I’ve been in recruitment for 20 years this year, and I must admit I never thought I’d be celebrating that milestone working from home due to a pandemic. Even in January, I would have thought you were mad if you told me that. Until COVID19 arrived in all our lives, we were growing fast and were looking forward to dislodging some of the more established players at leading firms. Anyway, enough of the present and let’s use some of the time at home for reflection.

Most of my career has focused on working with financial services clients in broadly speaking asset management, private equity, wealth management, and specialist finance. More recently we’ve started to help professional services and commercial & industrial clients hire lawyers and accountants. I’ve literally interviewed thousands of people and placed a huge number into a wide range of clients. On the whole most placements have been a success (clients utilise our refund policy so infrequently I struggle to remember the details sometimes), but some placements just standout and clients frequently talk about them over the years.

They turn out to be “Super Value Adders” in the firms they join.

So I’ve been giving thought as to why they’ve been so successful in generating revenue, changing culture, or making firms more profitable and I think they do share some common traits. I’ve tried to list them below and whilst I am sure there are things in their make up that I’ve missed out these are the most common traits I can see:

They are students of their industry

They literally know everything about their industry and importantly their competition. They are totally immersed on the drivers of their industry and understand the competitive landscape. They often build relationships with peers within their industry.

They give before they ask for something in return

They dedicate themselves to the task in hand 100%, they build relationships, aren’t scared to prove themselves, before they ask for more responsibility or a pay rise.

They aren’t scared to provide honest feedback to management

Due to being focused on making a business better, they recognise that they need to give frank and constructive feedback to their CEO/Chairman. They recognise that sometimes a CEO can’t get close enough to the day to day business to see issues clearly.

They energise others

This may be due to their natural personality or because they are skilled at getting others to do what they need doing, but they do take others on the journey with them.

They are resilient

They cope with setbacks, dust themselves off and carry on.

They work harder than others

Whilst there’s lots of management gurus talking about time management and work/life balance, “Super Value Adders” tend to work both smart and hard. It’s their ability to juggle multiple issues combined with their work ethic that makes them accomplish more in a year that can take others three years to achieve (if at all).

Firms can really help themselves by implementing a rigorous recruitment process. Great firms hire great people and they don’t do it by accident. They partner with specialists and the key thing to a good outcome when hiring, in my experience, is for firms to bring a structured process to sourcing and screening. I’ve outlined ours here, which has been extremely successful over the years in identifying high performers.

We spend a great deal of time screening candidates before we shortlist and in addition to someone having the right skills and experience, there is something very exciting when you meet someone with the above traits, that X-factor. You literally can’t wait to speak to your client about them and then the nice thing about our job is sitting back and watch your appointment flourish.

For more information on Fram and how we may help you, please don’t hesitate to contact me on 01525 864 372 or email [email protected]

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