Monday 21 September 2015

University marks meaning less to employers

Talent Propeller Director Sharon Davies was on Radio Live this afternoon discussing how many businesses are changing the their recruitment processes to focus less on marks and more on skills and aptitude. Check it out: Sharon on Radio Live



Thursday 10 September 2015

M2 Woman magazine recently sat down for a Q&A with Sharon Davies, Managing Director of Talent Propeller.

What do you think about the concept of saviour siblings?
Where does natural selection stop and science take over? The question how would we feel if our sole purpose in life had already been predefined before we were even born and we had no ability to or support to become our own personal best or make our own choices in life in matters so important as our personal health and wellbeing. That would be an awful situation to be in and whilst I recognise parents desire to do everything they can to save a child, equally as a parent, isn’t your responsibility to support all your children to be everything they can be individually?


Do you think that gender still plays a role in slowing down a woman’s career?
I believe you are only restricted by your own beliefs of what is possible and they reality you choose to live in.

What achievement are you most proud of in your life so far?
Creating businesses that have brought a collection of people together and giving them opportunities to learn and grow and achieve their dreams.

What is at the top of your bucket list?
If I found out I was going to die tomorrow, my greatest wish would be to know my business would continue without me and that my business partners would be looked after and that they were all empowered to achieve everything and anything they wanted to.

What’s the best advice you’ve heard this month?
Change the people or change the people. So true in business where negative attitudes are restricting you from moving forward and achieving your goals.

What was the last the last thing that really boiled your blood?
Opening New Zealand to foreign residents to buy our assets and property but who have no interest in contributing to NZ or our society or the improvement of our country and the people who make us unique.

How do you deal with a bad day?

A long run, wine, and then quality time with my husband.

What do candidates value in the interview process?

What does your interview process say about you?  Are you guilty of not responding to candidates because you 'don't have time?' Do you forget to follow up with people you have interviewed to let them know they didn't make the cut? We all like to avoid having these rather unpleasant discussions however, not doing this can be extremely damaging to your reputation, both now and in the future.


The 2015 Talent Trends Report provides some very interesting insights into what job seekers value during the application and interview process.  In knowing this information, it may help you to successfully attract, engage with and recruit quality candidates in the future.

The interview experience has a major impact on a job seekers final decision.

83% of job seekers say a negative interview can change their mind about a role or company they liked.
87% of job seekers say a positive interview can change their mind about a role or company they doubted.

So what matters to job seekers during the interview experience?

Who they want to meet on interview day:
The prospective manager               72%
A team member                               11%
An executive                                     6%
A Recruiter                                        5%
Don’t know                                        2%

What makes a great interview experience?
Receiving post-interview follow-up                            55%
Getting business questions answered                      52%
Experiencing company culture                                   49%
Having a conversation with the leadership team      44%
Having clear logistics (time, location) in advance     38%

When they want to hear from you;
When you have an update                                          59%
Periodically, even if there is nothing new to share   44%
When extending an offer                                              38%
When you decline to offer the position                       38%

77% of professionals want to hear good news by phone.
65% of professionals want to hear bad news by email.
94% of job seekers want to receive interview feedback.

This highlights just how important it is to have a robust, transparent interview process and an uncompromising policy of updating candidates on the outcome of their application. Many organisations don't bother to send an update email as they run out of time. Perhaps it is time to invest in a candidate management system that allows you to send these notifications at the touch of a button! 

Running on instinct, NZBusiness Magazine our Managing Director Sharon Davies

Running marathons requires a mountain of stamina; the ability to smash through pain barriers. Sharon Davies is a recent convert. In the past two years the 35-year old has competed in seven leading marathons – including Melbourne, Paris, and in LA, where she made the top seven percent of all women finishers.
Sharon’s business career has required stamina too – and there have been considerable challenges and pain along her journey.
And what a journey. It started early in 1999, when she was just 19, with summer camp in the US and nannying in the UK. 

A year later, back home in Auckland, Sharon was offered a consulting role at a temping agency, “building a desk from scratch within the advertising industry”.
“They handed me a newspaper and told me to start [cold] calling,” she recalls, “It’s funny how fate can play such a hand in your life, because the nice man at the very first agency I called said ‘yes, send one of your candidates’, and they hired her! How easy was that?”
It was the start of a two year working relationship with that particular agency and a job for Sharon setting up a brand new business: Big Splash – a specialist agency that designed, wrote and booked adverts for companies wanting staff; compelling ads addressing specific target markets.
Fate would play another hand from that first cold call too. The ‘nice man’ was owner Paul Ballantyne who, after working together on Big Splash, became her first husband in 2007. 
“You just never know where those first encounters in life can lead!”
Sharon and Paul introduced Big Splash to Australia in 2006. “I took my best staff member; we flew to Melbourne, rented an apartment and started calling,” recalls Sharon. 
Today that business is one of five in the group Sharon owns. Two businesses come under the Talent Propeller brand – the brand that’s commanded the bulk of her attention in recent years.
Talent Propeller has been an evolution, explains Sharon. Big Splash was born in a ‘candidate short recruitment market’. Lots of jobs, not many candidates. But when the GFC redundancies hit the market, the reverse applied. They could see the need to diversify. 
The way in which companies recruit had also been evolving. Launched in 2009, and in Melbourne the same year, Talent Propeller would be the technology at the forefront of that change – cloud delivered software solutions and personalised services making it less expensive and time consuming to recruit the right employees.
“We streamline the whole recruitment process,” says Sharon, “and help companies make smarter decisions around who they take on. We’re unique in that we’ve paired technology with our service and industry expertise; our service is three-dimensional and transparent. Companies can see exactly what’s going on with their recruitment.”
Service makes up a large part of Talent Propeller’s offering, adds Sharon. “We’re a ‘pick ‘in mix’ – we analyse a company’s recruitment process and tailor a package that specifically fits them.”
Businesses of all sizes can plug into Talent Propeller’s cloud recruitment software to manage job applications. Candidates are ranked in order of suitability as they apply. “Hiring managers can instantly see who the best people are, and make a connection,” says Sharon. 
Talent Propeller has introduced a hands-on service, which allows employers to be completely hands-off until the interview stage. They receive a short-list, long-list and a ‘declined’ list – all vetted via Sharon’s own recruitment industry experience.
And rather than judge candidates solely by their resumés, which Sharon says is still common, she’ll look for potential and attitude. “In some cases, just because someone hasn’t done a particular job before, doesn’t mean they’re incapable of doing it. 
“We need to be less one-dimensional about assessing people; consider competencies and personality profiles as well as resumés to get a much broader picture.”
Going solo
Sharon’s world turned upside down in 2011 when Paul passed away after a seven-month battle with cancer. She was now virtually flying solo, and felt it important to throw herself back into the business after just six weeks – after all, the livelihoods of her 25 staff depend on it.
Sharon took up marathon running initially to help clear her headspace and deal with losing the love of her life. Then after 12 months things suddenly hit home for Sharon. Where to from here? 
“We had to either stay where we were, or evolve – and that was up to me backing myself,” she says. It was time to move forward. “And that’s when it got a little scary.”
Today Sharon splits her time between Auckland and Melbourne. The business progresses through developing new versions of the software. Evolution comes faster in the technology game, she says. “I already have the next six releases worked out in my head.”
Growth comes fast too. In the past 12 months revenues have grown by 450 percent. “There now seems to be more people willing to look beyond traditional methods of recruiting,” Sharon says. She puts it down to doing things better, smarter and differently. “We’re breaking the mould.” 
Sharon loves what she does. “I have an absolute passion for both the industry and the technology. I love seeing an idea come to life through technology, rolling it out to market and seeing it impact positively on businesses.” 
Feedback suggests she’s on the right track.
Although Sharon recently remarried, she pretty much still drives the business herself “on instinct” and admits she has no formal advisors.
“But we do have this ‘yes’ business culture,” she says. “I tell my team to just say yes, because you have no idea what opportunities will come if you do.
“I’m a rule-breaker, I don’t like structure or red tape. So I say yes; then we sit down and work out how it can be done.” 
A flat work culture that feeds from the top down helps. Ideas and excitement are encouraged. High standards are set and expected, as is efficiency.  “It’s important people here are happy, fulfilled, achieving and successful,” says Sharon.
The next model she’s working towards in the evolution of recruitment is an online repository of candidates and their skills, which employers can tap into for specific positions. The aim is to reduce a four-to-six week process down to just a couple of hours. “So a candidate could be walking down a street and be sent a matched job profile and contact on screen.”
Sharon has advice for other business owners looking to succeed. First, don’t be so focused on your goals that you wear blinkers and miss peripheral opportunities. “Things evolve, so stay agile; it comes back to saying ‘yes’.”
Second, understand that business ownership is hard work and not a nine-to-five thing. “It takes grit, determination and stamina to bring that idea to life.”
There’s that stamina word again.

Adapt or Stagnate!

Breakfast invited Talent Propeller director Sharon Davies to discuss how technology is causing major disruption in the employment industry. With robots predicted to take over 40% of jobs in the next 20 years Sharon explains businesses need to either adapt or stagnate.

 Check out interview

Putting new spin on recruitment



Sitting at the tennis behind a man using the Tinder dating app, recruitment industry executive Sharon Davies had a brainwave.
"I am totally creating something like that for recruitment," she told herself.
"He sat all through this tennis match just picking all these girls, who were obviously all connecting with him, and going 'yes', 'no', 'yes', 'yes', 'no', 'no', and I thought: imagine if you could just have jobs sent to your phone like that where you could go 'yes', 'no', 'yes' - and, anyone you swiped 'yes' to, it sends your profile to that company to view straight away."
Spying over someone's shoulder was all that Davies, 35, needed to get a fresh idea for her suite of technology-based recruitment businesses.
Instead, she was sat down with a phone and the newspaper and told to create a new "desk" to cater to the advertising industry.
Her very first phone call hit the jackpot: Davies placed a new receptionist into an advertising agency.
On the other end of that call was Paul Ballantyne, whom she would go on to work with - at Big Splash, an advertising agency focused on designing, writing and placing recruitment ads - and then marry.
Big Splash kicked off in New Zealand in 2002 and within a few years Davies packed herself off to Melbourne to grow the business.
What she thought would be a straightforward expansion was a tough lesson in how unforgiving the Australian market could be.
"The biggest mistake I made was believing that it would be exactly the same, that Aussies were the same as Kiwis, and they really aren't.
"One of the things that we had to learn very quickly was that we were an Australian company - we weren't a New Zealand company trying to take on Australia, because they never would have dealt with us if that was the case."
It meant going in boots and all with an Australian business number, tax number, bank account and a commitment to the market that continues to this day, with Davies splitting her time between homes in Australia and New Zealand. Boom times for job seekers in the mid-2000s came to a grinding halt with the credit crunch in 2008, but the founders of Big Splash were already on to the next business idea. As job seekers flooded the market, there was an opportunity for technology-based tools to help companies sift through candidates, offering cost-effective alternatives to a recruitment agency.
Development began in 2007 and by 2009 Talent Propeller launched, providing client diversification for the business.
In 2011 things came crashing down when husband and business partner Paul died of melanoma, six months after Davies' mother died of a brain tumour. Looking back, Davies says it was devastating, but she did what she could to keep going, particularly for staff who were relying on the business to pay their salaries.
"You decide and choose how things will impact you, so I could have decided to sit in bed all day and feel sorry for myself but I chose a path of celebrating, particularly my husband, celebrating the fact that we'd had such an amazing relationship and that we had had a love that most people spend their entire life looking for."
It never crossed her mind to walk away from the business. Instead, the past five years have been focused on further development of the e-recruitment tools to help people whittle down candidate lists.
The firm's 25 staff place 2000 ads a month for 950 clients. Most of the companies she assists are looking for sales, admin, call centre, retail and lower-level accounting staff. The tools created by Talent Propeller help recruiters look beyond the CV to the aptitude, attitudes and personality fit of the candidate. Davies "crash-tested" the system herself when recruiting for a sales role, coming up with a shortlist with a far better match by looking beyond the lack of specific prior experience.
"They either worked in retail or they had no experience at all and we hired them and they're absolute gems." This new business of aptitude-testing and shortlisting is growing at 450 per cent a quarter.
She sees real opportunities for companies to streamline their recruitment using technology, particularly multinationals recruiting in overseas markets for the likes of call centres, but wanting to retain some control over the process.
And she's always on the lookout for new ideas to trial. Davies says the process is very organic - anything that looks like it has merit she'll test and prototype before bringing in a colleague who will work alongside her to get it off the ground.
Right now she's swiping right on her new recruitment app idea.