Staff Recruitment with Sak Awan

Mark Simpkins (00:02.129)
And welcome to what is a very special moment for me as, and welcome to the very first episode of Effie Gold, your source for real talk, real solutions in the world of further education. I’m your host, Mark Simpkins, and I’m here alongside my guests to bring insights that will hopefully take your provision to the next level.

And I’m absolutely delighted today to welcome my first guest, Sakoann, director of S -Night Recruitment and founder of the EPA Hub. Welcome, Sak. How are you today?

Sak (00:41.966)
Mark, thank you for having me. I’m good, thank you. Super excited. I know me and you catch up loads, but to be your first guest, absolutely honored.

Mark Simpkins (00:51.505)
Yeah, I’m so chuffed to have nailed you down and got you on my very first show, Zach. Because not only are you a great guy and you look very dapper and I’m super jealous of your waistcoat. And it’s an important topic that I want to talk with you today. Because when I’m out with my clients in my consultancy role, a lot of questions I get asked is, we’re looking for new staff. We’re looking to recruit into the sector.

And for me, the sector is a little bit different in relation to the recruitment of staff than many others. So it’s a great place to start. So tell me a little bit about the FE sector and the pain points that are out there.

Sak (01:35.534)
Thanks and Mark such a great introduction to what is one of the top three challenges most providers have, which is their people. And if we think of us as an industry, we are a people industry. We train people, we develop people. And yeah, it has been a challenge and I think it’s getting harder. So to answer your question about what are some of the pain points, top three I would say is if you think of where the industry has evolved to.

And you rewind back to the Fonda times potentially where most of our trainers, our coaches, our deliverers were NVQ assessors. We had one provision which were trained to gain NVQs. Fast forward to where we are now. We’ve got boot camps, we’ve got AEP. We’ve just had ESF. We’ve just had traineeships granted. They’re no longer available, but they were vocational delivery. We’ve got end point assessments now happening. There’s so much more provision out there.

and our pool of vocationally competent trainers are still the same. We’re not attracting as much new blood into the sector as we used to back then. If we level up and look at management roles as well, as our providers have become more complicated, so have our staffing needs and structures. One of the challenges that we’re seeing with a lot of our providers, both colleges and independent training providers is as we’ve diversified our provision, how do we stop silos?

And that is through strong leadership, through strong management, linking those up together. And I think the other bit as well, Mark, is where we’ve had so much change in the sector. We are a really values -driven, high -impact industry that people do because they love doing it, but it’s also a volatile industry. So we’ve seen a mass exodus of people leaving the industry, moving into either commercial, learning and development.

being employer facing, so you’re kind of the in -house piece. Or just going back to trades, we’re a vocational sector. We all came from somewhere to end up here. So I think they’re the three top challenges that we’re seeing in the sector at the moment.

Mark Simpkins (03:43.537)
Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ve actually worked with a number of clients that have got to the point where rather than trying to recruit, they’re bringing in practices like a grow your own type model, which is really interesting. And I’m a big advocate average actually for it. They’ve kind of looked at it and, you know, I find it quite incestuous in the sector where, you know, you have, you mentioned it, NVQ assessors, tutors, trainers, coaches.

Sak (04:04.878)
Ha ha ha.

Mark Simpkins (04:12.113)
development coaching, all of these kind of like buzzwords and stuff that we have now, right? You can’t just go on to Indeed or Read or whatever now and just put NVQ Assessor because there’s so many different titles and stuff out there. And actually what I find with the clients is that they just go, you know, when we try, it’s too broad, it’s too difficult to find the right people. So if we can bring in people from Sector and without perhaps teaching or assessing or coaching experience, we will then spend time with them and grow that kind of grow your own.

model, which is, which is a really interesting take on it, I think you’ll find.

Sak (04:47.726)
Mark and you know just on that point you made about the inconsistency of job titles. We’ve got a tally in the office and I think we’re up to about 63 of differing job titles with and it’s not just a nightmare for providers. Think of it from a candidate’s perspective. You’re looking for a delivery type role. Where do you start searching from? And the grow your own piece Mark. I’m a big advocate of that. I think it’s fantastic because you know.

Mark Simpkins (04:56.657)
Wow.

Sak (05:14.286)
I was talking to somebody a few weeks ago about the currency of currency and actually how the world has moved on and don’t get me wrong, the incestuous nature of our industry means there is a lot of knowledge, but you know, the bit that we do great in our sector is transfer knowledge is what we do. So let’s transfer that to the next piece. But I think just touching upon what you mentioned there about when people have gone to market and I know we’re going to talk about recruitment and what we can do to.

strengthen and have a strategy for recruitment is thinking of your audience. You know, as practitioners, as providers, when you’ve got a message, who’s listening and hearing that message? Which I know will unpack soon as well.

Mark Simpkins (05:59.345)
Yeah, yeah, I just get the feeling that the clients and the training providers and things that I work with is that the behaviors of the perspective employees is more important necessarily as you know, actually having that teaching qualification at the moment because, you know, if they’re hungry and they really want to learn and they have this sector expertise and they can bring something fresh and new to that curriculum, then you know,

Sak (06:17.934)
Yeah.

Mark Simpkins (06:28.849)
the teaching and delivery side of things can come, we can train them if they are hungry and that’s what it is that they want to do. So I guess my next question is, you know, I’m a training provider, you know, whatever it may be, I’m looking to bring somebody in, what kind of strategies would you recommend? Where do we start? I mean, obviously, I could go on to LinkedIn and I can start promoting that I’ve got these vacancies and I can try and spread the net quite wide and then I could bring in a…

a recruitment agency like yourselves to help and support. But ultimately, what gets me a good candidate in front of me and what can I do to capture that opportunity in the most effective way?

Sak (07:10.542)
question mark. And I think there’s, there’s three key things for me. And there’s a number of things, but three of them are super key. One is every other part of a provider’s business has a strategy sat behind it. Your operations do, your quality does, your business development, your compliance. For most providers, what you’ve just described there of let’s post something on LinkedIn, let’s cast an S Y, let’s whack it on the website. Unless your website is Google attracting millions of

Mark Simpkins (07:34.417)
Hehe.

Mark Simpkins (07:39.217)
Yeah.

Sak (07:40.75)
clicks every single day, that’s not a strategy. That’s a knee -jerk reaction to an imminent need. And naturally, I’m going to be biased towards using an agency. But whether you use an agency or don’t think of your recruitment as your talent acquisition, have a strategy around it. Because when you strip everything else back, one of the unfortunate things about our industry is we’re a relatively standardized sector.

Apprenticeships are apprenticeships, bootcamps are bootcamps, AB deliveries, AB delivery. What’s going to differentiate you is yes, your relationship with your referral partners and employers, but actually it’s going to be your people. Don’t leave that to chance. So this is what I’d say is one, think about your employer branding and proposition and positioning. So one of the things I speak to my clients about is it doesn’t matter who you are, there’s something that makes you world class, there’s something that makes you cutting edge and whatever it is, grab it.

Mark Simpkins (08:19.537)
Mm -hmm.

Sak (08:36.782)
run with it. So if you are a family run business, you know, the fact that your values, your ethos, your ethics, the fact that your family run, if that’s who you are, run with it. If you’re a small provider, you’re agile. You’ve probably got a more horizontal staffing structure, less bureaucracy, run with that. If you’re a larger provider with a track record, again, lean on that, financial stability, track record, market presence and awareness. So whoever you are, lean on that because the reality is,

Whoever you’re going to recruit is probably doing a very similar role in one of your competitors. What makes you different is who you are. Secondly, yay.

Mark Simpkins (09:13.521)
And sorry, before you move on to the next point, how much of an impact does Ofsted gradings have in that? What I mean is, does grade one outstanding, do they attract the best talent or do you have people out there that perhaps have a required improvement that are really keen and hungry to do that improvement piece?

Sak (09:35.342)
Mark, love that question because it feeds so nicely to what I was going to say, which is once you know who you know, no, no. But Mark, honestly, it’s so important because actually there will be providers out there and it might not be the roster. It might be an ESFA audit that they’re going through. It could be a whole host of myriad of challenges that they’re going through in the thinking. The reason I can’t find staff is because of X, Y and Z. And actually the second point is once you know who you are, what makes you world class, the second piece is your narrative.

Mark Simpkins (09:40.401)
Sorry, I interrupted you.

Mark Simpkins (09:48.753)
Hmm, of course.

Sak (10:04.43)
and your audience. How are you describing that? So we’ve done some work with a provider recently and they’re an off -stead grade three provider. You know, they’ve been running for decades, two, three decades now and great people, you know, genuinely do the right things for the right reasons. And they happen to have a bad off -stead grade. And, you know, we sat down with the organization and again, similar to what we’re doing now, really unpicked and got under the skin of who they are, what they were.

and put together a compelling narrative. Now that narrative, no matter how well sugarcoated isn’t going to be for everybody, but it’s about identifying who you are, making sure that you’ve got a compelling story and something that’s going to attract people to want to come in and join you. So we ended up appointing somebody with them. And actually the person who we appointed was somebody who wanted to work for an organization where there will be challenges because they’d been working for larger providers where there were a small…

smaller cog in a bigger machine. They wanted to be a bigger cog in a smaller machine. And they knew that this had inherent risks. But with the narrative through coaching them through that, through being honest and transparent in that narrative and what they let themselves into, it was, you know, they felt empowered by that and were excited. You know, who would have thought, Mark, somebody’s excited about joining a grade three provider.

Mark Simpkins (11:24.241)
Hmm.

Sak (11:25.518)
But it’s because you’ve done that. And then the third part, Mark, is your audience, who is that compelling narrative about this fantastic organization getting in front of, you know, and yes, we talked about LinkedIn and that plays a massive part, especially with your own employer branding and where you’re positioning yourself, your adverts and so on. But I’ll speak into a potential client that we’re still in talks with at the moment.

And they would talk about, you know, why would I use an agency? Because it is a significant investment, you know, when agencies aren’t cheap in the main, the good ones aren’t anyway. You know, why would we use an agency when we can advertise it directly? And we talked about the employer branding, talked about the narrative piece. But the example I gave is if I needed to redo my roof mark, as much as I can grab myself a ladder, I live in a bungalow, so it’s a felt roof.

much so I can grab myself a ladder grab myself some felt rip it off myself and try do I want to run the risk of leaks moving forward you know if I’m if I’m enough if I’m a an off steadable provider and I’ve got on off stead looming do I want to take that risk or do I want to give mark a call and say Mark look you know you are one the best in the market if not the best in the market I need an extra set of eyes I need some support

Mark Simpkins (12:30.353)
Sure. Yeah.

Sak (12:47.822)
course, I’m going to go to the specialist if I was sorry, last example, if I was an employer, and I wanted to enhance my training proposition to my employees, I’m going to try myself from I’m going to go out to an independent training provider or college, and that the experts really give me something robust and I see the exact same as an agency, our database, I mean, granted, it’s 11 years old, we launched back in 2013. It’s 44 and a half thousand candidates. But these are people that we’ve got those relationships with that we can.

pick up the phone too and have a chat with and many of whom Mark, let’s be honest, aren’t even on the market yet they’re happy to have a conversation with us. And so that’s where the audience of who you’re tapping into is so important.

Mark Simpkins (13:31.537)
So those three tips, which are all great, Zach, and I guess with my kind of Ostead hat on, I’m already thinking, do you know what? All of those things you mentioned are intent. They are the way that we do things, the strategy, the narrative, the story, the everything, the guys like that. So what I just want to move on to now is what I would call the implementation phase. So questions here about, you’ve done all of that and you’ve got a pool of some great candidates that you’ve put towards an employer, right?

remote versus face -to -face interview have an impact? What about the speed of how quickly you then go get them in for interview and application form, CV, all of those kind of things, one versus the other. And then, like I say, they’re in for interview and then how quick decision -making, what’s the ideal pathway for that implementation phase? Because they all have an impact, right?

Sak (14:29.358)
love that 100 % they do mark. So if I go if I get to granular mark, I get very passionate about things like this, please do pull me back out. So if we start from the beginning,

Sak (14:45.582)
Identifying when you need to hire somebody, super important. And your actions from that, again, super, super important. If you’ve got a knee jerk reactive response to recruitments, and what I mean by that is somebody’s handed in their notice, that we’ve not really done anything. We’ve kind of maybe put an advert out there, not engaged with any agencies, maybe put a post on LinkedIn. You will fast approach those 30 days and all of a sudden you’re weak before this person’s leaving and everything becomes.

knee jerk, everything becomes rushed. So make sure you’ve got a plan. Second bit is you asked about virtual versus face to face. I think a lot of it depends on the role mark. I think if you’re doing a role, which is an office based role or a center based role, because it’s delivery for some sort of trades or whatever, then yeah, I would most definitely have somebody in the office to come and meet with me just because you want them to see the atmosphere. You want them to see what, you know, give them a tour of what they’re going to be doing, the kind of people they’re going to be working with.

Mark Simpkins (15:25.489)
Mm.

Sak (15:45.166)
But if this is a hybrid or a motor role, don’t traipse them across just for the sake of it because it’s going to slow you down. One of the greatest advancements in recruitment since COVID has been people’s reliance and acceptance and happiness to work on teams and see that stuff can still get done through teams. Timely feedback, super, super important, Mark. People will win or lose the recruitment war based on that candidate journey they lay out for a candidate. And if you don’t have…

Mark Simpkins (16:02.193)
Mm -hmm.

Sak (16:13.518)
a candidate journey, you’re losing. That’s why you’re challenged with recruitment because, you know, we’ve all looked for jobs at some point and it is an anxious time. You’re being judged. You know, you’re putting yourself out there to the world’s like, I hope somebody likes me enough to offer me a job. You know, for people, it is their sole source of income. It’s what their mortgage, their lifestyle, everything’s dependent on. So if you’ve put an application and not heard anything back for three, four weeks, we’ve gone to an interview and actually were told.

two days before the interview, can you come and meet me on this day? All of this pace of bearing. I always tell my store to everyone, my colleagues, my staff, my clients that day one of a candidate’s perception of you is when they see that interview, how timely was the process?

Mark Simpkins (16:56.017)
Yeah. And I’ve got one more question I’m gonna throw in. I’m sorry, I know you want to roll that. Does, I mean, I’ve gone for roles in the past and, you know, stage one, stage two, even stage three, there’s some roles and you know what, it puts me off immediately. You know, having to go and I think a lot of them in my experience is that they do stage two and stage three for the sake of doing stage two and stage three. And so,

Sak (16:59.758)
Yeah.

Mark Simpkins (17:25.649)
Is that normal? Is that just my experience or do you find that too?

Sak (17:30.958)
Yeah, I mean, look, again, it comes back to that strategy piece. And a lot of time, a lot of organizations are making it up as they go along. And the likelihood of them having to get to stage three. And Mark, I’ve seen stage fours. I mean, at stage five, I’ve had to tell one particular client a couple of years ago that stop, just stop. And I think the big reason.

Mark Simpkins (17:38.097)
Yeah.

Mark Simpkins (17:48.497)
God. Wow.

Sak (17:55.086)
From a Candice perspective, yeah, 100 % turn off because remember you’re now competing with other agents, sorry, other organizations that are also recruiting. So if your process is a two, three, four stage process and another organization’s only got a one, two stage process, their offer’s getting to you faster. You know, for no other reason other than I’m looking for a role and actually they’ve come back to me faster. I’m still only halfway through on the other one. You’re going to lose, but also, you know, what is the purpose of stages two and three?

Could they be amalgamated into one? What is your scoring matrix? What are you looking for? Do you know what you’re looking for? And it’s all of these bits here. And nine times out of 10, if there isn’t that robust structure, and it doesn’t even have to be a robust structure, but just that you talked about it earlier, the intent, the measure of success, what are we actually looking for here? Then 100%.

Mark Simpkins (18:45.425)
Yeah, great. I realize we’re running out of time here, Sack. I know we could go on for quite a while. I have got one kind of quick question and then I’m sorry, I’ve got two. So my first one is, you speak to a lot of candidates, a lot of days, a lot of the time. Can you give me what you would say is the main reason why people want to move within this industry?

Sak (19:14.894)
So top, can I give you top three again? So I’ll have a top three. So top three and the first one is ironic given the sector that we’re in. It’s they don’t feel challenged, they feel bored and they don’t feel there’s any progression. Now we’re a training industry. So for me, CPD, you talked earlier about growing your own. It’s not just about the growing, which is super important. It’s how do you then nurture and develop these people? Second one, naturally a salary.

Mark Simpkins (19:18.001)
Yeah, of course, go on, give it to me.

Mark Simpkins (19:38.545)
Mm -hmm.

Mark Simpkins (19:41.969)
Yep, of course.

Sak (19:43.662)
And then the third one, unfortunately, tends to be management and communications, you know, bad people management and often bad management is stemmed by bad communications of leaderships across business.

Mark Simpkins (19:54.961)
Yeah, no, I can relate to all three of those. I’m sure everybody that listens to this can, you know, can do the same. So my last question anyway to you is, you know, and it will be a running theme throughout my, my, my podcast is, and I know you’ve given loads of hints and tips already, right? So can you amalgamate those into, you know, perhaps your top, you know, one, two, three tips. I know you seem to like things in three. So let’s say top three.

Sak (19:57.71)
Hahaha.

Sak (20:21.838)
I do.

Mark Simpkins (20:23.761)
Top three tips, if you can say from an employer perspective or from a candidate perspective, if you were going to give us three top tips to all of our listeners out there in terms of staff recruitment, what would they be?

Sak (20:36.686)
Brilliant. So first one for if I start with candidates, top tips for candidates from the conversation that I have is think of your CV as a pitch deck rather than an overview of your career history. Your CV needs to shout and scream, quantify it, talk numbers, talk about impact. That’s what’s going to make you stand out. Tip number two is don’t rush it. Don’t accept your first offers. There’s a hold.

three -hour conversation mark about counter offers, which I won’t get into right now, but do what’s right for you and always remember what was it that prompted you to leave your role in the first place or want to leave is what you’re potentially accepting addressing those. And if it isn’t, then rethink about it. And the third one, 100 % and also,

Mark Simpkins (21:06.865)
Yeah.

Mark Simpkins (21:22.449)
Grass isn’t always greener, right?

Sak (21:26.862)
The best time, just on this, I’m going to class this as point number two, the best time to be exploring opportunities, as weird as it sounds, Mark, is when you’re happy, because your threshold for what good needs to look like is only better. The problem is wanting to move on at your lowest is anything is up. And then the third point is if you are actively looking for work, think of who’s going to have access to the whole sector for you. Who’s going to be able to be exploring more opportunities for you.

They are agencies, you know, be that S night speed. There’s a couple of good agencies in our sector. Make sure you’re tapping into those because their audience and region networks massive. Very quickly on the client side of things. One is put together a strategy for recruitment. You know, that could be quarterly. That could be annually, but put together some sort. And if you don’t have the expertise in house, reach out to somebody who does. Secondly is think don’t well.

Think about who you are, why would somebody want to join you? Put yourself in the shoes of the candidate and not kind of a tainted shoes of the candidate, genuinely the shoes of the candidate, what makes you a great place to work and then scream and shout about it. Then thirdly, if you genuinely feel your people are your biggest asset and you want to explore the whole market to find the best talent, make the investment and work with specialists who can find and explore that for you.

Mark Simpkins (22:51.153)
That’s great. Thank you so much for that, Sack. And it’s been incredibly interesting talking to you about this. Like I say, we could probably talk about this for a long time, but the purpose of these FE Gold episodes is to try and keep them compact and try to keep them short so that everybody who’s listening can switch onto this and listen to it whilst they’re out walking the dog, driving the car, whatever it may be. So thank you so much for your time today. And if people wanted to get hold of you, Sack, they could go, what, LinkedIn website?

Sak (23:20.59)
Yeah, LinkedIn website email Mark’s probably harder not to get my contact details than it is to find them. And Mark, just two things again, one massive honor to be your first guest really appreciate it. And also a massive congrats for anyone who knows me, I’m a big talker to get me down to what looks like 23, 24 minutes, phenomenal.

Mark Simpkins (23:26.641)
Hahaha!

Mark Simpkins (23:40.721)
That’s it. Well done, mate. So just for you listeners out there, obviously, this is the first show. And so if you’ve enjoyed it, please do comment. Please tell your connections, friends, colleagues. And for me, it will obviously help the show grow for the future.

It wouldn’t be my show if I didn’t promote myself a little bit. So for if you’re, you know, for personalized quality solutions, then please do get in touch with me by LinkedIn or through my website, www .symkinsfequalityconsulting .co .uk. It’s probably easier just to catch me on LinkedIn though, like we’ve been talking about. It’s very much the go -to place and the easiest place to get a hold of people. So thank you for listening. Thanks again for you, Sack.

And that has been for the very first time, Effie Gold, and with me, Mark Simpkins, your host.