INTERVIEW
Investment in people
With 20 years in the industry, Emma Kwiatkowski, Hays’ Director for Nottingham and Derby, is vastly experienced in the world of recruitment. She spoke to Business Network Editor Nathan Fearn about the complexities of the sector and how it deals with an ever-changing landscape.
It’s hard to think of an industry so intrinsically linked to every aspect of day-to-day life as the recruitment sector. From momentous events such as the UK’s most recent
recession nine years ago and the more recent decision to leave the EU, to Government legislation such as the rise in the National Minimum Wage and clampdown on zero hours contracts, recruitment is never far away from the crux of any debate. It’s a life Emma Kwiatkowski has lived for two decades.
Having graduated from university, a chance conversation with, ironically, a recruitment adviser, set her on a path from which she has never looked back. “When I left university, I had no idea I would spend my
career in recruitment,” says Emma. “I unwittingly went to see a recruitment agency for a
potential role – I had thought I was seeing the company direct – and the person I spoke to quickly realised my heart wasn’t really in the role I had applied for. We got talking about what I wanted in a career and she suggested that I would potentially excel in a recruitment role. “I took that idea on, investigated which agency I thought
was the best, applied for Hays, went through a lengthy process and got the job and I have been with the company ever since.” In Hays, Emma had joined a recruitment agency with a
worldwide reputation and a major player in the recruitment industry. As of 30 June 2016, the Group employed 9,214 staff
operating from 252 offices in 33 countries across 20 specialisms. For the year ended 30 June 2016, it reported an
operating profit (pre-exceptional items) of £181m, placing around 67,000 candidates into permanent jobs and around 220,000 people into temporary assignments in the process. Emma’s contribution to Hays has been a varied one. The
five years spent in her current capacity as Director in Nottingham and Derby is the longest period she has spent in a role in a company that actively promotes from within. “I originally joined as a trainee consultant, which is
typical of a career path within Hays. Initially my background lay in recruiting across accounting and finance before working up to people management, running offices across the East Midlands and then the Midlands. “Five years ago, Hays went through a big restructure. Back
then we had about 20 specialist businesses with myself responsible for the accounting and finance arm. When we went through the regionalisation, a director became responsible for a location and all the specialities within that location and I picked up Nottingham and Derby. I have eight specialisms that I take leadership responsibility for.”
22 business network February 2017 But what is the role of a recruitment agency? In Emma’s
own words, simplistically, the job of a consultant is to generate good talent, generate job opportunities and match the two together. However, there is much more to it, as Emma explains. “If we take accountancy, for example, there are maybe
20 different things a consultant can do to generate a skilled accountant. That can range from attending various networking events, asking for referrals from good candidates that come through, working with the universities to pick up the accounts graduates, chasing up on leads, advertising and thinking ‘if I am a skilled accountant, where am I going to be’ and then making sure you’re in those places. “It’s not just a case of having a load of candidates on our
database and jobs getting called in, there’s a lot more to it than that.” Strategically, Hays’ model is very much tailored, almost
scientific, in its approach. “Take one specialism, construction and property, I have
consultants who look after niche parts of the market. One will look at architecture but just for temporary appointments and another just for permanent appointments. So within every specialism, you drill down even further. “We position ourselves as experts and specialists and my
consultants will look after a portfolio of clients in a niche area of the market. It’s very localised. In my Nottingham and Derby locations, consultants will look after everything in NG or DE postcode, that will be the market coverage they have. We’re able to offer specialist advice that benefits the candidate and the client.” In an industry so susceptible to the ebb and flow of
modern life, it’s no surprise Emma has seen many significant changes down the years. “We live in a complex world now,” says Emma. “When I started, I recruited finance people in Derby. The
finance director would be my point of contact and everything would be done between me and him. A few years after that, HR got more involved and then a few years after that procurement got more involved and then there were market changes, compliance changed, the legality of putting a worker into a job changed, legislation changes all along, there’s holiday pay and pensions to take into account when discussing a prospective employee’s salary so there are lots of knock on effects. “Changes happen but you deal with them. I remember when
holiday pay came in and employers were having to pay holiday pay to temporary workers and we thought it might kill the temporary market, but it didn’t.
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