#42 - Web Design for Recruitment Agencies - Robert Garner

In this episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I am joined by Robert Garner, Director at Abstraction Labs, a recruitment website design & development firm. We discuss his transition from a career in recruitment to becoming a software developer and eventually starting his own web design business.

Robert shares his diverse experiences, from selling recruitment advertising and working in media recruitment to launching a job board and moving into talent acquisition and software development, focusing on recruitment CRM systems. He delves into the challenges he faced early on trying to launch his own software platform, the pivotal role of self-teaching and online learning resources in his career shift, and gives advice for effective cold calling.

Robert also provides insights into the current state of the recruitment market, the importance of business development, and utilizing AI and automation. Additionally, he offers valuable advice for recruitment agencies on improving their websites, emphasizing the use of 3 easy things you can do today to assess your website:

1. Perform the Google Lighthouse performance test
2. Ensure Mobile Responsiveness of your pages
3. Incorporate high quality Images and Videos

Watch on YouTube

RESOURCES MENTIONED:
► Willo: Video Interview Screening Software
► Andrew Wood, COO & Co-founder at Willo
► Abstraction Labs: Recruitment Website Design & Development
► Robert Garner, Managing Director at Abstraction Labs
► The Challenger Sale, a book about taking control of the customer conversation
► The Jelly Effect, a book about how to make your communication stick

Transcript

0:05

Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's edition or episode, I should say, of the Recruitment Reality Podcast. I am delighted to be joined by Robert Garner, who I actually, this is the first time that we've met, right? Um, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to learn more about, uh, your background, obviously seeing you on LinkedIn and, uh, have a little delve into a really interesting background. And I think you can really share some, um, some interesting insights with our audience, both from, uh, working within recruitment, then, you know, becoming a developer and then. Now starting your own successful business. So, without me giving away too much, which I probably have done already, it would be awesome if I could hand over to you, Robert, and you could just give us a very quick kind of background to you, background to Abstraction Labs, and yeah, tell us a little bit more about yourself. Yeah, yeah, thanks, thanks for having me here and uh, yeah, good to meet you as well for the first time as well Andrew But yeah a bit about me Largely largely kind of recruitment for most of my career. So I used to sort of sell in recruitment advertising space to recruitment agencies to Uh, advertising agencies that look specifically after the recruitment industry. Uh, I deliberately went into recruitment. I used to sell to a lot of recruitment firms, really liked the sound of it. Uh, and then moved into media recruitment. So, recruiting for, uh, TV stations, radio stations, magazines, newspapers, uh, outdoor companies, ad agencies, all that kind of, that sexy stuff that doesn't actually pay that much money. Um, and then, yeah, ended up starting my own recruitment company. Had that for about six years. Uh, went to launch a job board as well, uh, media specific job board, but found it incredibly hard to get the traction on the search engines. So kind of pack that in, uh, moved into TA, uh, so worked in house, uh, for a major ad agency and for a major, uh, kind of media company years ago, and then eventually moved into software development. Uh, and in my last role, I was developing, uh, recruitment CRMs for a major kind of recruitment CRM provider. Uh, and then yeah, I started my business recently making recruitment websites. So yeah, a theme of recruitment throughout. That's but lots of different things within recruitment. It's interesting, um, the job board thing. So Willo, back in the day, we, we tried to be a job board, uh, before Willo was really Willo. And exactly the same thing, right? It's just, it's super hard to compete, even though, sorry Indeed, the likes of Indeed, it's not a very, you know, it's not really like a An amazing job board, as in, for the No, no, no. There's isn't incredible, but they've just got so much money to throw at it that getting anywhere in the search engine is, is nigh on impossible, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's so many improvements you can make. To to these job boards, uh, and i'm sure they've got it in their pipeline in their kind of product maps and stuff like that But yeah, their teams are so big their marketing teams are so big the the advertising budgets. They have a huge and If you're like you said if you're starting up a job board is it's tough to compete with uh that level of resources, so Uh, I thought it was a good job board But yeah, I just couldn't get it to rank and if you're not getting it to rank Then people aren't going to see it and they're going to apply for the jobs and you know, so on and so forth So it's always that kind of chicken and egg with job boards, really Yeah, absolutely. And it's, uh, yeah, I, it's just unbelievably tough. So, uh, I'm glad that you jacked it in. So did we, and did something different. And look at, and look at us now. know better things So, um, the thing I'm most intrigued about this is just from my personal, uh, you know, interest really is obviously, so you'd worked in recruitment for a long time. How did you then switch from recruitment to full stack developer? What, what did you, did you, you know, go back to uni? Was it something you'd already trained in in the past? You know, how did that work? um Just just self taught and yeah, you kind of get to the point where it's a lot of just copy and pasting I just do a lot of copy and pasting now Just on Stack Overflow and uh, that's it. I don't even know what I'm copying and pasting anymore. But um, no, it was during the um, it was um, just before COVID, I, I kind of was working for a, an ad agency and um, it were, there were some great people there, but it just wasn't, it wasn't my kind of outfit. Uh, and the, and the workload was huge. I was kind of managing like 20 to 30 roles at any one time. Uh, and some of these were like, you know, super senior, you know, like C suite roles and it would just, the work was just too much and I decided, you know what, like, I just can't keep up with this anymore and, uh, I jacked it in like maybe two weeks before lockdown kicked in. Thinking like, oh, like, you know, no big deal. I'm just gonna go off and, you know, get a job somewhere else. Like, you know, I'm in demand, uh, and there's some interviews and then everything just went kind of dead. And I was just like, oh, actually, okay, I'm not gonna be able to get a job. Uh, and then I was just thinking, You know, do I want to carry on down this route anyway? Like I wasn't particularly enjoying it. So over that period, um, I just, yeah, I just taught myself. But I think there's, there's so many resources online these days. You know, you've got YouTube, you've got all these, you know, for software development, you've got things like Codecademy and all these kinds of things. Udemy or Udemy, whatever it is. Uh, and I just, yeah, I just taught myself. Um, my stepdad used to, uh, work at, used to be like a head of IT. So he kind of grew up with computers in the house and playing around and putting together computers and stuff like that. Um, and I kind of grew up with them from an early age and I just thought, yeah, I'll just kind of teach myself. And then luckily I had a friend of mine I used to work with years ago, who was the CTO, still is, of uh, kind of a fintech company, Shuler Tech Company, and uh, chatting to him one day and he went, oh look, do you know what, we're actually looking for a junior developer, do you want to come join us? I was like, yeah, I'd love to. Um, I'd applied for about a thousand jobs up until that point, so uh, my chances were like pretty slim, so like anyone offering me anything, I just jumped out. And then yeah, there's like courses, like this thing called like, uh, the open source. Uh, kind of university where it has, like, access to, like, every computer science course out there. Like, you can literally take the courses that Harvard do, like CS50, uh, and get certificates from them as you kind of go through the, as that, so you can kind of take that as well. So, um, but yeah, just learn on the job and you're just always reading and yeah, that's how I did it. Anyone, if, yeah, if I can do it, anyone can do it, go for it. your job, Andy. yeah, well, and for those that don't know, you know, 90 percent of your time as a developer is spent Googling the answer anyway, right? Or chatty between the answer, copy and pasting it. So, right. That's how it works. It's yeah. But amazingly, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. I love that story. And I do agree. There's a, when I've looked into like starting to learn code, the thing that you really need is just commitment because all of the All of the learning stuff is out there, right, but then you have to have the appetite and the commitment to stick at it and not get distracted and do the easy thing and go back to the, you know, the, the, the day job as such. So, Go back to recruitment. it's admirable to, um, to, to have stuck at it. And then, obviously, you went through a few developer roles and then set up, uh, Abstraction Labs. So how did, how did that come about and what was the, what was the problem that you sort of saw in the recruitment market that you wanted to solve? Um, well, recruitment websites. So I, so when I started up my recruitment company back in 2012, I just started off with, uh, I think it was like a GoDaddy or a Wix or a Squarespace or whatever it is. Not to kind of, you know, there's, there's many kind of template providers out there. So, um, I had one of those and it did, you know, a really good job, um, as a, as a shop front to show that I was kinda a, a legitimate business. And I had that for about a year, maybe a year and a half or so. And then, uh, a friend of mine that I used to work with, that I ended up going to work for, um, the CTO. Um, he made me, uh, my website for my old recruitment agency. And, uh, he did, honestly, such an amazing job. Like, unbelievable job. I got a, an SEO guy used to head up a, an SEO agency in London to kind of do the SEO work on it. And it would literally rank top one, top two spots for every possible search term. So, you know, Media Recruitment Agency, Media Recruitment Firm, um, Agency in London, all these kinds of things. It was like Google definition. Uh, you know, you write random blog posts about, um, laptop backs and they'd be ranking on page one. Um, they just did such an amazing job and it just kind of made me think there's, there's so many recruitment websites out there that I don't think represent the company's brands and what they do and the services they provide as well as they possibly could. Uh, and that's why I went into this. Like I want to make good websites for people that perform well, uh, and kind of get across that message that you want to convey, you know, when you're talking to your clients face to face or when you're talking to your candidates face to face, I want to get that cross digitally. Uh, probably kind of represent your business. So yeah, I think there's a lot of poor websites out there and yeah, I just want to make them better, Yeah, make a better world through recruitment yeah, uh, very philanthropic of you Robert, I have to say. Uh, but no, there is, not, yeah, there is a lot of crap out there though. Um, it has to be said, and, and through no fault of, of the recruitment kind of agency or whatever, but also it just doesn't do any, a lot of the websites don't do anything for them really. They are just that shop window um, without really the kind of substance behind it to actually help them function as a business. And now, you know, it's like 40, 000 recruitment Agencies, registered businesses in the UK. So there's a lot to compete with, right? What, uh, if you, if you were a recruiter, um, if you were a recruiter or a recruitment agency owner, which you obviously have been, and you were sat listening to this podcast and you went, Oh, I wonder if, I wonder if my website's rubbish, I'm not really sure. What questions are you asking yourself to figure out whether you're one of the people that need to update their, uh, their websites or not? Because I feel like quite often they don't know what they don't know. Do you know what I mean? Like you, yeah, yeah, sure. If I, if I'm, if you're, if you're getting a cold call from me, then that's probably a big sign your website isn't so great. So yeah, if you get a phone call from me, then, uh, no, there's a few things you could check in all fairness. So you can. So if you're on your website in the browser, uh, there's a quick way you can kind of check to see, you know, there's things that you can approve or pass on to the developer. So there's this thing called Google Lighthouse. So when you're on your, you're on your website, um, right click on your website, little tool tip, kind of toolbar pops up, you press inspect. And then this, uh, developer panel pops up on the right hand side. And on the tab at the top, there'll be, uh, something that says Google Lighthouse. So Lighthouse, you can click on that. And then run a report and it will basically tell you the speed of your website out of 100. So you probably want it about maybe 60, 70 out of 100. you get it to 100, that's amazing, but 60, 70 is a good speed. Um, it will tell you about kind of accessibility, best practice. Uh, and also kind of an SEO score as well. And you want all of those to be probably 90 out of 100 as well. All kind of like little green circles. Um, so that's a good way to kind of check to see if your, your website's good. Um, I say images as well. A lot of people use low res images. For their websites, uh, and you can tell when you land on a website and the images aren't great, it kind of puts you off, um, a little bit, so yeah, and you can kind of, your developer could do this for you, but yeah, you can kind of do, you know, high res images for desktops or low res images for kind of mobile devices, um, spelling mistakes and typos, obviously, yeah, you know, trying to avoid that as much as possible, um, um, You want as many resources on there, you know, there's so many kind of resources you can kind of use these days as well. Like, you know, there's so many integrations, you have like chatbots or virtual chats, you know, a lot of people are going to be hitting your website outside of working hours. If they're working nine to five in the office, they're, they're hitting your website, you know, maybe between five and eight, you know, when they're looking for a job, when they're applying for jobs and things like that. So you can have kind of chatbot integrations or virtual chat integrations you can kind of, uh, use to kind of field those queries. Um, I'd say put some resources on there, put video on there, put real images of your company as well. Um, I'm bad for it. I have a lot of stock images, uh, on my website, but then it's just me in my house. Uh, a lot of the time and you probably don't want to see that. I've got a picture of me and the team. Hey, I've got my dog. I'll get my dog for the kitchen. I've got a bear for the kitchen. But, um, I say, yeah, use a lot of kind of real images, you know, from your office of your team of kind of social nights out and things like that. So. There's a few things you can, you can kind of, uh, do, but yeah, give me a call and I'll help you out. I'll give you some advice. What's um, in terms of like, Recruiters that you're working with, are you working specifically with agency recruiters, or do you also look at, you know, internal careers websites, that kind of stuff as well, or is it Predominantly Uh, I just do recruitment agencies at the moment. I think, uh, hopefully in a couple of years, a few years, we can kind of move into careers websites. Um, but they tend to be very different. A careers website is, and you know this, obviously you, you kind of work with, I guess with recruiters. And internal talent teams, you know, uh, Pano Fresh or kind of small recruitment agencies wherever, you know, in America or whatnot. So, um, I guess you get to see kind of both sides, but yeah, careers website is very different to a recruitment agency website. And there's different demands, different needs, there's different kind of integrations involved. So I just focus on the, the recruitment agency market at the moment, but, you know, I've got that background in TA, um, I've overseen the development of, of kind of. Uh, career websites and stuff like that. So, yeah, I think we're going to move into that eventually. Awesome. That's interesting. Um, so, sort of switching gear, which is the most commonly used podcast term ever. Um, switching gear slightly. What, uh, obviously you're, you're out in the marketplace, cold calling people, listening to their challenges. What do you, how, how, how firstly, how do you feel about the recruitment market at the moment, and what are you sort of hearing and seeing as people's kind of biggest challenges right now? Mm-Hmm Um, it's probably, I mean, you just have to kind of look on LinkedIn and, uh, maybe through the nature of my work at the moment, I'm probably connected to more recruitment agencies and more recruiters than your average recruiter might be. But I think, and when I do speak to recruitment agencies, sometimes people are kind of siloed and they don't realize that, you know, The market, how it is for them is the market for everyone else as well. And obviously, you know, last year, you know, everyone was focused on biz dev, you know, it's very different to, uh, the 21 market, the 22 market. And then you kind of went into this 23 market where, you know, the economy did change and jobs did dry up and employees were more picky about who they took on. Um, and I think that's the same, you know, in the, in the UK or, you know, in the kind of us at the moment. Um, so I think people are switching up a gear and kind of focusing more on, on kind of business development from what I've seen, um, picking up the telephone. There seems to be more kind of talk about kind of, you know, picking up the telephone, getting on the telephone, talk to people, talk to clients, talk to candidates. Um, and maybe they're not a move away from personal branding, but maybe, um, less time investment in it or, or using that personal branding alongside. You know, calling people, cold calling, whatever it may be. Um, also kind of automations. I mean, AI, I won't go into it because everyone, you know, I'm sure everyone's kind of bored of it now. But yeah, um, AI and the benefits of that. And I think that will, that will massively change the recruitment market over the next couple of years. Um, automations at the moment, I think, yeah, I think recruitment agencies need to be looking at automations. Um, that was, that was very big last year where it was kind of, you know, email marketing, uh, automations or, or adding kind of automation to your CRM system or whatever it may be. You know, people should be kind of looking at that. That's what kind of people seem to kind of talk about at the moment. And I guess most recently, I feel like there has been a pickup, you know, when I am talking to people and the things I do see on LinkedIn, the market seems to have kind of picked up and you always have that lull for the first kind of little bit of January and then kind of. middle of January onwards, then everyone starts hiring and you get that kind of run up, up until, you know, probably May, June when the summer holidays start kind of kicking in. So I think there's more positivity around now than there was kind of last year. But yeah, I think everyone was in the same boat last year. Yeah, last year was, uh, pretty rough for recruitment agencies, I would say. Um, knowing some of the results that I know, I mean, yeah, just very, very hard conditions. And I think it's still, it's still, you know, people get stuck. It's really interesting what you said about, um, the kind of personal branding and all of that kind of stuff, because I totally agree. I think. The reality is that that personal marketing, personal branding will only take you so far. I think people really invested in their own sort of LinkedIn profiles and that kind of stuff, which is super important, but they forgot that, you know, it's only 2 percent of people that really put in on LinkedIn. Um, the rest of the time and the rest of us, you know, you need to, you need to be making calls, sending emails, using automation and getting out there to basically find, find roles to work on. Right. Um, as a, as a cold caller for your own business. Have you got any, uh, any hints and tips? What's your favorite random technique for, uh, for cold calling no, I'm really bad at it. Like don't, don't take my advice. Like, no, everyone's pretty better than me. Um, but you're, you're from Pareto, aren't you? You used to work at Pareto. And, um, I remember Pareto were very, very good, uh, at kind of their, their sales training, their kind of sales training. They had like a little academy, didn't they? Kind of sales training academy and stuff like that. But, um, yeah, they're, they're, yeah, their sales people used to be really good. I used to kind of respect them. They're really kind of good. Um, Well, I used to do sales recruitment, so I'm not too bad at it. Um, uh, and I used to work on, on some tough sales floors and boiler rooms and stuff like that. So I'm not too bad at it. Um, I guess tips, I don't really have any tips. It's just kind of like finessing it really. It's just finessing it, being, I think when you're pitching recruiters as well, I think they appreciate a good pitch. Uh, I think salespeople, they appreciate a good pitch. Um, so when I'm pitching a salesperson or a recruitment person, you know, if you've got a good introduction, you sound confident, you know, you're confident in your products, you love your products, you believe in your products, uh, and you can kind of get out there and, and, and kind of ask them or kind of grab their attention. You know, I'll probably be like, you know, Can I grab a few minutes of your time? I just want to chat about, you know, how's business going for you at the moment and see how we can kind of possibly help you, um, you know, develop your website to kind of bring in more candidates, more clients or things like that, or, or kind of, you know, put some, you know, that revenue figure into the head. Oh, okay. You can kind of make my website better, which are going to bring in more revenue for me. Okay. Yeah. Maybe I'll give you 30 seconds of my time. So I try and just deliver that and then just ask a consistent relevant probing questions And don't be afraid like yeah, you're gonna I mess up some of it like just don't be afraid just carry on just keep them Cracking on. I love standing up pitching. I'm a good standing up pitcher So yeah, I think when you're pitching just yeah stand up smiling. I know it's really kind of old school I suppose but yeah smiling on the phone Smile while you dial, happy people sell. works, it works. Course it it in someone's voice when they're smiling or when they're laughing and it comes across and it's infectious. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of that. Smile. Yeah. And, uh, I don't know, have a beer, have a beer before you pitch. I don't know. Yes, that's one of the best. If you're having lots of energy go and have a beer at lunch. And, uh Pick it up in the afternoon. advice. No, well, I, there was a, there was a girl, uh, that, um, at Pareto specifically, you have to do an exam, a cold calling exam, and I still remember she failed her exam like two, two or three times in a row in the morning, so she went and had a couple of shots of tequila at lunchtime, came back and nailed it, because it was just nerves, you know, it was just nerves. This is, you know, 15 years ago or whatever, even longer. I think it's before, yeah, before 2009, 2010, or maybe even 2012, it kind of started changing and people started being more sensible, but yeah. yes, yeah, sensible. We'll go with the word sensible. Um, but yeah, no, good advice. And I think the thing about sales, uh, if, you know, to anybody that's going, Oh, do you know what? I need to do more BD and find more clients for my recruitment business. The reality is that you need to be doing, in this world, everything. So you need to be doing personal branding. You need to be, you know, trying to write blogs. You need to be using automation. But there really is no substitute for just consistent hard effort, um, on the phones and via emails, is my genuine opinion. Because I think The reality is that so many people have reverted to just sending emails and just using LinkedIn that actually, depending on your audience, you can really cut through that noise by getting somebody's mobile number and just picking up the phone because you are actually differentiating yourself purely by the fact that you're the one that's cold calling them. Um, and I think people sort of feel like they're interrupting people a little bit, but the reality is, you know, if you interrupted them and they tell you to get lost, they were never going to work with you anyway. It's not because you cold called them that they're not going to work with you. They just didn't want to work with you. So you're better off and try them again in three months time. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But no, I'd say, yeah, try the, um, I'm a big fan of kind of ABM, like, uh, Account Based Marketing. I think that you get that applied in kind of SAS a lot. Uh, I think maybe kind of moving that into recruitment agencies would be helpful and mix that with, um, there's a sales technique or a book called The Challenger Sale that came out of a company called CEB, um, which in my opinion made hands down some of the best kind of salespeople in the industry. So yeah, I said The Challenger Sale, mix of account based marketing. I think that's really good. And, uh, you've got a copy there, haven't you? There you go. Yeah. No, I'm a big fan of it. Yeah. Yeah. Get a copy. Yeah. That and, uh, The Jelly Effect by Andy Bownes. That would be a, a, um, a constant recommendation. I'll make a note of it, the jelly effect. it's really good. It's just about not saying stuff that people don't care about, basically. Um, so it's, uh, it's a really cool communication book. And Andy Bownes is a very good sales trainer for anybody looking to improve that side of things. Um So yeah, look, the, uh, thanks for the introduction and obviously for a few bits of advice, uh, Robert, really appreciate it. Um, I think what we, well, not I think, I know, what we normally do to wrap up these conversations is ask for, um, top three tips. I, I think what would be good for me is, You obviously, um, talked at the beginning of the call about how you would assess the website. I would love if you could just summarize that into top, into three top things. The first one I think is Google Lighthouse. So using that, listen back in the episode, if you missed it out, missed that, uh, bit, listen back to, you know, Robert's advice on how to do it. What would be the other two things that you, you know, if you're assessing your website and saying, do I need to get somebody in to fix this? What would you, uh, what are the other two things you'd recommend? Oh, I don't know. I think it's hard to pin down to two. I'm just going to like chuck loads of things at you, but um, It's kind of basic, but make sure, and I think most websites are kind of mobile responsive, but make sure it looks good on, on mobile. Um, I most are, I'd like to encounter a few that aren't these days, but yeah. Most people are going to be hitting your website on their mobile, so make sure it is, it looks good on your mobile and it kind of works properly. And, uh, images. Images and video. Video, obviously, yeah, a big thing for you guys, so yeah. Use, use good images, uh, that are relevant to your business. And use some video. Like, yeah, I love hitting a website and I can kind of look at some video and You know, you didn't need to kind of also play, but you know, some video about your company, about, you know, the, you know, the products or about the team, or you know, maybe about, uh, the charity work you do, or the sustainable side of your business, or, or, you know, get to know the founders, things like that really, some video content. Awesome. Love that. Um, and I totally agree. You know, I think also with video, people overthink it. They think it needs to be super polished. It really doesn't. It just needs to be relatively good, you know, um, and insightful and authentic, uh, depending on where it sits on the website. You know, landing page, you want, you know, super sexy video as much as you can. But if it's like a founder introduction thing, and it's in the Our Team tab, it can just be a talking head video like this, really, in my opinion. Um, so it's not as, not as arduous as you might, uh, as you might originally think. And also, we, back when we started out Willo, we had this little animated video that talked about why, why Willo worked. Maybe I'll share it in the show notes. Um, it was about 500 quid to make or something like that, maybe less. Um, and it was, Sensational. It made our business look way bigger than it was. Um, just by having this cool, cool thing and this guy with a really awesome voice talk over it. Um, you'd be genuinely surprised like how, uh, how good it was for, for like building brand awareness. So good advice again. Well, look, Robert, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. If, um, if somebody wants to get in touch, what's the best way for them to, uh, to connect with you? uh, cold Call me. Cold Call me. There you go. Uh, no, just through the website, I guess. Yeah, through my website. I, I sell websites, call, get in touch with me, with my website. No, my, my email address is there. I love a phone call. Gimme a call. I'm quite lonely, so I like to talking to people, uh, or LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn all the time as well, so message me on LinkedIn or my home address is on my website. Just if you're in the area, come by, tell late. Make you a cup of tea. Wonderful. Well, we will make sure that that gets onto the podcast show notes. So hopefully not too many people turn up your door looking for a coffee. But if they do, you know, hopefully they're looking for a website, Yeah, you're more than welcome. Yeah. You never know. You never know. Well, look, thanks, Robert. Thanks for joining. Thanks, everybody, for listening. And please, obviously, don't forget to subscribe, like, share and do all of that stuff. And yeah, thanks very much. Speak to you next week.