Who is Sophie?
Sophie Dearden is a professional who specializes in helping businesses with their hiring and recruitment needs. From small solo printer setups to larger companies, Sophie understands the struggles they face when it comes to bringing in the right talent. She assists smaller businesses that lack experience or HR departments by providing alternative methods of hiring. Additionally, Sophie aids larger companies, particularly those in industries like engineering, construction, and recruitment, where there is a significant skills gap or shortage. In the UK, she has successfully placed gas engineers and electrical engineers in companies facing these challenges. Sophie has extensive knowledge of the employee market and understands the difficulties companies face in offering competitive salaries to attract skilled professionals. With her expertise, she not only helps businesses with recruiting skilled individuals but also assists in staff retention strategies.
Key Takeaways
[00:03:17] Companies struggle to fill gaps in their workforce, leading to burnout, low morale, and high turnover. Traditional hiring methods are expensive and time-consuming. Hence, many companies turn to recruitment companies after failed attempts to fill the gap themselves.
[00:05:17] Big rebrand, hiring remote professionals, task delegation.
[00:11:24] University in England, ski instructing in New Zealand, art degree, gym failure, successful sales company, sacrificing relationships, shutting down company, working with virtual assistants, learning from past experiences, Tim Ferris's book, starting Resource Worldwide.
[00:15:45] Flexibility and cost-effectiveness of hiring remote professionals
Valuable Free Resource or Action
www.resourceworldwide.com
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Transcript
Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
struggling small businesses, right skills, talented individuals, technical or skill, hiring individuals, solo printers, home office, physical location, budget, alternative method of hiring, skills gaps, skill shortages, engineering companies, construction companies, recruitment companies, gas engineers, electrical engineers, employee's market, candidate driven market, salary requirements, HR department, retention of staff, organic growth, add more responsibilities, burnout, morale, team, infrastructure, competitors, gap, hiring, recruiting, recruitment company, expensive mistakes, rebrand, current website, tips for hiring, remote professionals, Philippines, cost-effective option, local area, upfront fees, sliding scale, A player, career progression opportunity, culture of the company, vision of the company, sense of purpose, poor retention, timely, expensive.
SPEAKERS
Sophie Dearden, Stuart Webb
Stuart Webb [00:00:22]:
Hi, and welcome back to It's not rocket science 5 questionnaire with Profiolo today. I'm having just some nice lemon water because I've got a bit of a sore throat of that. And I'm delighted to welcome Sophie Deird and Sophie is the co founder of resource worldwide there are businesses on a mission to really help, struggling small businesses find the right skills and talented individuals no matter her technical or skill they need to be. And so she's gonna talk to us a little bit about some of those problems. So welcome to it's not rocket science. Five questions over coffee.
Sophie Dearden [00:00:56]:
Thank you so much. It's great to be here. I'm super excited to talk to you and, hopefully share some new information and insights to anyone that's watching.
Stuart Webb [00:01:05]:
Brilliant. So, Sophie, tell me what is the sort of problem that you are currently trying to solve? What's the What's the problem that your customers have that you really help them to to to solve?
Sophie Dearden [00:01:17]:
So we work with a fairly sizable range different businesses. So anything from solo printers right through to kind of multiple 7 or 8 figure companies. And the one consistency across the companies that we work with is essentially they are struggling to hire individuals into their businesses. And it can be for a range of different reasons. Obviously, smaller businesses sometimes they don't necessarily have one any experience or a HR department to help them with recruiting. They may not necessarily have an office. A lot of solo printers in 2023 are able to start a amazing businesses, run amazing businesses even from their home office, for example. So they may not have a physical location. They may not have a budget to bring somebody in full time. So we'll come in and we'll help those business owners with hiring in our way, which is an alternative method of hiring. Or with the larger companies that we work with, we find that there's real skills gaps and skill shortages. So we work a lot with engineering companies, construction companies, recruitment companies, for example. Let's talk about engineering We have recently been placing gas engineers, electrical engineers into companies here in the UK because there's just a real skill shortage of that specific, niche. Alternatively, the skills are available in the UK, but the cost, but it's very much an employee's market or a candidate driven market, the cost of which the salary requirements are is so high, the companies just can't afford to pay them. that's the type of company that we start to work with, people who have got problems with recruiting skilled professionals, recruiting at all, and also retention of their staff as well.
Stuart Webb [00:03:03]:
So what's the sort of thing that you find business owners have tried to do or failed before you sort of help them? Where have they where they've been putting their efforts, which have not resulted in the right higher or getting the right sort of skill in their business?
Sophie Dearden [00:03:17]:
a lot of companies, and again, if we're talking about kind of our more established businesses here. A lot of companies grow organically. So they may have somebody in their business who's been there for a long time and they've kind of started to build up a team And what happens is they just add more and more responsibilities onto their existing team members. who might not actually be the right skill set for those responsibilities, their assistant team members come in and start to get burnout, for example, the morale of the team can drop. The retention then can drop. People might start moving looking for different positions. So when a company will step back and look at their infrastructure and go, okay. Actually, we've got a gap here that we need to fill, or it may be that their competitors are offering service there, not yet, sir, they're not offering. So for whatever reason, there'll be a gap that becomes available in the company where they need to hire. Traditionally, they'll look at either hiring themselves, but like we kind of touched on already, a lot of companies don't have HR departments. that ensure how to hire. they may look at using recruitment companies. Both of these different ways of hiring traditional recruitment companies I'm talking about, they can be really expensive and also timely. So if you try to hire yourself or you hire for recruitment company, the recruitment company gets it wrong, It can take a really long time to find the right person, and it can be really, really expensive mistakes to be making along the line. So the the biggest reason that we find that people come to us is because they've tried one of those 2 methods to fill this gap already. and they've failed in their attempts to do it themselves?
Stuart Webb [00:04:52]:
No. I know you're currently going through something a bit of a rebrand, so I'm sure I'm about to show your current current website down below where people can get more information about what resource worldwide do. But are there any tips that you can offer that that might help somebody who's currently in the process of trying to hire somebody with the right skills that you might give them to sort of really help them sort think through some of the issues they need to solve.
Sophie Dearden [00:05:17]:
Yeah. We are going through a big rebrand at the moment. So, hopefully, if you if you check this website out right now, not gonna be that relevant to what I'm talking about because that we've changed direction so much because of the demand for our service in the last 12 months. We've grown significantly. and we started the business working with solar printers and placing virtual assistants into solar panel businesses. And now we've really evolved and we're placing remote professionals into much bigger organizations. the the best tips that I can or the first tip can share is just to be really open minded about how you're hiring. So what we do is we hire remote professionals in four companies from the Philippines. so as long as the role can be done remotely, we can find someone with the skill set to do it. And the reason that we use the Philippines is because there's such huge supply of skill sets for the roles that we're looking to fill. And also it's a super cost effective option for clients because over in the Philippines cost of living significantly less than it is here in the UK. So the first thing I would say is if you've been trying to do the same thing and you've been trying to higher in either your local area and you're not getting the right applicants through or you're getting the right applicants through, but the amount there expecting to be paid is significantly more than your business can afford. There is another solution, and that's where we come in. Secondly, you can use the recruitment companies and they charge big upfront fees and they haven't necessarily delivered the best candidates. Again, that's something we hear a lot from our clients. Then again, the alternative method that we have, there are no upfront fees. and also if it's the wrong fit, we replace them for free for free. There's no kind of sliding scale on it. So be open minded to how you're recruiting Secondly, be really, really clear on what you're actually recruiting for. So have identify the skills that you need, but also identify the type person that you want to attract and what you can offer them. So very often in recruitment, people will just go, oh, I need this person to fill this gap. But actually, you've got to look, if you're trying to attract an a player into your business, what is it that you're gonna offer them? And I'm not talking about pay package and benefits. I'm talking about career progression opportunity. I'm talking about the culture of the company, the vision of the company. How can you help give them a sense of purpose? This is something that when we're recruiting for our clients, we talk about all the time because we wanna make sure when we present the opportunity to the candidates, we're a the very best quality and the very best talent that we can because we're providing them with a real career opportunity. Again, when you're looking to place someone into your business, whether a physical staff member, a remote staff member. If you can attract someone who's gonna be there long term, who's gonna grow into the role, who's gonna grow with the company, it's a much better situation to be in because like I keep saying, if you are recruiting someone, you have poor retention, it's very timely and it's very expensive. So just really thinking about that whole package that you can be offering when you're recruiting your team members. And involve, if you've got staff, involve all of your team or at least all of the department within this, really spend some time having a look at how your staff are spending their time. Because in our experience, if people are doing jobs that they're not either qualified to do or they don't really want to be doing, slightly their productivity is gonna drop. So an exercise that we often will get people to do is we will either get them if they're a solo owner or we'll get the the team that they're looking to fill the gap in to spend some time writing down all of the tasks that each one of them is doing. If they can spend, say, 3 to 5 days writing down all of the tasks that they're doing and then just eliminate first any task that they don't need to do, anything that's not helping reach the company goal or company vision. Sometimes it's tasks that they were doing 5 years ago that were relevant. They're not relevant now, but they're still doing them. So eliminate them first. Is there any tasks there that can be automated? So anything that AI can look after or anything technology. There's so many amazing programs, so many amazing ways to automate your business out. So is there any of those tasks that can be automated? And lastly, is there any of those tasks that can be outsourced in the way that we always make that last decision? or can be handed to someone else is we get people to highlight the things that only they can do and that only they want to do, and it's gonna give them energy and make them more productive again, a thing that we see in larger departments, and we see this as solopreneurs as well. If anyone listening is a solopreneur, you'll know what I'm talking about. I've been there myself, and you feel like you're head is in the weeds. And you're just there and the business is churning, but you're not really growing and the revenue is not really growing. It's probably because you're not doing revenue generating tasks because you haven't got enough time. That continues as the company grows in size. So anything that your team members are doing, that isn't revenue generating or isn't specialist to their skills, but they've just picked up along the way. Those are things that should start to get delegated to a never team member. And that's again, where remote professionals come in. They're very flexible. So it can be part time. It can be full time. it can work on your time zone or any time zone, essentially, So if there is that flexibility element of it, but it's definitely something that most companies haven't done for a long time is actually reviewed what tasks everyone is doing and how productive they're being in doing those tasks.
Stuart Webb [00:10:32]:
Do you know that I I did speak a lot of us lower language, you'll have to hear about automating and delegating those things because there's too many people spend too much of their time doing stuff that I either shouldn't do, or, you know, don't or cling on to something. I often say that too many business owners, even in very large businesses choose the path of least assistance because they're quite determined. Nobody else could do this as well as me. And in actual fact, many people can do it as well if not better than them, and they should be concentrating on, as you say, the revenue generation rather than admin or something else that they think is important, but in actual fact, it's just not really what that a business needs them to be focused on. And there must be something, a book, of course, some some some moan in your life that sort of brought you to the realization that you could help businesses like this. Is is there anything you could point us to that would would help us to understand?
Sophie Dearden [00:11:24]:
Well, for me, I'll give you my kind of short inversion of my longer story. but I went to university in England. So I moved to New Zealand when I was sixteen for 4 years and did ski instructing and had lots of fun. My parents wanted me to go to university. I said I'll go to university, but I want to do a course that I want to do. And that was art. And I did get a 1st class in an art specializing in painting in the renaissance period. but it's not really a career. I mean, I could have had a career as an artist, but opted looked at the financial possibility of success there and opted not to. so I finished my degree and I was kind of left wondering what I was supposed to do with my time. And I set up a gym anyone that's ever worked in the gym bit of personal training space or know that you work insanely hard for very little money. It's moved now. Online coaching, you can make a lot of money in that space, but online coaching wasn't a thing 15, 16 years ago when when I had my gym. so 6 months in, the gym went bump and I was kind of a graduate and in, I think, I was about £31,000 worth of debt from the gym. So I started to work in sales and very quickly, found that I had a real natural ability and ended up setting up my own sales company. So In my twenties, I spent 8 years working 80 to a 120 hours a week, skiing is my favorite thing to do. I didn't go skiing for that 8 years. I made money. I made good money. I had a great lifestyle. Lots of nice handbags, nice fancy cars. lots of VIP parties, but I've lost relationships with friends and family. I missed my parents' 25th wedding anniversary, for example, And my belief at the time was if I work really, really hard now, you know, work hard for 10 years and then the rest of your life, your have all these things that no one else is ever gonna have because they didn't work as hard as you worked. And it's a very old fashioned. It still gets thrown around a lot on social media. you notice the whole, like, you the harder you work, the more that you get, but actually the harder I work, the the more that I seem to lose. And meeting my husband through that company, made me realize. So a year after I met my husband, I actually shut that company down. And that whole experience made me commit that when I set up another company, and it took me a few years before I set up another company, but it made me commit to doing it in a way that, yes, there was going to be great financial a reward, but would never sacrifice my time again. So I had that mentality in place when I set up my next company. And that's what got me looking at working with virtual assistants very early on. I just had a newborn baby. I'd set up a new commerce company, on my maternity leave. and that pattern started to play out again, you know, I put the baby to bed and I'd be working till 1 o'clock in the morning and my husband would get back from his job and I'd say, Hey, I need you to help me pack these orders up. So the pattern was coming back and I thought, I'm I'm gonna learn from my previous company. I'm not gonna do that. So that's why I started working with commercial assistance very quickly outsource and make sure I was using my energy and my time only in the tasks that could generate the revenue. So It was that experience was really, really key. And then secondly, the book that I read around the time that I'd started to think about winding that company down, was Tim Ferris's 4 hour work week. I couldn't imagine it to be true. there's lots of bits in it, which I think are slightly outdated and slightly exaggerated now anyway. But just the concept that you could build company and still have that freedom and flexibility to spend your time traveling having experiences now for me with my family and my children, I thought, well, if if they can, if he can do it, then surely I can do it as well. So I did in my own business, and it was so impactful and so powerful. I got really passionate helping other business owners do the same thing, and that's when resource worldwide was born.
Stuart Webb [00:15:24]:
Brilliant story. I love it. I love it. I love the book. so if there is a question that I'm sure you are currently thinking he still hasn't asked me about. And so, therefore, I'm not gonna give you the opportunity to ask the question that I should have asked. And of course, once you've asked that question, you really do need to answer it for us. So what's the question I should have asked you, which I haven't yet?
Sophie Dearden [00:15:45]:
I think it's more a question, that people would think about themselves before deciding to hire remote professional from outside of the UK. and the question would be, well, why would I hire someone from outside of the UK? when there's, you know, lots of people in the UK that I could hire instead. and again, I'm not necessarily speaking to the solar printer here who's looking to make their 1st hire. I think most entrepreneurs looking to make that 1st hire, it makes sense on every single level to probably invest in a remote professional as opposed to hiring someone because it gives you the flexibility. It's so much more cost effective, all of the things that we talked about. But in answer to that question, we don't believe that you should hire a remote professional over someone in your home country. work a lot. We actually have probably about 70% of our clients in the States. We are just starting to develop our UK market further, at home territory, but just because we've built everything from word-of-mouth, to now, hence, why the marketing piece is coming into play. Most of our clients ended up being from the States. and it's the same it's the same there. It's not that we don't think you should hire in the UK or higher mistakes. And there's massive, massive value in hiring locally. But with the changing landscape, of recruitment and the way people work, there's a huge opportunity to tap into this massive network of talent and skill. that's just a bit further afield, literally, you know, the click of a button, the the cert, the the push of an email. And that's working with remote professionals. And where I really see this and how I see and I'm actually on a podcast next next week, which is where we're talking about the changing landscape of recruitment and retention. in the States, specifically in the construction and real estate industry. the way that I see this and we've seen, we've been running for 3 years, right, and the way that we're seeing this space change and develop sped up because of COVID, of course, everyone's understanding of how accessible actually it is to work remotely, is that if you balance having in house team members who also can work hybrid days or or local team members, but you also have remote professionals. you can build a much stronger company, and you can have a little edge on your competition. So let's say again, back to the skills, let's say that you are a digital marketing agency and we just did a place traditionalizing agency who specifically wanted an expert in Shopify Plus And WordPress. They're based down in Surrey. They've been trying to hire for this role themselves for the last 8 months. locally through recruitment agencies, and they just haven't been able to fill it because of, like I mentioned, the demands of the costs, Sorry, demands of the salaries. the candidates were being offered a position with them and then being coached by another company afterwards because it was so competitive. and then the candidates, 2 of candidates they did start just weren't actually up to scratch at all. So they came to us. We placed a team member in with them 3 months ago. It's they've took him from part time to full time within a month. So it's gone really, really well, but they also have all of their in house team So they've used him to fill a skills gap. They now come to us to fill another skills gap. But what it means is it means there's going to be more money in the company because it is more cost perspective to hire from the Philippines. So that's gonna go towards team bonuses. It's gonna go towards team days. It's gonna go towards more, marketing so that they can expand clients. The services that our guys are able to give them means they're able to expand their services. So again, they're able to build the business out. So it's more looking at how can I use this form of recruitment as a way to deliver better service to my clients, how can I use this form of recruitment as a way to enable the staff currently work with me to have a better experience of working with me, and how can I use this this remote recruitment to actually build my business and achieve my business goals in a more efficient way than I've been doing. So I think the 2 should work together, and we do the same thing. We've got CMO here in K. We're about to hire, operations manager again here in the UK. And by the end of next year, we'll have 4 or 5 key senior team members in the UK. but we also have a team of 12 out in the Philippines. So I think that working together is what's gonna give you the edge. as opposed to it's one or the other.
Stuart Webb [00:20:11]:
Brilliant. Brilliant. So if you thank you so much for bringing that to our attention, I really hope that we get see a lot more of what you're doing and really changing the way in which we're operating as teams. I think it's great. just very quickly before we end. if you would like to get notification of when we do these, chats and if you want to get on the mailing list and you get a copy of this when it comes out or local and Apple Podcasts and places like that. You can go to httpscolonforward/voltash link dot the complete approach. dotco.ukforward/newsletter. That is httpscolonforward/forward/ link dot the complete approach dotco.ukforward/ newsletter. Get on there, let me know about you would like some, some notification and I will send you the email and I'll send you notification of when we do these calls with really interesting people like Sophie, and you can get notification when it comes out on our podcast So if you thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us, I really appreciate you taking us through all of that. I hope when we get to see the website, it will be really spot on, and sort of speak to what you're trying to do, but we'll come back and we'll check-in with you later.
Sophie Dearden [00:21:21]:
Amazing. Thanks so much for having me to do it. Really enjoyed it.
Stuart Webb [00:21:24]:
Really appreciate it. Thank you, Sophie.
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