Simon Wright’s New York Trip: Winner of our BIG New York Incentive 2014

Ready to enter ? All you need to do is provide us with the name and contact details of an experienced recruiter. Click here to find out more.  Terms and conditions apply.

AN EASY WAY TO WIN A TRIP FOR TWO TO NEW YORK…AGAIN!

Back by Popular Demand

The GSR2R Big Referral Incentive

Last Year we received 100 Responses

So Your Odds Are High!

2014 saw the launch of the GSR2R Big Referral Incentive.

The response was incredible, and over the last few months we have been regularly asked “Are you guy’s doing the New York Trip again?”

The answer is: YES

We are known across London as being THE rec2rec that delivers. Why? Because we do, both for our clients and candidates. Dedicated to getting the best talent for our clients, 80% of GSR2R’s placements come from people who have experienced our service.

We are always looking for new ways to give something to you and the feedback from our lucky winner in 2014 Simon Wright was so amazing we decided its New York time again!!

“Thank you to Cheryl and all at GSR2R for offering such a wonderful and generous referral prize. Not only did my family and I have a terrific weekend in New York, it enabled me to visit my younger sister, who I hadn’t seen for 12 months. Thank you again and I will continue to refer people to GSR2R” – Simon Wright

Yes we are offering a trip for two to New York. Refer any experienced Recruiter to GSR2R, between now and October 18^th 2015, who we successfully have a conversation with and your name will be entered into a draw to win:

• 2 flights to New York

• 3 nights stay in the Standard Hotel, …… This place is anything but standard!!

The GSR2R Referral Scheme Why? GSR2R want to reward you for spreading the word about our outstanding service.  If you know an experienced person who works in Recruitment who is looking for the next step in their career, please tell them about  GSR2R.

Their reward: To work with a quality  Rec2Rec who will always put their needs first.

Your reward for successfully placed referral: £150 worth of gift vouchers of your choice.

When can I start? Right now! Call GSR2R Ltd. on 0203 696 1215.

Till next time,

Cheryl

Please note: If a name is duplicated by several people it will be the person who gave us the name first. Candidates who GSR2R have already placed are excluded from this referral scheme as are self-referrals. Referral to include full name and contact email or number. The winner agrees to kindly provide GSR2R with a photo of themselves with their prize.

Terms and conditions apply to all our incentives. You can find them by clicking this link. Terms and Conditions.

As a service to both candidates and clients the team at GSR2R regularly review Recruitment Consultant salaries across the sectors we specialise in as well as conducting salary surveys. You can see our most recent findings in the table below.

For candidates this gives you an opportunity to know if your current salary reflects your market ‘value’.

For clients this gives you an insight into what is required from a salary perspective to attract high billers in a
candidate driven market.

Average Salary by Years of Experience

This table shows the average salary by years of experience across sectors for candidates placed by GSR2R in 2015.
 
Please note that these figures are basic salaries based on Consultant level roles only.

For those of us who are naturally punctual, a habitually late person can drive us into a state of fuming, apoplectic rage- leading us to believe the other person is wasting our time through their own disorganization- or even worse, that they just don’t care about our time. Lateness is often viewed as disrespectful, inconsiderate, and just plain flaky.

And the business world tends to agree- in the Western world at least, time is money- and lateness reduces productivity, causes scheduling clashes and cascading delays.

Therefore, if you are a naturally late person, you are probably negatively impacting on your career success. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter how late you work, how good you are at your job, or how often you apologise: being late causes distrust about your reliability.

These days, arriving at a meeting or at work ‘on time’ actually means you are late. 5 minutes early is now considered ‘on time’ so that you can prepare and be ready to start work. This has been a fairly standard way of doing business for years: which begs the question: why on earth do late people continue to be late?

The thing is…you probably really don’t mean to be late. There’s an excellent chance that you don’t even really understand how it happens, and that your life has a constant miasma of stress and guilt hanging over it as you dash from place to place apologizing. Punctual people just can’t understand how you sent a text saying you were about to leave the house at 8:30, but somehow turned up at the office 5 miles away at 9:37. You can’t really understand it either. You know they’re angry, and you struggle to explain yourself in a way that makes sense.

But it’s ok, because finally there’s some behavioral research to make sense of it for you.

It turns out that there are different ways the mind processes time. Neuro Linguistic Programming explains that you can be an In-Time person or a Through-Time person.

‘In time’ people are your classic late-comers. They are so firmly in the moment that they really struggle to predict how long something will take. This is the person that wants to get lots done, so they decide to make some ‘quick calls’ before heading out of the house to work. They then get lost in the next task and before they know it’s 9:20! They then compound the problem by apologizing when they do arrive late, yet then get buried in another task like checking unimportant emails before actually getting started on the meeting, by which stage everyone else is so annoyed they can barely concentrate.

A through-time person on the other hand, rarely gets ‘lost in the moment’ and sees time as very linear. They can predict how long things will take and reschedule capably when things are running over time.

Workplaces, of course, have a mix of those two types, in varying degrees.

I mentioned earlier that the Western world views time as money, but there are many other parts of the world that view time differently- giving credence to this idea that there is more than one way to view time in a business context. For example, while Northern European and American view of time is quite linear, Southern European views of time are much more relaxed and based loosely on events and relationships rather than strict definitions of time. Asian cultures tend to have a longer-term view, where business deals are reached at slowly and through much ritual. For a very good article on this topic, see here.

If you are naturally late here a few simple suggestions that will help get you to those meetings
and social events on time…i.e. 5 minutes early!.

1. Write out what specific tasks you need to do in a day
2. Allocate time to these tasks
3. If you are not sure how long tasks time, time yourself
4. Ask someone who is always on time, how long it takes to get to meeting venues
if you need to travel, they always give themselves plenty of time
5. Recognise that you will always thing you can do more in a set time than is realistic
do under promise on deadlines and over deliver!

If the above just doesn’t sound like you, maybe a move to Spain might be an idea, sunshine and a chilled approach to time.

While Spain may not be your next job destination, we can help you find your next UK based role!
Call GSR2R on 0203 696 1215

Until next time,

Cheryl

Building trust is crucial to all working relationships, and it seems that the frenetic and hyper-connected pace of modern life asks us to build trust with colleagues and clients faster than ever before.

Trust is a strange thing- built much less on what is said than how it is said- the mannerisms; the eye contact; the posture that accompanies the words- and how that person makes us feel. Trust is largely built on non-verbal communication: when the body language dances in tune with the words being spoken.

Much of the literature on body language in the recruitment sector tends to be from the ‘interview-winning and self-confidence’ perspective, and we’ve written about this before. Yet less attention has been given to how our body language feeds into our long-term relationships with the people around us.

When we initially meet our colleagues, candidates and clients, it’s startling to learn that our first impressions of each other are only fractionally built on the words we say. The ‘formula’ of first impressions is that words only account for 7%, tone of voice accounts for 38%- and body language a staggering 55%!

There are of course opportunities to build trust after a first meeting, but if your body language is sending the wrong messages then your professional relationship will almost certainly suffer a lack of trust. Remember, people don’t offer opportunities to those that they don’t trust, and they don’t easily follow the direction and ideas of those they don’t trust either.

As a recruiter, building a strong and rapid foundation of trust with candidates, clients and your colleagues is vital. As a lot of your contact will take place over the phone, when you do get the chance to meet in person it is doubly as important that your body language conveys a sense of authenticity, warmth and confidence.

So, how do you ensure that your body language sends the message that you are trustworthy?

1. Even if you read no further, read this one. Mirroring people’s expressions is the most powerful way of making people feel at ease. By this, I mean nodding along to show you’re interested, frowning when they’re showing concern, and smiling when they’re talking about something good. You can even mirror their movements slightly- in fact in business it’s been proven that if you subtly mirror movements that you are overwhelmingly more likely to close a deal.

Remember: Don’t exaggerate this- most of it will come naturally once you start as mirroring is a natural phenomenon of human behaviour. It isn’t copying exactly what someone is doing. Research recommends you do 50% of what the other person does. You almost certainly already do it with the people you love and are at ease with.

2. Eye contact. Studies have shown that if we like someone, we look at them a lot more, and that we are perceived as untrustworthy when we don’t have a strong level of eye contact. Aim to keep eye contact during around 80% of the conversation.

 Remember, this is not a Mexican stare-off, and it will make people very uncomfortable if you maintain eye contact without breaking now and then. This is particularly true when you first meet someone, as it is human instinct to need to look a person over upon meeting. Smile, shake hands, then look down to your papers or laptop briefly to allow the person to have a good look at you. Sounds strange, but you will create a level of comfort this way.

3. Keep your posture straight and open– if you feel the need to cross your arms then just put your hands together in a relaxed fashion. Keeping a straight back and open shoulders conveys a powerful sense of confidence, which is a necessary building block for trust to grow in business.

Remember: even if you’re faking it, ‘power-poses’ have been proven to trick our mind into releasing cortisol and testosterone, the confidence hormones.

4. A firm handshake is vital to inspiring confidence. Studies have shown that firm handshakes inspire confidence…and limp handshakes can really hurt your chances of being hired (and trusted.)

Remember: this is not a strongman competition, and ‘bone-crusher’ handshakes will often be interpreted as an attempt to bully or assert authority over the other person. Try out your handshake on friends and find out if you need to change your handshake style.

Body language is such a powerful form of communication in the workplace that much more attention should be given to it when forming professional relationships. Yet the ‘hacks’ described here are relatively simple to adopt- so get started today and reap the benefits of trust with clients and colleagues.

In a previous article I wrote about how sometimes recruiters are good at their job and enjoy the success it brings yet continue to feel they can achieve so much more. The challenge though is that
many recruiters are not completely sure what to do to ensure they do reach their full potential.

This is the second part of a 2 part article where I share 9 shortcuts to put you at the top of the pack.

If you haven’t already, read part 1 [http://www.gsr2r.com/blog/9-effective-shortcuts-for-top-recruiters-part-1/]

1. How to deal with an angry client. It happens to every single one of us- so don’t panic, even if it was your fault. Watching someone calm down an irate client is a wonderful thing- and a skill you can learn too.

a. Apologise- even if you’re not at fault, say that you’re sorry that they’re unhappy with the service.

b. Ask exactly what happened- our instinct is often to placate them quickly and get off the phone, but that generally just angers people more (and loses you the opportunity to improve.)

c. Devise an action plan to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again, and communicate this with the client so they know steps have been taken.

d. Implement the action plan. (Seems obvious, but often doesn’t happen!)

 
2. How to close the deal.

a. Each time you speak to a prospective client, make it clear that you’re moving forward towards a deal.

b. Make the customer feel that are the ones moving it forward because they want to use your services and reap the benefits, rather than you being pushy.

c. Ask the client what they want from you before the deal is confirmed.

d. Inform the client that it’s time to decide if they want to go further.

3. How to keep them happy. So you’ve landed a new client and drank some champagne to celebrate- but 6 months on, will they still be happy? Well that’s up to you.

a. Stay creative. You were creative to land the client, so keep producing fresh ideas and strong talent.

b. When a problem arises, don’t shy from it, but pick up the phone with confidence to show them you’re on top of finding solutions.

c. Get to know their business- it’s the only way you’ll be able to deliver outstanding results that make you indispensable.

d. Make sure that the pricing of your product is competitive-or keep them well informed why you price it differently.

 
4. How to create loyalty. Business is made up of people-so you need to take care of the human side as well as the nuts and bolts in order to generate lasting loyalty.

a. Create genuine relationships- asks questions.

b. Nobody likes a heavy sales pitch, keep it light and friendly.

c. When you mess up, fess up- vulnerability generates loyalty.

d. Be reliable- hit deadlines, produce what you promised.

e. Catch up face to face when you can, create a genuine bond.

If you aspire to reach your potential and recognise that a change in role may help you to achieve
this, GSR2R can help, call now on 020 3696 1215.

Until Next Time

Cheryl

You’re good at your job and love your successes. Yet you feel that you’re not reaching your full potential: perhaps you struggle with motivation, are uncomfortable asking for customer referrals, or are great at creating rapport but often fail to ‘close the deal’.

Here are 9 shortcuts to put you at the top of the pack.

1. Motivation. You get to work and look at the phone a bit nervously, knowing you need to deliver results. Motivation is all in the mind, and you need a plan of attack.

a. Notice what has worked in the past, and what strategies have failed.

b. Make clear, achievable goals for each day- and keep a long-term goal in mind.

c. Acknowledge that you are the one in control of how you feel.Give yourself credit and think of past successes.

d. Where you can, avoid negative people and situations.

e. When things go wrong, have strategies in place to control your stress.

2. Your ‘Elevator Pitch’. As a recruitment consultant who spends a huge amount of time networking on the phone, you need to ensure that this personal ‘brand statement’ is catchy and confidence-inspiring. Here are a few tips:

a. Make it snappy! 60 seconds is ideal- particularly if this is a cold call.

b. Make it relevant to them. They don’t care about you (yet), they only care what you can do for them. Make the benefit clear.

c. Explain why you’re the person to deliver this benefit.

d. Ask if you can make an appointment to discuss it further.

e. Don’t talk like a robot. No-one believes someone who sounds scripted- rehearse it enough times that it sounds natural. (Recording yourself            is a great tactic.)

3. Asking for a customer referral. For some of us, this one is particularly painful. What if they say no? There are a few ways to make this process a success.

a. Give yourself some credit. If someone else had done the job you did, would you be happy to give them a referral? We often fail to give ourselves the credit we deserve- clients will often be delighted to help you out in return for a job well done.

b. Don’t ask your client for a referral until the ‘deal’ has been deemed a success.

c. Where possible, get referrals in person rather than writing.

d. Thank the referee and let them know if the referral leads to further success.

4. Writing a killer email. With a torrent of emails pouring into our inboxes day and night, your email pitch needs to stand out. Here are a few tips to writing emails to generate business.

a. Make the subject line punchy.

b. Hit them immediately with the benefit to them.

c. Say why you are the best person to deliver this benefit.

d. Ask for a yes or no response to avoid wasting either person’s time further.

e. Put white space in your emails- no-one wants to read a dense page of text.

f. Keep it short.

g. Turn your spellchecker on. Delete multiple exclamation points and don’t use block capital letters.

5. Leave it for a few minutes and then read it again- does it sound like a heavy sales pitch? Very uncool (and very unsuccessful). Get rid of the overly ‘sales-y’ bits. Showing them how much they need you. You know you can help them, but people are often wary about committing themselves. Your job is to make it an easy decision.

a. Be aware of their business position so you can position yourself as indispensable.

b. Make them an offer they can’t refuse.

c. Point out what’s at stake: perhaps use an example where you’ve placed someone brilliant with the competition, or how much money/time was saved.

d. Ask them what you could do better than the people they use now. This gives you information to position your product better to them- if not now, later.

e. Discuss the alternatives, then encourage them to commit- but don’t be overly pushy.

f. Once you land the client, celebrate with them to show that it mattered- and then get busy delivering what you promised.

If you aspire to reach your potential and recognise that a change in role may help you to achieve
this, GSR2R can help, call now on 020 3696 1215.

Until next time,

Cheryl

“Having made the move, I am heading up a sector and I am now responsible for a virtual team. This is enabling me to make a bigger impact in both this team and equally within my sector.  I am more of a specialist within finance. I have a lot more autonomy than before. After only seven months I am now a qualified financial recruiter and thoroughly enjoying my new role.”

Sheryl Abery

“I would absolutely recommend GSR2R; the value for me is that it’s a personal, long lasting relationship. I don’t feel I will ever need to go to another Rec 2 Rec because I have established a partnership with GSR2R and they know and understand who I am. They see no value in
placing me into a business where they can get a quick win. They treat you with respect, intelligence, they understand exactly where you are coming from and they are about creating very suitable matches. They are so well connected I would see no need to ever go and speak to another Rec 2 Rec.”

Rowan Fisk

“I would highly recommend GSR2R; in fact I have already referred 2 friends. Rec to Rec unfortunately doesn’t enjoy the best reputation in the industry. Way too few people are aware of the quality and level of service GSR2R provide, because of the industry experience, knowledge and ability to build great client and candidate relationships. I believe if more people experienced the GSR2R service, GSR2R could change the image of the Rec to Rec industry.

I am in a job that I love, working for a start-up business which is exactly what I wanted to do. I would never have found this job or company had it not been for the team at GSR2R”

Katy

“Yes I can confidently recommend Mike and GSR2R. I’d class my relationship with Mike as a partnering relationship as opposed to a supplier, there’s constant communication during the process and it’s all about relationships, because he is in it for the long term, it’s not transactional”.

“Mike is genuine and he offers transparent and honest advice. The level of service before, during and after is second to none. It’s very good. It’s not just about the fee with Mike. He likes to do a good job and that comes across”.

“I have recommended an individual to Mike that I haven’t taken on myself or is not a good fit for construction and property, I always recommend Mike to others and I’ve got nothing to gain from that. I don’t do that for the sake of it”.

Matthew Cary
Co-Founder Capstone Recruitment

“If you want a team of rec-to-rec consultants that are going to keep in contact with you, are going to try their level-headed best to solve your recruitment needs then I wouldn’t look any further than GSR2R.  They will understand your needs, get their head around the market and try and bring the best possible people to your attention.”

Robin Longes
Daniel Marks London

If you would like to read a complete version of any case study, please email Zoe@GSR2R.com
with the name of which case study.

Recruitment careers, much like sporting careers, have triumphs and tragedies, good days and bad.  There are periods where your work life seems charmed, yet times where your recruitment career appears as if it has plateaued, is having a bad run, or has even gone downhill over time.

Most sporting stars can identify with this rocky road, as their paths to sporting greatness are rarely smooth – perhaps because of injury, perhaps because of a mental block or personal issue, perhaps because someone ‘better’ came along and bumped them from the top spot or team.

Yet the true champions, those that become sporting heroes remembered for generations, have something different about them. What is it that separates them from the ‘almost-ran’, from the rest of the pack? Is it sheer natural ability?

You might think so, yet the sporting world is littered with examples of those who showed exceptional talent, yet faltered and fell when things went wrong for them. The tennis players who choked under pressure in the final set, or footballers who didn’t bounce back from injury despite having a clean bill of health.  The cricketers that couldn’t bear criticism so stopped improving, or the rising stars that thought they didn’t need to train or show effort so fell behind in fitness and new techniques.

So what really separates the champions from the rest? And what can we, as recruitment consultants, learn from the leaders of the pack?

The path to success – either in sport or career- is not so much about natural ability, but more in how you think.

Success comes from:

1. Mental toughness. Learning to thrive when the pressure is on, and getting back up and fighting on when the odds are stacked against you.

2. Learning from recent failures and then moving on. Success comes from breaking negative thinking habits- that horrible loop where it seems that your past mistakes have somehow tainted future projects and you become fearful of taking steps forward.

3. Intense training and preparation– Success comes from preparing well for that new business pitch or using your training to know exactly how to act when a candidate is not working out.

4. Feeling the fear, and doing it anyway. Like sport, the recruitment game is often high pressure. So learn from your sporting heroes about recognising those butterflies, that tightness in your chest, and turning it into adrenaline.

Yes, easier said than done. So how do you learn this mental toughness and ability to bounce back from defeat? The key is in cultivating a ‘growth mindset’, rather than a ‘fixed mindset’.

Research by Psychology Professor Carol Dweck has shown that both on the sporting field and off, that those who exhibit growth mindsets have ‘the mindset of a champion’.

Fixed mindsets

People with fixed mindsets believe that  abilities are natural, or ‘God-given’, and that they can’t be improved with effort or training. Fixed mindsets generally struggle with criticism and often hide their failures- because they believe their natural stock of talent is all they have and cannot be improved upon. Criticism is then perceived as someone pointing out a ‘fatal flaw’. Fixed mindsets will often avoid learning opportunities in case it reveals something they are not naturally good at.

Growth mindsets

Growth mindsets, on the other hand, believe skills can improve with learning and perseverance, and perceive effort as important and failures as opportunities to get better. Over time, the fixed mindset ‘stars’ often fade as they resist learning opportunities, and are often overtaken by those with growth mindsets- who may in fact have less  natural talent, but kept on applying themselves.

All of these things, of course, can be applied to our working life. From the floodlit stadiums to the office cubicle, the path to winning consistently and bouncing back from failure is the same. The key lies in having a growth mindset.

Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset?  The good news is that if you have a fixed mindset, you can change it, through viewing each hiccup in life and work as an opportunity to grow.

Our working life is often a rollercoaster, and you certainly can’t control all variables. All you can do is make yourself tough enough to learn to roll with the punches and keep on winning.

Until next time,

Cheryl