In the end, it's all about the people, with Robbie Blake
We've spoken about lending systems, we've spoken about lending models, and we've spoken about the nuance of diverse markets and even more diverse market niches, but in the end, there's one thing that ties every successful lending business together: people. In this episode, I welcome Northreach's Robbie Blake about how fintechs can attract and grow the right talent, and about how the current market conditions are bringing new recruiting strategies to the fore.
Northreach is over at https://northreach.uk/ (or jump straight to their jobs at https://northreach.uk/search-jobs/)
You can find Robbie on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbie-blake-16095616a/ and while you're there, follow the Northreach page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/northreach-uk/
If Instagram is more your flavour, they're here: https://www.instagram.com/northreach_uk/
But as mentioned, you can also find their own podcast, called Coffee Mornings with Northreach, on all the main platforms of by clicking here https://open.spotify.com/show/62vRWLXSzz7FUi7SOtMZSy
I am on LinkedIn, of course, so feel free to send me a connection request there: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanlegrange
My action-adventure novels are on Amazon, some versions even for free, and my work with ConfirmU and our gamified psychometric scores is at https://confirmu.com/ and on episode 24 of this very show https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/episodes/episode-24
If you have any feedback or questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.
Keep well, Brendan
The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:
Robbie Blake 0:00
All it takes is one bad egg to throw a business off, especially in what we're doing where it's small startups and scale ups - the impact that that person has is so broad that when it goes well, it's such a great feeling, but equally, if it goes the wrong way, and you hire the wrong person, they don't fit into your company values, your ethos, your approach to how you work, the effect goes just as much the other way.
It's not just around here's the CVs and putting bums on seats. For us. It's really about embedding ourselves in the business.
There's definitely this talent shortage. But I think there's a lot of people trying out new markets, a lot of movers and shakers, you know, you've got a global workforce, you can have people in Asia, in Africa or in North America, we're not speaking to people and saying if you can double my salary, I'll go there is people saying I need to have remote working, I need to spend more time my families and that purpose.
Brendan Le Grange 0:57
Tomorrow, I'm going to be jumping on the Eurostar to Paris dressed in green and gold to support the Springboks as they take on Ireland in a decisive pool game at the Rugby World Cup.
Now, I'm not going to talk here about game plans or strategies, I just shout and hope for the best if I'm honest - if you want more nuance on that side of things, Squidgerugby is where you should be going. But rugby is a physical sport, often even more so when the Springboks are involved. And if you want to win the whole thing - as we have done three times already - it'll last two months. So squad management is just as important as game plan. Fatigue happens, injuries happen, plans adapt, certain skills are more important at certain times. Certain player combinations amplify each other's abilities, while others undermine it's a delicate and fluid balance.
But getting it right is how you win the World Cup - as we have done three times already - but it's also your staff recruitment challenge played out at high speed in front of the cameras. Welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers with Brendan le Grange.
Robbie Blake, senior recruitment consultant at Northreach, welcome to the show.
Robbie Blake 2:17
Thanks for having me on Brendan.
Brendan Le Grange 2:19
Robbie, it's a bit of a twist on the usual theme here in that you are not directly involved in lending as it were. But if we really oversimplify the lending industry, you know, every business is built on capital to lend out a system to keep track of the data and then people to use that capital and use those systems.
So capital, you know, there's a market for it, we're gonna pay the lowest price, we can, we may pay a little bit of a premium for a system that has features we like, but often we end up with the same system our competitors have, and you know, that's not really a big deal. But people that is actually what's going to make the difference. And that's where you come into play here as Northreach.
So, talk to me a little bit about what you're doing there. And what it means I guess, to get the right team into place in a while let's talk about a FinTech business broadly, but a lending business within that.
Robbie Blake 3:15
Definitely, it's a really good place to start. And I think you summed it up really nicely. You know, it's those kind of three parts. It's the capital, the systems and the people when, for the last five years, and for the business, cumulatively about 70 few grey hairs to show it.
Our game is all around the people.
Specifically, we deal with those startup and scaleup organisations. But whether it's your first hire or your 1,000th hire, the process effectively should still be the same. And you're exactly right. That's what makes, I guess, every business unique and what makes it different.
It's not just around here's the CVS and putting bums on seats. For us, it's really about embedding ourselves in the business. So understanding, okay, what's your purpose? What are your values, your ethos, what's your culture, the technical skill set, and also the potential as well? What's the long term future for those people? Three dimensional hiring? So yeah, tell me a little bit about me.
I've been in recruitment for five years now, specifically for fintechs, financial services companies in that kind of startup scale up space. And it's everything from talent, attraction, to retention to processes to everything in between, in part
Brendan Le Grange 4:20
Because of that focus on startups and scale ups, but also the approach you take of being more involved with the business. We're going to talk about recruitment as in sort of getting people in the door, but also more encompassing employee or people strategy. But let's start there. We're in a very odd labour market at the moment where, you know, we've gone through talk of skill shortages, but also talk of huge layoffs in the tech field.
We're talking about AI coming in and making a lot of roles redundant. But, you know, we're also saying there's not enough people to fill the jobs from sort of relatively low skilled jobs all the way through to highly skilled jobs. So you are at the coalface you're seeing what's actually happening. So, what is FinTech recruitment? Like right now,
Robbie Blake 5:06
Like you said, it's such an odd time at the moment, because on one hand, you've got big tech companies making all these layoffs and everyone's initial reaction is, oh, there must be people everywhere.
But I think coming out with COVID, especially, one thing that we found is that all of a sudden, those aggressive hiring patterns are now going into a cooling off period, companies that have grown to be quite fat and are looking at and saying, okay, turbulent times, especially in the UK market, but globally, things are more expensive, we're kind of going into recession base rates are going up.
So it's kind of trimming down to skeleton crews, and then kind of looking at that and saying, well, okay, what's, what's next for us.
And the companies that are working well, are the ones that are adapting to change quite quickly. In terms of okay, thinking about remote working, you know, you're not tied down now that if you're based in London, you need people to have to work from London, you know, you've got a global workforce, you can have people in Asia, in Africa, or in North America, which from a skills perspective, opens up your talent pool massively.
Obviously, that ties directly into that work life balance, which has always been a thing. But I think now we're not speaking to people and saying, if you can double my salary, I'll go there is people saying I need to have remote working, I need to spend more time my families. And that purpose. I've been an underwriter, a data engineer, data scientist, head of underwriting, where do I actually want my career to go? And what do I actually feel passionate about? What my interest, what's gonna give me that long term fix?
There's definitely this talent shortage. But I think there's a lot of people trying out new markets, a lot of movers and shakers. And I think everyone can get caught up in the technical sometimes, you know, we need someone that's got X, Y, and Z, you know, X amount of years experience, all it takes is one bad egg to throw a business off, especially in what we're doing, where it's small startups and scale ups, the impact that that person has, is so broad that when it goes well, it's such a great feeling. But equally, if it goes the wrong way, and you hire the wrong person, they don't fit into your you know, your company values, your ethos, your your approach to how you work, the effect goes just as much the other way.
So I guess that's kind of where we tend to step in and kind of say, well, okay, let's understand the business and really embed ourselves to effectively act as an extension of of your business. And kind of saying to people, Look, this is what you need to be doing processes wise, you can't be sitting on candidates for two, three weeks, because someone else will come around and and we'll give them that opportunity. So it's the speed of how thing?
Brendan Le Grange 7:32
Yeah, well, let's stay on that point, because for me, if I look at my career, it was 20 years with banks and big international credit bureaus, where you want to have a few 1000 people, sometimes one of 10s, of 1000s of people within the organisation. And when you're recruiting, it's to fill a very specific role, very detailed role that's been held before by several people, and you've got a lot of information about what you're looking for. It's quite a structured process to find a replacement in most cases.
And then the last year and a half or so I've been in an early stage startup. And I've gone from representing a small part of the business to a small part of our clientele, to representing the whole business. So suddenly, it's a very different sort of role I'm fulfilling, how do you address that with these startups that are trying to avoid that one bad egg situation? Where you're trying to find that one? Jim?
Robbie Blake 8:27
Yeah, really good question. I think the main things that we're always thinking about is understanding, okay, what are your objectives? What do you need to achieve? And then what is your current team look like? And then kind of building up a picture. I think a big part of it is having that kind of entrepreneurial spirit almost, when you work for a startup is kind of not someone who's going to shy away from wearing multiple hats.
As you said, while you could be a, you know, head of underwriting or head of product, you might need to, you know, go on to investor pitches, you know, you might need to put a desk up sometimes in startups and scale ups, you know, it could be that we need to do a charity campaign who's going to run with it, I think the biggest thing for us is just being open and honest about that, when we go to market, and kind of sign to the candidates that we're speaking to look, it's going to be full on, it's going to be quite intense. But you're going to be able to put your own spin on it and have a real impact on the business.
And not trying to kind of sugarcoat it, and kind of say, you know, this is how great startups are. And you know, the world's gonna be your oyster and you're gonna be a unicorn in three years, and you're gonna make a lot of money on shares. That's the goal, right? That's the the ideal situation, but on the flip side of that is kind of being real with people and saying, Okay, we're, you know, understanding what your real motivations, you know, what are your real drivers? Is this going to be right for you? Because it isn't for everyone, and you are going to have people that are going to look at it and say, I need to security that a big bank offers me and that's not a bad thing.
You know, it's having those conversations and kind of understanding from both parties, the client and the candidate.
Brendan Le Grange 10:00
Exactly, yeah, shortly after I left my corporate job? We weren't looking to buy a house and I realised, oh yeah, it would have been a lot easier to get a mortgage if I just had that while I was still employed with a steady salary.
And there are things that impact your life, would you say you, you hear the stories of the ping pong tables and the free lunches and all that sort of stuff that Google or Facebook, my territory, but the reality is very different. And it's great to have a recruiter that understands that. I also want to pick up on another point, you mentioned there about the more nuts and bolts stuff, the how you do the recruiting, because before I joined confirm you, I've applied for a few jobs, and some of them were in consulting, I did a first round phone call with somebody.
And then I spoke to the founder of ConfirmU joined the team was talking to clients within a few days getting up and running up to speed, had been working there for a month or so when the consulting company got back to me and said, Yeah, okay, we've got a place in the calendar, can you make Thursday for a second round interview or something? So talk to me about the difference of how recruiting happens these days, and how technology plays a role
Robbie Blake 11:08
With startups and scale ups is that interview processes that is so much quicker, it's not having to make 30% of, of the team to kind of make a decision, it's about saying, right, we're going to put our flag in the sand, and then kind of make our decision on that as well.
And it tends to be a lot more informal, it tends to be a lot more conversational, you're not kind of got that old school interrogation style of interview of why should you come and join us, you know, it's much more of a two way street, because this doesn't just apply for startups and scaleups.
But in today's market, as much as you're interviewing someone to work at your company, they're interviewing you, because they'll have options. And where technology kind of helps is you can fast track processes. You don't need to wait for someone to be available to come up to the office and meet with multiple people, we can jump on a video call. We can speed things up, you know, using AI to do psychometric testing, you know, skills evaluations, and can make more database
Brendan Le Grange 12:01
What is hot in the market at the moment. What skills are you seeing lenders in particular, but again, more broadly, FinTech as well, looking for in the candidates?
Robbie Blake 12:11
The biggest thing at the moment is that data engineering, data science, that's the hot topic for everyone, because it's a high growth, high salary skill set. And with anything high growth, and by salary, the market was going to be super competitive.
So it's finding the right talent quickly, been able to secure them.
But that's kind of half the battle. The back end of that is okay, when we do bring on these kind of data engineers, data scientists who are going to be what sets us apart, in most cases, businesses, especially in the lending space, nowadays, it's all built on the data. How do we keep them? That's the second challenge.
But yeah, in terms of broad skill sets, data science, data engineers, one thing that we found, even with growing startups and scale ups is we kind of hire very quickly from a technical perspective.
But then we get to a point where we say, okay, how do we put some border around this chaos? There's great things happening, but who's communicating it between teams in terms of HQ functions, as well as the back office support? Because once we're writing all these loans, who's executing them? So those are the three hot topics at the moment? Anything data related engineers and science, back office operations and management? In terms of okay, how do we kind of put some strategy and put some order around it? It's very easy to very quickly grow from 10 people to especially in a scale up to 300.
But how do we keep it consistent? How do I know that? I'm getting the same the same result? If I'm doing it through one credit underwriter to another?
Brendan Le Grange 13:37
Yeah, I think back you into sort of my career where we have been going for a couple of years in essentially any and our startup and a different bank had collapsed. And our banking partner took on a few of the executives, one of whom came to our team, very different culture wise, was quite a shock to everybody. And I think sat down in a meeting once in the early days and said, Right, I've seen all the profit bottles, you building all your lifetime values, but how does this match up with the ledger?
And we're like the white now. We got no idea. We just predict things and run our business. And he's like, no, no, he mean, they're actually needs to link up to, to real money at some point in the bank account. And it was a jarring moment for many of us in the team. But after sort of a few months of settling in, made the biggest differences only realised like yeah, you can't just have all these data models running wild,
Robbie Blake 14:28
Something that we're finding a lot of times as well as going, Okay, we've got these technical whizzes that think they're on a brilliant culturally, they've got high potential, there's future business leaders, but what are we actually doing to support them to grow the business and to scale the business, those business challenges that every business faces, you need those people in there as well to kind of say, Look, this is where you're going to raise your knees and this is how we can jump in and kind of give a little bit of guidance as well.
No one really teaches people how to be a leader.
Brendan Le Grange 14:56
And maybe we could look at that in any use case. He says obviously, not necessarily naming names. But if you think about the recruitment that you do for small startups and scale ups, as we said, you got to make sure that fit is there, because a person is relatively more significant in terms of their percentage of headcount, their makeup, but also their the reward or getting it right is, is much bigger. And it could be defining for the future of a company.
Are there any examples of placements that you've done that demonstrate that sort of change that getting the right people into the business can bring about,
Robbie Blake 15:33
there's a client that we work with who are kind of in that kind of revenue based lending area, that grown very quickly kind of doubled in headcount over 18 months, or just under four, what they were finding is, is that the teams that they had were doing well, but there was no consistency across the board. So they kind of looked at it and said, Well, we know we've got good people, but there's just there's something missing, we're losing people, our attrition rate is kind of suffering a little bit. So where we kind of looked at it was okay, the people that you've got in the business, in those leadership roles, have you spoken to them and how they're feeling from the conversations that went on, it was when I feel like we're ready to lead a team of 30 people, while I was leading a team of five, it was more easy to manage, but now it's become too much.
And it turns out exactly kind of what we were talking about earlier, can say, look, let's get a more experienced head to come in here who's kind of been there and done that.
And it's kind of got the battle scars to show it that can come in and sort of put processes in place, talk to people understand where their individual pain points are, what people need from their own professional development. And yeah, they immediately found their retention rates went up massively, their productivity went up massively business that they were writing was more consistent, from approval through to funding through to payments, they were able to improve what their clients were receiving as well, when and that's kind of led on to bigger partnerships and better things for them as well.
But even on a much smaller scale, an organisation that specifically handle Sharia lending, and they were kind of looking at hiring a trainee, for business or for people, it's a trainee that hopefully is gonna be able to business and we can grow and develop, in theory, it should be very easy to hire for but then when you break it down, it's like, well, okay, how much time is consumed? Well, you're not developing products, you're not out and about on the road, you're going through the profile.
So sometimes it's just doing the legwork. You know, it doesn't have to be all strategic. So there's a, there's a lot of different avenues where we can kind of go down as
Brendan Le Grange 17:21
I guess one of the complexities with your chosen niche is that almost by definition, you are working with companies that are themselves that sort of changes in their life stages. And they've grown from the startup stage to scale up to full on corporate at each of those stages, you do need different types of teams, different types of people in different roles.
So it's an added layer of complexity, you're not just replacing, like, with like, you may be saying, I've got someone who's a star, they've built this team, but they're a builder, they're not a maintainer. And we need to get a different setup in
Robbie Blake 17:55
Exactly, for us as well.
Our ideal situation is we get a company of five people, we help support you, you get to three, four or 500 people to the point where you say, You know what, we've got a HR function, or recruitment function, we're at a point now where we don't need you.
And that's absolutely fine. You know, you can kind of fly the nest now. And we'll, we can kind of move on to, to the next startup, and even the types of people now there's a large portion of people that enjoy that 510 People band where it's super tight, you're building and get to the point where it goes like, okay, there's something here, someone else can take over and take it to the next level, because I'm going to start again,
Brendan Le Grange 18:32
And Robbie, that brings me to maybe a trickier one to answer that. When you imagine a typical startup team, a small group of people who've worked late hours in someone's back room, it must be difficult to look out at the world and not just look for people that look like you that look like the founding team, and that things like the founding team and say we need more of us.
So how do you still ensure or is there value installed? Ensuring things like fair hiring practices and diversity in hiring that a bigger organisation would be looking to achieve?
Robbie Blake 19:08
Definitely is something that we challenge our clients on as well, because I think something that we're really passionate about is yes, culture is a massive thing. And you want people that are on the same page and are in it for the right reasons. But equally exactly, as you said, you don't just want a team of clients, you know, have you thought about these kinds of backgrounds? Have you thought about someone from outside of the industry? Maybe if it's a non Yeah, you know, financial service looking for, let's say, a CFO, for example, you know, challenging I'm saying, Do you need someone who's come from the same background that you have? What value can they add coming from a different industry or someone from a different upbringing, a different country, different race, religion is kind of, you know, thinking about all of those different aspects and trying to be as unbiased as possible.
You can't get diversity, equality inclusion fixed overnight. It's not just a silver bullet approach where all of a sudden overnight You've, you've achieved it, it's something that's always ongoing, and you're always developing and always working on it. And I think in those startups, especially when you are dealing with people that have been in the, you know, in the spare bedroom, putting blood, sweat and tears into the business, when you are getting to that point where all of a sudden, you need to let go a little bit, and you kind of need to give control over to others saying, okay, just because people don't look like me talk like me and think like me, they're not right.
For us, that's not what culture is. It's kind of looking at and saying, How can we bring people from different backgrounds, different ways of thinking together, to all move in the same direction for the for the same purpose?
Brendan Le Grange 20:36
Yeah. And I think it's a case of getting comfortable with the idea that just because one way of thinking was right, when we started, this doesn't mean that that way of thinking is right for where the business is now, particularly, again, with the sort of businesses that you're speaking to, that are going through these sort of dynamic and fundamental changes, and the sort of person they can build for two years in the dark, a financial services product and new lending model, whatever the case may be, is not necessarily the person who wants to oversee 100 person compliance team,
Robbie Blake 21:06
Recruitment has got a bit of a bad name, I don't think it's something that people look forward to. I'm just being very honest with you, I think people would much rather go, I've got a team, they're brilliant, let's just kind of keep it at that. But it's inevitable. And I think it's about finding a recruitment partner that matches up with your ideals, your kind of values, your ethos, and he's the right fit for you,
Brendan Le Grange 21:28
Robbie, it's been great chatting during sort of hearing what's happening behind the scenes, as it were, you know, recruitment jobs, it's kind of the most important topic for almost all of us out there. So I'm sure a lot of people listening would like to see a little bit more about what Northreach is doing. Because either they are looking to follow the teams and help grow their businesses or they are out there looking for jobs, what we would be interested in perhaps moving to a start up.
So if anyone listening wants to learn more about Northreach, where's the best place for them to go to start doing that?
Robbie Blake 21:58
Definitely anyone looking for a new role looking to hire, we're more than welcome to have a conversation, that's for sure. If you go on to our website, which is north reach.uk, you can kind of find out a bit more about us there. We actually have a podcast of our own little bit of a shameless plug at the end here, Brendan, but he's got coffee mornings, myself and our CEO, Sam, we talk about recruitment trends, HR trends, what's going on in terms of talent, and everything else involved, which you can find on LinkedIn. And yeah, you can kind of contact us through my email, which is robbie.blake@northreach.uk
Brendan Le Grange 22:33
Perfect. I'll put those in the show notes as well. And coffee mornings, I imagine then, wherever you're listening to this podcast, so go check that out. Robbie, it's a .uk address, but you're not only a UK recruitment company, where else are you operating?
Robbie Blake 22:48
Very good point, actually. So while we've got a.uk, website address, and we are a UK based business, we've actually got a entity in Dubai. So we're able to support companies in the UAE, as well as all across Europe and across North America, predominantly, the US and Canada.
Brendan Le Grange 23:04
Great. Well, thank you very much for joining me, Robbie, as I said, a great pleasure to hear what's happening behind the scenes and reassuring to hear that there are still good and interesting roles for good and interesting candidates out there. Now definitely
Robbie Blake 23:16
There's always things happening. So now appreciate thanks having me on Brendan, hopefully people can find some useful takeaways and it's not your your kind of usual thing. But now I really appreciate having me on.
Brendan Le Grange 23:25
And thank you all for listening.
Please do look for and follow the show on your favourite podcast platform and share the updates widely on LinkedIn where lending nerds are found in our largest concentration. Plus, send me a connection request while you're there.
This show is written and recorded by myself Brendan le Grange in Brighton, England and edited by Fina Charleson of FC Productions.
Show music is by Iam_wake, and you can find show notes and written transcripts at www.HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.show and I'll see you again next Thursday.