienced recruiters, looking to work in an intimate and very personable team, based in London. We offer a great environment in which to succeed and have fun whilst we make money.
Sense of humour is the main requirement! As well as being an excellent recruiter. Having built a business culture I enjoy and am proud of, it is more important to me to uphold the cohesive and fun work environment than have ‘bums on seats’ who will detract from it. I strive to maintain an environment in which people want to come to work and enjoy being there, whilst having opportunities to learn, develop and grow professionally.
I am interested to hear any stories you might have to share on your journey through the storm! How was the pandemic, professionally, for you? Did you have any great or terrible experiences? Please share them below!
Lockdown Hair
