Tudor Marsden-Huggins, 36, is from Brisbane, Australia. He started his recruitment company, Employment Office, in 1999. Employment Office is a team of recruitment marketing specialists. They provide a recruitment option that’s neither DIY nor a traditional agency model, but a little bit of both. They offer a range of recruitment marketing, screening and shortlisting, e-recruitment software and recruitment branding products to their valued clients.
Starting the Business
Q: Where did the idea for your business come from? Where were you in your life and career?
A: As a small business owner in 1997, I discovered the challenges of recruitment first-hand. Lost between two polarised alternatives – DIY recruitment or the expensive recruitment agency model – the gap in the market seemed significant. From this need and my determination that there had to be a better way, Employment Office was born in 1999. From the very start, the business promoted a simple yet effective strategy that streamlined the recruitment process: tailoring an attraction strategy, screening the candidates online and comparing candidates ‘apples-with-apples’.
Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced when starting out?
A: There were a number of challenges, but one of the biggest was changing the mindset of potential customers. Intelligent, online recruitment marketing strategies were unheard of at the time, and it was tough to build credibility in a market that was dominated by two very different alternatives – the expensive recruitment agency model with little transparency and control for the client, or onerous and daunting DIY recruitment, which is not ideal for employers without the time or expertise to execute a strategic recruitment drive. We were unknown, untried and untested. We knew our product was a great solution to a dire recruitment need, but we needed to challenge the status quo and prove that to the market.
To overcome this challenge we took the Employment Office business to the market, one client at a time. Essentially, we needed to educate the market about what we trying to do, which was to offer a new, innovative solution to an old business problem.
To give you some context of the environment we were operating in, SEEK had started its online job board only a couple of years prior, and they used to go door to door, trying to sell their product to businesses. At that time, they were really up against it. Advertising positions online was a completely foreign concept to recruitment agencies, it was just not something that was considered to be an effective way to attract quality candidates. With the popularity of online job boards today it’s hard to believe the industry ever felt this way – but it was reluctant to adopt the new technology.
We were another player who set about challenging the conventional wisdom and aimed to revolutionise the way companies found their candidates. Initially through telemarketing and countless face-to-face meetings, we gradually established credibility in the various industries that still underpin our testimonial-based sales approach to this day.
Q: What is the one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you started the business?
A: I wish I had understood the concept of leadership a little better. People think they know about leadership. They think if they’ve had “manager” in their title they understand what leadership means and what it entails. But as I have gone through the process of growing this business, I have gradually come to realise that strong, effective leadership is not something that can be mastered in the short-term. It’s a lifelong commitment. Becoming a great leader, someone who provides the guidance and encouragement for others to reach their full potential, is a long, challenging and interesting journey. It’s a never-ending process.
Q: What would you consider your first big success in the business?
A: The first big win was getting my business partner, Susanne Mather involved. At that stage, I had the concept for Employment Office, and I knew it was a great idea, but what good is a great idea if you can’t convince anyone else of its value?
It was a huge vote of confidence when a successful person like Susanne endorsed the concept and loved it so much she actually left her role as CEO with another company to come on board.
It wasn’t only the validation of a great idea, it was also the start of a journey to create something special. When Susanne got involved, I not only had someone who recognised the potential of the business, I also had someone to share the load to get the business off the ground.
Q: What is the toughest thing about getting to the top / staying on top in your industry specifically?
A: The recruitment industry has undergone so many changes in the last few years, everyone is trying to get their slice of the action with their own unique selling point.
On the one hand you’ve got to be careful not to get too distracted by how competitors are doing things. If your approach is a good one, you need to stick with it and maximise the strength of your model for the benefit of your customers. By the same token, business does change rapidly, and it’s inevitable that your company will need to keep up with a changing professional market, offering solutions to stay competitive as industry leaders.
With this in mind, I think one of the toughest things is knowing when to hold your course, but not holding your course so much you become completely irrelevant one day. Striking the balance can be really hard. One strategy that has helped me is to focus mostly on any internal problems in the business, rather than the external ones.
The Future
Q: Where do you see your industry heading in the next 5 years?
A: The recruitment agency model will continue to come under pressure and it’s my prediction their market share, with the exception of labour hire services, will decrease further. In particular, high-end executive search services are in trouble. Technology and social media have made candidates so easy to locate on LinkedIn that it’s no longer necessary to rely on an agency’s rolodex. As a result, the agencies are scrambling to find new sources of revenue.
The agencies have an embedded culture of charging big fees, and they revel in the associated prestige of these big accounts. But the customer is becoming more savvy – they aren’t prepared to pay exorbitant fees when there are alternative companies providing a quality recruitment product at a fair price.
Post-GFC, the customer has changed the way they view recruitment, and what they are prepared to invest in. Customers are more focused on which elements of the recruitment process they should outsource, and which elements they can manage in-house.
The opportunity for Employment Office in the next five years is in selling an effective recruitment process, where each individual customer is offered a tailored solution to complement their in-house recruitment capabilities with marketing, shortlisting and recruitment branding products. The opportunity for Employment Office is to create solutions for an effective blended process that is easy for the customer to manage. The more tools that become available to the client the better, but that also means the process becomes more complicated. Employment Office provides the specialist knowledge to manage these tools effectively across a platform that delivers results.
Q: What do you plan on doing / changing in order to keep growing in this time period?
A: Employment Office plans to continue to organically grow our core market by selling good value products to mid-market employers with around 50 to 400 staff. These companies purchase recruitment products transactionally, when they need candidates for specific roles at specific times. We are planning for disciplined growth with more sales teams, operating in current and emerging markets.
Another key focus will be growing our enterprise business with employers with a staff base of 4000 to 20,000 employees. They are essentially buying the same product as the mid-market clients, but on an enterprise subscription basis. We will be targeting customers in this demographic with recruitment marketing, e-recruitment software and recruitment branding solutions.
The next few years will also see Employment Office looking at how we can innovate to meet the needs of our future customer, to ensure we continue to provide world-class recruitment products that addresses the key concerns of the modern employer. We will be refining each component of our recruitment process to ensure we continue to deliver a world-class recruitment product to our customers.
Q: What does ultimate success look like to you? How will you know when you’ve achieved it?
A: I will feel we are truly successful when we are a global business with offices in the markets that make sense for our model – Australia, Canada, United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa. We will have customers from all over the world, who recognise Employment Office for its organisational expertise. Our core product offerings of recruitment marketing, shortlisting and recruitment software will be the standard adopted by other players in the industry.
Success also means the business can function and grow without me needing to play a pivotal role – when we have a depth of leadership, and lots of people with a sense of ownership in the business.
We run a program known as the Business Ownership System, where selected employees are invited to buy a share in the profits generated by their team. It gives staff an opportunity to have a ‘skin in the game’, and to directly benefit from their success, as regular business owners would. I’ll feel Employment Office is a success when we have at least 50 great leaders and 100 people involved in the Business Ownership System.
By then, some our early team members will have become millionaires thanks to our Business Ownership System, and many more high performing employees will be earning well above the average market salary thanks to the model we have established for the hardworking members of our EO family. But that’s not the reason we attract and retain great people, we put that down to the passion they hold for our model and the solutions it allows us to deliver to our customers, coupled with the excitement of profit, growth and innovation.
Q: What do you think will be the biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs in the near future?
A: One major challenge is thinking of an idea that somebody hasn’t already done. In our sophisticated world that is a genuine concern and there is definitely a perception that everything has been done. But if you do manage to come up with a great original idea, it is so often the case that the idea is only a small part of becoming successful. It’s far more important to execute that idea well.
To look at it from another angle, you don’t necessary have to do something new, you just have to do it better than anyone else. Young entrepreneurs need to realise it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and taking the time to make considered decisions, rather than rushing in to things, is time well spent.
A significant challenge for entrepreneurs is developing their leadership skills. How can you learn if there is no-one above to teach you?
Because I went into business for myself at a young age, I experienced this first-hand. I joined the Young President’s Organization, and having a peer group to bounce ideas off and to learn from has been invaluable.
YPO helps you to move through the different phases as your business grows and evolves. The skills you need in the first five years are completely different to the skills you need in the second five years, and having support to help me through the transition has given me more confidence in my ability to lead the business.
Q: What one piece of advice would you give to someone just starting out in your industry and wanting to make it to the top?
A: Don’t do it for the money. It’s going to be so much harder and at times so much more disappointing than you can ever imagine, so the money’s never going to be enough.
Do something you’re passionate about and you love, and you’re more likely to be successful at it. You’ve got to love the business, the challenges that people throw up and the long hours. If you don’t feel that way, the monetary rewards, even in a very successful business, just won’t be enough of a reward for the work you have to put in.