SHE'S BACK! Welcome (back) to our new (old) Head of Talent… SLB

Earlier this week, I was invited by a new client to attend their Board Meeting to discuss all things talent and people related. 

They, like us here at Macs, are a service business… where the revenue and profits that they generate all come through the people they employ… meaning that retaining & upskilling their best people and hiring high calibre graduate potential (not to mention stealing the odd employee from the competition) is super-critical to their success.

I advised them on some of the important aspects of the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that we have implemented here at Macildowie such as LTIP’s, super-bonus, an Employee Assistance Programme, an extra day holiday for your birthday as well as our incentive suite (featured on the BBC’s website last year) that includes trips to Las Vegas and New York.

But, they were most interested to hear about Macildowie’s most recent hire.

Or should I say “re-hire”.

At our New Year Kick Off on May 10th we welcomed one of our favourite ever employees,  Sarah-Louise Bussey, back into the Macildowie family.  In my 22 years of working at Macs I have only ever written one blog about someone who has left the business… guess who that was about!  You can read it here.

At the New Year Kick Off, by popular demand and dare I say overwhelming intrigue, we decided to run a thirty minute Q&A session with SLB, in the format of yours truly “interviewing” her in front of the entire business.  Feedback suggests that this chapter of the conference was the highlight of the day.  Without stealing SLB’s thunder (as I strongly suspect that she’ll soon be writing her own “why I came back” blog), here are the questions we posed to her:

• What’s your favourite song?  
• What made you want to come back to Macildowie after 5 years at NEXT? 
• What will the early challenges be for you in the role? 
• How has internal recruitment changed over the last 5 years?
• What would success look like in your first year?
• What's the biggest quarter you had while billing at Macs?  
• What was your biggest achievement? 
• What do you think Recruitment Consultants need to do to be successful today and how does that compare to 5 years ago?  
• Is it right that you went from being a good to a great Recruiter because of that car journey in the snow…?
• What did you think of Macs as a supplier? 
• What’s the most embarrassing thing you could tell us about JT or what’s your funniest experience at macs? 

My client were so interested because they hadn’t ever considered bringing in a Head of Talent.  They are a small business who rely heavily on the revenue generated by their owner/managers and are currently devising a medium term strategy to enable them to hand over the revenue generation reigns at some point.  In short, they need a succession plan and for someone to be accountable for helping every employee to achieve their fullest potential.  They, like us, would benefit massively from an SLB!

We’re so excited and I mean soooooooo excited to have SLB back and I confidently expect that she won’t be the last of our ex-employees that come back to the family nest… I’m delighted to say that a number have already been back in touch.  

To answer question number three from the Q&A directly, SLB’s top 2 priorities this year are to hire Trainees or Recruitment Consultants with enormous potential and to lead the development of our L&D programme that enables our people to be the best that they can be, and market leaders in recruitment. 

So, for you, the reader… what next?