All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.
Transcript
The transcript has been edited for clarity.
Dive into executive recruitment with Bill Twining
Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment podcast. In conversation with us today is Bill Twining, Director and Executive Assistant to the CEO at CP group, who is in charge of global talent acquisition.
Hi, Bill. Thank you for joining us today.
Bill: Hi Lydia. It’s nice to be with you today.
Lydia: So Bill, you have an impressive profile that spans over 14 years. You are Canadian, but you moved to Southeast Asia to lead sales teams and even start your own businesses. You have also been with the CP group in Thailand for nearly four years now, and your role focuses specifically on global talent acquisition.
What drives your interest in the talent space, Bill?
Bill: As you’ve said, I’ve had an interesting journey. I’m Canadian, and I moved out to Asia after university. I’ve been through the entrepreneurial journey a bit, then into technology start-ups, and then I moved into E-Commerce which is quite aggressively out here. Eventually, everything kind of leads back to people. The successes I’ve had were because of people’s abilities and the execution of them.
Frankly, some of the failures I’ve experienced were also because of people and maybe not having the right people in the right place, as well as looking in the mirror about that. I’ve always been curious about how people will impact businesses and that’s what ultimately led me on this journey towards ending up in recruitment. It’s the curiosity of how people can frankly impact a business that is the core tenant that fuels me.
Lydia: Interesting. I see it led to a very significant role now in the CP group, where CP is a major conglomerate. There is also digital transformation which is a big initiative to drive businesses forward.
Your role, as you’ve said, is fueled by your interest in how people affect businesses which is critical in getting the right people to make this kind of digital transformation happen. How did you go about strategizing when you took on this responsibility?
Bill: I’ll begin with a small moment by giving anyone whose viewing a history about CP because I do think we have a global audience. It’s quite interesting actually because CP group, this year, is a 101-year-old corporation that is in many different industry verticals. It started out in agriculture and has moved into what we call the entire value chain; everything from the farms to the produce to the animal proteins, all the way to retail and now technology, where they own it and have a telecommunications company as well.
There is quite a vast assortment of business units there. It is a complex situation, especially for traditional business units that are now going through this digital transformation. I don’t mean to say it as a buzz word, but there’s a lot that goes into how you take a retailer and move through a full digital transformation to becoming E-Commerce and have it be a single part of their revenue streams.
As I’m strategizing for it, firstly I’m trying to make sure what the business is and where there is a problem statement because I think once you’re able to assess a problem statement, then that gives a lot of capacity to dialogue with candidates and be a little more open versus being rigid about what specific things you might be looking for. It also allows for a bit more open conversation because I think there are solutions that are usually found by people who are cohesive with others in leadership.
The first strategy would be to make sure you understand what the business is doing and what are some of the core problems. The second thing would be to go around the world and talk to different leaders in their specific expertise or industry vertical. That’s the fun part of it. By talking to people all over the world, you’ll find interesting ideas for solutions to your problem. That’s kind of my M.O on it.
What it takes to build a strong talent pipeline amidst fierce competition
Lydia: Digital transformation is as much or even more about people as it is about technology. And companies that make the financial investment into digitalization know how important it is to acquire the right kinds of tech talent. You need to execute these strategies eventually.
So, what might be some ways to compete for talent like that today and build a strong talent pipeline?
Bill: It’s a really good question. If we’re talking specifically about tech, product, or leadership within a digital business that’s looking to transform, the days of overpaying or being the top player are over. It’s rare that it becomes a number one priority for someone to take a position. At least for us, it’s rare.
The first thing, for example, we are a 100-year-old Asian conglomerate. How do you turn that into something that has excitement around the candidate’s experience? What is the kind of brand equity around it? One of the things a lot of companies are doing right now, and it has to be part of the formula, is what is your ESG positioning?
This is something that is becoming more and more prevalent and frankly needs to be addressed by the leaders. What I mean is that it should be about the candidates who come and become leaders. The take is, If you’re the candidate and I’m with CP, it’s all about my expression about what our goal is and what the future is at our business. I think that immediately addresses the long-term commitment that we’re going to make to one another.
The second thing is on the tech side of things, which is more and more relevant today, especially in remote work. I’m based in Bangkok, Thailand now, and remote work could be someone from a neighboring suburb, neighboring province, or a completely different country. We’re always trying to be a little more progressive in that area.
Although it’s new, it is something that HR teams need to be actively talking about. We can’t have it become something that doesn’t allow us to continue with a particular candidate because the world has, in fact, proven that productivity levels are at the same rate for remote work as they are for in the office.
Hiring executive-level candidates and assembling an A-Team
Lydia: Let’s discuss the leadership mindset to drive digitalization. What should talent leaders consider when they look for candidates, especially at the executive level?
Bill: That’s another great question. A lot of times, I have found that when you’re sitting in the talent acquisition seat, you can sometimes act in a manner that’s too singled. The dialogue is becoming a lot of talent acquisition pitching to candidate.
Because our objective is to find game changers that are going to come in and impact the business over the short, medium, and long-term. I think the most important thing is We need to make sure they ultimately have the curiosity checkbox. It means, ‘is somebody interested to understand more than what a job description might entail?’ ‘Are they asking about different subsidiary businesses, is it a publicly traded company or a private company?’
Last but not least on this, is to make sure that somebody coming in for a leadership role who is going to be a part of that leadership team is asking some questions about their peers in terms of background, skillsets, likes, dislikes even as well as the social side of things.
“I think curiosity is a bit of a catch-all, but engagement needs to be shown that someone is willing to understand more than just the business itself but the entire ecosystem the business works with.”
Lydia: You’ve founded companies in a variety of verticals, Bill. From international trading, business processing, outsourcing, executive search, and even SaaS. You’ve seen what it takes to build teams as an entrepreneur yourself. So, what were some key learnings you’ve had when assembling your A-Team?
Bill: I think A-Teams can be dependent a little bit on your situation. The situation mostly talking about the maturity of the business that you’re trying to recruit for. A lot of times, leadership will go through some iterations a bit, depending on the maturity of that business itself. So, a lot of times, what I’m looking for when we’re building the team part of it are communication capabilities.
I think we talked a fair bit about technology talent as a backbone of digital transformations and building digital products etc. But when it comes to technology, there’s a misnomer that they’re going to be just the coders, and they’re going to be able to sit around and not interact with other leadership folks such as the marketing teams or with operations.
I think that’s kind of an old-school mentality. I think tech talent is ultimately like today’s engineers. They’re problem solvers. If wer’re trying to focus on communication capabilities, we want the candidate to try to communicate and understand how they problem-solve because that will probably be a core thing for understanding the capacity of their individual skill-set and how they problem solve within a group.
To me, that would come before a specific use-case problem. I know everyone loves to use big consulting firms, problems, and use cases and look for a case study to walk them through it. Usually, though, we don’t have that much time in terms of working in talent acquisition. So, communication is a real focal point for me to try and understand how they’re problem-solving within an individual capacity as well as within a leadership group with peers.
Lydia: These are some great insights with business leaders and it also actually points to how HR and talent development can become strategic actually in a situation where you might be facing a downturn.
So, what might be some ways that HR leaders can provide a strategic perspective in this respect?
Bill: You come up with very good questions, Lydia. Got to give you credit for that.
I think in a downturn, every company will have different objectives. I can speak for us that the downturn is actually an opportunity. We originally are Chinese-Thai company because of the family that started this business. We have a senior chairman who is one of the most prominent businessmen in all of the Southeast Asia. He talks quite a bit. That the Chinese character for a challenge is also the same character for opportunity.
If you are an HR and a talent acquisition person, and let’s say the downturn affects you really seriously, whether it be the hiring freeze or retrenchment, whatever that may be, we have to ultimately be cognisant that they’re going to be opportunities there.
This is almost a double down for talent acquisition. Are you utilizing technology properly to make your job more efficient and make sure that your database of talent is as organized as it possibly can be? Are we clearly trying to upgrade our own skillsets? Have we geeked out and started learning about Web3?
It's where all of the smartest developers are going today. If you look at Marc Andreessen, there was a terrific Mckinsey article that came out where he talked about how venture capitalists like to follow where the smart technology engineers are going and if they’re all going into Web3, even though we’re now in a crypto winter, then that means something. So, are you educating yourself on that? Are you preparing for the next update because it’s coming? These things flow.
In that sense, my first point of view on it is that are you taking the opportunity to become better yourself? It’s a really good time to be out there and to actively talk to candidates. Just as if it was an open job requisition, you need to be out there talking to these guys and girls because they’re going to be able to fill in the dots a little bit about where especially technology is going.
I think these are really important points because in a downturn, what does it mean? Does it mean six months? Is there going to be a slowdown on hiring? At least for us, it means this is an opportunity maybe to get our hands on some people we might have never been able to get our hands on before.
“This is a great opportunity to reach out and try to find superstar talent that frankly might be on the market now, and they wouldn’t have been if things were hunky-dory.”
Overcoming tech recruitment challenges: a guide for leaders
Lydia: Many companies have been forced to shift towards digitalization. It was mandatory during the pandemic, and in essence, all these businesses have become digital, and they need tech talents. So what would you say are the biggest challenges facing tech recruitment today, and how might leaders be able to tackle them?
Bill: I think there is ratcheted-up competition for the best talent in today’s world. Now, I’m going to put a little bit of a lens on it because I think it’s an effective strategy. People in Europe, other parts of Asia, North America, etc. could be thinking a little bit differently. For us, we’re this 100-year-old Asian conglomerate, and the core message of game-changers is how do I get people when I’m fighting against big technology companies from the United States or Europe? A lot of the technology companies are based in Singapore out here if they’re global. There’s obviously a very significant technology scene in India and China as well. So, the first challenge is the competition.
Now, this goes back a bit to our challenge and opportunity at the same time. This is the time to consolidate HR to make sure we have all the same type of messaging around our brand and around what we are doing in the future. Everybody is quote-on-quote going towards ‘digital transformation,’ or if you already at technology play, then you would talk about scaling and growth or one of these types of things.
Digital transformation for quote-unquote ‘traditional companies’ is already at this kind of level-playing field. So they’re fighting against banks who are going through these transformations, such as insurance companies, retailers, golf courses, and so on. The more cohesive a brand you have and an understanding of what the future objective and roadmap look like is very important in solidifying the value proposition to the candidate.
The competition is massive right now. It goes back a little bit to my first point, too, which is that we don’t want to get caught in a situation where we’re pitching cash like, ‘oh we’re going to have to up that.’ Because if you have to ratchet up your cash for a candidate, it means you’ve failed a little bit in your capability to have that candidate understand the opportunity around the growth and new journey they would come on with you.
I know that’s a little bit, not bullet-points and factoids, but it is very important for candidate’s experience and the ability to secure them. HR is going to be the first one to be able to give that vision statement, especially if the candidate, well, at least in my experience, does not know much about your company. Even though we’re a massive company out here, if I’m talking to candidates in Denver or Utah or Toronto or wherever, then a lot of times they won’t understand that.
“HR sets the role, the brand, and the company value proposition. Then from HR, we want to make sure it’s our responsibility that hiring managers and ultimately the chairman of the board that we’re having cohesion of that type of messaging.”
Impact of recruitment tools
Lydia: We spoke about the challenges and ways of syncing around recruitment today and how to overcome these challenges. There are also automation tools out there in the market.
What kind of impact do you think tools such as Manatal can have on recruitment?
Bill: Manatal is a product that I really like because it allows myself and my team to knock a few of those things out. I’ll give you some examples. Sort of on paper, I executive headhunt, which means I’m a hunter. I’ll have a CEO role that will need to be looked at and understood, then I’ll go global for that search.
So, Manatal has a number of characteristics and tools that allow me to ultimately do that really efficiently. The second thing is, I think, maybe even extremely valuable, and I call it the farming side of things which is ‘how are you making sure that your internal talent database is the best it can possibly be?’ Because again, you don’t want to start every single job requisition from zero. You want to have things structured, and it’s the story of data - how do we get data? You can use AI if your data is really organized.
What we use Manatal for on the farming side, for instance, we want to keep in touch with every single Thai person who works on a NASDAQ or MISC publicly traded company. Most of them are in the United States, but a lot of them are in Europe as well. So, every Thai person that works for a company, we want to have as close to a continuous communication stream going with them as we can and not just, ‘hi, I have a certain job, would you be interested?’ But more so, ‘hey, this is an opportunity for us to tell you a little bit more about what we’re doing as this conglomerate.”
For instance, we’re building a high-speed train in Thailand. We can have this kind of communication exercises literally with one click. I can send a message to thousands of candidates on mass-emailing, and with that, I can create this dialogue that is more conducive to having a strong building block with these candidates for the time that they do want to come back home.
There are tons of tools that I use. I use a LinkedIn profiler, a lot of setting up my own criteria that allow me to get a strong fit from the recommendation engine. Recommendation engine is an amazing tool, but you have to make sure that you’re using it for the way that you want to use it.
You have to input the right kind of attributes, and you want to add as much information as possible so that the engine is going to work for you. But the engine isn’t going to just take the job description and match it for you. You want to add in priority rankings, the value, and different skillsets.
I use it on both sides; the hunting and the farming. Again, it’s just massive man-hour savings.
Looking towards a career in recruitment? Here’s what you should know
Lydia: Bill, you have vast experience and even exposure in the headhunting and recruitment space today. What advice would you give someone starting out in recruitment today?
Bill: Well, first of all, you should join the recruitment department because I think it always needs really smart people, but I can tell you that again in my view, which is that I really feel like recruiters should act like consultants.
“Part of being a really successful recruiter is having the curiosity and the drive to have continuous learning. There’s just no doubt about it.”
First of all, within the digital space, things are changing so fast that you want to be reading and getting your newsfeeds on stuff that matters, and there is stuff that’s mattering. Not to hit Web3 over and over again, but this Ehtereum merge is potentially massive. But do you know why it is that way? Read about it.
The first part I would say is to generalize your newsfeed intake and your information consumption. I was just an undergrad and never did an MBA or anything like this because I tried to kind of learn on the job but the second thing would be to look at case studies, and there are really good case studies like Harvard Business Review or similar publications that start with a problem statement. These guys were going to get disrupted with technology because they were a dinosaur, and then it will talk you through a lot of how you get through that case study.
The takeaway here is that you as a recruiter can distill the business down to a problem statement that could also be synonymous with your objective of the business, like double revenue, get more users, increase the basket size, or whatever it is. Then you’re going to frame your mind around problem statements, and then that will dictate when you talk to candidates that they can open up about potential solutions.
I know I’ve said that before but I do think it’s really important because a lot of our time, our job as recruiters isn’t just to tick the boxes and send them on their way to the hiring managers. Our job is to find the superstars and prep them so that they can talk about solutions with our hiring managers and undertake that process potentially at that stage.
That’s what I look for as somebody that really gets it, and I know the first part of it, in terms of information consuming or the content consumption means that they want to grow.
Those would be my points in terms of what you can do that doesn’t cost you anything but a subscription. It doesn't have to be where you go to school for it. No disrespect to school.
Get in touch with Bill Twining
Lydia: Those are great points because curiosity really opens the doors to understand what you don’t know and raises awareness of what you need to find out in order to reach that kind of goal or rather support a business in a strategic way.
Thank you very much for your time today Bill. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show. Where can the audience find out more about you?
Bill: So I’m an avid LinkedIn person, so I’m always on LinkedIn and happy to chat with anyone. Also, if anyone has interest to move out to Thailand and work for the largest in Southeast Asia, then ping me.
Lydia: We have been in conversation with Bill Twining who is the director, and executive assistant to the CEO at CP group specializing in global talent acquisition. Stay tuned for more weekly episodes of All-In Recruitment.
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