So, this is the last episode of 2017 and I wanted to take the opportunity to say a big thank you to everyone for making it such a brilliant year for the podcast. I’ve had some amazing guests, some very supportive sponsors and the audience has doubled in size. Thanks to everyone for the likes, shares, comments, reviews and other feedback you’ve sent me. I really appreciate the support and I’m looking forward to an even more ambitious year for the podcast in 2018.
As this is the last show of the year I thought I’d bring you something a bit different. Back in February I recorded an interview for the Career Life Stories series produced by Nick Price and Working films. My Career Life Story was a launched a few weeks back and I thought it might be good to present it to you in audio format via the podcast.
Here are the intro notes on the interview from the Career Life Stories web site:
“Matt Alder is a speaker, author and talent acquisition consultant and has been at the forefront of digital recruitment marketing since the late nineties.
Matt was there at the beginning of the online revolution in recruitment working with TMP and Monster.com in the late nineties. He went on to lead Digital Teams at a time when the industry was transforming from placing jobs in newspapers to embracing – albeit slowly – utilizing the internet for jobs. As Matt says, “We used to do presentations saying that the internet would change the way people looked for jobs and everyone used to laugh at us.”
He was part of a digital generation and new-wave of talented people whose formative careers were at a time when the world was changing as the internet took hold.
As well as being one of the leading podcasters in the recruiting industry with over 14,000 global listeners to his Recruiting Futures podcast, he has also recently written a book called Exceptional Talent which he has co-authored with Mervyn Dinnen.
In this episode we cover:
• Matt’s early introduction to the internet and his passion for technology
• How his drama and acting experience shaped his early years
• Leading the first digital recruitment teams in the UK
• Starting his own business – including the tough lessons learnt as a founder with an HR Tech startup
• The development of his podcast and why its his passion
• What it was like writing his first book”
Thanks again for all your support and I’ll be back with Episode 116 of The Recruiting Future Podcast in January
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast is provided by Smart Recruiters, the hiring success company Smart Recruiters is a full talent acquisition suite with candidate relationship management and an applicant tracking system all in one modern platform. With an extensive marketplace of more than 300 vendors and a user experience that candidates, hiring managers and recruiters alike love, companies from Ikea to Bosch to blah blah Car leverage Smart Recruiters to attract, select and hire the talent they need to grow and expand their business. Visit smart recruiters@www.smartrecruiters.com to find out why companies across the globe consider them to be the number one ATS replacement.
Matt Alder [00:01:10]:
Welcome to episode 115 of the Recruiting Future podcast. So this is the last episode of 2017 and I wanted to start it by saying a bit big thank you to everyone for making this such a brilliant year for the podcast. I’ve had some fantastic guests, some incredibly supportive sponsors, and the audience has doubled in size. Thanks to everyone for the likes, shares, comments, reviews and other feedback you’ve sent me. I really appreciate the support and I’m looking forward to an even more ambitious year for the show in 2018.
Matt Alder [00:01:49]:
As this is the last show of.
Matt Alder [00:01:51]:
The year, I thought I’d bring you something a bit different. Back in February, I recorded an interview for the fantastic Career Life Stories series which is produced by Nick Price and Working Films.
Matt Alder [00:02:04]:
If you’ve not come across this series.
Matt Alder [00:02:06]:
Before, I would recommend visiting www.careerlife stories.com to watch some really insightful films about the lives and careers of some really interesting people from our industry. My Career Life Story film was launched a few weeks back and I thought it might be good to present it to you on the podcast in audio format.
Matt Alder [00:02:29]:
So my guest this week is me.
Matt Alder [00:02:32]:
Talking about my life and career to date. I really hope you enjoy it.
Nick Price [00:02:37]:
My guest on this episode of Career Life Stories is Matt Alder. Matt has been at the forefront of digital recruitment marketing since the late 90s. He continues to innovate in the sector and advises a growing number of major employers on their talent acquisition. He hosts a weekly recruiting and HR podcast that has over 14,000 global listeners a month. He also recently published his first book called Exceptional Talent with his co author Mervyn Dimmer, talking about his life and career to date. It’s a pleasure to introduce Matt Alder. So Matt, your career is starting in recruitment advertising. You’ve worked in digital recruiting now you’re a consultant with your own business, metashift. But the common thread through everything you’ve done really started with, really started with the Internet. Was it part of the plan that you saw the opportunities with the Internet and that was where you wanted your career to be?
Matt Alder [00:03:32]:
I came across the Internet when I was working in photography. It was really disrupting the way that photography, commercial photography was working in the late 90s. And I just saw it as a kind of fascinating agent for change in how we kind of live and work. So I was really keen to try and get an Internet job, as it were, whatever that was at the time, as soon as I possibly could. And it was really total accident that ended up in recruitment. But I think it was a happy accident and it kind of, I suppose it really aligns with what’s important to me. And really with recruitment, it was the opportunity to be in an industry at the very start. So when I first started, started working in digital recruitment, there were very few job boards, didn’t really even exist as a thing in the uk. And the opportunity to get in at that kind of innovative, kind of ground floor level was just like a brilliant opportunity to sort of help shape an industry.
Nick Price [00:04:33]:
Which is quite interesting, isn’t it, because a lot of people at the time were in recruitment and then migrated towards the Internet and online and understanding that. But you went into it really with an online mentality first and then recruitment came part of your world alongside that.
Matt Alder [00:04:50]:
Yeah, I mean, I think when I think about it, in some ways it feels a bit random, but I think also there are aspects of it that fit together, that fit together quite well. So my first proper Internet job was again working for another photography company. And I was selling an Internet photography kind of online catalog solution to big creative advertising agencies in London. And I kind of go into the creative department and try and persuade these creatives that the Internet was the future for photography. And these people didn’t even have a computer, you know, they had nothing connected to the Internet. So I kind of got this real sense of kicking against the norm and struggling and just really enjoying being that persuasive person to help people see the potential in this new medium. And I think when I got into the recruitment side of things, it was exactly the same. We’d go to presentations and we’d tell people that the Internet was going to change the way that people look for jobs and they used to laugh at us. And I love that. I loved the fact that it was us against the world and I love the fact that we had to really think about how is this going to work? How can we persuade people, how can we grow up as an industry and move forward? So when I look back on it, it all makes perfect sense. But, you know, perhaps at the time it was, it was, it was slightly random, but I think there was a real, this kind of real theme of, you know, trying to, trying to change the world.
Nick Price [00:06:22]:
So when you were younger, did you have an idea of what you wanted to do for a career?
Matt Alder [00:06:27]:
I had quite an early exposure to technology. My dad worked in it. He got into computers before computers were really a thing. And, you know, I found that absolutely fascinating. I did, you know, I was really, really interested in the development of computing, what it could be, what it could be used for and all that kind of stuff. But I really, I think, felt that it was cut off to me because I wasn’t really a kind of maths or science kind of person. I was much more into kind of, you know, arts and the written word and all that, all that kind of stuff. And the guys who did computing at school were those kind of sciencey sciency math geeks. So I kind of just sort of ruled that out as a career path for years and years and years and years went off in a very, very different direction. And I think when I saw what the Internet was doing to work in business in the late 90s, and I saw that actually there was the opportunity to look at this from a business perspective, from a marketing perspective, even from a creative perspective, it suddenly felt that perhaps the career that I’d always wanted had opened up to me again.
Nick Price [00:07:35]:
So you spoke about being at school and a sort of maths and science geek. So where did you fit into that? Because ultimately you went on to do English and drama. You went on to do English and drama at university.
Matt Alder [00:07:45]:
I did.
Nick Price [00:07:46]:
What were you like then when you were sort of studying and that? Were you quite academic? Were you interested in lots of different things? Was drama something you loved doing?
Matt Alder [00:07:54]:
When I was at, When I was at school, particularly when I was at primary school, but also when I was at secondary school, I was incredibly shy, like painfully shy, you know, I’d never say anything. I kind of really, you know, really didn’t like speaking up in public and all that kind of stuff. So obviously I started doing drama because that’s the complete kind of. The complete kind of opposite of that. And I think, you know, I think I kind of learned that my life has always got better when I’ve done things that are outside my. Outside my Comfort zone. You know, I started acting at quite, you know, reasonably sort of early age and I just, you know, I absolutely loved it. And I think it was that, that learning opportunity of being outside of my comfort zone, but also the kind of safe place to play within a character that isn’t, that isn’t necessarily. Isn’t necessarily you.
Nick Price [00:08:43]:
Are you someone who’s naturally confident and comfortable standing up in front of people performing?
Matt Alder [00:08:50]:
I am. Now, you know, we’re talking. I do a huge amount of presenting in my job, so I present to kind of audiences all the time. And I absolutely love, love being on stage. I love helping people understand new ideas and be interesting. You know, it’s a privilege to be on stage and have all those people giving you, hopefully, their undivided attention. Have I always been in that position? Probably, probably not. Obviously did a lot of acting. What I loved about it was the opportunity to work really hard and be really good at something. So the amount of rehearsal that would go into a short amount of time on stage was, you know, was absolutely just, you know, fascinating to me. And, you know, university. We did it to, you know, quite high, quite a high level, you know, and that was brilliant. And when I moved into the working world, I felt that I’d be able to take these, you know, these stage skills with me. And I just remember that when I got to the level of my career that I was making presentations, my first four or five presentations were terrible, just awful, you know, absolutely died of death.
Nick Price [00:09:58]:
In what way?
Matt Alder [00:09:59]:
Just, I didn’t, you know, I do things like I’d write a full script for myself. I. I would have no sense about what I was trying to get across to the audience. I was overconfident because I’d done all this kind of stuff on all these, all these stages and it was brilliant. And I just didn’t really think about the message and what I was doing. And I went through a massive kind of crisis with. Crisis of confidence with that. And then over time, I found my professional voice, if you like. I kind of really thought about how do you make an audience, you know, how do you make an audience feel. How do you make an audience feel excited and interested and engaged in this content? Even if they don’t agree with what you’re. With what you’re saying, that’s still great because it’s all about getting reaction. And it was just lots and lots of, you know, practice and hard work and really, you know, thinking about energy levels and confidence levels and things like that. So, you know, I feel very Confident in all of those situations. But it’s kind of a real journey. I thought When I was 23, 24, I had absolutely cracked it and I didn’t realize that I was very much at the beginning of a much longer journey.
Nick Price [00:11:04]:
What was the reason for choosing English and Drama as a degree?
Matt Alder [00:11:07]:
I basically chose subjects at a level in university that I was interested in when I was doing my degree. Actually, there was some brilliant, I think, brilliant kind of transferable skills you learn from doing something like drama. Teamwork is one of them. You know, working as part of a team where you absolutely trust that the person you’re working with is going to do the thing that you think they’re going to do and then if they don’t, how do you, you know, how do you kind of react to that? So I think that kind of, that team building, that, that level of communication, obviously the, the, the confidence to, you know, present, obviously when I rebuilt that in my working life, I think were brilliant things. But, you know, I got to the end of university and I still didn’t know what I wanted to. I wanted to do. So I never really had, you know, much of a CL career would be or where it would, where it would take me, even, you know, even at that point. And then I graduated and there was a recession on and there were no traditional graduate jobs available, certainly not for people with the sort of degree that I had. So out into the big wide world with no real sense of where I was going.
Nick Price [00:12:15]:
You were born in Cornwall and then you moved to Kent and then. So once you graduated from Winchester, wasn’t it?
Matt Alder [00:12:22]:
Yeah.
Nick Price [00:12:23]:
You then took yourself off to London.
Matt Alder [00:12:25]:
Yeah. I seem to have always been quite nomadic and the only real jobs that were available at that point were sales jobs. Probably the first sort of 18 months, two, three years of my career, I was in telephone sales in different environments. Started off selling travel solutions, then was lucky enough to kind of move into photography, which was a bit more interesting. Then I worked for the Guardian newspaper, then I went back to photography and then I kind of finally landed in the world of ad agencies and marketing agencies and that was the start of the whole digital recruiting thing.
Nick Price [00:13:02]:
Tim P. You joined, which was the start of your digital career, if you like.
Matt Alder [00:13:09]:
Yeah, it was. So this whole Internet career thing had become a thing. I was working, selling this Internet photography solution, but really I wanted to work for an advertising agency. Not quite sure why, but I always wanted to, I suppose, work for an advertising agency. That was the nearest thing I had to some kind of idea of Career direction. And really just through you know, a whole series of bizarre coincidences and accidents, I kind of ended up working at tmp, which was a recruitment, you know, recruitment advertising agency. And as I say, it kind of, it wasn’t, it wasn’t planned, but kind of as soon as I arrived and saw the opportunity with this sort of online recruitment, digital recruitment thing, you know, I was, I was kind of, you know, I was kind of blown away and fascinated by that. And it was, yeah, it was a very odd time working for a company that claimed to be an Internet company. And you know, on our floor of the office there was just one, you know, one computer that was connected to the Internet that people had to share. So that was, you know, that, that was quite interesting. But yeah, it was, it was a, it was a, you know, I kind of felt my career had really started at that point. I felt I’d kind of sort of finally reached the, the starting line.
Nick Price [00:14:29]:
Just sort of paint a bit of a picture about where the world was at that time.
Matt Alder [00:14:33]:
So I always like to tell people that in that job I was lucky enough to share a bank of desks with the whole of Monster Europe, which at the time was two people, because they were, they were kind of expanding and opening, you know, opening versions of what was the monster in all those countries. So, yeah, it just felt like really kind of exciting times. We, you know, we didn’t have very, very good equipment. Everyone thought we were kind of slightly mad, but there was this brilliant sense of, you know, camaraderie between, you know, the first people who are working for Monster. We were kind of on the sort of more the sort of the TMP marketing side. So we were selling website solutions. We had an ATS product which was so early to the market the words ATS didn’t ex. So we didn’t quite know how to describe it. It was like this magic database that would help you with the recruitment process. And yeah, and I think it was difficult and it was challenging, but there was this kind of real sense of, the sense of camaraderie, this sense that we were doing something that would be, would be big.
Nick Price [00:15:44]:
It was quite pivotal, wasn’t it? Because there’s a whole sort of mental shift and attitude towards recruitment as a whole, wasn’t it?
Matt Alder [00:15:51]:
Getting into this at the start of the dot com bubble was just fascinating because people used to say to me, you’re kind of mad working in this Internet thing. We don’t know what it is. And then there was this incredible 18 months where it was the biggest thing in the world. And there was all this money flying around and, you know, we weren’t actually billing, billing anything or making any money. But the world had changed and it was going to be amazing. And then 18 months, two years later, that just literally disappeared. The bubble burst. And a lot of the people who kind of got in to the industry then got out and we were kind of left almost looking at each other going, what happened there? And that was when I think the hard work really started, where we said, okay, now the hype has dissipated. What does the Internet really do for recruiting? And I think that was the interesting thing. Just trying to work out what tools and techniques that were facilitated by the Internet and digital technologies would really, you know, would really move things on and improve things. Things.
Nick Price [00:16:51]:
Was there much resistance to this change, both from clients and within the agencies themselves?
Matt Alder [00:16:56]:
There was a tremendous resistance to change. People don’t like their way of working being disrupted. That’s when I kind of really had to grow up in terms of how I communicated and how I persuaded people. So there was lots of resistance, but also there was lots of support as well and lots of people kind of coming on board, helping us refine what we did. There were some fantastic clients who wanted to be absolutely at the front of this and do things differently. And they weren’t necessarily always the most obvious clients. They were just people within organisations who could see this as an opportunity and really wanted to see how it could benefit their organisation.
Nick Price [00:17:35]:
You mentioned there that you had to change the way you communicated with people, how you persuaded people. What do you mean by that?
Matt Alder [00:17:42]:
It’s really easy to be very preachy to come from this. I know something that you don’t know. To really make the most of this technological change change, you have to take everyone, you have to take people with you to make it happen. So I think I realized very quickly that this was a real collaborative process and people who object to this kind of change very often have a very valid reason for doing so. Taking on board people’s points of view is very important, but also I think it’s important that you do have to have that vision and say, you know what, this is where it’s going and I believe that it’s going to be better, otherwise things would never change. But I think that, and I still, I see people do it all the time just getting. Getting incredibly preachy about, you know, what should happen and what’s going to happen is a very long way away from being a kind of an agent of that change and making Things happen. But it was a massive learning curve for us as well. We were kind of young and inexperienced and when you’re operating in an environment where there aren’t really any case studies and there isn’t really, you know, much precedent about what’s happened, that’s kind of tough. It was an interesting time.
Nick Price [00:18:53]:
The agencies had those defined roles, account director, account managers, account executives. But during that time there was a whole new world of job roles created, wasn’t there?
Matt Alder [00:19:03]:
We had to sort of define what the best way to sell, build and deliver digital products would be. And this was happening. It wasn’t just happening in our sector, it was happening in ad agencies in every sector. It was inventing jobs for people. It was like, we think we need someone who’s going to do this and what would they be called and what skills would they have? And it was incredible, incredibly exciting time. And as digital got bigger and bigger, people got more and more specialized in what they. In what they did. And I think, you know, my first digital job did everything from, you know, selling, sell the website, write the copy for the website, project, manage the website. The only thing I couldn’t do was program it, but, you know, everything else. And by the time we got to sort of, you know, this is what, 2008, 2009, you know, the world has specialized.
Nick Price [00:19:45]:
After TMP moved to new role as head of Digital Barkers, which is one of TMP’s competitors. Just explain a little bit about that time.
Matt Alder [00:19:54]:
I kind of really specialised in media planning and online media buying. We were one of the biggest buyers of job board space in Europe at TMP in that time. And it was just the opportunity to go and expand my digital horizons again and be in charge of a team that did web development and other aspects of digital. It wasn’t an easy job, it wasn’t an easy move, but I certainly learned a lot, lot.
Nick Price [00:20:17]:
So after that was when we sort of get into the time you’re at now, really with your own business and set up your own consultancy. How did you start that business?
Matt Alder [00:20:25]:
What happened was the financial crisis hit. The industry took a massive hit. There was lots of change, you know, lots of change that was being driven by the market. You know, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant time. After sort of a confusing few months, I took the opportunity to go and set up up my own consultancy business. The ability to go out and prove that I could do this by myself was kind of important to me. And, yeah, just, just being able to sort of work directly with the clients and really think about what was next for the industry was, was why I.
Nick Price [00:20:58]:
Did it, what was it like setting up your own business?
Matt Alder [00:21:00]:
You know, I had to really think about and, and refine how it was that I, that I helped organizations and what value did I. Did I give to them. Going from having a salary to suddenly not having a salary is always. But, you know, it kind of sharpens your mind, it makes you think differently. In some ways it’s stressful, but I found it to be, you know, almost a much more positive form of stress. You know, I kind of love the fact that everything I do comes, comes from me and ultimately is in my. Is within my control in some kind of way. So. So yeah, it’s certainly been incredibly challenging, but eight years later, I’m still here, here. So. And I’m still doing it. So I’m guessing, I’m guessing that success.
Nick Price [00:21:47]:
And what was the most difficult part during those eight years?
Matt Alder [00:21:50]:
The most difficult thing for me has been really sort of working out what to focus on. My passion is very, very clear. I love the industry that I work in. I’m really, really passionate about doing something that facilitates people finding the right job and the right. The right career for them. I think that’s kind of important to me.
Nick Price [00:22:15]:
You also were involved in a tech startup called Three Sparks. What lessons did you learn from that?
Matt Alder [00:22:21]:
Basically, we built what was a great piece of technology that was a really simple way that employers could have mobile websites and mobile applied processes and entered that with a certain amount of confidence that the timing was right and people would buy this product. And actually, I think perhaps some of that confidence was slightly arrogant because it turned out that maybe it wasn’t quite the right time or. I think it turned out that we needed quite a long time to develop and bring this product to market. Things didn’t happen quite as quickly as we’d hoped, and we kind of struggled to keep funding that business. So while we had a great product, great team, and some excellent clients and some great coverage, I mean, we were mentioning in Fortune magazine at one point, but it was just that keeping that momentum, going through the product development, when that’s all you do was a tricky thing. So in the end, you know, we, you know, we kind of had to walk away from it.
Nick Price [00:23:24]:
Tech startups almost become quite a fashionable thing, but it’s a pretty difficult thing to do as well, isn’t it?
Matt Alder [00:23:29]:
There’s also this kind of narrative that if you have a failed tech startup, that’s kind of fine because you launch a startup and it fails and everyone’s all right. The reality isn’t quite like that. You know, if you have a business and you put everything, everything into it in terms of your, in terms of your time, you know, and your passion, but, you know, also your own money, if it fails, then there are things you lose and that’s difficult. And I think people in the tech space talk about failure as this kind of, this great kind of learning thing. And it is, but it’s not easy. It’s very hard.
Nick Price [00:24:04]:
And so after 20 years of working in London, you’ve now moved to Scotland. And how does that work for you? And what was the motivation for that?
Matt Alder [00:24:13]:
It took me a very, very long time to find the right person to marry, but I finally did. And she’s amazing. She, you know, she makes everything, you know, she makes me better in every single way. And really we were kind of looking about, you know, what would happen, what would happen next with our lives. I did 20 years in London, which was impressive as I only moved there for a year in the first instance. And I absolutely loved it. I mean, I loved, I loved living in that city. I loved, you know, being part of, you know, such a dynamic and changing environment. But as I kind of said, and I think this has been a, something that’s reoccurred through my life and through my career, things always get better when I kind of take that leap out of my, out of my comfort zone. So my wife is from Scotland and it so happened that we decided to, we decided to move to Scotland, which, you know, I love it, it’s such a fantastic place to live. We live right on a beach, which is amazing and certainly not you could do in London. I’m learning a lot about how you can run a business with global clients effectively from anywhere.
Nick Price [00:25:15]:
How have you found the practicality of living in Scotland? But with lots of global clients and a lot of work in London, there.
Matt Alder [00:25:22]:
Are always trade offs. The lifestyle is fantastic. Living in a beautiful place, you know, it’s such a, such a cool little town that we live in. There have been certain aspects of my work that I’ve had to kind of, I’ve had to kind of back away from. I can’t really do anymore. So I’ve kind of had to really sort of reinvent what I do. Look at my offerings, look at the, the businesses that I kind of run and really work out how it fits. There’s always kind of trade offs and I suppose that I’m always interested in that process in terms of how does that work and how can I make the best of this opportunity and leverage the advantage of where I am.
Nick Price [00:25:59]:
Have you always been quite career focused? Would you say? Are you career focused?
Matt Alder [00:26:04]:
Interesting question. Because I think the answer is yes and no. At the same time, I’m very passionate about my career and what I do. Lots of things that I enjoy, I’ve kind of weaved into my job. So I enjoy traveling, I enjoy presenting, I enjoy reading, I enjoy researching, I enjoy looking at new things. And I think that I’ve been able to weave those into. Weave those into my job and into my career. So everything is so intrinsically linked, it’s quite difficult to separate that out.
Nick Price [00:26:34]:
So what are the things that are important to you now?
Matt Alder [00:26:36]:
To me, one of the things that is incredibly important is, is making things better by putting out really interesting, quality content. And I suppose crucial to me now is I have a podcast. So every week I interview someone different from around the world, talking about their experiences in the space and how they’re using technology to do different things. And it’s a huge privilege to be able to do that. And I’m always delighted that people listen to it.
Nick Price [00:27:10]:
Let’s talk about your podcast then. Podcast’s been going two years. How did that start?
Matt Alder [00:27:15]:
I was doing this huge amount of kind of research and talking to people and going to conferences and, you know, reading and all this sort of stuff. And I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to actually do that in public? So. And I’ve always been a massive sort of fan of, you know, audio content and radio, and I love podcasts. So I thought I’d. Well, why don’t I create one? So the original idea was it’s kind of my research and development, me being curious and finding out about what people are doing, but doing that in public, you know, giving people. People access to those. Those conversations. And that’s how I started it. In some ways, I’ve been blown away by success. It’s been more successful than I could have imagined. And then the other half of my brain that says these things are never good enough, you know, tells me that I still need to work on it and I still need to. Still need to make it even better.
Nick Price [00:28:00]:
So you’ve now just written a book or co written a book. How did that start and what’s that experience been like?
Matt Alder [00:28:07]:
It’s always been my ambition to write a book, and I. And I always thought I would, but I didn’t really had a plan about how that would. How that would happen. Sometimes these things just come along and you have to, you have to run with them. So Mervyn Dynan, very good friend of mine and also a colleague, we collaborate on a lot of content marketing production for a number of companies, was approached by a publisher to basically write a book and we talked about it and we basically put in a joint proposal with us as co authors, we agreed the contract, the book was finished. I think it took us about eight months to write it.
Nick Price [00:28:43]:
I guess that’s one of the highlights of your contract career.
Matt Alder [00:28:46]:
Yeah, I mean, I think it’ll all come down to how many people buy it. But the book’s called Exceptional Talent and it’s all about what we almost call the sort of the new talent journey. So we break down the whole of the sort of recruitment and employee experience. I think what’s interesting was we looked at the title Exceptional Talent and a lot of it is actually breaking down, well, what is Exceptional Talent? And I think you get a lot, a lot of narrative, particularly in the tech space, about employing a players, employing people who are absolutely brilliant and you know, will drive the business forward. And that really isn’t our definition. It’s all about values and attitudes and having people who are flexible in their thinking, who match the values of the organization. You could help companies navigate through what are very unpredictable times, both socially and economically. And I think that was fascinating and it was a great process to go through. And a lot of it was just getting out, you know, getting a lot of the stuff that had been in my head out onto paper. So it required a lot of time and concentration and retraining my attention span to do it. But it was a great process and you know, I’m personally really proud and really pleased with the content and I genuinely hope that people will find it useful.
Nick Price [00:30:07]:
Looking back over your career, how do you think you’ve developed and changed?
Matt Alder [00:30:11]:
I think a lot of it has been learning about myself and I think, you know, I’ve talked a lot about doing things that take me out my comfort zone and you know, then, then, you know, life gets better. And I think to deconstruct that process a little bit, it’s been about realizing that a lot of the things that have held me back at various points in my life and my career are of my own making. It’s just unhelpful beliefs I have about myself or the way the world works in my head. And I think that if you, if you really challenge yourself by doing something you feel completely, that is completely out your comfort zone, you can kind of sort of expose that and say, actually, well, what would happen if I didn’t believe that what would happen if I thought this was possible? And I suppose that I look back on my career now and I can see the evidence of that. So 10, 20 years ago, I couldn’t see that. I couldn’t get that context. So I think that as a person I’ve just become much more, much more self aware and just really sort of clear on where I’m headed, heading and where I’m going. And I think for the first time things are starting to make a little bit of sense about how I’ve ended up here. And I think that’s, it’s kind of an exciting time. It’s, you know, I look at the rest of my career, however long that will be, you know, and I’m really looking forward to it.
Nick Price [00:31:29]:
You’ve worked with people, you’ve worked for people, collaborated with people. What qualities people bring out the best in you.
Matt Alder [00:31:37]:
The qualities in other people that I really look for and really respect. I think honesty and openness are really important, but it’s also a sense of curiosity about things, you know, looking at things and thinking what would happen if we did this completely differently. And I think I work best with people who have that, you know, who share that values and share that, share that kind of attitude. It’s generally that, that curiousness that, that willingness to sort of challenge things and say actually is that, you know, just because things have always been like that, that. Does that mean that that’s right or you know, that that’s, that’s kind of appropriate and it’s not necessarily being, you know, completely contrarian and disagreeing with everything, but just having that natural sense of curiosity. And I think that the people that I’ve worked best with in my career who’ve had all kinds of different skills and types of experience, have kind of really sort of shared those values and that philosophy, you know, that openness, that honesty and that curiosity. Curiosity.
Nick Price [00:32:39]:
So the flip side of that then is what, what situations frustrate you?
Matt Alder [00:32:43]:
Other things that frustrate me. I think people who, you know, people who are just absolutely set in their ways and, and will not countenance that things could be different. Huge things about social media frustrate me. The social media is brilliant, but I think there are aspects of it that are very frustrating. The whole sound bite culture that, you know, someone can say something and it becomes, suddenly becomes the truth if enough people love like it. People who create entertainment for themselves by just dissing things that other people do and not really offering anything, you know, Any kind of alternatives themselves. I think I find that very frustrating about social media as well.
Nick Price [00:33:19]:
And we’ve talked about your book being quite a big highlight to your career. But when you look back, has there been a pivotal moment in your career?
Matt Alder [00:33:27]:
There’s been a few that I could say, you know, a few things that I might be able to identify as pivotal moments. But when you asked me that question, there was one thing that came into my head which was. And again, it’s funny, it always comes back to this. It comes back to presenting. We’ve sort of talked about, you know, my journey of learning about present, you know, being a presenter and trying to be better and better. And there was this one time where I just took a massive shift in style. And I think that, you know, I’d done a presentation internally within the organization I was working for, and it had gone down particularly badly. I got some very negative feedback about. About it. You know, I really thought about that, took that on board and completely changed the style in which I present very much to, you know, what I do now. I never use a script. You know, I always use. Make sure my slides are as visual as possible. I always try and make sure there’s no barrier between me and the audience. But it really came down to one presentation where I suddenly did all of those things. All of those things for the first time. It was a very big presentation with a not particularly friendly audience. Audience. And it just went phenomenally well. It was. It was. It was a massive risk that I took to do what I did, and it was amazing. And I think, you know, that really sticks out as a pivotal moment because I completely changed the style of how I. Of how I do things and how I communicate.
Nick Price [00:34:49]:
That’s interesting. And do you think that that’s the type of person you are when you talked about taking yourself out of your comfort zone? And actually when you talked about going to drama and everybody working really, really hard, that these things don’t happen by accident. Actually, you have to work really hard to achieve what you’ve achieved.
Matt Alder [00:35:08]:
I think I’ve learned that through everything that I’ve done. Lark and talent play a part in things, but actually, if you want to be really good at something, if you want to kind of really push the way that people think about things and the way. Way that things work, you just have to work incredibly hard. You have to, you know, you have to have those failures. You have to have those learning moments. You have to. It goes back to when I was doing drama. You just have to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and rehearse until you get bored of rehearsing and then just keep doing it. And I think that’s. That’s been an important, important lesson to me. And even, you know, even with my podcast, I feel it took me 20 episodes to get even vaguely into the ballpark of where I wanted to be. So I think persistent and hard work are incredibly important.
Nick Price [00:35:55]:
And what is it you most enjoy about the work you do now?
Matt Alder [00:35:58]:
The variety of situations that I kind of experience. So I work with some really big global companies on recruitment, innovation, really kind of working in partnership with them to try and find where they take stuff. And then the next week, I’ll be working with a smaller company who have never done any kind of online recruitment ever, and helping them choose an ATS system. And then the next week, I’m writing a book or producing content. So I think it’s. The sheer variety of experiences that I can now have is just really important to me. And it’s something I really. Something I really value in my career now.
Nick Price [00:36:36]:
Is there anything you would change in your career?
Matt Alder [00:36:38]:
There are a number of opportunities to take things in a different direction. So I could have pursued acting. Do I regret that? Yes, I do regret that, but that’s not what I did. There’s been a number of times that I could have left the recruitment side of the industry, but actually, you know, when I look back on my career as a whole, I have no regrets at all. I’m delighted that I am where I am now, and I’m just really focused on what’s next. And I think that some of the changes that might happen in the next few years will make a lot of the stuff we’ve been talking about just seem irrelevant, and I think that’s really interesting. So I’m just really focused on what does the future look like. You can have regrets about the past, but you can’t change them, so why focus on them?
Nick Price [00:37:26]:
So, finally, what does the future hold for you now?
Matt Alder [00:37:28]:
I am very much focused on where I can take the podcast. So up to 8,000 listeners a month, which is amazing, but I think I can take it a lot further than that. So really looking at how I can get really interesting guests and really sort of improve the production. I’m working with some great employers, and I really want to continue doing that. I love the podcast because it gives me the opportunity to talk to people who are kind of on the ground and driving change within their organizations. We’re a very interesting time in terms of, you know, in terms of what technology is doing to work. So I really want to help people negotiate that and navigate that and understand that and, you know, by sort of telling stories and, and linking people to interesting content, that that’s really what I want to do moving forward.
Nick Price [00:38:23]:
Matt, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:38:35]:
Thanks very much to Nick Price from Working Films. You can find the other interviews in the series along with some bonus content at www. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes, on Stitcher, or via your podcast app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, just search for Recruiting Future in your app store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can also find the show listed there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next year and I hope you’ll join me.
