How to Hire Great Marketers with Alicia Lykos

James Lawrence: Welcome back to The Smarter Market, a podcast brought to you by Rocket Agency. I'm your host, James Lawrence. I'm here today with Alicia Lycos. Alicia, welcome to the Pod. 

Alicia Lycos: Thanks for having me. 

James Lawrence: I'm looking forward to today's conversation. Alicia is one of Australia's leading authorities on HR and talent optimisation. Former HR consultant at Unisys Australia and Civic Video, Director at Object Consulting, as well as the SAS Institute and accredited predictive index certified analyst, which I want to talk about today as well. Currently CEO and Chief Talent Optimiser at the Red Wolf Group that works with a really diverse range of businesses to use data to develop and then implement leadership and talent management strategies. Alicia, we've done work together in the past and it's really helped us to attract and then retain talent and get the most out of them. Alicia, welcome and looking forward to our conversation. 

Alicia Lykos: Can't wait. 

James Lawrence: It'll be interesting to talk about the current employment market. Borders have been closed, they have just reopened. The Great Resignation, which we've heard about. I hear that it's happening in America. It's not happening here. But then I speak to other agency owners - it's impossible to get people that are experienced. I talk to our clients and other in-house marketers, and jobs that used to get dozens or hundreds of applications are getting almost none. What are you seeing out there in terms of talent? 

Alicia Lykos: I think that they released, even just in February, that unemployment for Australia is down to 4% and that's really the lowest I've seen in record years, in about 14 years. And then it hasn't actually gone below 4% since 1978. 

James Lawrence: It’s almost zero.

Alicia Lykos: So what you're really saying is, there aren't people sitting around waiting for a role, trying to get into the market. We have a shortage. And whether that's a combination of lots of things and visas and students, international people not being here because of border closures. But also the boom of many businesses that are expanding - they’re growing, they're capitalising on the opportunities that are ahead of them. And we don't have enough people. Unfortunately, we don't have enough people in the market. Now that means that the pendulum has really swung, where instead of employers going, ‘oh yeah, I'll post a job and my biggest challenge is sifting through 100 applicants’.

James Lawrence: It used to be like that. 

Alicia Lykos: It used to be like that. Everyone's like, ‘where were the days where we used to have 100 people and that was our biggest time we’d have to save?’. Now it's, ‘we don't have anybody applying’. Like if you go on LinkedIn, that's the biggest indicator for those people who are out recruiting. You go on LinkedIn, they show you how many people have applied. And those numbers are like single digits, sometimes double digits, if you're lucky, for most roles. So, you know, if you're getting 4 to 10 to 12 people applying, that's a real challenge for many businesses. 

James Lawrence: Yeah.

Alicia Lykos: And really now I think marketing businesses have a really intense competitive edge because it is about marketing your brand, about your business. And that's the biggest opportunity for businesses as well. People are sitting back and going, ‘oh, I actually can get a job. I can get a job in many different areas’. The question is: what do I want to be doing and who do I want to be doing it for? And hence they're going to put your business under a lens and really be doing their research on you and what other people say about you. What's your marketing presence? What are you doing on LinkedIn and Instagram? What are your employees saying about you? Because you can go down that rabbit hole in 10 minutes. It's pretty easy to stalk a business. So the question is: what will they find when they go stalking? That’s a question most companies aren't asking themselves. They're like, ‘oh, we're so amazing. Everyone should want to join us’. Your brand presence is what people see externally, and you've really got to be looking at that. 

James Lawrence: It is an interesting shift. I wanted to go down that. You touched on it, which was whether it was two years ago, three years - whatever it was, but people were looking. People were unemployed or they'd come back from overseas and they're looking for work. But it's virtually zero percent unemployment if we’re at 4%. People aren't looking so how do businesses, if you are looking for an in-house marketer, what do you do? Does it mean using recruiters? Is that the only way to do it? Using sales navigator yourself? What’s the practical way of finding people?

Alicia Lykos: You've got to take a really holistic approach because there isn't a silver bullet that's going to solve your problem. And ‘if you're looking in this one place, you will find it’. I think you've really got to look at a combination of things. If you're out thinking ‘we've got to grow our business’, take it back a step. We've got to grow our business over the next year. We might have 3 to 5 opportunities, let's say, of new roles and or turnover. All of those roles you should be recruiting for now, whether they're for now or they're in 6 to 12 months, and really starting to think about what we call workforce strategy. And if you're really smart about it, you've got to look at your internal capability first, and that is key. 

Alicia Lykos: So how do we build? It used to be called 'succession planning’ in big business. That's the formal term for it. But I think businesses really do need to look at the capability of the people internally. As my business grows and evolves, who is going to be ready? Who's going to be ready to take over? And what if I invest that 20 grand I was going to spend on a recruiter and I put my people through some intense training, through programs, through mentoring, through getting them on industry events, really coaching and mentoring my people? That's really what we're going to have to be doing and really fuelling the business - not from the top but from the bottom and focusing on graduate programs and intern programs. But many companies don't have the confidence to do that because it does take a lot more effort and energy. Because you have to invest your own time into it. You typically do have to invest money in building a program that really coaches and mentors people through. That would be my first piece of advice - before you even go to market, look internally first. 

Alicia Lykos: The second piece of advice is really around asking for referrals. Most good people hang out with other great people and especially those who are well networked. Who could you go to in your network? And we've seen a few of our clients get really good at it. Let's say, you're going to go out and market a role. They build social media titles for the role, so they don't put out a job ad, they break it down into social media tiles. And that's great because then people are swiping through on LinkedIn or they're swiping through on Instagram, they can share that outwards and your staff can share it. And it's less formal than, ‘hey, we post a job on Seek, have a look’. It's like, ‘oh, actually this tile is really pretty good. I'm motivated to keep flicking through’. I think that shows the creativity of your brand as well. Typically it won't just talk about ‘here's the job’. It's about ‘here's the opportunity and here's the values and here's what the experience is like and here's what your career will look like with this opportunity’. Yes, we still need to look at your Seeks and your LinkedIn and those platforms. But we need to be more creative in how we use those platforms and also build that pipeline and often that when looking for in-house people, we may need to build a bigger brand presence in general. So your company is out there, they're at events, they're hosting things, they're bringing people into their office. They've got a community. Because from your communities, is where you’re going to find that talent. 

James Lawrence: I want to come back to the grad programme. I guess there's short term and there's long term, right? Like a lot of the stuff there is so valuable, so important, and will set you up for long term success. But it's like, ‘I need someone yesterday, how do I do it?’ But I think the short term stuff is really interesting. I had a client who really runs a great business, really quality operator. His most senior marketer is leaving. He reached out to me and said, ‘can you refer someone?’. I said, ‘well, it’s kind of hard. I'm not going to refer you to one of my existing clients because that's not doing the right thing by them’. But he kind of pushed me and said ‘well, no, actually. Go back in your brain - 18 months to the last 10 years. Can you give me just the names of people that you were impressed by?’ And actually I just gave him five or six people and he's now reached out to them and things are progressing and they’re people we haven't worked with for years. So I think it's just that. But I’m sure if he were to put up a job ad about 18 months ago, he would have had a bunch of senior marketers apply and it kind of would’ve been fine.

James Lawrence: Any other LinkedIn hacks? I don’t want to call them LinkedIn hacks. But, you know. I’m a CMO of a business - a SaaS business or whatever it might be, and my two midweight marketers underneath me have left. What do I do? I put things on Seek, I put them on LinkedIn. We don't get the traction we're used to whether we're hiring for an SEO or PPC role, it's crickets. So any other things that might be a little bit outside the norm that you're seeing out there kind of working?

Alicia Lykos: Anywhere there's community. I work a lot with IT-types of businesses and they always have what we call ‘user groups’ or ‘community groups’. What you need to do is be in those. Because typically they will, depending on the type of community, they will have different parameters. But often they will want to be actively sharing opportunities, because that's what the Community is valuable for. ‘Oh actually, we're outreaching and we're showing people there's opportunity’.

James Lawrence: Yeah.

Alicia Lykos: So knowing those networks and where to go after. And I think every business will have some little niche, whether you're looking for - and it can depend if you're looking for more technical people versus creative people. It depends. But you want to be where they are so that's what I always say to people: ‘you've got to be advertising where these people hang out’. The other thing that most companies haven't really gotten into, which seems really odd, is any type of Facebook, Instagram advertising. I’ve got a very sort of blue collar client out beyond Toowoomba in Queensland. And he runs a - what we call - belt splicing for the minds and he only has eight staff. And you know what he does? He’s in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, and he does a Facebook ad for a 50 kilometre radius of the suburb that he's in for people of a particular age demographic. Now that concept is actually quite sophisticated.

I mean, we don't see people using Facebook or Instagram or any of that for jobs. We see it for promoting products and services and all these things. But when was the last time you were on Instagram you saw a job opportunity? Like never?

James Lawrence: Who’s gonna offer me a job? 

Alicia Lykos: Haha.

James Lawrence: Unemployable.

Alicia Lykos: We've got to be thinking - again, I always say that this industry, the marketing industry, has a great competitive edge. You guys know how to do this! You know how to use this software so I would say capitalise on it and stand out from the crowd. Do things that no one else is doing yet. And get into…try and experiment. It's the same with marketing. You gotta try and experiment when you're out looking for people. Place an advert.

James Lawrence: So true. Probably a year ago we started going into a Facebook group that’s kind of big in agency-creative type land, and we’ve landed a couple of staff from that. Okay, I'd be curious as to just - macro, what you're seeing with just the typical LinkedIn ads, your Seek ads. What are you seeing there?

Alicia Lykos: Definitely a downturn in the number of applicants. That’s across the board for everybody. Everyone's seen a real decline in the number of people applying. The quality of applicants is low, whether you're on Seek or you're on LinkedIn. The other thing that people aren't doing well, is advertising properly in the first place. What used to cut it with your old job ads, when you were in a tail talent hot market, you could write a pretty bad job ad, let's be honest. You could just talk about your company with a few bullet points, all the cliche rubbish, like ‘strong written and verbal communication skills’. If you’re writing that on your job, and you need to delete it now. Stop being boring.

Alicia Lykos: You have an opportunity on Seek and LinkedIn to use videos. We're seeing companies who are truly being competitive and saying: ‘actually we're going to do internal videos on our employee experience’. We're going to interview our founder and get the founder's story about the why and the purpose behind the business. We're going to interview clients and get their real ‘wow, Aha’ moments where we've made an impact. What are people looking for? They're looking for a role where they have purpose and meaning, that they feel connected to the organisation.

Alicia Lykos: Deloitte and PWC put out big studies to say, what are millennials really looking for? But this has boomed during the great resignation. This purpose and the meaning in their work. They don't want to just do a job. They want to feel connected to something bigger than themselves. And I think your jobs need to articulate that. You can't use your old format that used to work two years ago. Now we have to almost scrap that and rewrite ads in a totally different way and leverage all the tools that we have around creative visuals in terms of the language choice that we use and even the video and all the collateral that we can provide. I think the biggest challenge is getting people to apply in the first instance, but then have a look at what you're doing. Does it motivate you? Do you go, ‘oh, wow, I actually am going to have a look at everybody else's ads in the same category under the same parameters in your same location’. Would you click on your own ad? 

James Lawrence: It’s basically marketing, right? If we're trying to attract marketers, it's as if we're running a campaign to generate leads. It’s like, what's the competition doing? How they were doing it, what's working, what's not? Let's test stuff. We don't put things in market. It may work. Might not. Same thing here. That's such a practical takeaway.

Alicia Lykos: The other value add for this industry is like you guys need to treat recruitment like a campaign. I say this to people outside of the marketing industry. I say: treat recruitment like a marketing campaign. Now, from the moment that these people, let's say, they are out looking, which by the way, is only a small percentage of the market, like the passive market. Let’s say you want to attract them. Yes, you need to write a killer ad, you need to have a great careers page on your website. What are people finding? Doing that research on your own company and seeing what are your reviews on Glassdoor? When people Google you, what do they find? Then there's an opportunity from the moment they apply to be campaigning. So it's not just the typical ‘yes, we're interested. No, we reject you’, again. All of this old school recruitment needs to go.

Alicia Lykos: There's such an opportunity to put them into an email campaign. Put them into whatever you're using, whether it's ActiveCampaign, and actually use marketing to go, ‘hey, thanks for replying, know someone will be in contact with you, but in the meantime check out this video’. I know it seems crazy, but everybody is doing this. And even if they're a yes or no, at least they’ve had this amazing positive experience with your brand. And there's so much you can do from there in terms of, ‘hey, you're being scheduled to come in’. You know, ‘someone's going to give you a call, you know, in the next couple of days. Here are the things we typically like to cover up with you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah’. There could be a picture of the person that's going to ring them all the way through to like, ‘hey, you've been invited in for an interview’. Someone's rung you, you know, here’s a little bio on, you know, office manager who will meet and greet you. You can be so creative with recruitment and create a great experience because the majority of people that you bring into your building, you're not going to hire, right? So how can you leave them with an opportunity that maybe in two years and three years you can go back to them and they will be right for you? 

James Lawrence: I love it. I've never thought of it that way, but that’s exactly how when we're marketing to our prospects, when a lead comes through, it's: ‘here’s Kevin, he's going to give you a call’. This is a good segue way, which is: most prospective clients come to us and are like, ‘we need more leads’. ‘When do you need them?’ ‘Tomorrow’. And marketing doesn't necessarily work that way. You've got the bigger pay, slower moving brand stuff that generally sets the foundation to then generate leads and enquiries at the other end. I'm looking at that analogy and it’s probably similar to recruitment, which is: ‘I need a candidate and I need them tomorrow’. And there's definitely things you can do. We can run Google ads, campaigns and whatever else to generate leads for business. You can put ads on Seek and LinkedIn and hope to get some candidates, but you kind of talked before about what's working for your best clients, probably being longer term strategies, grad programmes are starting to consider now the role you're going to have to fill in November because that will give you the best candidate.

James Lawrence: Can we talk on what is working in terms of longer term recruitment strategies? I guess putting that value proposition forward makes people want to engage with you. 

Alicia Lykos: Businesses have an opportunity to take their external brand that we know. And typically spend a lot of time on building that external brand and really flip the switch on that. It's what we call the employee value proposition. In terms of that long term strategy, the first piece of the puzzle is you need to have an absolute reason why people should work for you. And it is different to your external brand or your brand. And the way that you build one is really through engaging and consulting with your staff. Why do they love working for you? What's in it for them and what type of company internally do they want to be a part of? Because every company has their own culture, but this is really defining the fundamentals of who we are. 

Alicia Lykos: A good example is PWC. Their internal EVP is ‘be well, work well’ and everything they do stems off those four words in terms of well. So it might be the way that they work. They work well, they've got healthy workplace habits. It's about nutrition, it's about physical exercise, it's about mental health, it's about financial health, it's about career health. So everything is about these concepts and that really grounds every programme they build off this sort of foundation. Now that's a pretty simple concept, but each company gets an opportunity really to define who they are. And again, that's different. It's different to your values, but it is a way that can actually start to promote who you are. I've got another client, they're about real people, real opportunities. For them, everything is really around the word real, which again, quite simple, but it's very authentic, very, very down to earth. That then translates into a huge amount of diversity that they hire because it is about real people. So they have a big push on diversity and accepting lots of different backgrounds. Focusing on the EVP is really important and then being able to take that externally to produce content, to produce programmes internally that are off the back of that and then be promoting them on LinkedIn on your social channels.

Alicia Lykos: The other thing I see companies do is, they've got these great external brands that's obviously pushing what they do from a work perspective, but they don't often talk about what's happening internally. You know, those promotions, those internal events that they're doing. What's it like behind closed doors? I've got a client who's a furniture business and they produce the most amazing boutique furniture for pubs and clubs around the country. And all they do is post on social media about their product. And their products are amazing. But I said to them, ‘why wouldn't you every now and then start talking about who's the man or the woman behind this piece of furniture? And here's the team and here's the journey that this piece of furniture has gone through a little - the people internally who've helped produce it’. We need to share our employees’ stories as well. 

James Lawrence: Because I’ve got my marketer hat on, they kind of interrelate. You don't have a company value that you live and breathe. You don’t have an EVP that you live and breathe. I think the furniture one's great because it's at the extreme end that the benefits are there. But if you're a service business, like a lot of our prospective clients, they will go to our Instagram page not to see great campaigns we've run. But rather to look at our staff. Are they happy? Are they being looked after? Are they succeeding? Do you want people on your campaign who are great and happy and enriched, or do you want drones that are sitting there at a computer terminal? The benefits of that both for your brand but also to attract. And I would do exactly what you're suggesting. If you're looking at a job somewhere, you're going to go to the Instagram page and what is it actually, you're going to look at Glassdoor because you have a choice. You don't have to take a job anymore. 

Alicia Lykos: And that's it. And that's where I'd say, how do you stack up against those for other options? Because what we're seeing is good top quality candidates have three or four things on the go. Your biggest challenge is not only getting people to apply, but then, let's say you have gone out headhunting or whatever you might have done. How do you actually get this person across the line? This is going to take a lot more effort and energy than it used to be. Taking this approach of ‘oh they would be lucky to work for us’. Well, that might be true, but they don't know that yet. How are you articulating that even through your interview process?

Alicia Lykos: Still people take this very old school approach to interviewing, which is: I've got my questions, which you need, so I'm not going to discount having some questions that are stable through the process. But how do you build connection? How do you build rapport? How do you sell the company and the values that they have and how do you articulate the journey that they're going to go on? Be very authentic and build that connection. Because if we take too much of this, I'm going to interrogate you. You definitely have got to move away from the interrogation. ‘I'm going to deliberately make them feel uncomfortable and see how they perform under pressure’. That is not going to go well. 

James Lawrence: You touched on it there in terms of the head hunting piece. Obviously, in this pod, the audience is in-house marketers, right? And in-house marketers are struggling at the moment to fill gaps in their teams. You're stuck. You need someone. Recruiters are often the easiest path to turn to. It'd be interesting just to get your feedback from what you've seen over the years. Do recruiters work? Do they work in marketing? Yes. No. And if so, what are some ways to engage or not engage with recruiters? 

Alicia Lykos: Recruiters are their own industry in itself. And I have a lot of empathy for them because right now they're facing a pretty big challenge. But they also haven't particularly evolved. What I mean by that is they still run the exact same process that they ran 20 years ago. They all tell you their competitive edge is their book of context.

James Lawrence: Heard that before.

Alicia Lykos: Heard that before. What I would always say to anybody across any industry is: be ready. We call it recruiting readiness and we actually help clients with this. We say: look, before you engage with the recruiter, spend 24 hours or 48 hours and do these things first and just see what lands before you reach out to a recruiter and you go and spend 25 grand. Like are you committed to not spend 25 grand is really the question.

Alicia Lykos: And then do the key things, which is actually define your role, do what we call a ‘job design’ and really truly design the role. What is the role? What is the opportunity? What is a day in the life? So sometimes when you actually sit and talk it out, it can be a couple of pages. But really it's just a thinking, working document. What is a day in the life of this person? What do they spend the majority of their time doing? Not a formal job description because people hate those, but really the experience that they have. What are the clients that they're going to be dealing with? What are the type of projects, what's the team environment, you know, what's their career opportunity? And once you then flesh that out, you then can start to work out what type of person I'm looking for. Am I looking for a really proactive person, or am I looking for someone who's just going to be a great operator who can just sit and do for long periods of time? We call that job design. We use psychometrics to do that. We use a profiling component and that really helps work out those behavioural traits that we're looking for in someone then. Write a great killer job and write your own.

Alicia Lykos: Again, we help clients with a bit of a framework and a template, but you guys are marketers, you guys are really able to nail the right ones. One industry that doesn't probably need help writing a great ad. It is actually an ad, right? Not a job ad, just think about a great ad. And then post it on Seek, post it on LinkedIn, post it on those community groups. Get everyone in your business too who might know the right people to share it. Pick up the phone and say, ‘hey can you share?’ Create those social media tiles that we had our designer whip them up in half an hour. Here’s the brief, here’s the key points. Put them on the tiles and then reach out.

Alicia Lykos: Everybody can use LinkedIn. That is actually something that you can start to search for job titles in a particular area and you will get a short list on your own LinkedIn profile. I then will go through and connect. I'll just connect, just connect with, ‘hey, we're both in the same industry. Thought it'd be worthwhile connecting’. The more senior you are in the business, the better. Like, if you are quite a senior person internally in your own business, the better. They'll want to be connected with you. And from there you can do some like, ‘hey, nice to stay connected’. Now that process can take a little bit of time because you don't want to walk into an interaction, be like, ‘hey, we've got a job. Are you interested?’ It can be a bit too intense. Generally, we use softer language like, ‘hey, it's great to be connected. I look forward to, you know, buying into some community group stuff we have just in the short term. I thought I'd let you know, we are actually actively looking for people at the moment in case you know anybody’.

Alicia Lykos: You can kind of build your own campaign in a very non-aggressive way and see where that lands you. And what you'll find is that then they end up circling back to that ad. They might share that ad. So take that 24 to 48 hours and get ready. Then worst case scenario, you got to engage with the recruiter, which is definitely the worst case. But often we do have to do it, right? And guess what? You're giving that recruiter the best brief they're ever going to get? They're going to get this great document, which is: a day in the life and here's what we're looking for. You've already done a job ad that should really clearly articulate it. So there's already all this collateral to go with this that you can hand over so that the recruiter is set up for success very quickly. They might be able to just screen through their book of business and go, already I've read that and I know three people. So it's time well-spent. 

James Lawrence: That’s great. Because, you know, it's not coming at the sacrifice or the compromise of the other. Worst case, you've got a great price, you've got a job, you've actually thought about who you actually need to fill it. But best case, maybe you actually do get some traction doing it yourself and it just makes sense, right? 

Alicia Lykos: And you're running two processes at the same time. I never want people just to be using a recruiter. To me, that's a wasted opportunity. You never know what will happen. All it takes is one strong applicant to come through. Why not be promoting your own brand? It’s a great opportunity. 

James Lawrence: Can you talk a bit about that? Because I think we've sworn off recruiters. We've been doing this for a long time now, and we've used recruiters. For a range of reasons we've decided it's not the way we want to build the agency. And we've you know, I was going to say, we've obviously worked together and you've helped us build out our grad program and we are more strategic now in terms of bringing people into the business that we know in 24 months time will fill certain roles and all that kind of great stuff. But when we have used recruiters, often it's kind of like ‘ah, we've got a recruiter on that now’ and it took us a long time to realise no, you can run them concurrently. Maybe if we could just unpack that a little bit because it's almost off the record, it's taken care of now and we've often found that that in itself has a massive downside. 

Alicia Lykos: I definitely think that it does have a downside because there's just a bit of a missed opportunity in terms of people coming across your brand versus there's a bigger chance that someone, let's say, they are active in the market, will apply for your job. Recruiters have to typically recruit and advertise under their agency's brand, and typically they won't disclose who you are. Now, if I'm a candidate and I’ve got heaps of opportunities, I would much prefer to apply for a job that actually is for the company directly, then apply to a recruiters ad. Think about it that way. Recruitment job ads. Now they're, you know, 300 bucks a pop on Seek and they're pay per click on LinkedIn for LinkedIn ads. Nowadays, you can actually post a job for free under any of your own direct profiles accounts. You can link it to your company and post it for $0. You obviously then can do more and you can boost it, but if it's free, why wouldn't you leave the net open to say? And by the way, it's also a positive message that the company's growing. We've got the opportunity. 

James Lawrence: It just feels that a lot of behaviour around recruitment is outdated because the balance has shifted. When the job was the sought after thing, you could get away with being pretty sloppy and now it's changed very quickly and a lot of behaviour and patterns that used to work just don't anymore. And you've got to pivot and change quickly, which COVID has taught us to do or you're not going to get someone. I think that's true. 

James Lawrence: What I'd like to talk about now is bringing young people into a business. So the temptation is: I've lost a mid-weight someone, therefore I need to bring a midweight someone in. We've lost our designer. I need to bring in a designer that can do the job. It's harder now to find that person, as we've kind of touched on. But when I talk to other agency owners. There is just this general…it's not about bringing in young grads just because they're cheaper and whatever else. It’s actually about, if you want to bring in great talent these days, often that is the place to look at. I think agencies forever run on cheap talent, kind of a pyramid structure. But now it's the same concept but for a different outcome. So it would be interesting to talk about hiring young talent, whether it's a grad program or whether it's more ad hoc, and what you've seen and what makes for potentially people that are going to make for great marketers down the road. 

Alicia Lykos: I think you're absolutely right. It's always been the triangle model way. Most businesses want to be filled with cheaper, local people. Let's be direct about it. And if you view it that way, you will see those people grow and take that opportunity and leave you. And you have actually spent all that time, effort, energy, let's say, training them and supporting them, and then they're going to leave. If they're not treated well, that absolutely will happen now. So if you are not looking after your younger workforce, they're going to leave you. That's pretty simple. They've got plenty of choice and opportunity.

Alicia Lykos: Therefore, if you think about how we value this tier of our business and how we design them, a great experience that not only will give us a return on investment, but will ensure their opportunity and growth. It means you have to design a program, whether it's rotation, whether it's that they've got a mentor in the business, whether it's that they're having regular development conversations with someone in the business. It can be that simple. They're getting a quarterly catch up so we can find out what they're interested in, what they'd like to spend more time on, knowing that development is what we call the 70/20/10 model.

Alicia Lykos: 70% of your development should be experiences that you have. Now, that's the easy aside, right? Getting them on projects, shadowing, getting them into meetings, listening, observing and doing. And then 20% is around exposure. So what are they hearing? So it's actually, ‘this is above your level, but I'm going to have you come in and listen. I'm going to have you come into this client meeting that normally you just wouldn't ever be required to be in. But come on in today, because I think this is a good learning opportunity. Just sit and listen’. And then it's 10% on training and most businesses think that it's the other way round, 70% training. What's the training we're giving them? It's actually not the fundamentals behind development in adults. It's 70/20/10. So we need to think about that when we think about this younger workforce, our grad program, whatever you want to call it. How do we create that for them using that framework?

Alicia Lykos: Now when we're attracting the right grads to begin with, the biggest challenge most companies face is, well, they’ve got no experience, so they don't have a CV, right? And that to me is the exciting part because now we get to strip back what we call the briefcase. Think about when you hire someone, it's the head, it's the heart and it's the briefcase. Those three components on a little stick figure: the briefcase is your experience, your skills, your knowledge that you bring with you. It's also your baggage. If you've got bad habits, it's all the baggage. Now, often when we're hiring senior people, we're hiring for the briefcase. We want to bring in all those skills, knowledge, experience they've had, all these things; let's bring on the briefcase. But anybody who's ever managed people out of the business, it's typically due to their behaviour, not because they didn't have the right briefcase.

Alicia Lykos: Now with grads, we get to flip the switch and say, actually, you don't have the briefcase. Right, let's hire you for head and heart. What are your behaviours, your cognitive capability like? How well do you synthesise new information? How quickly does your brain work? What are your behavioural drivers? And then what are your values and your ethics? What are your beliefs in terms of what you want for yourself and how do you think people should be treated and all those beautiful things about a person? We're hiring for that now. And I think that the greatest opportunity is because you can start to fill your business with people who you're well aligned to and that will add value from their head and their heart. And that's ultimately the best way to build a business. 

James Lawrence: That's awesome because we've always had this idea, you can always teach them the skills or whatever else, but it's pretty ad hoc. But that just makes so much sense. And it is. Often you hire someone who's got the four years of experience doing what you think you need them to do. And they come in and they just do it the wrong way because they've been working in a place that has a different way of doing it. To your point, I don't think we've ever let someone go because they couldn't do the job, it’s because-

Alicia Lykos: The behaviour. It’s always behavioural, right? It’s behavioural or it's brainpower typically, right. If you look at the statistics. Brainpower has a lot to do with it. Some people can't keep up with the role and they face what we call altitude sickness. So imagine they're hiking up a mountain. They get to a certain point, right, member of the team, they add value, but they just cannot get off that next base camp. They can't get up to the next level. That doesn't make them still a great human. You’ve just over-exceeded their growth.

James Lawrence: The wrong seed in the business to them at that point. 

Alicia Lykos: And you've got to find them an opportunity. So when we look at: what are you looking for in grads though, is when you start to think about the head and the heart. And if you even look at the World Economic Forum, they are looking at these top 15 skills and things that are on that list is your analytical thinking. How well can they solve problems, deal with complexity? The thing that's on there, which is interesting for marketing, is around creativity. But the other word they use in that same category isn't just creativity, it's originality. And I love that word, right?

Alicia Lykos: If we think about young people and we think about marketing, it's not just the creativity, which is obviously a need in marketing, but it's their originality. So what is it that they've thought of that they've created that has an original component? Because there's so much copycatting going on, right? In terms of ‘oh I've seen these companies do it all, just replicate that, put a different colour over it’. Well, so what's an original idea that they've had? If I'm interviewing grads, I want to be like, ‘tell me about an original idea that you've had’. It's a hard question. I'd like to challenge everyone listening to this. What's the original idea? 

James Lawrence: What's going on in my head? I was like, What am I going to say if you ask me? 

Alicia Lykos: But it's a great question, right? I love that concept because we often say, tell me about your creative style. And it's that, okay, they're all generic stuff. Ask them a question about originality and see what they say. It's a great question even for seeing people. 

James Lawrence: I like that side from the interview. I like, ‘how else do you ascertain originality’? Rather than just asking for examples. Can you think, are there other ways or devices to help kind of extract that from a candidate?

Alicia Lykos: It's something we could definitely dig into. We want to see, obviously, examples of work that they've created or produced. Or maybe something that they've seen as original. What really, you know, in terms of you going down a particular industry, maybe they're really great at video content. What's a really original video concept that you've seen? And why? Why do you think it's original? Has it really not ever been done by anybody before? And what's this take on originality, too? I think just even exploring that as a concept, it helps you work out how well watched and read and exposed they are in the industry. Because really what you want is people who are obsessed by the industry and that absorbs their life. And that's where you get passion and interest and originality. 

James Lawrence: That's it. I think that's okay. You mentioned the World Economic Forum study. In terms of marketers, what other things that… because you obviously work across a broad range of businesses recruiting - strong word - but looking to develop talent across a whole range of roles disciplines. But what are the traits of great marketers? How do you hire them? Things you've seen for businesses, like you’ve obviously worked for us. So most of the roles we're filling out are kind of marketing roles, the listeners on the pod are all marketers. What are the specific things within recruitment of marketers that you kind of touch on? 

Alicia Lykos: Nowadays, if you're looking at in-house marketers specifically, the thing that we know you will need is an ability to build connections and build client relationships. It doesn't even matter what role you're in, whether you're an active account manager, even if you are a designer, you're working in graphics, you work behind the scenes. You need to be able to sit across from a client and ask a great question that no one else has asked them yet. You need to be able to understand what the client is saying and then still follow up with more questions and synthesise and summarise what they've said to make sure that we've truly understood. And so there's a combination of emotional intelligence with that, it’s the ability to have critical thinking. It's another skill, which is actually asking questions. How well can they ask questions to others around them, and how well can they then set expectations and communicate that back?

Alicia Lykos: So whether it's with a client, what I can hear you saying is this, this and this. What I think we need to do from here is this. Is there anything I've missed or that I haven't understood? So I think actually having an ability to have client relationship skills, and I use that as a very broad banner because it is very broad. Even if you're a designer being able to do that process and because you're going to be interacting - if you're an in-house market, it doesn't matter what level you're going to be interacting with a client or a team member who's dealing with a client. And those skills are absolutely paramount. Because at the end of the day, if you don't have those skills, then we could be outsourcing this role. Think of it that way. Like, well, why don't we use an outsourcer to do that project, piece of work? What's the differentiator? Right? If you think about what to differentiate, the differentiator is your ability to deal directly with the client.

Alicia Lykos: And that's where you become very valuable within a business. It is your ability to communicate effectively, to have the emotional intelligence, to ask great questions, to look at a problem that the client's having from a different perspective and add to that and try and solve it. I think all of those things combined is where you get that edge for yourself internally, but it's the things that we need to be looking out for as well when. 

James Lawrence: We're bringing them in. I like that. And then I want to kind of move now into the use of data and testing to bring candidates into your organisation and what kind of options the listeners have in terms of using data. What works, what doesn't? Is it a yes/no type thing or is it just helping you inform more about candidates and how do you introduce it? Because I can imagine it can also be quite intimidating. You've got a choice and you got five rolls open and four of them are saying you've had two interviews and the next one is saying, hey, fill out this questionnaire before we're willing to proceed. I’d just be curious to talk about that. 

Alicia Lykos: I think if we put it on our banner, let's say testing. Or even psychometrics, it's become absolutely more prevalent everywhere. Everyone I'm talking to - friends, colleagues, I'm constantly being told, ‘hey, I got sent this link to do this test. Tell me more about it.’ Because obviously we specialise in using people data. And so you can call that psychometric. I would say to people looking at implementing it is, you've got to be looking at things that are highly accurate. There's plenty of tools out there. There's a whole lot of home-grown stuff and there's a whole lot of stuff that doesn't have enough research and data behind it. And also that you shouldn't be using in recruitment. It doesn't have enough what we call validity. So you can't use a whole bunch of tools. And I see that happening all the time. People like, ‘oh, we're going to send this person this test’. And when you look at it, this test has not been validated. It's not accurate enough to make an employment decision on. So you actually kind of weaponise the information for the wrong use.

Alicia Lykos: You also don't want to slow down your process at all, like given what we've just talked about, is how challenging it is to secure people. You don't want to then say, ‘oh, now I need you to spend an hour and a half doing all these tests and all, and if you fail, which you might, then we're not going to proceed’. I mean, that's not a nice, what we call “candidate experience”. So really what you want to be doing is using something that's highly valid, highly accurate, and it's quick and easy to do. Really, anything over 10 minutes, you're overcooking your experience. We use with you guys at Rocket something called predictive index and it's very quick to take the behavioural. It's only 5 to 6 minutes. You can then add a cognitive component, which is how fast you learn and acquire new information, knowing how important that is for our graduates as well. That takes 12 minutes all in total. You are done in 20 minutes if you're going to do both combined.

Alicia Lykos: Those types of tools that are quick and easy to use are great and the earlier on you use them the better. If they're that quick to type, we'd be encouraging you to get it as soon as possible at that stage. If it's; “hi, take this five minute assessment before you come in for your first interview”, at that point, they’re kind of open minded. Now, you wouldn't take this 45 minute assessment before you come in for an interview. I mean, I'd tell you to bugger off. Like, I'm in high demand. Why would I get 45 minutes of pre-work and I don't know anything about this outcome? It's also working out where to put it in your interview process, that's important as well. And again, if you think about it like a campaign, where does it make the most sense so often? It's after our first interview. So you've got to know me. I've got to know you. We're both still keen to proceed. Maybe it's introducing it then. 

James Lawrence:  And then, what are you using it for? I guess that's the big one, right? Is it a pass/fail? Is it just to help guide you on if this person might have some weaknesses here? Obviously, what one of our clients might want from, say, a general marketer versus if they're hiring a technical SEO role, the needs are different. Like you just talked about - it's probably a very broad question. I’m just keen for you to unpack that a bit. 

Alicia Lykos: It's actually a very good question. Because what we do see companies doing is saying, ‘oh, it appears we should be doing some psychometrics and testing, so why don't we find someone? We'll just use them.’ With no clarity around why. And that's just as dangerous. You might as well just not do it. I'll just put it through a test and it'll work out if there's any red flags and you're like, that's stupid. What you need to be doing is actually understanding the role. So we use PR to actually profile the job and say: well, actually this job requires the person who's going to be in it to be very proactive. It's a very fast paced role. They need to be quite independent because they're working on their own and they're driving new ideas and they need to be open to risk. They need to maybe be a bit more introspective because they need to be quite internally creative.

Alicia Lykos: So when we start to profile the job, we can then compare candidates to the job and say: well, actually it's not a pass or fail. It's: how are you going to feel about doing this job in two years time? Because there's going to be components where you've got to flex yourself. You know, you might not naturally be that proactive. You might be a little bit more responsive to things. Well, how are we going to ask you a great question to work out how you're going to cope? And I think it's all about giving you more data to ask better questions. And it's also about seeing that long term fit in that role, because knowing that for most people, they're going to evolve into other roles, into your business, knowing what that could look like. Sometimes we hire people who are actually not very aligned to their job, but we know that really in eight months we don't see them in that role long term. We've got a career pathway for them that says, actually, I think you're going to be really well suited over here. 

Alicia Lykos: That's why we use tools. It’s actually to give us more insight on the behavioural drivers of the people, what's driving and motivating them and then how we use that information - not just in recruitment, by the way, this is where the data becomes valuable. How do I use that assessment now to better manage you? How do I use it to sit down and have a bit of development conversation? How do I use it when I'm onboarding you to tailor your experience? How do I use it when I'm introducing you to your team and your team dynamic? I think if you're using data in a really positive but respectful way that actually sits along with the employee lifecycle, that's where that data now becomes really valuable and that's where I think companies are missing. An opportunity to use data is not just about the pre assessment tool. It's thinking: how can we introduce this into our business to get a better understanding of everybody? To use it when we're building relationships and building teams and really use it throughout the business. 

James Lawrence: That's awesome. And it might not be as simple as this, but if you had to say, what percentage of a decision about hiring someone or not hiring them would you put down to data versus just that feeling you had when you interviewed them versus the answers they gave to the interview based on this briefcase they bring - all that kind of stuff. Like is it a 5% or is it a 50%? Where do you - your clients that are doing a great job of recruitment, bringing on board and managing and growing awesome teams? How significant is the data bit? 

Alicia Lykos: I have a few particular clients who have had to build their businesses quite quickly. When that's the case, the data becomes more valuable than ever, because in that situation, the data weighting could be as high as 70, 80%. Like, we won't interview you really, unless I build out sales teams, I'll build out customer success teams for SaaS businesses. We are definitely looking for some key behavioural drivers in you. Because we just know highly successful new business development salespeople need to have some particular drivers. If you don't have it, then there's a good chance you're going to get it and you're going to fake it till you make it and you're going to fail. I don't have time in a business like that. We can't run the risk versus businesses that are really established and are really stable that go, okay, well this is just one role. We can roll the dice on this a little bit more than normal and then the weighting comes down a bit.

Alicia Lykos: But it depends on which role as well. There are those things as well. It's the impact of that role. Data is one piece of the puzzle. I believe it is truly fundamental. I would say it's probably 50 plus percent if I was going to put a number on it, purely because I have seen the repercussions of people who are not in the right role. And the toll it pays on them that they are eventually going to leave the role anyway. So if I'm thinking about: I need stability, I need long term growth. I know that if I hire the right behavioural match to the job, I hire the right cognitive scores. I know you've got the brainpower to keep up with the job. I'm actually, I am so far forward than just on my gut instinct. I have great intuition, I have great empathy, I have great instinct. I won't let it determine my totality of thinking because people are complex. If you think you're really great at reading people, think about some bad hires you've made where you got a really good vibe when you met them. We get it wrong. We just do because people are mysterious and they can turn up a particular way. 

James Lawrence: And you can't possibly test all of those things in an interview, like I said. It's how we've - and I'm not sure if that's by design from what you've done with us - but for the roles that we do have an abundance of candidates and, they typically are the grad roles, the younger roles or maybe some roles two years ago, it's data first because there's enough candidates. This is the role, these are the attributes we need. COG test needs to be kind of there or thereabouts, and then we start from there. But if you're looking at a technical role where we need someone with five years experience and you've got three candidates, the data will help guide your decision making and it might preclude someone because it's so out of whack. But otherwise it's more like: okay, well, there's maybe a gap here or a strength there. Are we willing to compromise on that or take a bit more of a punt than we normally would? 

Alicia Lykos: When it comes to those roles that are really hard to find - we face that more often than not nowadays - with those really tricky roles and you only have maybe one or two or three people at that point, the data becomes helpful for how to manage them. So I can predict what's going to go wrong and actually where the biggest challenge and stress is going to be. 

Alicia Lykos: For example, if you hire someone who is very, very introspective, they're very reserved, they're very quiet. But the role requires them to be out meeting new people all the time. They've got to build rapport. They've got to be highly communicative. They need to be big talkers. Okay, I'm going to sit down and have a conversation with this person, number one in the interview to say, how have you gone about influencing all of those components? But if let's say we do hire them because we want the briefcase, I now need to sit down and say the things that you're going to find really challenging over the next few months is how many meetings I have scheduled for you and the fact that you going to be forward facing, you're going to be talking all the time. We need you to share your ideas with the team, but let's make this as least intrusive as possible for you. What can we do to set you up for success? So then the data becomes a real point for us to guide the conversation, to equip that person so they do not fail. That is how I would get you. 

James Lawrence: That's awesome. I love that. Either way there's benefit. It's just about it's not necessarily yes/no in hiring someone - it's potentially that. But otherwise it's not a perfect world and I think we know we're operating in a very imperfect world at the moment when it comes to talent. So at least allow it to help guide. Alicia, this has been awesome. I've been making notes and I reckon there's like ten.

James Lawrence: My thing is, marketers can listen to the pod and get one practical take away that's going to help them in their role, then that's great. But I think any marketer involved in recruitment, stalking a business like: look from the outside-in into own business. Stalk it. Would you apply? I think looking at your in-house capacity - don't just knee jerk: we need to replace X, Y, Z. Is there someone that we can bring through with training, whatever it might be? I think, reviewing your job ads. It's like the balance has shifted in a good way. I'm a bit scared if I look at ours, but I’m hoping if I look at it, it will be fine. But I think our People and Culture team is looking at using videos. 

James Lawrence: You’ve got to sell your business as you're essentially how you'd market it. I think in this current environment, treating it like a marketing campaign, the briefcase thing is awesome. I don't think that's necessarily a short term talent thing now, but just generally the head, the heart and the briefcase being the little thing that for better or worse, you can train. Or maybe it's actually not necessary at all.

James Lawrence: I'm going to ask you one final question. I'm a marketer. One of my great staff has left. What's the one bit of advice that you'd give me on how to hire a great marketer in this current environment? 

Alicia Lykos: So many answers. 

James Lawrence: I’m going to give you one.

Alicia Lykos: I would say pause. Just pause and reflect for a minute. And I would say, go through your options. Go through your short term and long term options. And I think that's what it really comes down to. Because to your point, if we knee jerk and just promote out, I would say stop, reflect and get ready. It's getting ready for recruiting. Because if you spend the time there, how do I go and get in front of the right people for this opportunity? You might come up with some creative ideas on your own. You might go, ‘actually, I do know people I could reach out to.’ 

Alicia Lykos: To your point earlier, you've had someone reach out to you. Who do you know in your network that you can reach out to? You will come up with your own ideas. What we do is we get into a state of panic and we all know panic brain isn’t very helpful. Panic brain is where we make our bad decisions and we go, ‘oh, what have we done previously? We'll do that now’. That is not what you need to do in 2022. You need to stop and be creative and think. Think it through. And then go and take action and build that team around you to help you take that action. 

Alicia Lykos: At the end of the day, everyone in your business needs to be involved in recruitment because it's about your brand. It's about how do we attract, how do we inspire our top talent and how do we keep them engaged? If we can do that, they're going to go out and find people for you. Then that long term strategy kicks in. 

James Lawrence: Love it. Alicia, thank you so much for your time. 

Alicia Lykos: No worries. Thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. 

James Lawrence: Thanks for listening to the Smarter Marketer podcast. Stay up to date about new episodes on LinkedIn and Instagram by searching for Smarter Marketer podcast. You can purchase your own copy of Smarter Marketer via the Amazon website. And if you want a second opinion about your business’s approach to digital marketing, send me an email at jamesl@rocketagency.com or visit the rocketagency.com.au website. Thanks for your time.