Analytics Recruitment at The Candidate 2020 - Leif Radford

At the end of an eventful first year for one of our emerging teams, Analytics Recruitment Manager Leif Radford reflects on the challenges and successes of 2019.

How has 2019 been for the Analytics department?
Personally, this year has been the most exciting in my career to date for a few reasons. In 2018 Analytics didn’t even exist as a department, since then Felix and I have been beavering away to establish us as one of the most efficient teams in the North West. We have been able to deliver on some really tough briefs that larger agencies couldn’t, and support candidates we’ve placed to build out teams of their own. 

We’ve also expanded the remit of roles that we cover into more technical data science and development roles, as well as having new successes with some of the UK’s leading research agencies. We thrive in variety, so widening the net of roles that we understand and are able to deliver is something that’s reaped real rewards in terms of how engaged we are day-to-day. It does mean that every day is a school day for us, but with so much to learn and so many new people to speak to, we’re having lots of fun along the way.

When it comes to recruiting in the world of Analytics, what are some of the biggest challenges facing the sector?
The biggest challenge we’re facing at the moment is being able to educate hiring managers and decision makers on the realities of recruiting in this market specifically. If they’ve only ever recruited marketing candidates, but have now been tasked with finding an analyst, it can be a sobering experience when we explain the differences.

The positive is that from the research we created in partnership with the Manchester Publicity Association (MPA) this year, we were able to create a sliding scale on a lot of the factors we come up against, backed up by real-time data from actual recruits within the North West. Having this on hand means we can illustrate with tangible figures that if you’re looking for someone with X amount of years’ experience, you will on average be faced with a recruitment process that takes Y months.

The research also helps when it comes to one of our other big challenges, battling against varying benchmarks on salary and title between businesses. These variations can be born from a number of reasons, including the stage at which a business is at in terms of developing its analytics team, or the funds and resources they have available. The effect of this is that candidates with the same skillset and experience level, can have vastly different titles and salaries – disrupting the market and causing widespread confusion. I can actually think of a couple of local businesses that dish out huge salaries and “Head of” level titles to candidates with less than a year’s experience. If these candidates stay with the business it’s brilliant for them, but as soon as they try to leave their salary and title far outstretches what they would be able to find elsewhere. If it’s also their first role out of University, it’s often difficult to then educate them on the market as they don’t have knowledge of any other business to contradict what they believe.

As is the nature of recruitment, we’re dealing with people, so there’s always going to be negotiations and conversations to be had. For us, having these independent research pieces to direct people to really helps re-enforce that what we’re saying in un-biased and with everyone’s best interests at heart.

What were the highlights of this year for you and your team?
Having the authority and knowledge of the market to be able to confidently give advice to clients and candidates has been a highlight for Felix. As someone who enjoys chatting to people and helping them out, being able to give people pointers and steer on their CV’s, interviews, and careers has been a fulfilling experience. From a candidates perspective this is a huge value adding that Felix is now able to offer that can really make the difference.

For me the highlight of the year has been seeing our team grow and our product develop. It’s sometimes difficult in this industry to remember that there’s a lot more going on outside of commercial targets. Seeing Felix develop into a fully-fledged consultant and the successes that have come from his hard work has been fantastic for me as a new manager.

What are you excited about in 2020
One of my standout experiences in 2019 was having the opportunity for The Candidate to sponsor Measurecamp Manchester, a renowned analytics un-convention organised by people in the industry. We were offered a last minute sponsorship slot so jumped at the chance, even if it meant we had less than 2 weeks to prepare. I had personally never done any form of public speaking at all either, so the prospect of having to stand at the front of a room of analysts and try to keep them engaged was a daunting one.

Stresses aside, the day ended up being a steep learning curve, but ultimately a roaring success. So much so that in 2020 we’ve already accepted a sponsors slot for this year’s Measurecamp. Equipped with a year under our belt, 6 months to prepare and feeling much more confident in my speaker abilities, I’m really looking forward to this year’s event already!

Leif and Felix are more than happy to have a chat over the phone or meet you for a coffee – whether that’s to discuss your options as a candidate, to give you some advice or market insight, or to see if they could support you with recruiting.

Drop them a line at [email protected] or call on 0161 833 1044.

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