EP206 – How to Recruit for Free
with Josh Wood & Ian Luckett

INTRO: In this episode of the IT Experts podcast, we're going to help you work out how to recruit for free.

Welcome to the IT Experts podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1 million, and if already there, get to 5 and go fast. At the end of the day, isn't it all about building a business that works for you rather than you for it? I hope you enjoy the show.

IAN: So good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast. Today we've got a real interesting one. You're wondering why on earth I'm talking to a recruitment consultant about how to recruit people for free. Welcome to the show, Josh Wood. How are you doing, Josh?

JOSH: Hiya Ian. Hiya, good, you?

IAN: Yes. Very good. Thank you. So thanks very much for coming on the show and also helping us prep for this show and Josh is, he'll explain in a minute who he is, what he does and who he helps but I met up Josh, at the recent CompTia conference, like the guy with loads of energy. I said, you need to come on the podcast, we need to have a chat and a crack. What can we talk about? And he said. I'm going to teach your audience how to recruit for free. And I went, but isn't that what you want to get paid for? So before we get into the detail there, Josh, tell everybody, who are you? What'd you do? And who'd you help?

JOSH: Hi. Yeah. My name's Josh. I work for Beaumont IT and we're an MSP specialist recruitment agency.

IAN: Fantastic. So the conversation we were having before was recruitment agency. Very interesting. Yes. We need right people. We need the right people in the right jobs. Is there a skill shortage? I don't know. Do MSPs struggle with marketing. Absolutely. Is recruitment a bit like marketing? Absolutely. So hang on a minute, we've got a bit of a synergy here. So we've talked about recruitment before. I'm going to shout out an episode a little bit later on that we've done previously, which was a really good show. But today we're going to talk about how to get people recruiting for free without any agency fees. Now, just explain your theory behind this, Josh, before everyone thinks we've gone absolutely bonkers.

JOSH: Yeah, before my boss bursts into the room and takes a hatchet. But that's right. Yes yeah. So these sorts of information is what I take a lot of my customers through. And recruitment is kind of similar to an MSP in a way you provide a value, you provide a service, which a lot of it is, saving time or, cost savings in a way. And so whenever I onboard a new customer, we go through these steps with them in terms of. What we don't want to be is an expensive CV sifting service, if that makes sense. Just the same as you don't want to be the cost center to a business. You want to be that value partner. You want to build some trust with them. Absolutely. You also want to provide value in that you're not just doing the low hanging fruits. I like speaking with engineers and recruiting engineers and finding those really tough people. There's no point in me going, Oh if I throw a job ad up And I get a hundred people and I'm just sifting through that. And I'm doing work for you that you could do yourself quite quickly. Quite easily. Why I'm not earning my fee there really, am I, I'm just, you're just paying for my time. Whereas, so that's where this comes from. It puts, it does. Put people on back foot a little bit when you say, all right, have you tried this first? Let me just, we exhaust all the options before you come to me. Cause you know, I know recruiters like a lot of salespeople, there's a tendency to really want to sell.

IAN: Yeah.

JOSH: Basically...

IAN: Why do MSPs find it so hard to recruit technical people? What's the what gets in the way?

JOSH: That's a very large question to be fair.

IAN: I can run it as long as I like.

JOSH: There is a combination of factors. At its bare bones MSPs within the kind of the wider IT talent community have this kind of unearned reputation for being really busy, work, you like dogs and you never get a social life. Busy is fair. I think that probably, the fair way of saying that is it's faster paced and that, unlike an internal person who knows every nook and cranny of the network and knows every sort of exception to the rule of everything you do have to be thinking on your feet. So that does draw a certain type of person. But as an industry, the MSP world doesn't really do a lot to get rid of that impression. And you see it all the time, job adverts must have MSP experience, must be doing this. And, there is a great value in someone who's been there, done that, got the battle scars. But at the same time, it doesn't do a lot to, the kind of the bright people in other IT fields that would be a value add to the sys service, no, to the employer, basically.

IAN: Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? Because sometimes we have lots of conversations pretty much every week with our clients on I need to recruit someone. Okay. Who do you need to recruit, and as soon as you get the it's like okay, so you don't know who you need to recruit. How can you, I know we're going, we're not even touching the questions here that we've got that you've prepared for. So lovely to put you on the foot. How can an MSP when they get busy, in your opinion, what's the best way for them to work out who they need to hire next? Because so many will go from a cost point of view, I'd like to bring in an apprentice, but they don't understand that the cost is actually involved in a lot of time and expertise in training that apprentice, I can't afford a full level three tech. Okay. What's a level three tech anyway? Lots of conversations about that. We've got some big project work coming up and I'm going to get, and they catastrophizing this whole. Team basis and then they get stuck in this mist, this thick mist. How, in your view, can an MSP simplify who's the next hire?

JOSH: So there's a couple of ways of cracking that nut that kind of think the easiest, and if you're on that kind of a year at the 1 million point where you perhaps you're wearing a lot more hats you pop you need to look at, okay. What's the kind of work we're winning? You say you've got projects coming up. What kind of projects, does the ticket volume look like? How quickly are those, getting through those tickets? How and also what level of the tickets are there is there? Because quite often when you do that kind of analysis, you actually see our first liners are kicking a lot of tickets up to second. So I can spend a half day working with them. Increase their knowledge on some simple things, reduce that escalation. Then the second line is not quite so busy and I can concentrate on that lower level. So oftentimes recruitment is actually a training issue. It's with some businesses. The other side of it is as I know, the businesses that, are doing well at recruitment and a kind of, get ahead of the curve, not just, Oh my God, everyone's falling off all my engineers are screaming at me and, the tickets, the ticket queue is getting massive They have a formula for certain number of users, certain number of endpoints. That's really simply what X level of tech can handle. And then, so that it is literally just led by the sales funnel, the sales pipeline as a call, we knew the no custom. We've got this many heads, a hundred heads coming in next month. So we're going to need to start recruiting knowing it's going to take us a couple of months to then get another engineer. So by the time that customers on boarded and all of the, all the, you know, The nuts and bolts of kind of fixes are done there and it is just back to day operation. We know we're then at the point where we're going to cope with the load. So yeah, so it's a systems and a process thing doing recruitment. Well, which won't surprise you, but it. Often does surprise owners.

IAN: No, it doesn't surprise me. But I think the thing that I love about what you just said there is that this is a training issue most of the time, how many people, cause I literally had this conversation last week with a client and I said have you got a skills matrix of who is doing what? And it's yeah, and they're working towards, I said, yeah, but they might be working towards their accreditations to tick the red boxes, amber to green, but is that what you actually want? And is that what you actually need in the business for what's going up? Because it's all very easy to say, oh, I'm going to give you the training. We're going to do this and we're going to do that. But if you don't feed the training and if you don't, if you don't use those skills, then they're never going to adopt those skills, build on those skills and excel at those skills, rather than, if you've got someone working on, I don't know. I'm going to say something that I'll probably regret, but if you've got someone who's working on some like Microsoft dynamics, like power app stuff, yeah. And then they get trained on it, but they never use it. It's a waste of time. Yeah. And we just said that everyone's busy. Have a look at what you need, with your with the training issue and you might actually find you could stop listening to this podcast. Right now, because you might not need anyone. You might just be a bit of a training issue and you might just be able to go back. But then what will happen is when you do come back and listen to the second half of this podcast, you'll know exactly who, what you need, who you need, why you need, and what they're going to do, what that role looks like. And you're going to be so super specific. So let's get into the model here. Go on.

JOSH: Just a quick add, because I think it's helpful. Ask your engineers what's where their skills are missing as well. It isn't, doesn't, it's really easy to look at the 100 foot view and go, oh yeah, we've missing this, we're missing that, we're missing that. But actually your engineers will have a really good input into, these are the tickets I don't like doing, because I feel like I'm out of my depth. Or I see more of these tickets, I need more here. Or that input, is it important, a customer of mine did say to their engineers recently, what are the problems you come to me for? Because those are the problems you're going to need to train them to do so that realistically, you don't want to be touching those tickets. You want to be either working on project work or going and selling more, going and selling more work and winning more business.

IAN: So, the MSP has done all that, they've reviewed it, they've spoken to their engineers, they've understood and there's a need for them to recruit. What do they do? Do they just pick up the phone to a recruitment consultant and say, hey, deal with this and then send me a really big fee for someone who may or may not work very well, or, what's the free version of doing this? We've got three steps here we're going to run through now. So what's the first one we've got, Josh?

JOSH: The key one is advertising well. There are a number of decent advertising websites that will allow you to advertise a role for free or for cheap. Indeed, Glassdoor being notable ones. And a lot of people listening will probably go, yeah, I stick it, I stick an advert up on, on Indeed and I get three or 400 people applying and I don't get anyone or if I do, I'm really settling for someone that we've really got to push into the role. And a big part of that is actually advertising your job properly. A job advertisement isn't a job spec that we don't just copy and paste out of the HR folder that we recreated when we wrote the business, yeah, it's an advertisement. It's a piece of marketing. You need to be able to talk about what makes you different, about why people would want to come and work for you. Progression is a great part of being in the MSP world as an engineer, but it's not, it's more than just, oh, we'll pay for your certs or, hybrid work and what other kind of perks, the job you've got is about what we're going to support you to do the atmosphere of the business. Are you a bit, close knit people? Do you like going out? All these sorts of things are things that you as somebody who works within the business will go yeah, that's just part of working with us, but these adverts are going out to people who don't know anything about you, or if they do, they'll know what their mate's mate has said because they knew someone who worked there once as good written advertisement about what it is to work at what yourself should set the picture of how fantastic your business is, the kind of the cool customers that you work with, you working with creative customers mentioned that it's, these are all drawers or if you're working with engineering, real engineering, manufacturing customers, you're the backbone of industry. You make the people that make things work from an IT perspective. We so much concentrate on, you've got to have this certification. You've got to have so many years at M365, which is fine. And he's a valid part of it, but it should be bullet points at the bottom. It should not be the kind of the grand total of your job advert is here's what I want, not here's what we can give you.

IAN: How can people stop the flood? I don't know many people who want to go through 400 CVs because the candidates just gone. That looks all right, Josh, that looks all right. And I know we've mentioned Indeed and Glassdoor. We recently used Indeed to recruit. And I found some of the tools within it. This is going to, this is going to sound to you guys just like the bloody PSA conversation where you buy something and you don't use all the buttons and the bells and the whistles. But there was some really good aptitude tests. One that I actually went through, it was quite hard actually. It was the English test. But some of these tests that they've got already built in can help you. If you've got 400 candidates, it can help you to sift down the people who want to stand out who want to, be noticed rather than that, how do we, what are some of the tips that you would suggest using to reduce the number of candidates or button pushers that we've got so that you've got some really good quality people that you can spend some time reviewing.

JOSH: So it's funny, isn't it? Because as a recruiter, I would want to go and see all the applications for the diamond and the rough. I've got eight hours a day to spend doing this. So I appreciate that. You are, this is at best is in, in your after hours, once you sat with a beard trying to go through them on your phone. So I appreciate it's a different skillset. Screening questions are quite good. So I'm fairly sure indeed allows you to do a lot of sites do, but the key to using screen questions. It's not yes, no answers, but it's written out. And so say, for example, do you drive change it to how many years have you been driving? It's all these things which stop the push button, yeah, I'll just ice that. It's within my location. It's within my salary range. Stop them, stop getting people to stop and think about it and do that will dissuade some of the people, there is, if I could find the foolproof way to advertise in a way that you only got candidates you want, I'd be making loads of money selling advertising training to be fair. It isn't foolproof. One of the things that I do and I, I've had customers do is Put your contact number on the bottom and get people that are interested to reach out, from a candidate perspective, they want to do as much to reach out to you as you want, to stand out to you as you to them, have a way for them to get in touch with you.

IAN: I think screening questions is great. So you could ask a question like, tell us about something that really excites you about your current role or you're looking for. And then when you're going through the applications, if people haven't put anything in there, you could pretty much just discard them. Because they haven't been bothered to put anything in there or anything like, people if people are not going to go over and above trying to themselves, this English test I was joking about with indeed they it came up after, cause I, cause some people had just submitted it and it was like, what is this? And I was sitting there literally, don't think I was having a beer, but I was sitting there talking to the wife about it. And I said, I'm going to have to apply for this job to find out what this is. Cause I didn't know this happened. And it happens after you've submitted your application. And it comes up and says, would you like to stand out from the crowd and take a This other test and it was like, yeah, so we did it, but it was afterwards. So when, so I then turned it to everybody who filled that test out, went through to the next level. Cause they went over and above. And it got to quite good. And also you've got down here advertise on your website. This is one thing that just always gets overlooked, isn't it?

JOSH: It's because let's be honest, job boards make it easy to advertise. It's all streamlined. It's very much easy. Whereas, sometimes you're going to have to go and ring the person that designed your website to go and figure out how do I do this again? It's a bit archaic, but it is it's free advertising. It's free search engine optimization for yourself If you know if you're going down that route as well, yeah, you can it's another way of people to come into your website with word of mouth and referrals being one of the a great way to do business It's also a great way to have candidates So if people are looking for IT jobs and location and your website pops up, brilliant. You've just You've got it. Hit the nail to the website and got it free.

IAN: Hit the nail on the head. And it also shows as well to your customers that you are growing and that you are, the business is moving in the right direction. So the candidates filled out all the information they want to come and work for you.

So that's the first step. How do we, what's the next step we need to focus on to work at how we can recruit for free?

JOSH: Social media is a great tool and as Gen Z are more and more entering the marketplace, this is going to be their first stop. If you. A lot of businesses are already using it as a marketing funnel, but we all, we, a lot of us that are salespeople or business owners, look at LinkedIn, look at social media as this is a marketing tool. This is a sales tool. This is going to bring more people to my business. The candidates are also there as well, because especially LinkedIn, as a recruiter, a good amount of business and a good amount of candidates come from direct outreach. And also the stuff that I do on LinkedIn. So when you're looking at your marketing work and you're looking at what you're posting on LinkedIn, , it's a really easy to be talking about the cool things you're doing the achievements your team have been, and just give a great picture of what it's like to work there. It's free sales pitch us working for you as a business. And it works on the other side as well. Your customers and potential clients are going to look at this and look at the kind of the posting that you're doing about. So and so has just gone and done a charity run or, we're going out and doing this interesting thing, or we're going to go out and watch Silverstone F1, whatever, what have you, they're going to look at, it's a thriving business that looks after its people and it humanizes you. It takes away that kind of corporate sheen and customers like that, there's the old adage that people buy from people and it's the, one or two posts a week, a month, depending on how quickly, you're posting schedule about how good your people are, how great it is to work for you. And it doesn't have to be our Mr. Business Owner, and look how amazing we are. It's just celebrating the accomplishments of your employees. Does wonders for your candidate attraction, for your business development, just Selling you as a business in general.

IAN: We got to remember LinkedIn was originally a recruitment website, wasn't it?

That's what it all started off, at the beginning was for people to find people who were looking for, if you were on LinkedIn, you were on LinkedIn cause you were trying to get another job and it's, what are you doing on LinkedIn? And all of this that's probably where I am starting to show my age a little bit now with that, but I'm an absolute advocate of what you just said there, the business profile, build it, build a brand, build the culture, let people know what it's like. If you've got some funny things going on, new vans, people going holiday company, barbecues, all of that kind of and staff achievements as well shows that you care about those people. So it's another place for them to go and see, which I think is a really great shout.

Third point we've got down here is got all these hundreds of and hundreds of candidates come in and I've seen so many times the interview process revolve around me. Oh, they're going to be brilliant. Great. What did they say about this? I didn't ask him that. What about this? Oh no, they're starting next week. They're really good. And it was like, God, that interview went well, didn't it? And it was like, you didn't even ask any proper questions. So I'm am an absolute advocate for having a structured interview process. That's where if you can align it around the values as well, then that gives you good experience. But what's your view on how do we structure this process better? How do we really get, the best out? Because you spend in any time with anyone, it's money, right? It's money. If you've got a 30 minute quick chat with someone, make sure, tell us, Josh, I'm going, I'm going into, I'm going, we're flicking it around the other way. What do we need to do?

JOSH: Structure is so important. I, everybody should have the same interview process. There are customers I've worked with in the port before, sorry, to have said, Oh yeah, we'll just get him in for a coffee and have a quick chat, which is, as you say, is the business owner telling them about everything they've done and they've had a great conversation and the kind of, it's gone, yeah, they don't really speak very much, but yes, it's single right. We, I always say half the interview should be Skills and qualities based. When you're looking at what did we want from an engineer, when you put your advert together, when you put your job description together, you should also be putting up what questions can we ask to get that information out of people? So that there should be a component of that, and it needs to be. Job specific. If you've got loads of networking, you're going to need to know their understanding of network protocols what they're working with, et cetera. There's no point in asking them an M-three, six, five cloud based questions because they might not be able to answer. Aptitude questions as well in terms of that what their personality is what are they proud of in their, in, in their work? And, and what they do when they struggle. I always like the question of, if you don't know how to solve a problem, What'd you do? Correct answer is, I go to Google and if I can't find Google, I go and speak to another tech, but it is it's, you're not trying to catch people out, but you are just trying to I always advise my customers. You want to get an idea of what their diagnostic skills are. Cause that's at the heart, especially at service desk level. That's the heart of what they're doing. And then there should be an opportunity for them to ask questions and in a more conversational style. It shouldn't be right. We've got five minutes left. Is there anything you want. And there should be an element of you selling the business to them. There should be, here are the things that other people have done. Here are the careers we've grown, the businesses that we've supported. And the perks, you should be really using that as an opportunity to hammer in the work you did in the job advert to talk about how great it is to work with you is again, you want to be wrapped in like a sales conversation you want to be wrapping around to the positive things you want to leave them on at the end of that conversation, like we've had a great conversation, all my questions were asked. And I've got a really good idea about what it's like to work with them. I think it's really important. And that bit is the last 10 minutes. Is there anything you want to ask? Oh, let me tell you what we can do for.

IAN: Is it still a candidates market? Oh it's keeps changing, doesn't it? It does.

JOSH: Yeah. And I think it's a normal market. I think we all had a bit of especially as business owners, shell shock in 2022, where everybody, it felt like all your engineers were leaving every five minutes for big pay rises,

IAN: Yes a lot of big businesses throwing some money around wasn't there?

JOSH: Yeah. We, and I work in the North. The majority of my, all my customers are in the North. And so London all of a sudden went we can pay him. We don't have to increase the pay and we can pay him better. So let's go on a rampage. It has normalized, the expectation of, there is most people work hybrids in MSPs. Yeah. In my experience, obviously big businesses is a little bit different, but the salaries have normalized. And so you're back to geographic candidate pools.

IAN: Yeah.

JOSH: And it's, so it's not a candidate's market, but you can do that, use some of these tricks and you can really stand out to the candidates that you want. It's probably the best.

IAN: Cause, it's not just about they're applying to you. So they're all waiting for you to tell them whether or not they want to go, whether or not you're going to, they're going to work for you or not. It's, IT is the fastest growing sector. And it will be for the next 10 years. So that means there's going to be a lot of moving around. Then if you've got good people and you want to keep hold of them, then that's a whole different podcast you want to be listening to. But to find the right people to start with is really important. How many, what does what's your view on how many interviews should you have? What sort of length should they be? Should they be in person, even if it's a hybrid role?

JOSH: It really depends on the business. I always say, unless it's a senior appointment, two interviews is usually enough because you've got to be as respectful of their time as they need to be. If you're I, the best, I, what I would normally advise is someone said to me, I don't have a defined interview process, I would say a 30 minute or 15 minute screening chat. Just to be, is can we get on, is this person who they say they are? Have they turned up in ATI? In a shirt at least. Over teams is a good option. Second option. I know a lot of businesses now really like the in-person interview and there, you get more out of a person you get to see them more less comfortable more in, working the environment mode the downside of that is it makes you if you process go longer. It does, it's you know it drags things out especially if you're seeing three or four people for the same role and then with time comes the danger that you'll lose people to other options other opportunities that side of things. So it is always a balancing act. And I think the best people are the ones who are the most flexible. This is the standard process, but if we get someone good, we'll break that process and we'll make sure that we, if they have to, if it has to be a teams, we'll do that just so that we can see in the week, if we come to offer them, we can have them come in to see us and meet us in the office.

IAN: What's your take on technical tests? When should they be done and how long should they be? And can you recommend a system or things like that? Cause some people either do it. They either do nothing. They do a technical test or they bring them in the office and test them out for a day. Don't they half a day, things like that.

JOSH: Yeah, it's really dangerous is the wrong word, but it's a difficult thing to ask a candidate to do is to give up some more time to what will look like to them, do a bit of free work, even if it's a structured technical test. Yeah, I've always been a big proponent of if you need technical testing to incorporate it into that long, proper interview, whether that is a, we'll sit side by side with the team, one of our engineers, and we'll work on a problem or, you do something but have it as part of that interview process. Don't go right okay. We've had this long conversation. We've had the free screen cha, so we just do before we make a decision, we'll send you this test, go and do it in your own time. Because people really, it really begrudges people even if they're aware of it because it's Their time you're taking up to save you time.

IAN: Yeah,

JOSH: It's going to put, it doesn't put the people off that you'd want to put off. If that makes sense, the people that are going to smash that test and be a real value add usually are the ones that are going to take on bridge to it.

IAN: So be clear about it. Let them know upfront, let them know how long it's going to take, what the process is going to look like. And so that they're really clear at the beginning on what it looks like. Cause if they want to be out, then they'll be out a little bit sooner. Weren't they before?

JOSH: So you save a new time. It's not the right fit.

IAN: Great stuff. Good. Good. Just before we bring it in for a bit of a landing I just want to remind everybody about episode 164 of the podcast, which was with Meg Fenny and she went through a great process on you found the right candidate. Now, what do you do with them? How do we engage them? How do we build them in? What do we need to do? How do we make them feel loved and get the best out of them? Meg's a really great show. Go and check that one out, the link for that will be in the show notes below.

Josh, love it, you managed to do it. You've managed to help people to work out how to recruit for free. So if you are looking for people right now in your MSP, what advice have you got for them as they come straight off this podcast?

JOSH: It's follow the one, two threes really, isn't it? Advertise correctly and well. start building that social media presence, which isn't going to happen today, but it will, subsequent hires will really add value and structure that interview process. So that means that the time you spent finding and qualifying these people isn't wasted when you get them in the office.

IAN: Brilliant stuff. Josh, as I said, thanks very much for helping with the show today, sharing your knowledge on this. If people want to continue the conversation with you, how do they find you? What do they need to do?

JOSH: The best way is on LinkedIn. Cause I am terminally online, like a lot of my generation. Which is Josh Wood or you can, reach out to me directly via email at joshwood@beaumontIT.co.uk. Otherwise all the contact details are on our website, which is beaumontIT.co.uk.

IAN: Fantastic. That's great. We'll put all of those links in the show notes as well. So look, good luck with all you guys at Beaumont. I look forward to seeing you popping up at various events throughout the rest of this year. And yeah, great show. Thanks a lot, Josh. Take care now.

OUTRO: Hang on a minute. Just before you go, and if you're curious about how this episode links with the ability to scale your MSP to a million or, or if you are already there, accelerate to five, then we want to invite you to come and take the MSP Mastery quiz. And in just three minutes, you're going to get a 360 degrees scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time engaging along your people and help generate more leads in your MSP. It's really simple. Just click on the link in the show notes. And if you have enjoyed this episode, we'd love to get some feedback from you by means of a rating review on Spotify your podcast platform of choice. We really appreciate every single one of them. Now you can go and enjoy the rest of your day and we look forward to catching up and connecting with you soon. All the best.