CX Superheroes podcast - Series 15 Episode 2 - Candidate Experience - Julian Lukaszewicz

Welcome to the latest episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes Podcast. In this series, we bring you leaders, mavericks, rule breakers, and conformists to the discipline of customer centricity. We hopefully will bring you some of their ideas, will inspire you, and share insights that have allowed us to understand their take on the world of customer experience. Now, in today's episode, we're going to be looking at candidate experience in the world of recruitment and understanding what matters most in that experience.

And we're going to be joined by Julian Lukazovic, who is someone I've known for many years, but he currently runs a career IQ Academy. And it was really interesting catching up with Julian to understand how things have changed significantly over the years and what the expectations are of employers, but also what the expectations are of candidates and how when they're misaligned, it really can create friction in that experience. So without further ado, let's go over and speak with Julian.

So here we are. It has been many years since Julian and I have had a long conversation, but we've been in touch throughout that time. If I I think probably Julian, first welcome. Welcome to the Customer Experience Superheroes.

I'm so glad you've finally joined us on this. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And it has been a long time.

I mean, COVID has passed since you and I last spoke. And just for just for uh transparency, we worked together. I mean, we actually had a couple of really interesting engagements, didn't we? Kind of back in the day in in workshops.

So it was very exciting. I think you brought an airline perspective, which was quite unique, I remember, way back then. So maybe maybe we'll get into that a bit more. But we're talking to you today, bring people bang up to speed, about career IQ and your role in as a leading figure in recruitment.

And one aspect of recruitment that is really important from an experience perspective is candidate experience. So I'm hoping you can shed some light on that and also recognize in the discipline background you've got, you'll approach it with a more formalised and structured approach. It'll be really helpful for our audience. So, Junior, welcome again.

And maybe take us back and just give us a bit of a canter through from flying planes backwards and forwards all over the world, measuring the heights of salt and pepper pots right through to where you are now, if you don't mind. Yeah, no worries. Thank you so much for the introduction. So, yeah, I'm Julian.

I'm from Poland, but haven't lived there since I was 18. Most of my career I spent in the UK. But as you said, my first proper job was, and that was the introduction to customer experience as a field. I was working as a passenger experience consultant for an airline consultancy, which basically meant that I was flying 20 to 30 flights a week with different airlines, basically experiencing the product and the service on my own skin, and then working with the executives of the of these airlines to improve the passenger experience.

And sounds great on paper. It's not as fun. You eat airplane food, you sleep in your own in your clothes all the time, and all the movies are the same, so it doesn't really matter what you apply with. But then that allowed me to transition into the broader world of consulting.

So I specialized in strategic design, customer experience, and innovation consulting. And it took me from some of the big names in consulting, like Accenture, to also some smaller boutique agencies. I've done work probably in every continent. I've led a vertical in healthcare in Singapore.

So I was working in APAC. So I was doing that for geez, 15, 14, 15 years. But for the past year and a half, I've exited, let's say, the consulting world or I've pivoted slightly. And now, in terms of not helping people, not helping companies make more money and make their new products and services, what I do is I help individuals with their careers.

So it's either helping people get jobs or helping companies figure out what is the best way to attract talent, but also helping people just to think about their careers as not only job hopping, but as a career management service almost, and think of it as one continuous timeline. And what is the best way to roadmap it and to strategize around it rather than to be surprised about the sudden layoff that your company might experience. Excellent, excellent, brilliant. And and therefore, hopefully the audience will appreciate when we talk about experience from a recruitment perspective, you're not approaching it with a keen interest.

You've got years of experience of delivering experience programs with varying levels of success. So you really understand the fundamentals and the science of this. I want to go to that bigger topic, first of all, if I may, that you just mentioned there about individuals seeing their what they do as a career rather than kind of a stopstart. I'm in work, I'm out of work.

Expand on more what why that's important from a mindset perspective. So I think that it's really important. One thing I will say is that in my work, I read a lot of science journals and science articles and basically try to base my work based on science. And one of the most important characteristics or mindsets for people who determine that they're gonna be successful in their career careers, even starting with like seven, eight-year-olds, they've done some studies, is proactive mindset.

So if you are proactive about what you want to achieve in your life, more likely or not, you're gonna achieve it, right? It's quite logical. It's funny that right, scientists probably got a grant to do to work with. But it basically means that almost 99% of people I talk to in terms of candidates or job seekers, when you ask them, what do you want to do?

Where do you want to be in three years? You know, that dreaded question at an interview, where do you want to see yourself in five years? No one has an answer to it. Right.

To me, like it struck me at one point, we as people, we plan our holidays in a much more granular level than our next career move or our just kind of like long-term holidays. Like if you ask me where I go next on holiday, I'll tell you which hotel I'm staying in, what I'm doing, where, which restaurants I'm going to. But if you tell me what isn't the job I want next, it's like, oh, I have never thought about it. Which kind of strikes me.

And I don't know if it's because it might be based on our behavioral biases in terms of like almost like the you should say for retirement, but no one ever does because it's too far in the future. It might be in the same ways that we're just kind of not wanting to think about ambiguous future. We would rather something concrete, something pleasant, because also change is unpleasant. But what I'm seeing is that the people who are thinking about it proactively and thinking about it once they are already, they are still employed, they are happily employed in their job.

They are thinking about it like, okay, what do I want even to get out of my current role about current job? Because it's not about change, it's about kind of being purposeful about what you do, because hey, we spend sometimes more than 12 hours every day at work. So why not make it into something that you actually think about rather than just go through the motions? And do you think with that you talk about this kind of proactive mindset?

Does that then free you up to be more progressive and more invested in your current employer? So, but my point being that if you're if you're not if you don't have a long-term view in your head when you're thinking career, is it possible then that when you're making decisions within your role, you think more short-term because you're just not thinking about freely thinking about long-term planning? Yes, I do think that first of all, you are reactive rather than proactive. It's like, oh, I got this project, so I need to do it, or there is this team, I need to join it.

Rather than thinking about like, do I actually want to take this project? What does it help me achieve? What would, let's say, this role help me do? But if I can put a little span in that wheel, what I think is quite interesting is that companies want people to think this way.

Okay. Companies, I see, and that might be a little contrarian, is that companies don't want you to have almost like a thoughtful workforce. Right. They want to rational reactionary solve today's challenges type workforce.

Yeah. Exactly. Which again, you hire smart people in order for them to be smart. But somehow I think companies want to hire smart people and then transform them into slightly less smart versions of themselves so that they don't ask tough questions.

Sure. But but I don't know if that's is that just capitalism and that's what it is. Or during COVID, people stopped and had the time to ask questions. The great resignation.

Exactly. Yes, yeah, ask questions about what am I doing, what's my purpose here. I mean, I've certainly seen it. I mean, obviously, most organizations at some time or other are going through some level of consultation.

And when you talk to people working outside of the fence as a as advising to those organizations, projects dry up around that time because nobody wants to be seen to be associated with something that perhaps is a bit more long-term, requires some investment, hasn't yet materialized any return. And if you're associated with those more visionary pieces, you can get put into a box versus if there's nothing associated with you that's kind of outstanding, you're not on the radar, or if you're seen to be just there were five things that needed delivered this year and you've done all five of them, you're viewed in a slightly different way.

So I can understand, as you say, the organization's perspective and perhaps also employees' perspective in in that regard. And maybe also it's a bit, it feels a little bit like a betrayal if you're kind of saying, well, let me tell you we're going to be in five years' time. No disrespect, it won't be here. You know, it feels like, oh, okay, well, we're kind of good enough.

But I was talking to someone not too long ago, and she was very honest about it and said that she holds a very senior role as customer experience leader, but actually to move up, she needs to move across because there's not that board level role. So therefore, she's been encouraged to look at other areas of the business. But she said, everyone in my team likes being here. We like doing this.

I don't want to have to become head of marketing or head of operations just to get a career progression. In that respect, a bit of honesty say, well, it won't be here. Seems fine unless you make a board level role there. But I guess we're all inherently nervous at some level that we'll say something that will put us into a into the revolving door that says you're it's about time you leave.

Yeah, and I think that's why we are all scared of change as human beings, right? That's how we're wired. So a job is in most people's is their identity, right? Is their sense of their identity?

They're gonna do, they're gonna take a lot of abuse in order to keep it. Because let alone the financial aspect of it and stuff, just like the characteristic, the identity, the character of it. So therefore, and companies see that, right? Like we probably gonna jump into it, the power imbalance in interview processes or in the recruitment process, right?

Companies like that power imbalance, and they want to maintain it as much as possible. So, therefore, we as employees or people as who want to or work in these fields, that's what's that's what's fueling it. Like would rather be quiet and do what they tell me rather than be on the chopping block in the next time. It is a very interesting kind of cat and mouse experience, isn't it?

Because from one perspective, you have the almost the employer goes first, they lay down the gap they have that desperately needs to be filled, they put that out there, unless it's headhunting, but typically it's there to say, here's the role, we don't have filled and we need it filled. Please come forward suit us. And then as candidates, you kind of you show mild interest as opposed to going all in. Rarely does anyone go all in and say, look, whatever it takes, I want this particular position.

And if they do, the company probably feels they're a little bit too much. I'm not sure this is the right sort of person. But then obviously, when the company sees it's got a lot of interest, this cat and mouse relationship changes, as you say. So therefore, they then start to be a little bit more selective, and there may be a few good candidates in there who then fall into the tertiary group and maybe don't even get feedback.

But in they're actually very good candidates. And but then you get down to the last two, and then the candidate now knows they're really wanted, and the power balance goes back to them, and it's a case of okay, how do we want to make this work? So it's it's not like it's a formalized experience process that you can kind of predict. It does require some time.

I don't know, I mean, whether it's still the same now, Julian, but like back many years ago, I've known of bosses of mine to say, right, I've got to fly out to Gibraltar to meet them because they're on holiday, they're gonna stop there for a day, and they've said, come to me, and they're like, I'll go, sort of thing. So this kind of the power balance is very true. I mean, is it necessary, do you think? Is it just a reality of how things are?

I know as a I guess as a candidate for looking for a job, it's not something I do or want to do very often. But as a company, it's something that's I do every single day. I have different roles and responsibilities. So one of us is in quite a vulnerable position, the other is very understanding about what they need.

But at the end of the day, both of them need each other in order for it to be fulfilled. That's very true. There is, I think the it can't, if you want to boil it down to one, let's say conflict, I think it's conflict of values. And for employer, the biggest value or the biggest driver for them is safety, certainty.

So if I hire this person, 100%, this is the right person for this job. So that makes them very slow, very risk averse, very kind of reactionary in order to be like, I have to be sure that this person is a hundred percent for job seekers or for people who want new employment, for them is time. I currently don't have a job, I need to find something as soon as possible. So there is this massive conflict.

Like, hey, I want to go through 10 rounds versus like, but I want the job now, not in six months' time. Yeah, but you do kind of understand both sides, and I think often the conflict comes from either, and like that's how it's extrapolated, is that companies are too risk-averse, and they take like now. I don't know if you saw like on LinkedIn, it went viral that the Catholic Church chose their leader in two days, and for an internship, you need seven rounds. And someone commented, Yeah, but Pope was an internal hire.

So that's that. So companies are going through these 10 rounds, like you have to come to my office for two days. Of like, who has two days to come to unpaid work? Versus the candidates who are like, Well, you see often LinkedIn posts, like, oh, I applied to 700 jobs and I didn't get one response.

It's like, and I always reply to them, and I get a lot of pushback, is like, you're not qualified to 700 jobs, like it's not Da Vinci that you can do seven, right? So that means you're just send it out to 700 completely random things. Of course, you're gonna be rejected for most of them because that's not who you are. It's better to know, first of all, what you want and then apply accordingly.

But lastly, I would say most companies, and I'm guilty of it myself, when you write the job spec, very rarely you actually know what you're looking for. You're writing a wish list, you're writing like, oh, ideal Canada would have this and this. So the job spec is kind of like unrealistic or it completely doesn't really match the reality, then people kind of be like, but this thing, I don't match it, or it's not sounds great, or anything else. So then again, the communication style between the two camps is kind of broken because what it should be is like, hey, look, I'm looking for someone who has these broad skills characteristics.

People apply, but again, it has to be probably a much better system than it is right now because I've had roles where I was the hiring manager, I got three, four thousand applications. Wow, no one can in their even and I was trying to be a nice person, and I looked at every single one, and sometimes out of four thousand applications, there was no one to interview. Right, wow, wow, yeah, so that then again so it's an imperfect system, then isn't it? I mean, we've had this conventional kind of almost staged approach, which is the the job advert and then the C V and then the screening interview, and then the competence and capabilities interview, then the hiring interview, and then the appointment, and and then after that, then I guess it's the referrals and the probation.

It is a fairly standardized process. Is that where we are still broadly? Broadly, with a lot more hoops to go through. Okay, so it's got more complicated rather than simplified.

It got a lot more complicated because I think nowadays companies are a lot more risk averse because it's maybe it's cost them a lot more to train employees or to just recruit employees. So it's like, hey, if I'm invested investing so much time of my team, time to recruit someone, it's better be the right person. So I need to have 10 rounds of interviews. But then candidates, like there's always this feeling is that which qualified candidate who is in demand has the time to go through 10 rounds?

Sure. So maybe then you're putting so many rounds, but you're actually filtering out a lot of people who be like, Look, I'm busy, I'm running a very successful thing right here. I can have one, two conversations with you. If we match, if we don't, no.

Because no one who's actually in demand and who has the skills who's that one percent has six months to go through hoops and hoops, yeah, and they don't. So I do think that experience is broken. And what is interesting is that both sides will tell you that it's broken. So it's not like one will complain about the other, and we're both hating kind of both processes at the same time, but somehow no one knows how to change it.

And to me, is because as an innovation consultant, I know companies hate risk, right? That's the entire point of a company to minimize risk. Yeah. Hiring, in the end, it's working with people, yeah.

And people are inherently risky because you until they work, you don't know how they're gonna behave. Well, it's like two ingredients, isn't it? Until you put them two together, you don't know if they're gonna react well or not. Independently, they may sit there very stable, but when you bring them together, and to be honest, you don't want them to stabilize, you kind of want a little bit of fizz in there as well.

That's what you asked for. Otherwise, why would you wouldn't want them in your company? Exactly. So it's like in a marriage, like once you like doesn't matter how long you date the person, let's say, or how long you're with the person, like sometimes it will be something like, Oh, I didn't know you are like this, or that you drink coffee this way, or you snore, or something like this.

And it's the same with a company, like just because you like them in three interviews doesn't mean that they're gonna be great, but also just because they went to three interviews doesn't mean they're gonna be this or that, so it's broken from that experience. But I do want to say is that there are some uh let's say key things that companies or candidates could do in order just to make it a little bit more civilized, I would say. And yeah, if you want, I can expand on it. Yeah, well we'll we'll come say because I I want what the way I want to frame it is actually around three things that kind of are fundamental for a good experience.

I want to get your impression in terms of if these are things that are uh neglected, badly managed, or if you've got ideas of what good looks like. Okay, so the first one is around managing expectations. So any experience, if you can manage the other party's expectations, a very good senior leader. I would say we're in the business of supply, and actually we only have two jobs to do, get it there on time or explain why it's not arrived on time.

So from a candidate experience, managing expectations, how could that be done better? That's a very good point. So on a company's perspective, managing expectations, it all starts with the job spec, right? Because that is the first touch point between, let's say, a job seeker and a company.

They read the job spec. But about 99% of job specs are not even written by ChatGPT, because ChatGPT can do it better, but they are written in the most inhuman, most corporate, most buzzwordy thing you would ever see. So the fact because you know, there is some is almost like designed by committee, right? It's written by the hiring manager plus the HR plus legal plus this plus that, and it's all these buzzwords that no one knows what it means.

So it doesn't show not only what the The job entails, but mostly what type of what would make the person successful in the role. And I think that's something that is really important. I will tell you from my own experience when I was helping a company write some job specs, one thing that dramatically improved demand, let's say, and response rate was publishing the interview questions in the job spec itself. Ah, okay.

Because why maybe we'll get there, but like why an interview is supposed to be an interrogation, right? Like it's not like you don't know. It's like these are the seven things that are important to me. And these are the seven questions or seven topics that we're going to discuss.

Yeah. You can prep, you don't have to, it's like an open book exam, right? You wouldn't have a meeting, would you board meeting with the where you kind of go, the agenda is secret. When you turn up, you'll find out what it is.

So it's a bit like taking exams at school where you get tested on how quick you can finish something rather than the real skill, which is what you know about it. And that's what we're saying here, isn't it? That if you went to the if in the job spec it told you the sorts of things that you're gonna need to know, you've got the opportunity to go, right? I'll prioritize it.

In my busy life, I'll make sure I can focus on these things for you. Yeah, but it's exactly as I said, like in the candidate's experience, it almost feels like it's a competition, it's us against them. Yeah, but you don't want to build that experience, that expectation of like you have to compete against me and who's gonna ask you a different question, stuff like that. It's like, no, we're supposed to work together.

Let me extend my my my hand and tell you, like, hey, look, it's important to me that we talk about these four things. It's up to you to know this. So I think setting those expectations and often saying about how many rounds it's going to take. Yeah, that's also like for some reason an enigma in companies, like just one more.

Just let's that's the worst thing anybody can do. Just one, just one more person, just one more person. So if you are reading a job spec that says not only what the company does and this stupid blur, but like, hey, this is what the role is. Maybe then what is expected of the role in the first 30, 60, 90 days in order to be successful.

So you kind of see how it progresses. Oh, and by the way, this is what I would love to talk to you about during the interview process, and these are how many steps you're going to have, and this is how long it's gonna take, for instance. I'm not even gonna go into salary bans because that's I don't want to open that Pandora's box in terms of expectations, salary ban. Do you think you can get, I mean, you do you think you get a reflection of what the company is going to be like through through that piece?

I mean, if it is full of additional stages, it's concealed, it's set up to trip you up. Do you think as a candidate you start to think, it isn't just think about the things they're doing to me. Is this a business I want to be a part of? And your recruitment process is one of the most visible and tangible manifestations of your company culture, right?

Because it's how do you attract people and how do you treat people in your process? And I've seen it myself is that the better it is written or the more human it is, the more candidates it attracts. Yep. It's like a completely new approach to something.

You like you literally stop scrolling and be like, oh my god, this is different. I'll tell you, like yesterday, I came across a job for not the most innovative of businesses, some tech platform thing. It wasn't great, but it was one of the best job specs I've ever read. Because it started with like, hi, my name is, and I am the VP of operations in this company.

And I am looking for someone to join my team like this and this, and I would love this person to do this and this, and then the first 30 days you're gonna do this, and this is how we do, this is what is important to us, this is how it was it was very long, it was probably like two pages long, and it was written almost in a narrative form. It was not bullet point, it was kind of like it led you almost through a story about the company. And I reached out to the person who was recruiting, and I was like, Hey, just want to, by the way, just want to say this is an amazing job spec that I've that I've seen.

And they said in 48 hours we got 1500 applicants. But again, because it's it was written in a way that it stopped. This is the company I want to work with. This is the company because if they write it in that way, that's what it is.

I'll I was working, I was helping some tiny two, three person companies, didn't have a brand, didn't even have a website. But the job spec, because I wrote it with those principles in mind, I got hundreds of applicants. Yeah, because they were told me, like, oh, this is amazing, like I'm not stressed enough. The only footprint they could see was the job ad, I guess.

That's the only footprint into the company, yeah. Yeah, it was just the LinkedIn job ad, so it wasn't anything else, but you know, it had my name, had my email address and stuff like that. However, I would say from the other perspective, with the fact that I share interview questions, less than one percent of people actually prepare for those interview questions. So I don't again, it's from the candidate experience.

That's crazy, isn't it? You've invested yourself in going and actually you're not doing the homework. From a candidate experience, people it's I always see it almost like a David and Goliath story. Like we like to bitch about Goliath and say, oh, you know, how bad they are and they're treating us, and we are these downtrodden people.

But when I tell you that I have two, three, four thousand applicants for a role that says specifically, I don't know, you have to be based in one country, and I get people from very different continents than that one country, or I get people from looking, for instance, innovation consultant, I get someone who is a plant manager in a completely different continent making bricks. Yeah, yes, I'm you're if you're going to write the post like, oh, I applied for 4,000 jobs. Yes. So I think the expectations for the candidate are also that don't expect almost I wouldn't say a fair shot, but don't expect that you're going to get response to every single application you do.

Because if you spend five seconds just easy apply, easy apply, why would a company spend more than five seconds reviewing your application? Like it should be it should be able to give that much effort to it. Oh, probably gonna give that much effort to it as well. But I do think that there is candidates do have a lot to be blamed for, unfortunately.

And I guess at that point, as I said earlier, most candidates are probably not seasoned veterans at this. They don't want to be doing it. Even those who are kind of career hoppers who may do it every sort of two years or so. Again, it's not something that you do all of the time.

And we're not schooled at how best. I mean, some of it is obvious. You say there's a question here that's written, you need to provide answers to this and you choose not to do it, or there's a criteria that you don't fulfil. Maybe you think you're chanced in the arm, but you know, you're not giving yourself a good shot at it here.

But I guess there's a lot of stuff in there that we worry the psychology of a point of being appointed is you say or do something that reveals something about your character that might work against you, even though you don't know it's going to work against you. I think probably we've all heard back someone saying, Well, you didn't give us a good enough appreciation of how you would resolve that problem. So we didn't think, you know, oh God, I thought if I did that, then you'd think that was the only answer and I wasn't creative enough.

So I guess it's catamassing again, the candidate is probably not well equipped going into this situation, are they? I and I don't know how you deal with that. Maybe is it the organization again just making it very clear what we expect of you? Or is there with people like yourselves, is there an ability, do you help coach your candidates to understand just exactly how to give yourself the best chance?

Is that the difference between you and kind of maybe a recruitment house, which is just here's another job, here's another job, here's another job? 100%. I do think that even the most qualified of candidates, one of the things that I love to do is mock job interviews, where I help clients prepare for an interview. And I would have people who are 20, 30 year kind of leaders in companies.

The moment I start is like, hello, sir, thank you so much for applying for this role. My first question is please tell me something about yourself. They crumble. Like it's funny to see they they stutter, they mumble, they're like, Oh, can I do it again?

Can I like suddenly this entire almost like it's like when a you're putting a camera in front of you, like I don't know, people completely change their personalities is the same thing. The moment interview scene of an interview and this kind of like, please tell me something about yourself, people forget what languages they speak. And because to me, first of all, recruiting or like applying for jobs is a skill, but like every skill you have to practice in order to be better at, and interviewing itself is a very particular form of communication or a very particular skill that if you don't practice it, like imagine if I don't know, you haven't played football in five years, yeah.

And now I put you in front of a team and be like, play football. You'd be like, I haven't played in five years. How do you expect me to do well? Yeah, fulfill that is like I haven't done one in five years.

Okay, let's go. It's like, but no other skill, you don't think like, oh, I haven't done something for 10 years, I'm gonna do it. Yeah, because you need to practice. And the biggest, I would say, uh, kind of issue that people have is that most people when they're nervous, they overtalk, they talk too much.

Yeah, so that then a question which is hey, please tell me something about yourself, turns into a 20-minute monologue. Right. I lost you after the second sentence. I don't know, I was already checking my emails, right?

You were while you were still talking. So being able to have a condensed narrative, like I always tell candidates is like, imagine you are a service provider. Because in the end, that's what you are. You are a one-person service provider.

A company that is hiring you, they are basically looking for a to buy a monthly subscription to your services, right? Your salary is a monthly subscription to your service. So imagine they go into your website, you have a product or a service website. What is the bold thing that's the first thing on the header on the website?

Because it's not like I was born in and I went to this primary school. No, it's like this is my value prop, this is my five board, billboard, your headline, yeah. And if you don't communicate it effectively, why do you put it on me to try to understand what you do? Yeah, oh, because I'm a generalist, because I do a little bit, this and that.

It's like I don't have the mental capacity to try to decipher or take a little here and here. I want to hear, like, I'm busy, I'm I have a lot of things on my mind. Tell me one sentence what you do and what problems you can help me solve. Because then if I have that problem, okay, I want to talk to you.

If I don't have that problem, I'll be like fine. But you don't solve 40 different problems. You maybe solve two, but they're correlated to each other, right? It's not like you're amazing at CFO and a CHIRO, but you cannot do both, probably at the same time.

So just tell me, just treat me like I don't have time, and treat me like I'm yeah, I'm a little bit of a let's call it an idiot. If you treat me this way, and I'm talking about like the candidate treats the employer, is like, hey, I don't know, you don't have time. My 20-second pitch is X, Y, and Z. I help companies do X and Y.

I have done it in these companies, and this was the result that I've done it. And that's it. And then after 20 seconds, a company could be like, Oh yeah, I can resonate with that, or like, oh no, actually, I don't look into it. But it's like, I think it's similar to consultancies.

Consultancies are very afraid to specialize, right? It's like, oh, but I will lose the rest of the market. But it's the same with candidates, and kinda is like, oh no, but if I say only I do this, then all the other jobs in the world. I'm like, you're not gonna have an astronaut in your 50s, like you don't have the skills in your 20s, you're not gonna do it in your 50s, so just lean into what you actually know how to do.

Brilliant. I mean, I can see myself falling into those traps exactly. You mentioned and kind of that tell me something interesting about yourself. If you reveal one thing, you think, oh god, that's a bit dull.

Let's bring something else out. And then you and it's not something, as you say, it's not a question I've thought about. So therefore, as soon as I start it, loads of stuff rushes to the front of my mind. So you do need to have that one prepared because otherwise you don't you sound anything but interesting, you just sound a mess.

And then it's and then you're trying to cover that up. You try in your brain realise, oh god, sound like a mess. Let me piece all these things together, and this becomes worse, doesn't it? It's really interesting.

Great. So that's brilliant. That was manage expectations. My second one is quite often what helps with a great experience is knowing the context.

Now, the context of a candidate experience is probably again one of those areas where you're not sure it helps or hinders you. So the context could be I've been let go three times now for companies for the same reasons, and therefore this is really my last chance at this type of job, or I'm gonna do something very different. But of course, you'd never reveal that. And the organization's perspective may be the reason we got this job up and it's been up again is because the team that surrounds it just doesn't seem to get on with this.

This role doesn't fit in our company, so we can't keep good people here. Again, you're not gonna reveal that. But when it comes to great customer experience, understanding the context allows you to this word personalize, to kind of personalize and adapt to make sure that it's a great experience. How does it work in in candid experience?

Because I'm guessing we're not neither of the parties are that transparent in the process, are they? No, they're definitely not transparent, but I don't know if it comes from a malicious place. I think it comes from ignorance and just simply not knowing better. So one thing that would say from a candidate's perspective, very few candidates know anything about the company they apply to.

Right. Okay. Imagine, like, and that's like imagine I am going to say, hey, I'm gonna spend the eight hours of my day for the foreseeable future in a place that I don't know anything about. That would raise questions to you as the employer, because one question that I often ask in interviews is like, tell me three things, three interesting things about my company.

And almost I've never gotten an interesting answer. Right. Oh, the people just go on the website quickly and they kind of read, scroll through. I can see them kind of scrolling in panic and reading the timelines on the website.

And imagine if the on the other side, if it would be like, Oh, actually, I've watched the podcast with your CEO and he said something interesting to me. He said this, oh, and I talked to three of your current workers, and they told me this and this about the company, and this is what I've heard. Suddenly you'd be like, Oh, okay, this person is actually really interested in what we do, and they took the time, so maybe I should take the time. So I think that is something that knowing the context in terms of what situation you're getting yourself in as a consultant, right?

Having the empathy for the business, right, for the client is a fundamental skill. So if you don't invest the time in getting to understand the company, and now I'm not talking only like what products and services they sell, but like what's their culture like? Like, where do what do they do? Like nowadays, on Glassdoor reviews, on LinkedIn, on all the social media platforms, you can really figure out a lot of things about a company before you actually talk to them or you apply to them.

So I think that's super important from a company's perspective. I think what the context is that it's very rarely that the person who is going to be hired or the person who's going to manage the new joiner is writing the job script. So again, like if I don't want someone to order my dinner, and that's just the dinner, right? Because they don't know what I want, how I want it, and stuff like that, or a coffee order or whatever.

But somehow it's almost like a completely disjointed segment that is hiring manager, and I'm talking, of course, more like mainly these big companies, it's like I need a person, and then HR is like, I have a template for that, and they just have a template, and then the hiring manager is like, I just spent 20 hours of my week talking to people, and none of them met the brief. Yeah, and it's not because the people are bad, it's just the brief was bad. Yeah, writing the job spec by the person or by the team.

Like, I've had experiences where the hiring manager asks their three, four people in their team, like, hey, who do you think would match? What do we need? What type of skill do we need? Where is the gap?

And then kind of collectively was like, hey, look, maybe we have a lot of people who are very good customer research, but we don't have anybody who can do quant research. For instance, like we do a little bit, but we don't have a strong person, for instance, like that. Like, okay, great, let's bring that up. But HR wouldn't know that if they don't have it in their specs.

Or and I don't want to be resentful to HR and everything else, but what I'm saying is that it knowing the content, only the person as right in customer experience, we always do these customer safaris and stuff like that. Treat yourself as the customer. If I'm the customer of my team, right, in my team, I would love to be able to design what I'm looking for to join my team because in the end, I'm the only one who actually knows the reality today in. And so being able to kind of merge it too, because then what comes well is this kind of job spec, which is hey, my name is Julian, and I'm the hiring manager for this team, and my day looks like X, Y, and Z.

And I'm looking for someone who can take A, B, and C off my plate. And that's when you're reading like, okay, because then you can see again, knowing the context, you can Google the hiring manager. Again, for some companies find that is like, oh, I will not reveal who's your manager until the end. It's like, that's the person I'm gonna work with.

Like, give me their LinkedIn. Like nowadays, like, it's okay to just give me their LinkedIn and be like, hey, look, this is who I am. But on the other side, I have had interviews with it as a candidate with people with companies five, six rounds. And only in the last round, I was like, Oh, I just noticed, I just read your CV because I like to read the CV as a last thing, you know, that you've done this and this.

I'm like, so you just wasted six hours of my life and of your life by not really knowing who I am. Yeah, it's so often that companies don't like always these kind of like little nightmare scenarios, like, oh, a person doesn't know the name of the candidate or didn't really read the CD and stuff like that. So, again, the more I know about you as a candidate, and the more the candidate knows about me as a company, this faster and smaller, and the success rate is going to be higher because we're going to be as two adult professionals trying to figure it out if we match, versus kind of this cloak and dagger is like, oh, I'm not gonna reveal this, and then oh, why do people leave?

It's like maybe because you didn't tell them the crucial information. And it must be even worse for consultants, because obviously the consultant's job is to really understand what the problem is fully before you then kind of diagnose the solution. And so for a consultant not to have that information to hand must be frustrating for them as well. I mean, the point I want to talk then is consistency.

Because obviously, even if it's if the experience is quite poor, but it's consistently poor, you just get used to the fact that this is the level it works at. And if it's a budget airline, it's a budget airline. I just accept it for the trade-off in price. But actually, I would imagine from what you've said, you're talking about the in the process, you end up pulling in different things.

So you pull in a bit of technology from HR, you're optimizing advertising platforms, you're using different individuals at different stages of the journey. So is it a really inconsistent experience for candidates? And vice versa. Do candidates present themselves in an inconsistent way or do they behave inconsistently so that it confuses the company?

I don't know with that one, but just interesting your perspective. From a company's perspective, consistency matters because you deal with individuals, and individuals are very or is impossible or pointless to standardize. Because let's say an interview process for a board-level executive person and intern shouldn't be the same. Of course, let's say, in terms of fairness and all of these things, yes, there should be consistency, right, in order to this, but the type of conversations or the entire process that you're going to have should be very different.

That's why there's so much frustration. Like one of my clients had several rounds of interviews for a two months internship. Right, so really necessary, like the ROI of time. Investment by the company for two months intern, it shouldn't be this way.

So I do think that there shouldn't there should be like some pillars of experience in terms of like, for instance, if you've managed to get to the first round of interview, we're going to send you an email with a little bit of an explanation if you don't proceed, right? So these kind of like basic of experiences, or hey, at the end of every step, I will tell you when you can expect decision by. So again, knowing the context and everything, I'm managing expectations, but the details of it, I don't think they need to be consistent, they need to be the same.

But I do think some of these types of pillars around communication, around expectations. On a candidate side, I think in terms of I think constancy or being consistent presenting yourself, I think it's important to have a is something that I work a lot with my clients, is a value, as I said, a value proposition. Because if you present yourself to five different stakeholders in five different ways, they will all get together at the end and try to decide and be like, oh, but they tell me that they're actually passionate about HR.

And someone's like, no, but they told me they are passionate about sales. Like, how are they actually? You know, they all tell me just things that I want to hear. Like, yes, of course, like in any human interaction, you have to adjust yourself to the person you speak to.

But in terms of again, like you go on Netflix website, any person in the world or go on a Netflix website, the value prop will be the same. Sure. And then you like it or you don't, you subscribe or you don't. But the value prop is the same.

What is the one thing that kills most startups in the world is the fact that they try to customize their product or their solution to every single potential client, right? Yep. So then it doesn't work. So that's why know yourself, know what you can bring to a company, adjust it to the angle that you're talking to the person, but you cannot be five different things to five different people and everybody promise and promising every single person you talk to that I'm gonna solve your problem, I'm gonna solve your problem.

Because then it's just disjointed. And you're like, I would rather have someone who tells me one thing five times than five different things. You've got to be very going into this process, you're making it very clear. You need to be very clear on who you are and what you stand for.

As you say, have your value proposition, I do this and I don't do this. And therefore, what you want is you say those five people get together, say, they made it very clear this is their lane and this is not their lane. And then you can be very clear with them and say, Well, that's a shame because we need someone like this. I think too often people just try and get across the line.

If I can just get in, if I can just get across the line, get in, then I can be the real me when I'm there. And they'll love that. But actually, that probably doesn't work, does it so well? So we've you mentioned earlier about consultants.

So I'm really interested because obviously your background, you've worked, as you say, for big consultancies, you've worked in boutiques, you worked in innovation, very much voting in customer experience. We hear a lot of narrative out there at the moment around the evolving, the destruction of customer experience, depending on kind of whose narrative it serves, I think is probably the truth of it. Customer experience has become perhaps more embedded. That's what's happened.

It's like where we started with the first CEO, it was actually the chief electricity officer because people didn't know what the what electricity was. And you needed someone to say, you can work late in the evening. What? How do I do that?

We switched this. Oh my god. And I think over time customer experience has become embedded more into organizations, more naturalized. So, therefore, perhaps the roles are shifting, but those involved in advising and consultancy, I've certainly seen many jump into other roles.

Is this a reality? And if so, where do consultants go when they no longer consult? That's a very good question. And I do see that starting with the wider trend, is that customer experience and let's call it user-centered service design, business transformation, however we want to call it, had its ADA probably in the past 10 years, let's say, right?

Maybe a little longer than that. But suddenly businesses realized that is like, wait a minute, I've had a team and customer experience for the past 10, 15 years, and what did actually change in my business? Oh, maybe they improved this, they mapped a few journeys, and they helped people how to use posted notes. Of course, I'm highlighting here.

But there is this kind of questions for almost about do we need a vitamin or do we need a painkiller? Um a lot of companies, I think, are a lot more, because companies are risk-coverers, a lot more into cost cutting than into growth. And innovation, customer experience is all, you know, about kind of position in this way. So that then companies see, like, oh, maybe I'll just set up a team in myself.

It will cheaper, they will know the context. It's not like they will be dropped in some 20-year-olds and pretend that they know what they're doing. It's like I'll train the team, they will know what they're doing. And a lot of companies are now building these in-house teams.

So that then leaves consultants a much smaller pie to compete for. I know a lot of medium-sized consultancies in the UK, they had to close because they suddenly their clients dried up because they had one, two anchor clients, and then suddenly they dried up. So consultants are seeing themselves in this, they're seeing it. They're smart people, they're seeing it.

Lately, I spoke to around 50 consultants in service design and customer experience in innovation around the world. I had people from the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada, almost every continent. And what is fascinating is that every single person told me the same things. First of all, is that they see consulting as a dead end.

That was the quote. So a lot of consultants see consulting as a dead end because they don't want to partner, and because they don't see partner as a potential avenue, because the prestige and it's not there anymore. So they start asking themselves what is the value of them being as a consultant? Because most of the projects nowadays are buried so deep within organizations that they don't see light of day, or even it's just a PowerPoint presentation that gets into a shelf.