Clare Muscutt talks with Jo van Riemsdijk about motherhood, CX recruitment and how to get hired!
Episode #203 Show Notes.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Hi, Jo!
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Clare Muscutt – host:
How are you today?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Very well, thank you.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Awesome, awesome. Thanks so much for joining me to share your story and advice on recruitment in these crazy Covid times.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Oh, you’re very welcome. I hope I’ve got something interesting for people to listen to.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I know your story, so I know you do. And that’s a great point to begin. So, I know you’ve got a really interesting backstory. Please can you tell the listeners how you got from publishing into CX recruitment.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Sure. Well, I started off, really, my career – it was working for a picture agency where my clients were publishers. So, we used to give them pictures of ‘woman with croissant’, for example, if it was a relevant story in Women’s Weekly or something like that. I started off there, and I lead a team of account managers because I really enjoyed the client relationship side of things.
From there, I left and went to work for ITN, and I sold – or I didn’t really sell that much, actually, in fairness – the ITN footage, news footage, for new media clients, which was actually gaming companies, so people who made these sort of simulations of World War II fighter games. Sometimes, they’d have a section of World War II footage, which we would sell. I worked there for nine months, and I was made redundant, which was hideous. Then, I worked for a business information company called The Profile Group for eight years, where I had an amazing managing director, who was this fantastic woman called Clare…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Great name.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
… who no doubt will listen to this, hopefully, at some point. She really helped build my confidence up. I started off doing business development. Then, I sort of ran the account management team, and then I ran the commercial team. I suppose at that point, actually, we were sort of doing customer experience and voice-of-the-customer type surveys in a sort of caveman-drawing type way, I would say. We had customer feedback reports that we used to produce every month to make sure that the product was getting better, and better, and better – which, actually, I’d done to protect my sales team. So, if the sales team figures weren’t great, I’d be able to say, ‘Yes, well, that’s because I told you about this, and it’s still not happening.’ So, that was why I did that initially. I loved working there. I worked in an exclusively female senior management team, which was awesome. And I’ve got some really good friends from that time.
Then, I left there and went back to my picture roots because I actually did a Master’s in the History of Art many, many years go, and I wanted to use that at some point in my career. So, I went to work for another picture agency called the Bridgeman Art Library, which was run by an amazing lady, again, who was called Viscountess Bridgeman. I worked for her for nine months to make the whole thing more commercial, but I actually managed to get pregnant in my first week, which was unexpected…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Little surprise.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
… I think it’s fair to say. So, I left nine months later, and I never went back. It was very long commute, and, as sad as that was, it wasn’t going to work.
At that point, my husband and I left London and moved back to the homeland, which is where I am now, which is Hertfordshire, where I had several friends who also returned to the homeland when children appeared. Then, I spent more and more time with friends here, one of which is the lovely Kate Baird, and together, we decided we wanted to set up a business. We weren’t sure what, but we wanted to do something. So, we thought that as we’d been hiring managers and candidates, that the whole recruitment process for people was generally pretty dreadful, and we felt that we could actually offer something good.
So, we started off trying to come up with an idea for local businesses because a lot of our friends had had quite big jobs in marketing, or lawyers, or finance, or whatever, and they all left to have children – they were the ones that left and had children – but all with loads and loads of talent and experience. And we wondered whether with could actually harness that talent and put women into short-term contract roles for local businesses so they could work on a project-by-project basis. You could have someone who was marketing director of Unilever doing a marketing plan for your smaller business.
And we thought, ‘Oh, my god, it’s going to be amazing. We’re going to make loads of money. It’s going to be fabulous,’ and it was an absolute disaster. But in so doing, oddly, a chap came to me with his CV and he was a creative director – I think at UBS or somewhere like that – and I was really interested, thinking, ‘What is this?’ And it actually turned out he was a user experience customer-focused person. And another one of my really good friends was very senior in HR at Barclays, at the time, and I asked his permission if I could send his CV to her so I could ask her where I would place someone like that, and she said, ‘Ooh, this is really interesting, Jo, because we’ve got seven customer experience director roles, which we are struggling to fill. So, I’ll put you in touch with resourcing.’
So, then, Kate and I suddenly got seven customer experience director jobs at Barclays, and their resourcing team didn’t really know what they were recruiting for. The more we did, the more research we did on those roles, the more interested I became in what it was that they were doing, sort of, ‘Hang on a second. This sounds remarkably like my caveman-drawing type days, except a lot more sophisticated.’ We got to talk to some lovely, really interesting customer experience people in this search, and it made me realise that it was a massively underrepresented area. So, for candidates, if they wanted to move jobs, they would be told about digital marketing roles or customer service roles; they wouldn’t be told about the customer experience roles. No one really got it, and resourcing teams were really struggling, ‘What is this thing? I don’t know what this thing is.’ So, we spotted a niche.
Then, another old friend of mine – from teenage years in Bishop’s Stortford – is a chap called Christopher Brooks, who is quite well-known…
Clare Muscutt – host:
I know Chris.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
… in customer experience. And I went to see him, had a chat with him about, ‘Do you think there’s a market for recruitment for customer experience people?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely because just no one gets it at all.’
So, he helped us learn about it, get to grips with what it was. He was a part of our business for a while. He’s not anymore because Kate and I wanted to be entirely independent of any consultancy, but he was a big part of it to begin with, and I will always be in his debt, really, for that.
So, that’s how it happened. Then, we’ve grown year-on-year organically, slowly. A lot of our business comes from referral, which is great. Once we’ve got a client, we tend to keep working with them, and then getting new work. This year, obviously, has been slightly different, but that’s it in a nutshell, I suppose.
Clare Muscutt – host:
And yeah, big up Sir Chris Brooks! He’s a great ally, isn’t he, for women in CX?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah, definitely.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Lovely chap. Lovely chap. So, just winding back a little bit to the story, where you said you managed to get pregnant in the first nine months of a new role.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yes. First week, I think you’ll find! The first week.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Oh, gosh.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah, the first week.
Clare Muscutt – host:
How was that?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Somewhat surprising. I felt really bad, actually, because at that time, I was in my early 30s and I had been for a couple of – I was married, I got married at 28 – I’d been for a couple of interviews, and people had, to my face, said, ‘Well, you’re in your 30s. You’re married. Not that keen on taking you on because you’re probably going to have a baby.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh, right.’ And of course, even at that point, you shouldn’t really say that, but several, two or three people did actually sort of say, ‘Well, I think probably at your stage in life, you’re not the most attractive candidate.’ ‘Wow. Okay.’
So, Lady Bridgeman was amazing. She liked me because I was very commercial, but I did have a History of Art background – because the Bridgeman Art Library is the biggest picture agency for fine art – and so, I was quite an attractive proposition because I understood the art side, but I also understood the commercial side. And that’s not normally – you don’t normally find a mix of that. I did feel awful, awful, saying to her, ‘I’ve got something to tell you. I’m pregnant.’ (Gulp!) Also, I felt really bad for the team because the team had been really shaken up by my arrival, if you like, because I was brought in to make it a lot more commercial, and so that’s what I was doing. There was a lot of very uncommercial people being trained and nurtured into being quite commercial people. They started to really enjoy it, and they really loved – and by the end of it, we had a really great relationship. But then, because I was then going, I think they felt a bit, ‘Oh, now you’ve gone, and now we’re back where we were.’ That was quite hard.
Clare Muscutt – host:
How long was it? You got pregnant in the first week of the role, and then took maternity leave at…
Jo van Riemsdijk:
At the day I gave birth.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Oh, wow! Why did you wait so long?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Because I wasn’t – you’re only due maternity leave after you’ve been there – at that point, I can’t remember what the legality of it was, but at that point, you only could have maternity leave if you’d been there long enough. I think I actually missed it by two days, but fortunately, because the business was great, they said, ‘Oh, well, no, of course we’ll pay it,’ because otherwise, it would have been some other – I can’t remember what it was back in those days. It’s years ago. But it would have been some sort of maternity allowance, which was significantly less. So, that’s why I – I mean, literally, I had a call from a lady called Tick, who was one of my counterparts, as I was in labour, and my husband saying, ‘Yeah, I’m really sorry. She’s going to have to give you a call tomorrow because she’s actually got into labour.’
Clare Muscutt – host:
Oh, wow. So, literally…
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Literally…
Clare Muscutt – host:
… you were at work and went into labour.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah. Yeah.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Oh, gosh. That’s so stressful. Yeah, I think you’re right, the stigma around women in their 30s and our attractiveness as talent, in some cases. There’s been a lot of national stories about it, hasn’t there?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Mm.
Clare Muscutt – host:
But you can’t ask a woman, ‘Are you planning to have more children?’
Jo van Riemsdijk:
No. Absolutely.
Clare Muscutt – host:
By law, now, which is great that we’re protected. I know some of the best hires I ever saw come in, one at Sainsbury’s – who was my marketing director – Justin hired her when she was pregnant, so he knew…
Jo van Riemsdijk:
That’s amazing.
Clare Muscutt – host:
… yeah, yeah. She was incredible. She did an incredible job, there. So, yeah, I think those who would write women off because of their plans to be mothers would definitely be missing out in a lot of cases. I’m really glad that they’ve tightened up the legislation around…
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Oh, god, completely. The other thing is, once you’ve had a baby, your ability to condense your working into a very – you’ll become incredibly efficient because you have to be, basically. You just squish it all into the time that you’ve got.
Also, you have massive guilt that you’re not doing the best you could possibly do that you might have done prior to having a child. So, for employers, mothers are actually quite good employees because they really are very, very committed, and very, very efficient.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah. You’re not the first person to talk about that mum guilt of trying to balance a career, especially with new motherhood, and no matter what you do, feeling like you’re letting either yourself or your child down in some way by not managing to do 100 per cent in all areas, at all times.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Do you think the change of working style might be helping to facilitate a balance between work and family, or is it harder?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
I don’t know. I mean, I can only talk – I think it depends on the stage that your child is at, I would say. I would say, the younger the child, the more challenging the working-from-home situation might be. My kids are fortunately now both at secondary school, so they’re quite self-sufficient. So, although most of our interaction depends on, ‘Can I have some biscuits or crisps or something?’ You know, they fortunately don’t ask me about, ‘Can you help me with this maths?’ for example. And I don’t need to keep them entertained. I have to be aware of what they’re doing to entertain themselves, but I don’t necessarily have to entertain them. I think if you’ve got children who are little, particularly toddlers – in fact, any age, really, up to probably Year 4, which would be about nine – I think that would, for women working from home, with children at home of that age, that’s really challenging, I would say. I feel very fortunate that I am not in that situation myself anymore.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I can imagine. I know that a lot of my friends who are parents celebrated when the nurseries opened again because they found it impossible to work with toddlers around.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah. So, yeah, back to your story, again. I absolutely love the fact that you started a business with your BFF. Some great background there, with lots of female-only teams and female-run businesses. What’s it like to work with your bestie?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Oh, it’s awesome. It’s awesome. It is awesome. Kate is one of the funniest people I know. So, no matter how dark the day – and recently there have been some pretty dark days. I can’t pretend we’re hugely busy because we’re not. Things have changed in the recruitment world quite a lot. But no matter how dark the day, there is always something that we will find to laugh at. She is my rock, completely. So, if I’m having a bad time, she bolsters me up and vice versa.
We complement each other quite well. I’m very commercial. I’m quite, ‘Here I am’ (jazz hands), and Kate’s brilliant because she has run businesses. She’s great on the stuff that requires reading, and detail, and stuff that I am not good at. So, she’s absolutely brilliant at that. She’s getting a lot more jazz-handy, so I’m going to have to up my game, I think, slightly. Yeah, no, she is brilliant.
Together, we have really helped each other through, definitely, this very, very difficult time. We celebrate the great times, and we commiserate the bad time, so what can I say? I recommend it.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah, yeah. I suppose there’s always a risk, isn’t there, of combining business and friendship? But when you get the balance right, and it’s the right balance of personalities, and skills, and talent, yeah, I can imagine…
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah.
Clare Muscutt – host:
… being in that situation and having a bestie through these times – in business and in your personal life – is a real asset.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
It really is. I mean, we trust each other implicitly. I know that she is always someone I can completely rely on – completely, 100 per cent – and I know that she feels the same about me. I think that we are so lucky to have that relationship, and to have each other. There are lots of other people that have that, of course. But Kate and I are very personable people, and it really plays to, I think, the strength of our business that we are very open, and transparent, and honest, and kind – I’d like to think – and that’s really what we want our business to be like.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Your purpose, it lives in your friendship, and in your business, and in the service that you provide.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah, well, I hope so. Yeah.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I know it does. It does. I can see that from the social media posts, as well. So, just back to what you were saying about Covid’s really changed the recruitment world.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Mm.
Clare Muscutt – host:
What have you seen as the biggest differences for hiring managers and candidates during this crazy time?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Okay, the biggest difference is there are a lot less jobs.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yes. Number one.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Number one: there’s a lot less on the market. Companies have obviously put hiring freezes in place. They want to protect the staff that they have, and of course they do, and rightly so. That’s good. That’s a good thing.
So, for candidates, that has meant that it’s become even more competitive than it was already, and you’ve got to be absolutely on-point when you apply for a job. Your CV has got to sing and shout to that job description because if it doesn’t, you’ll get rejected, pretty much.
Because the volume – I mean, for hiring managers, the volume of applications per role is absolutely humongous. What I will say is that having – we occasionally advertise for roles if we don’t have enough people with the right skillset, in the right location, for the right money, otherwise we take from our network – but when we do advertise for roles, probably about 95 per cent of the applicants are wrong, completely.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Really?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Usually, yeah, because people apply for jobs just to apply for a job, sometimes. And you think, ‘Why have you done that, you random person? You clearly – even with the questions that you have to answer saying, “Yes, I have five years of customer experience experience” – you really don’t, do you? Really don’t.’
I think a lot of people do that. And I think, particularly at the moment, there is a tendency for people to panic and to scattergun apply for things. And that is the biggest waste of time you could ever, ever do, ever, ever, ever, ever. Do not scattergun apply for jobs because it does not work. You need to be meticulous. You need to do your due diligence; you need to check that job is real. If it’s an agency, call the agency. Don’t apply to the agency. Call them up, say, ‘Talk to me about this role.’ Make sure that it’s live. Make sure you know who the client is. And then, if you then talk to the agency, it’s quite likely if you are right for that job, they’ll think, ‘Oh, hurrah! Yes, don’t bother applying on our advert. Please send me your CV directly.’
You’ve got to be absolutely on-point. When you apply for a job, your CV has got to, got to, got to be tailored to that job. If it isn’t, then…
Clare Muscutt – host:
You’re not going to get through the net.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
No. Unfortunately not. It’s grim, grim, grim, and recruitment is broken, broken, broken. I would absolutely love to be the person that changed it to be great, and so when people think, ‘I’ve got to recruit anything,’ they think, ‘Hurrah! I’ve got to recruit. I can’t wait.’ Wouldn’t that be nice? No one thinks that, unfortunately, but it would be good if they did.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah, so, that’s one big tip there about tailoring your CV to the job role. So, is that like using words that are in the JD, repeating those? Giving…
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yes.
Clare Muscutt – host:
… examples of exactly when I did this thing?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, one thing that I think is really helpful: you have to remember that when you apply for a job, it is quite likely that you will – if you’re applying directly to a client – you will be looked at first by in-house resourcing. Now, in-house resourcing vary in brilliance, just like recruitment consultants do. Most of them are old recruitment consultants. They also work – which I never really realised – on several more roles at one time than a recruitment consultant does. So, an in-house resourcer can be working on anything from, depending on the organisation, from an engineering role, or a finance role, or a marketing role, and you can bet your bottom dollar when they get a customer experience role, they think, ‘Oh, god. Not this again.’
Clare Muscutt – host:
‘I still don’t know what it is.’
Jo van Riemsdijk:
‘I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it is. I’ve actually got no interest in it at all.’
So, remember they’ve got volumes and volumes of CVs to get through. So, they’re going to just look at it – they look at it, on average, for six seconds.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Wow.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
So, if you don’t hit them in the face as being obviously right for that role in that six seconds, you will be discarded. I mean, obviously, you must never, ever, ever, ever…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Lie.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
… tell a mistruth on a CV, ever. But what’s a really good thing to do is to detail – from reading the job description, you should be able to see what the key skills are that they’re looking for – and it’s quite nice underneath your initial profile to detail your key skills, so you make it as easy for that in-house resourcer as possible.
Clare Muscutt – host:
To tick boxes.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah. If you imagine talking to one of your friends who doesn’t understand what customer experience is, right? I’m sure everybody has got friends that don’t understand what customer experience is, and they’ll go, ‘So, what is it, again?’ And you have to explain to them in the most basic of terms what it is that customer experience is. You kind of need to emulate that on your CV when you’re applying for a job because then, you’re making it easy for that in-house resourcer who’s possibly overstretched, doesn’t understand it, make it easy for them to see, ‘Oh, look at that. Oh, hurrah! This is a good person. Here we go! Through to the hiring manager.’
And if you are a hiring manager, anyway, then you know when you get a whole load of CVs on your desk, you do not read the CV from cover to cover; you do not read every word. You also glance at a CV for about maybe 10, 20 seconds.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Slightly longer.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
You have to imagine, if you are a hiring manager, that you were applying to yourself on the very worst day of your life, when everything’s going wrong – you’ve got meeting after meeting after meeting – and there’s a pile of CVs, and you’ve got to leave early, so you’ve got to get through them. So, you know on that very day, you are going to look at those CVs for 10 to 20 seconds. You’re not going to read them. So, appeal to yourself as if you were recruiting yourself. That’s probably my best piece of advice.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Put yourself in your hiring manager’s shoes?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah.
Clare Muscutt – host:
But as CX professionals, we should be good at that…
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah.
Clare Muscutt – host:
… because of our skills in empathy and understanding our customer. So, thinking about getting a job a bit like customer experience?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah, basically. That’s exactly it.
Clare Muscutt – host:
What’s your point of view on photos on CVs?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
No. Definitely, no.
Clare Muscutt – host:
No?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
No.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Oh, okay.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
No. No. That’s a big N-O from me.
Clare Muscutt – host:
That’s a very clear N-O.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah, N-O. There’s several reasons for that. A lot of companies now are very strong on anti-discrimination. The minute your put a picture of yourself on a CV, you can see whether you’re female, you’re white, you’re black, whatever, and that instantly can prejudice somebody against you or for you.
Also, CVs shouldn’t have – if you’re applying via an ATS system, photos just will cause it not to see you. CVs should be, in my opinion, in Word, very basic, no picture, no graphics, no links, very plain, very easy for any ATS system to read at all. So, definitely no pictures.
Clare Muscutt – host:
So, sometimes – well, I don’t do it anymore – but when I had contracting jobs, because I was a service design/CX design specialist, my CV looks very pretty, and it has a picture on it. So, I shall bear that in mind in case I get back into that market.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Well, I think the thing is, pretty CVs have their place. If you, for example, get contacted by somebody, saying, ‘I tell you what, send me over your CV,’ and it’s a hiring manager, then it’s entirely okay to send a pretty CV. But don’t apply for a job using your pretty CV.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I get you. Okay, I see the difference. I guess I was already kind of in there when…
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah. Well, then that’s different.
Clare Muscutt – host:
… with short-term contracting day-rate kind of roles.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah. That’s different, then.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Thanks for clarifying that, though. It’s probably good advice for everyone out there.
I noticed, as well – so something I’d noticed that had changed: I was chatting to somebody the other day, and their whole recruitment process was obviously all done online, and I think they’re about three months into the role now, still never met their boss in real life. How do you deal with the kind of online interview process?
So, let’s say, CV has been bang on the money. The SEO search words have all been perfect for the system to pick up, or the recruiter who perhaps doesn’t understand what CX is. You’ve got to the stage of having an interview. How can you deal with the difference in not physically being there? How do you present yourself well online?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
I mean, obviously, you’ve got to – whether you’re wearing pyjama bottoms, make sure you’re wearing a nice top, right?
Clare Muscutt – host:
I’ve actually got my gym leggings on, still, at the moment. You can’t see them.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Well, why not? Why not? I’m not going to show you what I’ve gone on.
Obviously, look nice and be professional. You need to treat it as if it was a face-to-face interview. Actually, I personally find Zoom conversations as if I was sitting in a meeting talking to somebody. Be yourself. Be authentic, is the most important thing; don’t try and be something that you’re not. Prepare for it by making sure that you have researched the company, you have read through the JD several times over, so you know exactly what they’re looking for.
But also, one thing that Kate and I really advise people to do, before anything, is write what we refer to as a ‘brag sheet’. Now, what this is, it’s sort of like a book of you, if you like. So, write down all the stuff that you have done in your career that you’re really proud of. Now, that’s obviously customer experience stuff, of course, but it can be anything from personnel development – if you’ve had a difficult team member, did you bring them round? How did you do that? Did they do really well after that? Write about things like when you’ve done amazing stakeholder engagement, you’ve changed someone’s mind, you’ve got them to buy into something. Anything that you find that you are super, super proud of. Write it all down, all down, on a piece of paper, however you want to do it. And you can write in as much detail as you wish because the mistake that so many people make when they come to interview is to – and I get this all the time – ‘How did the interview go? How was it?’ ‘Oh, it was really good. I really enjoyed it, but I used a really random…’
Clare Muscutt – host:
Example.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
‘They asked me this question, and I used this really mad example. And I don’t know why because I’ve got so many good ones.’ And it’s like, ‘Great. Oh, dear.’
Clare Muscutt – host:
‘Whoops!’ I’ve been there myself. I’ve done that.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Well, yeah. But if you write down all the stuff that you’ve done that you’re really proud of, you’re less likely to allow that to happen because you’ve got your internal database of stuff. So, if it’s written down in front of you, you’re more unlikely to come up with a random example and to come up with the one that really exemplifies what it is they’re asking you about.
Generally speaking, customer experience, they want to have examples of when you’ve done stuff that’s great; that’s changed things. Or equally, they may want an example of when something hasn’t worked, and what did you do to make it better?
So, just be prepared. That’s all you can do. If you write your brag sheet, then you’ll stop yourself from making those mistakes. And it reminds you in dark days of not having any work – and it can be really, really awful for people – it just reminds you how awesome you are, actually, and how employable you are. And sometimes, you really need to be reminded of that.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah. It sounds like a good idea just to write your brag sheet, anyway.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah, exactly. You never know when you might need it.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Never know when you might need it. But just to make yourself feel good. I know, personally, it’s been really challenging on the consulting side. I think I might go and write my brag sheet after this, just to remind myself I am awesome.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah, you should do. You should do, definitely.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Just speaking about coming up with examples – that would probably be for a competency-based interview, wouldn’t it? Are there ways that you can guess what competencies you might get asked by looking at the CVs or…?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
No. Well, I would say it depends on the client. I mean, if when they’ve given us a briefing, the client says, ‘Oh, you know, well obviously, the big…’ I always want to know: what are the really big yesses, ‘I need this person to have this’? And they give me those yesses. So, it might be customer journey mapping; it might be the stakeholder engagement piece; it might be voice of the customer; whatever it might be…
Clare Muscutt – host:
So, the technical side?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
The technical side. I will brief the candidate on that, and I’ll say, ‘Look, these are the areas that they’ve absolutely, categorically stated there must be really good experience in.’ And then, that will allow them to tailor their CV, but then it will also allow them to make sure they’ve got those examples to hand…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Up their sleeve.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Yeah, exactly. So, if leadership is a big part, for example, then they would need to have examples of leadership, of managerial stuff, of turning that personnel issue into a success.
The benefit of going via an agency is that, of course, we can brief you on that, whereas if you’re going in directly, it’s a bit more challenging. So, you need to read between the lines on the job description about what actually they’re going to ask you. But be prepared for anything.
Clare Muscutt – host:
So, working with a recruiter helps both the hiring manager and the candidate make sure it is the right fit, I guess?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
I would say yes. Obviously, I would say yes.
I mean, obviously, at the moment, companies are looking to cut costs. So, agencies are being written out as far as they possibly can be. And fine, that’s the way that it is. That’s the world we live in. But if a role is business-critical, it is important to get that person in quickly. Now, we all know how customer experience is a massively misused term. It doesn’t necessarily – you can have someone in a customer experience role who may be strongly marketing, who may be strongly operational, who may be strongly technical and digital. They come from all sort of different backgrounds, and have all sort of different leanings, and every single customer experience role is unique to that business, okay? So, just because somebody has got a customer experience title does not necessarily mean that they’re the right person for that job.
So, where we can add value is that we know our candidates. If we get given a brief, we can pretty much fill a job very, very quickly because we already have access to those people. So, it makes it a lot easier and slicker, and we would hope more pleasurable for people, because also we’re really keen on ensuring that our candidates are really looked after as far as they possibly can be. We work really hard as their advocates, and we want to make sure they’re protected, and get the feedback – and if it’s a ‘no’, why is it a no? – so they can improve. Really hard, sometimes.
So, yes, I would say it’s an awesome idea to use a specialist agency. We’re not the only ones; there are others who are also very good, I believe. But what can I say? Yes, I think it’s great.
Clare Muscutt – host:
And then, my final question is just for people who are now looking for jobs – there’s a lot of people in the market because of all the terrible things that are going on – is it worth trying to get in touch with recruiters directly, even if there isn’t a role available right now, to get on the radar?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Why not? I say, why not? In terms of an agency, I’m always happy to have CVs of customer experience people; of course, I am. I’m delighted to talk to – I mean, my day is mostly spent talking to customer experience people. There are very many worse jobs that you can have.
I would say to people right now: make sure you are active on LinkedIn because you need to be seen. LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful too. Link in with everyone you know. Like people’s stuff. If you want to for – I don’t know – any particular organisation, and you see they’ve got a customer experience director who is active on LinkedIn, like all their stuff. Comment on all their stuff.
Also, there’s no harm in reaching out to people and saying, ‘Look, you know, I’d love to work for an organisation like yours,’ because there could be a contract role; there could be an opportunity in the future. There’s absolutely no reason you shouldn’t do that. And even if it just results in a conversation, conversations are great. It’s another expansion of your network. Nothing is ever lost by having a chat with somebody, ever. I think people are a lot more open, now, to having conversations with other people because of this whole Covid thing, and also, because we’re all not working in the same sort of way. So, I don’t think there’s any harm whatsoever in…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Reaching out.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
… just reaching out to somebody. I really don’t.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Super. So, if people want to find more about CX Talent, how can they get in touch with you?
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Well, we can go to our website, of course. And LinkedIn, I’m very – I’m trying to be active. I’m finding LinkedIn quite hard work at the moment because you’ve got to think about new things to say all the time, and I’m thinking, ‘I haven’t got anything else to say,’ but I’m trying. I’ve got some ideas.
Yeah, LinkedIn is a really good one. Our website is www.cxtalent.co.uk. Our numbers are on there. Our emails are on there. We’re always really happy to hear from people, always.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Super. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, today. I really enjoyed that conversation. I’m sure – as you said at the start, you wanted people to get a lot out of it – I think you’ve given so many great tips, I’m sure they will have. You’re one inspiring woman in CX.
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Thank you, Clare. Thank you so much for having me.
Clare Muscutt – host:
You take care, now. Bye!
Jo van Riemsdijk:
Bye!