Alex Rawlings

SUMMARY

What distinguishes contingency recruiters from search and selection, advertising and selection, and other recruitment methods?

Retained recruiters (engaged or contained) have a better success rate of 90-100% and are often smaller specialist businesses. Contingency recruiters typically fill 15-20% of their searches. It is crucial to realize that when working with recruiters, the goal of filling a vacancy is being purchased rather than just recruitment services, and it is advised to collaborate with a recruiter who is familiar with your industry.

What steps do Alex Rawlings and his company take when a customer approaches them searching for a chief executive, and what data do they acquire to ensure that they make the best placement?

The approach entails having a thorough conversation to fully grasp the motivations behind the opportunity, the degree of urgency, and the location of pain and issues within the organization.

What is the function of an operational partner in private equity, and why is it crucial for businesses to have a good working relationship with a recruitment partner?

An operating partner in private equity, also referred to as a portfolio director or portfolio manager in Europe, is a business executive who sits on the boards of the portfolio companies they manage and support. They bring knowledge and people who understand how to run a business as a portfolio company rather than how to run a private equity firm. For businesses to avoid filling positions hastily and to ensure that the recruitment partner is contributing value to the company, a close working relationship with a recruitment partner is necessary.

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TRANSCRIPT

Marcus Cauchi: Hello. And welcome back to The Inquisitor Podcast with me, Marcus Cauchi. Today as my guest, I have Alex Rawlings who is the managing partner of Raw Selection. They're specialist recruiter focusing on private equity and portfolio company executive search.

Marcus Cauchi: Alex. Welcome.

Alex Rawlings: Thank you very much for having me Marcus.

Marcus Cauchi: Alex, Welcome.

Alex Rawlings: Yeah. Thank you very much, for having me Marcus, and looking forward to this discussion.

60 seconds on your background

Marcus Cauchi: Wonderful. Could you give us 60 seconds on your background and the type of work that you do?

Alex Rawlings: Yeah. So as, Marcus, said in the intro, basically we're an executive search firm. We work exclusively with private equity firms and their portfolio companies working across Europe and north America.

Alex Rawlings: So my background has been within executive search. I began doing very junior low level low level's probably not the right term, but junior type appointments. Within the dental industry and then progressed on through industrial manufacturing and eventually just got hacked off with, the recruitment industry that I was, or the businesses that I'd worked in.

Alex Rawlings: Things could be done better. Things could be developed and processes improved and, and therefore struck out on my own and, went for the private equity industry because to be honest, I, I really wanted to place chief exec CFO, so a little bit ego driven, but also I wanted to do something bit different at a more senior level and therefore, broke into this market.

Alex Rawlings: So not, the most glamorous of stories, no broken back things, just somebody who wanted to, do things a little bit different.

Different types of recruiter

Marcus Cauchi: Okay. So Alex, let, let's talk about the different types of recruiter. So we have contingency recruiters, advertising and selection and then search and selection. Would you mind just explaining the difference so that people who are thinking about partnering with recruiters understand the difference, between.

Alex Rawlings: Absolutely. And I can go through it and I'll go through the actual difference, between what the, the service level offer. But I'll give you wide regard as the, the real difference between what that is. If you work with somebody contingent, contingency firms tend to fill anywhere between 15 to 20% of their searches.

Alex Rawlings: If you work with a retained recruit, there's terms like engaged or contained. There's all sorts of different things have kind of come out now, but where there's a transaction, usually at the front, and then there's a set process of what's gonna happen. You know, you work with someone like us and we're at a hundred percent and typically you'll find firms at the more niche and small end. I'm not talking about Russell Reynolds and those big boys, but typically you'll find it where it's those smaller niche type businesses. You're looking at 90 to a hundred percent of a success rate. And there's your key differentiators.

Marcus Cauchi: What's really important here is to understand that none of you are buying recruitment services. Anyone who goes to a recruiter has tasks that need to be done and you need somebody to do it. So you're buying the outcome. So if you want the vacancy filled, then my strong recommendation is dig deeper into your pockets. You will save yourself a shitload of time because instead of dealing with 20, recruitment agencies filling your voicemail with interrupted voice, voice messages, your inbox with CVS that they're no relation, or if they do, you have to sift through 400 of them. You are better served working with somebody who understands your business and works with you in partnership rather than treating your recruiters like commodity providers, who are a little better than slavers in ancient Rome.

Contingent recruiter

Marcus Cauchi: So contingent recruiter, basically they get paid if their CV gets the stamp that says we hired your person, and they may be one of 3, 5, 6, 12, 20 companies, all trying to fill the vacancy.

Advertising and selection

Marcus Cauchi: Advertising and selection, you pay them a certain amount of money, they run an advert, and then they sift, do the sifting for you.

Retained search

Marcus Cauchi: And then you have retained search, which is head hunting. Head hunters go out and they specifically target individuals who have a good cultural fit who are able to do the job, but also will be a good compliment to your existing team. So it doesn't always work out. Let's be honest, but you have a much higher probability of filling the vacancy with the right kind of candidate.

Marcus Cauchi: All you have to do is look at the churn rates of people in your organization where you have done it rather through luck than judgment and without a systematic process or an expert in finding those sorts of people. The failure rate of executive level placements is two in five. That's the average, which means 40% of your vision is blown out the water within 12 months. So it makes a good deal of sense to work with someone who really understands your business, your marketplace, the competitive landscape and the types of people that, you're looking to, recruit and the outcomes that you are trying to implement. Is that fair?

Alex Rawlings: Yeah. Completely, completely agree. If you look at things and it's, it's not only what happens with those processes. It's but it's what, when, when a retain campaign is, is taking taken up, it's actually what happens with regards to the actual process of filling that search. And it's been best explained to me kind of when I was making that transition was when you actually beginning on that process, if you were to go out to an accountancy firm and you were to say to speak to three accountancy firms and say, look, we want you to do our books and the end of the year, whichever one's done will pay. You're not going to get the best possible books with all the information they're not gonna put the time. They're not gonna put the effort in. They're not gonna do the whole resourcing. They're not gonna look through the whole of your books and look how you're gonna say tax. They're gonna do a bit of a job and then present it to you. Probably give it to an office junior. Now I do appreciate with some of the big firms that they do that, you know, as if we look at big executive search firms, you, you guys are hydrogen struggles and your fees and the fee for an introduction's gonna be below. Probably a hundred K, whether that's us dollar, 120,000 UK pounds, you're probably gonna get thrown to an associate, but that's why I push people to speak to niche and, and, firms.

Alex Rawlings: So if you look at the retain model, it's mapping out the industry it's going after your competitors. It's looking at similar and, and like-minded industries, whether it's a manufacturing company that makes widgets, you go after all the widget manufacturers and similar companies that man manufacture metallic components.

Alex Rawlings: Same with the software business. You'll look at all the similar exact competitors or software companies that are in that growth stage. They're about the revenue level and that's, what's important within that process. Therefore you will come out with a better executive that fits better, you know, on a contingent basis.

Alex Rawlings: You're basically hedging your bets with five or six searches, and you'll probably place, you know, one or two of them. And therefore you're not gonna get the full look in the market. You're gonna get somebody that probably looks great and don't get me wrong. I've worked contingent out. I've made some great introductions, but it wasn't because I mapped out the market and went through it.

Alex Rawlings: It was because I had the right person at the right time. And could there have been a better person where you could always argue, there could be a better person, but either with, if you, what would you rather, the kind of here's the person that I know is available and on, on my books, which I hate that comment, but that's contingent in a way, or would you rather have a really deep dive look into the market and approach proactively potential individuals from within the industry that I either not looking or maybe I'm looking.

Marcus Cauchi: What I've always taught my clients when I was in training and, my people on my team now i s you prospect for choice. And if you are working with a retained search firm, then what they will be doing is giving you the choice of the best in the available in the market. With contingency, they have roughly a four to 20% win rate.

Marcus Cauchi: So on average, most contingent recruiters are operating closer to the four than the 20, which means that they have to play. They have to work on 5, 10, 15, 20 assignments every single month. If you're paying a retainer, then you have the attention of that executives consultant. So that's, another great reason for investing in search.

What it takes to do a good search?

Marcus Cauchi: So let's just dig a little bit deeper into the reality of what it takes to do a good search. So a prospect comes to you or a client comes to you and they say, Alex, we're looking for a chief executive. What sort of briefing do you take them through in order to discover the depth and breadth of understanding that you need in order to make the right placement first time?

Alex Rawlings: Yeah, absolutely. So we've got a, a set process as a business that we go through, which have found that most recruitment firms, will go over, but maybe not to the, the kind of level of detail that they should, but rather than talking about, you know, what other firms do, let's talk about what, what that looks like.

Alex Rawlings: So the first thing we're looking to understand as a business, is what what's actually going on within the organization. So firstly, what's the reasons why this, this opportunity's come to fruition, what's happening within the organization and getting a really good detail around the situation that it sits.

Alex Rawlings: We'll then look at the urgency level and how do we need somebody within the next day? Do we need somebody tomorrow? Do we need somebody in maybe 12 months to kind of build that picture? And then we look at where the pain and the problems are sitting within the organization. So it's really for us is unearthing.

Alex Rawlings: You know, if we've looking at the chief executive, a lot of our client, or pretty much all of our clients, if it's on the portfolio side are gonna be looking to do a tra a transaction within three to five years, or if they've owned this business for a while, potentially even shorter. So what are the potential risk factors here?

Alex Rawlings: What are the potential issues that are currently sitting in the business? Why are they looking to make this change? What happens? What's happened within the business? Why is this basically this opportunity come to fruition and where does the pain sit? Where's the problems? Where's the issues? And that's what we're trying to unearth in kind of those first initial kind of conversation, providing all that fits will then move forward. So if you tell me that you need a job filling within nine months and you know, you're happy with your chief exec, if we can find somebody who's, who's bang on, you may hire them. We're not gonna go any further. Probably with that conversation, you know, we'll be polite, but, , we understand where that urgency level is there and where the pain, where the problems are. And then we'll look to progress to kind of further discussions. And Paul's there to, to break for a question.

How often do you find that the person that looking to retain your service really understands what it is that they need from that new hire?

Marcus Cauchi: How often do you find that the person that looking to retain your service really understands what it is that they need from that new hire?

Alex Rawlings: It's interesting actually, because if you look at the private equity guys, then a lot of these people, you know, no disrespect to them, they're very successful in their field, but a lot of them are on the finance side. And therefore, when they tend to hire a chief financial officer, they tend to know what they want from the CFO for, for like, for coming to them and what information they need and what reporting and what structures and what, all that kind of stuff. When it actually comes to running a business, the very best private equity guys will tell me that they are not operators. They do not run in that business. But in order to answer your question, how often do they really know what they need? It's quite rarely. Do they actually know the ins and outs of the type of individual that they require to get this business to a liquidity event? And there can be a lot of scenarios where chief execs are changed out where you, you know, an executive said it to me was on the phone with him yesterday. We're very close on an offer. And he's, he's said to me, you know, 50% of private equity firms on their deals, they change the chief exec through hope that's that it will change the business. And then the other 50% are making a change because they need a new chief exec. And that person is not at the level that they need to grow it.

Alex Rawlings: So the first 50% is more so if we change this individual, it will change the business. Whereas, you know, fundamentally there may be some issues in the business. So to answer your question, I'd probably say if I talk on five searches, one of them will fundamentally know the ins and outs of that company well enough. And I have to say a lot of the times that where that, that is that one is either that partner's really switched on within the business and, and really understands the operations and, and how it, how it works, or they're actually an operating partner and they work. And they're an experienced chief exec and have moved into a, an operating partner role, which I'm happy to explain if, if, if that, you know.

What a liquidity event is?

Marcus Cauchi: Can you define for people who are not familiar with the term, what a liquidity event is?

Alex Rawlings: Sorry. So a liquidity event is when a business takes it through to an exit process. So that's typically where it'll sell to what they call a strategic, which is, usually a big blue chip type corporation or a competing business, or they'll sell to another private equity firm. And then there's of course, you know, where they go through IPOs in various different ways. But typically they either sell to a competitor or big large blue chip, or they sell to another private equity firm or go through another three to five years and then sell again, either to another P firm or strategic, of course there's IPO, but that's not as, not as common, certainly not nowadays. But certainly not within the private equity industry in the lower middle market, which is where I specialize.

Operational side effects

Marcus Cauchi: Okay. So then can you go on to, describe what you mean by the operational side effects?

Alex Rawlings: Yeah. So, in, in the States, it's usually called an operating partner,in the US. We're kind of in Europe, we're kind of taking on like a portfolio director or portfolio manager type title. Usually and I say usually, but sometimes it isn't, but usually that is an executive that's come from within the industry.

Alex Rawlings: Who's been a chief executive, maybe in a couple of portfolio deals and has sold those businesses or is a chief exec of a really large bluechip organization. And they've decided to bring them in as a, as an operating partner, albeit that's not usually as successful. And they are proven executives that sit on and kind of manage and support the portfolio companies and that bridge between the private equity firm and the portfolio company and bringing expertise and people who understand how to run a business as a portfolio company, rather than how to run a private equity firm and grow that. And that's where we, we've seen a lot of businesses making that transition to bringing people on.

Marcus Cauchi: Okay. So let's talk about the kind of relationship that works really effectively between a hiring organization, whether it's private equity or the company itself, and the retained recruiting recruitment partner.

Marcus Cauchi: One of the things that's struck me over the years is how reactive people are in recruitment. And what I'd like to explore is why having a close working relationship with a recruitment partner is essential so that you'll never try to fill a job in haste.

Alex Rawlings: Absolutely. And this is easy one from a, a recruitment perspective to really position and sell what we do. But so coming it from a, the hardest thing for, for any, you know, for any business owner that I speak to is finding really good suppliers and is working in partnership and in tandem with them, cause it's fundamental for the growth of the business. Whether it's a recruitment business or whether it's a, you know, your software provider or it's your, your, your metal supplier. If you're, if you're manufacturing business of, you know, we'll go back to the widgets again. You know, whatever it is, the supplier base, you know, having a really good accountant is really good both for your end of year returns personally, but also for, for your business and making sure you're maximizing what you're doing.

Alex Rawlings: So finding any good relationship in that partnership is essential for companies. And you know, the amount of business owners that we speak to that are frustrated with the software provider, the customer service crap is crap. They don't get any additional support. So if you think about any problem where you've bought something, even if you're not a business owner and you listening to this you know you bought something and you've had buyer's remorse or you wish you hadn't got that because that laptop isn't as good. Or you, you wish you'd brought a Mac or you wish you'd brought HP or whatever. That is the fundamental reason why when you're partnering, you're in a really strong relationship with a search firm that it's not a master servant relationship, that it is a really good communication.

Alex Rawlings: You're actually, that person is adding value. Now I appreciate there's some of the stuff I'm about to say, if that isn't happening, it's probably that you need to find a different search partner or you need to realign how you work with them. Coming back to your earlier question of those, you know, what do we ask and what do we go through?

Alex Rawlings: It's understanding fundamentally what the business is at. And regularly when we've asked those kind of initial questions and we go through the pain and the problems, and then looking at what does success look like for an organization. So if they don't mirror and they don't match, so you've got a load of pain in the business where, you know, let's say your procurements shot, you're not getting the right things, your on time, delivery's really poor, your customer service levels are disastrous. But your, you know, your sales are incredible. And, you know, the private equity guys telling me that this is what success looks like. We want egss in three to five years and then missing all of these pain and these problems then that's our responsibility to push back and be like, okay, I suggest if you've got this issue, which are basically operational issues, then having a really strong commercial CEO is probably not where the business needs. If you've got operational issues, so it sounds like actually your chief operation,officer's not doing as good a job as you'd like. And actually we probably need a really strong operational CO, CEO to come in here and leverage that.

Alex Rawlings: And then if your sales are really strong, but your ops are rubbish, that's where your problem sits. Whereas private equity firm might be actually, we've got high sales. We need somebody who can continue and grow that. Yes, of course you do. But if that's where your key strength is as a business, you need to look at your weaknesses and build in your weaknesses because clearly someone in that company's driving that sales growth. And you are not looking to change your CEO because they're, they're too good at sales.

Marcus Cauchi: They're gonna be getting very pissed off because a lot of their time will be taken up with dealing with unhappy customers who they've got through the front door and are being, let out the back door because of poor operations or poor service.

Alex Rawlings: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Marcus Cauchi: So the, the challenge here is that as a supplier, whatever business you are in, it's incumbent on you to challenge your customer or your prospects thinking and their preconceptions and assumptions. Because, unless you are going to just be an order taker for which frankly, you do not deserve a premium. Just taking an order, hire someone off the YTS team. If it still exists, I'm showing my age now. In that case, clearly that was something in manufactures' time. So gives you a bit of a carbon dating on me. But all you need is a clipboard in an order form. There's no skill for that. If you're gonna be a supplier who is a genuine partner to your customers, Then you need to be ready to have difficult conversations.

Marcus Cauchi: You need to be ready to say no to them. You need to be ready to tell them the cold, hard truth. Knowing that they may not like to hear it. Do it respectfully and do, but do it with the right intent. And if they don't want to follow your advice, then bluntly, it's incumbent on you to say, you know, we're not taking that up.

Compromising the customer is a disservice by operating out of scarcity

Marcus Cauchi: I don't wanna be associated with a failure for lack of spine. And I, I think one of the challenges here is that so many people operate out of scarcity. And as a result, what they're willing to do is compromise. And in compromising they do their customer a disservice.

Marcus Cauchi: Your thoughts?

Alex Rawlings: Yeah. No absolutely agree. And it's all about that again, that comes down to the fundamentals of the relationship and, and choosing the right supplier, working with that. And if you are going out there looking for that, and fundamentally you wanna work with the right firm, then that's, what's gonna get you that strong relationship.

Alex Rawlings: Whereas if you want that kind of wider gathers transactional type approach, then you know, you're gonna get CVS on your desk and then you're gonna move on from there. But you know, there there's two, both people have responsibility there, you know, both the, the search firm to be able to turn down the business and not just chase the cash fundamentally, probably waste their time.

Alex Rawlings: And then also the, the, the actual firm business itself to actually identify what it really wants. And how do we actually grow strategically as a business? You know, the types of deals or placements that we, that we do, you know, they're not, they're not low cost, in consideration with, you know, where the market could be sat, but also the actual.

Alex Rawlings: What happens at, you know, the word liquidity event, the exit event that I spoke about, you're talking millions and millions of pounds, dollars, euros, whatever it's in. So therefore fundamentally getting that right at the front end spending could be 50, could be 120, could be 150 K with a search firm.

Alex Rawlings: Fundamentally is very small in comparison with millions and millions of pounds on an exit value.

Marcus Cauchi: Absolute pickings by comparison, one of my, recruitment clients cited an example a couple of years back where he placed a chief medical officer who added 330 million to the value of the business. So paying him 150 grand to find this chief medical officer is cheap as chips.

Customer success

Marcus Cauchi: I mean, it literally is pocket change. It's the, the price of the money that you would spend on biscuits in a decent boardroom over the next three years. So do not skimp. If you're gonna hire don't fall into the Dilbert's trap, where Dilbert walks into the, boss's office and he says, Dilbert, it's not true people aren't our most important asset. They come ninth after paperclips. If you have that attitude towards your people, then frankly, you deserve to fail the research that's just come out in Salesforce and it it's not mind blowing. It's in fact, it's, it cannot be that obvious really. Customer success is determined by the customer outcomes over the customer experience, plus the employee experience.

Marcus Cauchi: And if you don't have great leadership, if you don't have great management, then chances are the resources will not be made available to the employee. The culture of the organization will not be strong. They will not all be marching to the same tune in the same direction, towards the same outcome. And the reality is that it is tough out there.

Marcus Cauchi: We have the pandemic in the UK, we have Brexit. That's another 6% of our GDP. This year, we're looking at somewhere between 15 and 22% reduction in GDP. We're right at the beginning of a depression. The pandemic is not going away, whatever Mat Hancock weeps over on TV in terms of the vaccine coming in. We've got another 12 to 18 months of this.

Marcus Cauchi: We have the fallout from the US market in terms of the confusion and the delays around the handover of the presidency. We don't know what's gonna happen over there. There is an awful lot going on at the moment. That means we are gonna go through tough times and you need great leadership to see us through this.

Marcus Cauchi: And you need leaders who are looking ahead. They need to be planning three to five years in advance. Just because there's a lot of uncertainty doesn't mean you can't do the planning. And a chief executive's role is to be the totem. They are the standard bearer around which everybody else should be crowding and saying, okay, this is the story.

Great crew and leadership to grow the business

Marcus Cauchi: This is what we are doing. This is the vision of the business. And without a strong chief executive, with a good operations and a good finance team, good marketing, good sales, chances are you will become irrelevant to your customers. So if you want to grow your business, you need great people at the helm and you need a great leadership team and you need a great crew.

Recruitment as the number one job of every leader

Marcus Cauchi: And recruitment is fundamentally the most important function any leader and any manager has. It is your number one job. If you hire well, you onboard well and you develop well then miraculously, most of your management problems disappear. And part of the problem here is I don't believe that people see recruitment as the number one job of every leader.

Marcus Cauchi: So why is that? Why is it, relegated to a commodity? Why is it relegated to an interruption to their day?

Alex Rawlings: It's not understood. And to come back and I'll answer that question, but it's come back to it. I can't remember which book I read it from, but good book, but 90% of business problems are talent problems in disguise. Which is, again, it's really easy for me as a recruiter to say that because it fuels kind of the industry that I work in. But, you know, looking at it from both as running a business as well, when you have an organization, even as a recruiter, we say, you know, if we could just have three more of that person, five more of that person, you know, even one more of that person, we would fundamentally be stronger as a business and we'd be able to grow faster.

Right people into the right roles

Alex Rawlings: And if we can bring the right people into the right roles and those problems, they become how hard challenges of to overcome and grow. And those people take it upon themselves. Whereas when you've got the wrong types of people, you can't overcome those issues, you can't overcome those problems. You've got a book in front of me in, in the moment.

Alex Rawlings: I don't recommend highly the book, but we can easily read about marketing. You know, marketing is a little bit of a mystery until you go through it. And then you realize that you set up a podcast, you realize that you, you know, you do email marketing, you know, that you put adverts on Facebook that you put advert on LinkedIn.

Alex Rawlings: We can follow those actions. But when we're actually interviewing somebody, we haven't taken the same approach as business leaders on how to actually interview people. I don't know, a single executive that's ever had training on interviewing. Not that I've asked everyone, but I've never had anybody go to me oh yeah, yeah, I've had, I've really good fundamental training on how to interview and how to select people and how to identify problems in the business. You know, there's a great book called, Who by Geoff smart, which is one of the best recruitment books I've ever read about .Creating scorecards for people about identifying gaps about identifying areas within your business. What are the outcomes, what do you want them to succeed in? And we've built a lot of that around our vacancy take on process and the new search we'll go through building that out to be able to identify what a client needs. And I think that is the reason why, because it's put down as a bit of a bit of an art, whereas actually everything is science and we've gotta understand it.

Alex Rawlings: We aren't gonna get it a hundred percent, right? But we shouldn't be at the, the areas of kind of 20% feel or, you know, losing two out of five c suite execs, as you mentioned earlier. We shouldn't be at that level. So therefore, fundamentally we haven't put the time and effort in that's. One of the things I've put into the business here, because the mistakes I've made is actually having an interview process, having a selection process, having an understanding of the type of individual I need for that particular market or that particular job.

Alex Rawlings: And that is I think the reason why we haven't focused enough on what it is, we've just kind of, I'm a good interview cause I had Johnny and he's done that. But the last, the other five people I interviewed and took on, they were all rubbish, but Johnny was good.

Marcus Cauchi: It's really interesting that two out five statistic has been around for over 18 years.

Alex Rawlings: Right.

Marcus Cauchi: And it hasn't shifted. It's still 40% of executive hires fail within, the first year. Now that's a damning indictment of leadership because they do not invest in a, a recruitment methodology. That is scientific and reliable and they don't iterate on it .So that they don't learn from their previous mistakes.

Salesforce research

Marcus Cauchi: The other thing that baffles me is the total failure of applying the, of either implementing exit interviews and or implementing the lessons learned .And exit interview should be where the leaving candidate should tell the cold, hard unvarnished truth, and you should listen. And in fact, Salesforce's research points to something, a parallel on this, which is that companies that speak to unhappy customers on a regular basis have a six times faster product development cycle than companies that don't. You need to invite the uncomfortable conversations and the, the constructive criticism of people who are unhappy.

Marcus Cauchi: You're unhappy customers, you're unhappy employees and exiting employees. And whether they are jaded and angry and bitter or not listen to what they have to say, because in there you will find some painful and useful truths. And always recruit better. Recruit. up when someone leaves, recruits someone better than the person who has just left. Which means that you have to revisit the job description and the hiring template. Don't just cut and paste it.

Marcus Cauchi: And, again, I'm sure this is going to cause a outcry among the HR community, but there aren't many who listen to my podcast. So I'm probably safe. But for God's sake, get HR out of the recruitment process because they spend more of their time on the R than the H. They spend a more time on resources than the human side.

Marcus Cauchi: The reality is that, having human resources running your recruitment process, I think is catastrophic in many organizations. Certainly most of them. Good HR is worth their weight and goal. Don't get me wrong. They're fantastic. But good HR is like finding a unicorn cause most HR has been relegated to a cheap alternative to legal advice.

A manager should be recruiting every day

Marcus Cauchi: They spend their time on disciplinary, they spend their time on, punitive staff, on putting together contracts. On putting together policy. But this is about recruiting people for your team. And that requires a great deal of insight and HR doesn't have the bandwidth for that. As a manager, you should be recruiting every day. You should be interviewing candidates every day. You should be building your bench every day so that when you do have a vacancy, you've got five good candidates who all fit the profile. Who meet all of your must have requirements, have many of your nice to haves. None of your red flags have already been, talked to about what the offer is likely to be and have accepted the terms.

Marcus Cauchi: And what you're looking for is the one who of the five who is available, who any of them could do the job. Now, if you do that, then you're recruiting through choice. You're not recruiting reactively and you must never compromise on recruitment because wrong hires are the single highest cost in any business I've ever come across.

Marcus Cauchi: And can you think of an instance where a bad hire has not been catastrophically expensive?

Alex Rawlings: I can think of an instance to where it has and it's been private equity and it's a company called Toys R Us.

Marcus Cauchi: Right. And what happened to them?

Alex Rawlings: Well, try and get, try and find them. Fortunately, the, I can't remember the name of the giraffe, but you can no longer. I'm pretty sure there is actually one store left but it was bought out.

It's an accumulation of decisions that cause an organization to fall down

Alex Rawlings: It won't be Toys R Us anymore. But yeah, you can't have. Evidently no one, no one business decision causes one thing to fail. It's an, an accumulation of decisions that cause an organization to fall down. But you know, if you try and pinpoint it at certain things, it was Toys R Us rejection of the internet and the lack of foresight. You know, was it cake house fault?

Alex Rawlings: You know, everyone's got a bit of responsibility around that. But, you know, at the end of the day, Toys R US turned around and went, no people love coming in our store, will outsource everything to Amazon. And then a load of fundamental issues also accumulated along with that. Blockbuster was the same, you know, they did a re they did research, and their research said that people like the opportunity to, to come into our store and, and actually touch and feel the DVD packets and read the back, which is ridiculous.

Alex Rawlings: People like the opportunity or like the potential of bumping into a neighbor within our store. And number three, people like the, engaging with the person behind the, desk and the opportunity to buy popcorn. Now, those not verbatim, cause I will have, paraphrased or maybe, got a bit of, a little bit of a wrong, but the gist of the point was there.

Alex Rawlings: And that was research done by blockbuster as to why they weren't going online. And then something called Netflix came along and, and you search. Now that comes down to your fundamental top leadership people. And you made an interesting point when an executive leaves don't hire that same position. If you're in a growing business and you have ambition to grow, now that's stupid. Cause every company says, oh, we wanna grow by this, we wanna grow about that. Yeah. Fundamentally everybody in their mindset once. But when it actually comes down to the action of it, they don't, which is why we have lifestyle businesses. Which fund the Ferraris and the Bentleys and the Rolls Royces of the owners.

Alex Rawlings: And fundamentally the business doesn't go forward. It tends to shrink, or the thermostat tends to reset if they go to 17 million the fall back to 15, because that's where the business is comfortable. So it's about thinking, right. This business wants to grow, this person's exiting, we've grown from, let's say 20 million to 50 million or whatever, or maybe five to seven, whatever the, the, the change has been. The business is different now. The business has different, those implemented processes, things that work, you now need somebody who's come in at that better level. You know, if you've had a marketing executive, hire a marketing director to come in and drive that growth and take it to the next level. So, yeah, fundamentally, if you've got somebody and they've left, listen to what they've.

Alex Rawlings: Typically we blame the individual that leaves that it was their fault. And then when we have somebody as successful, it was our fault for hiring them. And we brought them on and we develop them. Well, we kind of probably need to, to flip that around when somebody leaves and doesn't perform, we need to take accountability for that.

Alex Rawlings: And that's our fault. And when somebody does perform, we need to put all the praise and all the responsibility on that individual is that will continue to grow them. But that's how I would look at that as, you know, making that change in making that shift fundamentally.

Marcus Cauchi: Well, again, I, I'm gonna take this a, a step further that not only does recruitment need to be a daily activity for anyone in management and above.

CFO as a lead funnel for great sales people

Marcus Cauchi: And what we should also look at is how CFOs are talent spotters. CFOs are constantly being pitched. What we should be looking at there is, using the CFO as a lead funnel for great sales people. I think we're tying up the CFO with the head of sales and saying, I've been approached by this individual. You should talk to him about joining our business. I think that's a really very powerful resource as well. And you gotta think outside of the box, you gotta partner up with your recruiters as well and say, this is our vision for the business. This is where we are aiming to head in 12 24, 36 months.

A strategic relationship with your search partner

Marcus Cauchi: These are the kinds of roles that we are going to meet in this period. So we're gonna home grow some of them, but what we also want is choice. So we wanna augment our internal candidates with external candidates so that we are getting the best people. This is the kind of strategic relationship I would advocate with your search partner. It's not something that you just bring them in when you have a vacancy. If it were me, I would want my search partner in every quarter so I can update them in terms of where we are, where we're headed, the obstacles that we're facing, what the competitive landscape is. I'd also want to get from them, what trends they are seeing because search firms are wonderful resource for research.

Marcus Cauchi: That's their stocking trade. They spend their lives researching markets and researching people. What kind of clarity of vision, are you able to offer your clients because of that expertise that you have in researching markets?

Three fundamentals of a recruiting business

Alex Rawlings: It's interesting. And there's a fundamental, you know, if you look at the, the three fundamentals of a, of a recruiting business, you've got the client side, which is that interaction, which is a lot of our, you know, will be like with myself or one of the other client guys within the business. You've then got the, the kind of intervening function within the business. And then you've got the research functionality. And some businesses as, as you'll see, the recruitment industry is actually starting to transition a little bit, albeit very slowly, cause we are very archaic as in industry. You know, people are still doing interviews on paper and filing them in boxes and sending them off to, I dunno, wherever they send these, things to for storage, but you know, you research side of, and, and there's not many firms.I know that actually work on technology and have everything on the cloud, but the that's a different, different conversation. But on a, on a research basis, you know, what are we doing every day? We're speaking to your competitors. We're speaking to the candidates within those businesses that are giving us insights to what's happening.

Alex Rawlings: What's growing, what's moving. There's wide regard as the intangibles with regards to what we know. And some of that will be correct. And some of it will be false observations and that clients and candidates and, and various other people have, have shared with us. But overall, it gives us an insight into what's happening.

Alex Rawlings: So that's wide regard as the kind of intangibles, which a client wouldn't grow their business on the back of and fundamentally change things, but it adds into their understanding of what's going on in the market. Who's making shifts, when's the next Uber within your industry coming forward and how do you put yourself at the forefront?

Alex Rawlings: I'm not saying that we're predicting Uber. I'm just saying that we give you a different insight because you will not be speaking to the chief executive of your competitor or a similar industry on a regular basis because we're either pitching them candidates or we're trying to get them as a candidate with those conversations.

Alex Rawlings: So what do we pick up on our, on our research process, we pick up how businesses are growing. So we fundamentally understand when we interview candidates at senior level, how our business has grown. You know, is this industry particularly focused on, organic growth and that seems, seems to be where, because there isn't as much of a buy and build play and that's a terminology for, you know, an acquisition growth or is it more of a, a, sorry, is it more of an acquisition side? And they're actually making loads of plays and this huge opportunity here. What are the challenges that a lot of these businesses are facing? Is it all very similar? Again, it will all come down to talent, but it'll all be in different areas.

Alex Rawlings: And where are the, you know, in the aerospace and defense industry, who's winning the most programs, who's winning the most defense contracts and kind of what's coming through there. So there's a little bit which kind of sits maybe a little borderline with the intangibles, but I put that as tangible because we can understand how our business has grown and how our chief exec has developed that.

Alex Rawlings: And then obviously it comes down to the actual individual with regards to their salaries and how it sits. You know, we work everything on tech. So if you came to us and said, look, we're actually looking to appoint a chief exec. We'd be able to tell you all the chief executives, across your industry in similar, in competing, this is the typical compensation structure.

Alex Rawlings: And we'd even be able to break that down to here's all the examples of the chief executives that have done exits. That have achieved businesses to grow, to, to exit those companies. And also there's also, you know, team sizes who's in where, where do people sit? How much of it. Have they've got human capital within,within their marketing team, within their sales team, within their operations team.

Alex Rawlings: And we build out things like that. And they've also got fundamentally where do these people tend to come from as execs? You know, where are the, is there trends between the individual that you've hired as a CEO in their success and where their background and net and, and track record come from, which we've gotta be careful on because not an, a player in one business, isn't always an, a player in another.

Alex Rawlings: They are sometimes let's say if I go and join, if I went and joined Uber to three years ago, and I was the VP of marketing, not knowing much, maybe not the VP marketing, cause they've really pushed that really well. But let's say I was the COO of Uber, which their operations is not strong from what I've heard.

Alex Rawlings: They're certainly their profit isn't. So.,I could look really good, but I joined Uber and Uber was on its way up. So we've gotta fundamentally understand who was the driving force within that business. And you can be a passenger in a business and look good. But it's understanding the fundamentals of where it comes from.

Alex Rawlings: So there's a lot more to that, but I could go on all day with regards to research functionality, but that gives you an insight into what we know of what's going on.

Marcus Cauchi: Well, very helpful. I think it's also really important when you are working with your search partner to fundamentally understand the dynamics that go on within the leadership team.

Are you ever brought in to leadership team meetings so that you can look at the dynamics to how they work together?

Marcus Cauchi: And, looking at the strengths and weaknesses, are, are you ever brought in to leadership team meetings so that you can look at the dynamics to how they work together? I think that would be a really interesting

Alex Rawlings: It's not, it's not something that we've done actually. What we tend to do is speak to the PE guys and then speak to the portfolio guys and understand fundamentally.

Alex Rawlings: We can usually get a fairly good picture. And then you're looking at kind of, you know, if you wanna bring things in, you go down the behavioral psychologist route and assess the business from the fully, rather than I would all suggest to a client, look, go with the best that you can get. If you want to go cheap, then bring me in and have me sat in a meeting and I can give you an insight into it. If you really want to take a business forward and, and grow it when you're in your due diligence phase or when you are in your, in your later, stages of going towards your last two years towards exit, bring in the behavioral psychologist. Spend, you know, we've got, we've got guy who works with us, a raw selection who will do that. And they will understand here's your strengths, here's your weaknesses. And this is like a lot of business. Ah, yeah. You know, we've done personality tests. I'm like, yeah, but this is like a personality test, but this is on crack. This is the huge amount of growth within a business that can happen, and a huge amount of understanding of each individual within a company and therefore, you know, whereabouts you, where whereabouts you are and all of that.

Alex Rawlings: So, that's, what's really key, from that perspective is, is again bringing the, the, the individuals. And I agree with you on bringing in, you know, the recruiter, but sometimes I would argue that the recruiter doesn't know that well enough to be able to understand it. And there's a lot that goes on behind a business from a psychology perspective to whether that person is good or bad.

Alex Rawlings: And we usually get a lot of the information, if not all of it through effective questioning would be how I'd bring that through, but, you know, you've got nothing to lose by going extra and, and bringing us involved and, and, and seeing things in, the more we see the better we know,

Alex Rawlings: and that's why we do go out and meet with clients as well.

What are the three questions that private equity should be asking you, but they're not?

Marcus Cauchi: Okay. So tell me this, what, what are the three questions that private equity should be asking you, but they're not?

Alex Rawlings: Yeah, what's our, retention rate, what's our success rate. So retention rate of, of hire. So let me go into a bit of more detail. So, you know, within 12 months, what percentage of those people have left?

Alex Rawlings: That's absolutely key. And I've actually got an ebook on this. I can send you that across and send you the link over. So the retention rate of what it is, what's our success rate? So with all of our retained and we've got engaged service as well is a hundred percent success. So since we established a business three and a half years ago, we've got a hundred percent success rate.

Alex Rawlings: And then question three. So those are the first two that absolutely clients need to be asking. And then question three, I think not enough clients care about what we do as a process. And I get that because why would you, you know, you don't care about how the widget's been made, but I think if you're looking at assessments of different firms, and rather than, you know, the old saying of nobody ever got fired by going through for, by working with IBM or choosing IBM. And actually understanding what a company's process is so if you said to me right now, what's your process. I can talk you through the 14 steps, which all have steps underneath them. But the simple 14 steps that as a business, we go through to complete a search. And I think a lot of firms typically in, in, even in executive search, just go, you know, we go for a, just a really stringent process and they'll talk about the re reference checking.

Alex Rawlings: They'll talk about the X, Y, and Z of, of how it operates, but they won't talk about actually, how do they find the relevant executive? How do they source? What's their process of unearthing those individuals? We can all do reference checks. We can all do personality profiling testing. The hard part is not assessing the individual for, for their, for their relevance to a position.

Alex Rawlings: The hard part is getting in touch with those people and contacting them. And if you aren't able to, to reach out and know who those people are, then you will never be able to, to even do that assessment of those individuals. So I think it's understanding fundamentally how a search firm works and the steps that they go through in order to, in order to fill a position.

What process do you go through in order to ensure that the brief that you have been given is wonderful deliver the outcomes rather than just simply taking the spec?

Marcus Cauchi: Okay. So let's go a little bit further back in the process, designing with the candidate. And can they, for the role and for the outcomes that, the company intends them to deliver. What process do you go through in order to ensure that the brief that you have been given is wonderful deliver the outcomes rather than just simply taking the spec?

Alex Rawlings: Yeah, absolutely. So fundamentally what, what, it, it comes down to a lot of, a lot of, a lot of things in recruitment because of what we do comes down to effective questioning and being able to get into that. We obviously ,I'll go through the, the kind of top lines can answer this question in a, in a hell of a lot of detail, but you would probably need three podcasts to go through it, to get it.

Alex Rawlings: So I'll give kind of top line and we can delve into more as we go through. I'm gonna cover off what regard as the simple ones, you know, if you speak to a recruiter and I'm gonna call recruiters, executive search, head hunters, you know, it's just different titles fundamentally. But, if you speak to a, a recruiter and the first thing they ask you is what are you looking for?

Alex Rawlings: I'd really be concerned about that individual because there's been no conversation around anything else as an organization. But go, we're going to ask that question, but it shouldn't be your first, your first point of call. And we're talking about those assessment questions that we use the kind of first four to understand the problems, understanding issues.

Alex Rawlings: We're we're consultants. We have recruitment consultant, whether we're called head hunter, we've positioned ourselves close on that kind of periphery of currently of management consulting. So we've gotta really understand what the situation is with regards to the business. So ,the the top line questions I'll ask, is really getting into detail with regards to the company and getting the understanding of that.

Alex Rawlings: And we'll have already done some research before we get onto that core. We really wanna understand your perception of the company culture. And it's an interesting, when I say that is it's your perception because one person's perception of a company culture is completely different to another person's. And then we can really paint a picture. If I told you the company culture within this business, within Raw Selection, you know, you may be able to sit down with someone who sees something completely different within the organization that maybe, you know, I've been blindsided by and I haven't been able to understand. And then we'll go through obviously well, so not obviously they cancel that.

What the business needs to go through transition wise to become that organization that you want to be

Alex Rawlings: We'll go through, what does success look like? So what are the outcomes? What do we want to achieve? Where, where does the business need to be? Now, if I say to you, I wanna exit the business in five years. Okay. That's great. And we want to hit 125 million target. Fantastic. Right? What needs to change in the organization for that need to happen?

Alex Rawlings: And then we actually begin to build a picture and you are already telling me what you need experience wise, but I'm not going, what do you need? Why I need a chief executive with technology software experiences, words as a SaaS model. That's not fun, that's fundamentally top line stuff. I wanna understand what the business needs to go through transition wise to become that organization that you want to be.

Alex Rawlings: Cause if you are hiring somebody with the track record of the business that's at right now, that isn't gonna be what gets the business to 125 million. We're not hiring somebody at 25, we're hiring somebody for 125.

Marcus Cauchi: In effect you're exchange enablement partner.

Alex Rawlings: Yes. I've never thought of it that from that perspective, but yes, that would work.

Alex Rawlings: We're understanding it's all about. And, and there's a lot, there's all the detail there, but if you can understand the fundamentals of what does the success look like and, and what's their perception of how they get there. You've gotta have a lot of, quite a few conversations with, with different people in the business, ideally to understand it.

Alex Rawlings: If you. can, then you understand where that business needs to go. And you know, we talk about a lot about recruitment firm. Oh, they've changed the brief, oh, they've decided something different. You know, there's two problems to that. One is that the first search firm hasn't understand the fundamental problems in the business.

Alex Rawlings: And two, the company doesn't know what it needs to do to, to realize its its goals and its achievements, from there, which maybe is us not asking effective questions, but also maybe they just actually don't have a good enough awareness over the business, which again, comes back to us. Should we be speaking to people in the portfolio as well as P firm,

Marcus Cauchi: If that's happening, chances are treating recruitment as a tactical activity rather than a strategic activity as well.

Alex Rawlings: Most likely.

Marcus Cauchi: And if you're recruiting for those senior positions, then you have to be recruiting for the strategic value that they bring. The tactical stuff is the operational work on the ground that the managers need to implement in order to deliver the strategic objectives. But if they're changing the brief halfway through then as a recruiter, you've fundamentally failed because you haven't got that clarity of their vision.

Partners challenge one another

Marcus Cauchi: You haven't got the direction, you don't understand what's really going on. And also you probably haven't had the nerve to stand up to them and say, well, hang on a second. If you are going to achieve that, then this, this, and this needs to happen. And cause the title of consultant for anybody who does experience that is a misnomer because you're not being a consultant. All you're doing is taking an order. And then yeah, exactly. So that's not serving the customer as they need to be served. And I think part, part the problem here, and I I've said it many times in the podcast, partners help each other to get better. Partners challenge one another.

Marcus Cauchi: You don't let the business fail. You don't let the relationship fail either. But you have to have the ground rules that you are going to have difficult conversations. You are going to challenge them. You will end up in constructive conflict and you're allowed to fight. There's nothing wrong with having a fight, over stuff because that's how you get a better outcome.

Marcus Cauchi: And you need the different perspectives, but if you're treating your recruiter in this master servant type of, approach, then you are not really serving them well. And I think the analogy my friend Martin Lucas talks about is that you need to behave like a butler. I always use the analogy of jeeves and wooster.

Marcus Cauchi: Bertie Wooster has an incredible knack of finding himself in trouble of his own making. And jeeves helps him out of it, but he's respectful. And he always maintains his dignity and sometimes, they have to enter into conflict, but he always has Bertie's best interests at heart. And I think you need to think like that there is no shame in service.

Marcus Cauchi: It's not servitude. And that's what being a commodity provider and recruitment is. You're just another commodity that just gets thrown in a crumb here and there in the hope that maybe you get the boat, but you don't ever get the meat. Now what a genuine recruitment partner will do is they will challenge.

Marcus Cauchi: They will work together on defining how that strategy can be realized. They'll even question it they'll feed insight. And this is why regular contact with your recruiter is essential. You don't just bring them in. When you have a vacancy. You need to be working with them 12, 18 months beforehand. Yes. If someone dies or leaves suddenly, then why didn't you know, that they were going to leave? Dying is, trickier.

Marcus Cauchi: You should have a contingency. Most organizations will have key man insurance. Why would you not invest the same level of attention to making sure that for any vital position you got four or five candidates lined up in the wings in the event that something changes?

Alex Rawlings: And it's an interesting point and I think if, if there's, you know, there's people sat here listening, going, okay, that's fundamentally difficult.

Alex Rawlings: And technically everything is, but if you have, and, and let me just try and trying of get my position on, on how do you get that? It's about your everyday conversations. It's about your everyday discussions and it's not having five CVs of people that wanna work for you. I mean, that's the ideal, but it's, you know, five really great people who are just gonna wait around and work for you. Ideally yes but you know, is that really gonna come to fruition? I don't, I don't believe so. But the, unless you're like a Google or someone else. If you have every conversation you're having is all about hiring every conversation that you're having with somebody you're thinking who's the best person there. You mentioned about the chief financial officer getting pitched all the time.

Alex Rawlings: You're thinking if somebody's pitching into my business, I'm thinking, okay, actually, I could be interesting hiring you, you in the right location, could you be, are you the right type of person? And it's all about thinking like that and having that kind of bench strength of people that you know are good.

Alex Rawlings: And therefore, if an opportunity arises, you reach out to them and they're there. It's not that you've got their CV sat on your desk from my perception. Marcus pushed me back.If that's, if, if that's not what you're positioning here, but it's about having a lot of conversations and then I get push back.

Alex Rawlings: Well, Alex, you know, you run a business, you know how busy it is. And I'm like, yes, I do. And no I'm not running a 50 billion or 10 million or whatever, 20 million, 30 million revenue, big organization. But which I could argue, therefore, technically I could actually be busier, but it's about working on your business. And are you an operator or are you an owner? And if you are owner, you are strategic in driving these initiatives. If you are operating, you need to hire someone to be doing that role. Not to spend time in there.

Marcus Cauchi: I interviewed a fabulous chief executive, Michael Brawdy. And, he said that there are four masks that most leaders were at least one off.

Cost of not knowing when to say no

Marcus Cauchi: The one that costs you 31 hours a month is not knowing when to say no. On average, not knowing when to say no cost leaders, 31 hours a month tied up in pointless meetings, the wrong kind of meetings, too long meetings, answering questions that they shouldn't be answering, that they should be delegating.

Marcus Cauchi: The second is hiding their unique perspective. The third is not being willing to have difficult conversations. Didyou know that, that on average, based on his research, 70% of employees are avoiding difficult conversations within the business. The fourth one is not being committed to rigorous authenticity. So being completely honest, and, he's a really interesting character.

Marcus Cauchi: He was a drug addict, he went through rehab in 2002 being sober ever since he's built three companies up one, became an in 500 liquidity event sold to, a large publicly listed company. And what's really interesting is one of the things that he is absolutely dead set on is we must be ready to do difficult work.

Marcus Cauchi: And this is difficult work. And most people will shy away from it always to I'm too busy. Well, you're too busy cause you're not saying no. And 31 hours of your month are being taken up in total piss and toss. You're not having difficult conversations with people, which means that you are creating the conditions for management problems to exist.

Marcus Cauchi: You would free up time from that. You're not being rigorously authentic. Now when he set his company up, they were five people strong. They managed to get onto TV and they were just about to hit a spike. And, he had to tell his people, I don't know how to be a chief executive. I haven't got a clue what I'm doing.

Marcus Cauchi: I'm just a recovering drug addict who happens to be running a five man company. That's just about to hit the curve of the hockey stick, help me. So he went out and he got a coach and a mentor, and he went out and he got help from his people. But most bear leaders are too spineless and too afraid to have those rigorous, authentically, authentic conversations.

What book would you recommend?

Marcus Cauchi: Unfortunately, we've come to time now, Alex, what book would you recommend?

Alex Rawlings: So based on what you were saying, with regards to the, the kind of culture of an organization, it's something we've implemented here. Kim, I think it's Kim Scott, so used to be the chief exec or senior leader within Google and Twitter. And it's Radical Candor, a really amazing book. It's hard at the start, keep persevering with it. And then there's kind of a all links in at the end, to get through, but highly recommend people read that and bring that into their business.

Marcus Cauchi: Excellent. And Who by Geoff Smart.

Alex Rawlings: Absolutely.

Marcus Cauchi: Fantastic. Thank you.

What one bit of advice would you give 23 year old Alex that he would've probably ignored?

Marcus Cauchi: Tell me this, you've got a golden ticket and you can go back in time and you can advise your idiot 23 year old self, what one bit of advice would you give 23 year old Alex that, you know, he would've probably ignored?

Alex Rawlings: Pay more risks, which probably maybe a bit of a backwards from other people, but, you know, there's we all I say, we all, that's not, that's not position it as everyone, you know, fundamentally for me.

Alex Rawlings: Yeah. I've worked with coaches, I've worked with mentors, they've done, various different bits with me. And one of them is I've always got my foot on the accelerator and then that's very quickly followed by the break. It's advice I'm giving myself right now. And it's advice I'd give myself then, is to take more risks, believe in your capability and just do it.

Alex Rawlings: You know, if this word failure does come around and you don't succeed in that, you'll just literally find another way of finding that success. And then when you hit that you'll want the next thing. So it would be to, for that reason to take more risks.

How can people get hold of you?

Marcus Cauchi: Excellent. How can people get hold of you, Alex?

Alex Rawlings: Easiest way is LinkedIn very, prominent on there. So it's Alex Rawlings. And if you put Raw Selection on there is unfortunately somebody called Alex Rawlings who is very strong with languages. He speaks seven different languages fluently and learned them within like a year or something. That is not me. So if you Google that, you'll find him

Marcus Cauchi: School system.

Alex Rawlings: I haven't got my SEO rating up that well enough yet, but he got a lot of, prominence, but yeah, if you put Alex Rawlings, Raw Selection, you'll see me and it's on, LinkedIn, I've got a little red circle around my, photo, as everyone in the business does just to stand out a bit different, but that's the easiest way.

Alex Rawlings: If not, you can always email me alex.rawlings@raw-selection.com. But if you find my LinkedIn, you'd also find how to spell Rawlings and how to, and and how to contact me. All my contact details are on there. So, nice and easy.

Marcus Cauchi: Alex Rawlings thank you.

Alex Rawlings: Yeah. Thank you very much, mark. It's really, really great conversation.

Alex Rawlings: Really enjoyed it.

Marcus Cauchi: This is Marcus Cauchi signing off once again from The nIquistor Podcast. If you found it useful, then please like comment, share, and subscribe. And if you feel welldisposed, then please go to apple podcast. Scroll below the fold and find the, reviews section and give an honest review or 1, 2, 3, 4, or five star review is welcome.

Marcus Cauchi: Give your honest feedback in the meantime, stay safe and happy setting. Bye-bye.

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