Martin Tripp Associates executive recruitment Archives

Psychometric tests and quality recruitment

Sophia Garibaldi

Thinking outside the box-ticking

At all levels, recruitment can be costly and time-consuming. As such, employers understandably aim to maximise the benefits and minimise the frequency of the recruitment process. For the same reasons, improved staff retention is one of the highest priorities for our clients. For recruiters too, it is a sign of a successful hire, since strong retention strategy starts at the recruitment phase when companies look for compatible values in candidates alongside role-related skills.

Core competencies are the focal point during most recruitment processes, tested through competency-based interview techniques or by the assignment of practical projects. However, an increasing number of companies, particularly larger ones, have started

Unreal Engine 5 and the future of games and film tech

James Dodd

Whether you realise it or not, you probably already know Epic Games‘ Unreal. It is the engine behind ‘The Mandelorian’ on Disney+ and a plethora of games on mobile, PC or console.

Epic’s latest iteration of the engine – Unreal 5 – was revealed this week. Via a tech demo running in real time on a Playstation 5 dev kit, the world finally got its first look at what the future of gaming really looks like. Along with many, I witnessed something I’ve been dreaming of since I was a kid, and something I’ve been hearing about a lot, lately.

Epic Unreal 5 Tech Demo

I have spent the last couple of years talking to games industry leaders around the world. Our conversations have covered everything

Mental Heath and Wellbeing during and beyond lockdown

James Dodd

Steps to help you deal with remote working and social distancing.

Since the outbreak of Coronavirus began, we have been speaking with business leaders about how they are dealing with the sudden need to change the typical working practices of their businesses and their employees.

While the logistics of remote working are challenging, the real challenge lies in ensuring the health and wellbeing of home-working employees. It is important not just for their own mental health, but also to ensure your business stays productive. With this in mind, we have been attending webinars organised by our friends at Thrive, the mental health specialists. As a result, we were able

How to save money on recruitment

Martin Tripp

Research from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation suggests 42% of employers have raised their levels of pay in order to secure difficult-to-attract staff.

What makes staff difficult-to-attract varies from company to company; but usually it is because the skill set needed is in high demand but low supply (HDLS); because of location issues; or because the company or its sector is simply ‘not sexy’.

These are all valid reasons why your company may struggle to attract the best people. But poor recruitment practices are a much bigger issue.

Skiing lessons for media business success

Martin Tripp

Competent skiers at Puy St Vincent. Martin isn’t amongst them!

I have just spent a week falling down mountains. At the age of fifty, I have discovered the truth of the adage: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Specifically, you can’t teach this ancient pug how to ski. As much as I understand the theory, the practice is beyond me. And I have the bruises to prove it.

Annoyingly, of course, it was also my children’s first attempt at skiing. After their first two-hour lesson, they were straight back up the mountain to crack the green runs. By the end of the week, one of them had conquered red runs and the others were comfortable on blues.

Happy eighth birthday to… us!

Martin Tripp

Today marks eight years since MTA opened its doors to an eager media market. Although, as it turned out, the media market in 2008 was not that eager: within weeks, the global economic collapse had gathered pace and there was precious little investment in the industry. Timing has always been my strong point.

Nonetheless, we landed two clients in the first couple of months. The first client, one of the UK’s largest consumer publishers, remains a client today. The second – an international news and data business – led to a multi-year project which saw us recruiting for bureaux around the world (Russia, China, Europe and the US). Strong partnerships like this have been our mainstay ever since.

How do media firms prepare for an uncertain future?

Martin Tripp

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

It is one of the most derided quotes of all time: simultaneously mocked both for its obviousness and its obscurity, Donald Rumsfeld was trying – ham-fistedly – to explain US foreign policy in Iraq. And we know how well that turned out.

The limits of Mark Zuckerberg’s recruitment strategy

Martin Tripp

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, Mark Zuckerberg made an interesting comment about what he looks for when making important hires.

“I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person,” he said. “It’s a pretty good test and I think this rule has served me well.”

To a large extent, it’s obvious that Zuckerberg’s model has served him well. It has helped create one of the most successful and fast-growing businesses in corporate history. And the principle of wanting to work alongside like-minded people, with whom he enjoys working, is a good one. Who wouldn’t want to work that way?

Why you should recruit executives who are better than you…

Martin Tripp

In his 2011 AdWeek memoir on David Ogilvy, the advertising legend, Kenneth Roman tells the following story:

“At one board meeting, he [Ogilvy] gave directors sets of Russian nesting matryoshka dolls. Inside the largest doll a smaller one, then a smaller one, and so forth. Inside the smallest doll there was a slip of paper:

“If we hire people who are smaller than we are, we will become a company of dwarfs. If we hire people who are bigger than we are, we will become a company of giants.

“Hire people who are better than you are. And pay them more than you if necessary.”

It is a great guiding principle. The smart manager hires the best team and revels in its success – a success which reflects well on all of them; everybody wins. The less smart manager hires down, the team struggles to meet targets, and the manager ends up blaming team members; nobody wins.

The limits of recruiting executives through your personal network

Matt D'Cruz

Every week I talk to dozens of media business leaders about how they recruit senior executives. I ask them what the changing nature of business means for their hiring policies, what their recruitment challenges and pain points tend to be, and I also ask about the measures they take when they’re recruiting executives – the advertising they use, the contingency agencies taken on, and the headhunters they engage.

When I ask these questions I frequently hear the same answer repeated back to me:

‘Oh,’ the business leader will say. ‘I just recruit through my own network’.

The remark is usually qualified with: ‘we know everyone in the market anyway’.

Five key tips when recruiting for senior management roles

Albert Ng

MTA media headhunters In the last 12 months a good proportion of my time has been spent recruiting for senior management roles, particularly leaders for B2B information businesses.

Appointing and interviewing candidates for a number of similar roles in a short (ish) period of time has lead to a series of commonalities emerging; a number of key qualities employers are really looking for, those that make good senior management candidates stand out from the field.

Here are my five key things to look for when recruiting for senior management roles:

Recruiting digital executives? Do they know how mobile ad-blocking could affect your firm?

Matt D'Cruz

Here’s a potentially concerning development all media owners would be advised to keep an eye on: this week, the Financial Times revealed ‘several’ mobile operators are proposing to lock advertising on their networks, with one European provider preparing to do so before the end of this year.

If you’re thinking of recruiting digital executives in the next 12-months, this could be a live issue with which they (and you) might have to deal.

Recruiting for change management: six key considerations

Albert Ng

Use of MOOCs in educational publishing As an executive search firm serving the media and information sectors, a large number of recent briefs have focused on hiring people to drive or assist transformational or cultural change within a client organisation.

The majority of our clients have been looking for executives and managers with a proven track record in changing the way teams work and/or think.

For the hiring firm it’s often difficult to know the exact qualities they should look for when hiring new people to bring change to their business. What makes a good manager of change? It can be so different from one business to the next, it’s often difficult to draw up a specific list of requirements. There are, however, a few fundamentals – things to look for – that hiring firms should take into consideration when recruiting for change management.

Recruiting a Head of Digital? Have you considered these six key issues first?

Matt D'Cruz

MTA media headhunters While Martin Tripp Associates specialise in filling high-level positions right across the media sector, the vast majority of searches we’ve completed over the last three or four years have had one thing in common: nearly all of them have been about finding executives to assist in a transition from print to digital, or increasingly, from one kind of digital presence to a more advanced one.

In that context, the job title ‘Head of Digital’ can seem anachronistic. After all, if your business is digital-first (as many of our clients now are) then virtually every department – editorial, sales, marketing, product development, the lot – should have digital skills at the core.

However, some clients still have successful print businesses with separate digital teams that need to be managed. In that context, when they’re recruiting a Head of Digital, what they really need a matrix-managing figure to establish digital best-practice across the business.

Glassdoor.co.uk: how increased transparency can affect executive recruitment?

Matt D'Cruz

As headhunters, one of the questions we get asked most (other than ‘how much is it paying?’) is ‘how is our company perceived out in the wider market?’ It’s something of which busy company directors can easily lose sight. In fact, I’ve been asked that question twice this week.

The nature of my executive recruitment job means I talk to hundreds of people every week, and in doing so I pick up an enormous amount of chatter about how happy (or unhappy) people are in their roles. Sometimes the reasons are personal – say, a lack of opportunities for progression. At other times, they’re directly related to office culture. We get a lot of the latter. If you’re in senior management in the media, the chances are we have a better idea of how prospective employees perceive your company than you do.

Earlier this week, I spent a fascinating half-hour or so on Glassdoor.co.uk. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a bit like Tripadvisor for job seekers. It give people an opportunity to hear a number of views on what it’s like to work somewhere, before they sign on the dotted line. On my first visit, I immediately looked up 20 companies I’ve worked extensively for in the past. And on every single occasion, the feedback was pretty much as I’d expected.

Tag: executive recruitment