Farrell Associates meets Naomi Drayson, Recruitment Manager at Oakley Capital to discuss the role of Talent Acquisition in Financial Services.

 

The role of Talent Acquisition has evolved dramatically over the last 10 years; once established as a way for companies to reduce agency spend and handle rapid growth, over the years it has morphed in a range of ways, often handling responsibilities typically found within HR departments whilst also adopting some of the methods employed within executive recruitment.

Alongside the evolution and market cycles of recruitment as a discipline, the talent function has also played an important role in the emergence of technology both from the perspective of careers marketing and applicant tracking. Throw in the ever-evolving world of assessment testing, video interviews and DEI and you have a uniquely complex role; a good Talent Acquisition Specialist can not only save a business money, but can also drive hiring standards, reduce staff-attrition and develop competitive employee value propositions.

Farrell Associates sat down with Naomi Drayson from Oakley Capital to discuss her role, challenges and priorities. Naomi is tasked with hiring across the firm with a particular focus on Oakley’s Investment Team. Oakley Capital is a private equity investor employing c.190 people from 4 offices across Europe. With over £11bn in Assets under Management, Oakley puts ESG and Sustainability front and centre within its investment and fund management strategy.

Matt Baty (Farrell Associates):

‘Hi Naomi, it’s great to be able to sit down with you to talk a bit about your role; as recruitment professionals we are usually talking about other people’s! One of the things we're trying to do as a business is demystify the recruitment process and give a bit of insight into how we work as head hunters, how agencies operate, but also in-house. You've transitioned from agency to in-house so have a rare insight into both worlds. I’d love to know about your career journey and how you got into the role that you're in now’.

Naomi Drayson (Oakley Capital)

‘Thanks for inviting me to speak with you, Matt. I started my career in executive search, straight out of university where I’d just graduated with a degree in economics from Bath University. I was motivated to choose economics after attending a ‘Take Your Daughters to Work Day at Lehman Brothers’ when I was younger and having the chance to ‘interview’ one of their senior economists – a female I might add! My education also gave me a good basis to my knowledge and understanding of the sector as did temping in London in my university holidays – as a result I have experienced the world of insurance, corporate finance, investment banking and now private equity, so that initial ‘holiday work’ gave me a great head start’

Matt:

‘We find with social mobility, that initial work experience, or knowledge sharing is vital for giving young people that pilot light of interest in careers. It seems it certainly helped you. What impact did it have?’

Naomi:

‘I wholeheartedly recommend that to people. I have to admit at the time, I resented my father for encouraging me to earn my own money. But, you know, in hindsight, it really was the best thing that he could have done for me’.

Matt:

‘In my experience, recruitment and particularly Executive Search is something you fall into. What was your experience?’

Naomi:

‘When I joined search, I honestly didn't know what it was. A search firm approached me whilst I was temping  in events at ABN AMRO straight after graduating. I had no idea what they really did, but met with several consultants and found it to be a very people orientated place – that culture really resonated with me and has definitely stuck with me as I've progressed in my career.’

Matt:

‘What were your initial impressions of search?’

Naomi:

‘I felt that I was almost being given a behind the scenes view of the world of finance. […] I figured that for my personality and strengths, search was an ideal fit for me. I enjoyed being in the wings rather than on the front line, so to speak. So I stayed there for a while and really honed my skills in terms of organisation and scheduling as a Search Assistant. I was scheduling interviews and liaising with the candidates, creating presentations and other associated administration, which I loved.’

Matt:

‘How did your career progress from there?’

Naomi:

‘Ultimately, I decided that it was time to do something new so I moved into a researcher role within another search firm but very quickly realized that I'm not a salesperson whatsoever! I stuck with it for a year specifically looking at private equity markets. I remember mapping the market in Dubai and back then, LinkedIn was brand new and very basic, so my role involved a lot of cold calling and researching, which I enjoyed; I loved talking to the candidates.’

Matt:

‘What prompted your decision to change from research? Research is a strange ‘hybrid role’ – it’s not really sales, but uses those skills, and is administrative but also requires some strategic thinking’.

 Naomi:

‘I found it very hard selling new roles to others when I wasn’t 100% invested in my own role. So I decided to return to the Executive Assistant (EA) world and further my career there. The EA domain is such a great place to build your experience by moving between roles so having taken a year out doing something completely different wasn’t an issue and I slipped back in with ease.’

Matt:

‘How did you find yourself working in Private Equity?’

Naomi:

‘I built my knowledge in in corporate finance, in the metals and mining and oil and gas sectors, and then ended up in private equity after I approached an ex-colleague to let her know that I’d be interested if a role came up, and it did. So I made the move and never looked back’

Matt:

‘In smaller or growing businesses, recruitment often sits within the administrative areas of the business. How did it develop for you into the role you are doing today?’

Naomi:

‘I view the recruitment piece as the golden thread that has underpinned my career. Once you've gained that understanding of the pace and the structure and the organisation required to recruit, that sticks - or certainly stuck with me. Once internal stakeholders know that you ‘get it’ and can work at that pace and understand the process, you really start to build a brand for yourself. Initially my role was part Executive Assistant and part Recruitment Co-ordinator, but now I am purely focused on managing recruitment for Oakley’.

Matt:

‘When I moved inhouse before working at Farrell Associates, the thing I found very difficult to adjust to was that everybody around me thought that recruitment was easy until they tried to do it themselves. Managing internal stakeholder relationships and trying to add value in what was seen as quite a transactional role is really challenging. How did you find that adjustment at Oakley?’

Naomi:

‘Yes, I was probably quite naïve initially. Certainly over the past two years, it's developed hugely. I had just always assumed that everyone knew how to recruit and, you're quite right, they don't always. It has certainly created an opportunity for me to step up and showcase my knowledge whilst helping others at the same time. At Oakley, that's manifested itself in a number of ways, the biggest one of which is through running recruitment training sessions and inhouse workshops which continue to be very well received across the business. There is so much satisfaction to be gained from sharing your skills with others.’

Matt:

‘We often face criticism from candidates, and at times justly, that the process is confusing and challenging. How have you approached this aspect of your role?’

Naomi:

‘I continue to put a lot of effort and focus into improving the recruitment experience, not only for colleagues conducting interviews, but also for any candidate we meet; I am hugely passionate about ensuring they have a positive experience with Oakley. No matter who comes to meet with us, and no matter what the outcome of their interview, I want them to walk away thinking and feeling what a great place Oakley is. I really want that to come through’.

Matt:

‘I’m always amazed at how little people know about the different methods available to recruit people. How have you addressed this with your colleagues?’

Naomi:

‘I think it’s just a case of never assuming people understand it in the depth we do. I recently hosted a training session in Luxembourg and I thought it was going to go one way and it went in a completely different direction – we ended up focusing on discussing the different types of recruitment firms there are, for example the difference between an executive search firm compared to a contingent agency, and how to develop and leverage  job specifications to measure the success of a candidate’.

Matt:

‘How has technology changed the way that you work?’

Naomi:

[…] ‘It made me smile when you talked about the days prior to using LinkedIn and technology. I think the biggest one on everybody's lips is the use of AI. My conversations recently have been absolutely fascinating and range from the way students and candidates are using coding on their CVs to try to ‘beat the [application] system’, through to the massive increase in efficiency which AI will bring; you can almost elevate your decision making abilities based on the data that's being generated there.

That being said, we don't yet use it widely within recruitment at Oakley; the hiring managers and I are the people behind CV screening - maybe we will harness the use of AI with time, who knows? The one area I have found it useful is for creating niche job specs, particularly for roles which are newly created and therefore, with which, I’m less familiar.

Technology plays an ever-increasing part though; we find virtual interviews a huge help. Simply having that first round via Teams means it hits diaries far more swiftly. Our case studies are also hosted online and debriefed virtually – the time and energy efficiency savings are huge; gone are the days of me scrambling to get a laptop set up, creating guest users and booking meeting rooms. It also leads to clearer desks as CVs come in via email now, although we did receive one paper copy recently – it was such a rarity we almost didn’t know what to do with it!’

All that being said, a considerable part of my role retains that human touch – for example, I sit down with senior stakeholders on a monthly basis to discuss strategic team planning; we look at the size and shape of the team and we think about the future and how to project those numbers in terms of people. I think some things will always be best done with a human touch!

Matt:

‘There is often a lot of criticism from candidates about the experience of the application process. How have you adapted at Oakley?’

Naomi:

‘There's much more of a focus on a positive experience for candidates now. I think more people are becoming aware of providing decent feedback and making sure that they're treating people with respect, which chimes hugely with me. Then also the element of diversity and inclusion is an ever-growing space. I think lots of businesses are working hard on eliminating bias in their processes, amongst other things.’

Matt:

‘DEI is such a big and challenging topic; we are much more aware of the prevalence of unconscious bias, but you also need to find the very best in the market. How does Oakley approach it?’

Naomi:

‘We are thinking more about people's backgrounds and being more open to meeting with people with a variety of backgrounds in order that we can really build that broad, diverse team, which then hopefully will result in a stronger team and ultimately more interesting investments in our case.’

Matt:

‘That’s great to hear, although there is also the practical challenge with DEI, that the more you broaden your approach, the more onerous the administration becomes. Afterall, there is only 1 role often and hundreds of applicants. How do you balance the need for efficiency with the perspective of inclusion and social mobility?’

Naomi:

‘In the context of the sheer volume you have to get through sometimes it is really difficult to give meaningful feedback or to have meaningful engagements with candidates. I track everything - every single name that crosses my desk is recorded somewhere and every single person who applies for a role directly or from our various search partners is responded to. It’s a priority of mine to ensure we respond to people’.

Matt:

‘Recruitment is not an exact science; how do you go about trying to identify the right person?’

Naomi:

‘At the very start of a search, we thoroughly brief our search partners to make sure they completely understand what it is that we're looking for – leveraging their position as our first filter […]. We ensure that our job specs are clear and written with the right kind of language so they appeal to the broadest group of candidates. For example, there’s some research somewhere which states using language such as ‘rockstar’; is more likely to attract male than female candidates, so we pay careful attention to such details. In doing so, it takes away the focus on how someone might look or sound and instead ensures we focus on the skills they have, the experience they would bring […], essentially ensuring we're basing our assessment of candidates on facts rather than perceptions. It all comes back to making sure you've got a really solid job spec, because actually that's the document that you are measuring people against’.

Matt:

‘It’s all well and good having a robust entry point, but often DEI goes out of the window when it gets to the hiring leads themselves. How have you supported the senior team at Oakley to understand DEI?’

Naomi:

‘We’ve run a variety of training sessions to help educate the entirety of the Oakley team, not just the senior members, and we also have tried to standardise various parts of the interview and selection process to ensure that people are asking not only the right kind of questions but also consistent questions to all candidates, particularly on the non-investment side. We also make sure we have a mix of people within the interview team, whether it is an appropriate gender split or people from different disciplines within the business to enable a broad variety of perspectives. Finally, we work hard to make sure the candidate feels at ease […] - we set out what we're going to talk about, how the interview will be structured, and encourage them to relax. A big part is ensuring the hiring teams follow through and are consistent – I plan to run regular workshops on this to help maintain this approach’.

Matt

‘What assessment techniques to you use and find the most effective?’

Naomi:

We do adopt technical testing, usually as a later stage in our interview process once both sides are interested – this comprises either technical questions, a technical test or a case study. We also use competency-based questions. Again, coming back to that job spec, which is the real centrepiece of all this, we build competency-based questions using both on the job spec and also the competency frameworks that we have for each role as reference points, along with our Oakley values. We don't actually use psychometric testing in London. Some of the search firms that we use provide it, but we don't put an awful amount of weight on it. We definitely find that the structure is important, alongside measuring, in fairly simple terms: are they a decent human being? I really hesitate to use the phrase ‘cultural fit’ because I think I find that's a more biased way to look at it. So it’s more about are they a well-rounded individual? Do they have the technical skills? Do they have the experience? […] in other words, we try to build a 360^o picture of them before we hit the button to offer.’

Matt:

‘Which part of the role to you love the most?’

Naomi:

‘The people part, which is hilarious because I'm actually quite introverted! I love talking to candidates. I like understanding people's career stories and understanding how they got to where they are and what they've experienced. I also really enjoy building working relationships with our search partners and fostering those. And, obviously, it's just great when you know that you've found the right person and you get them in that role and you're simply excited for them to be part of the team. It's been so great watching Oakley's brand build. I ‘d not even heard of Oakley when I joined two years ago and now it's so much more established’.

Matt:

‘What about the most challenging aspect?’

Naomi:

‘That probably links into the most challenging piece, which is now that we are more established, the volume of direct applications is growing. I currently make sure I go back to everybody personally and give them the response that they're due, but obviously that snowballs somewhat when you're well known and I may have to eventually revisit my approach.’

Matt:

‘Having been inhouse myself and helped grow a business from 70 to 400 people, one of the hardest aspects is retaining the culture and the personal touch that people loved when you were smaller and more agile. Retaining and replicating that environment and way of seeing the world is so hard, isn’t it?’

Naomi:

‘[…] Exactly, absolutely 100%. Our culture is something very special that we are trying to retain as much as possible, but I think, naturally, that probably does change over time as the company grows. It's all part of life, isn't it? You have to develop; you have to change to be successful. It doesn't mean that you necessarily lose that special thing. It might just develop as the brand and the company grows. So I think I'm very much a glass half full in that sense’.

Matt

‘What kind of things keep you awake at night in your role then? When do you wake up in the night and think, Oh my God, that's so difficult. Or how am I going to fix this?’

Naomi:

‘I find it really difficult to switch off and I do wake up in the night thinking about work. Getting a search to close is probably one of the biggest things. We've had searches which have lasted far longer than ‘usual’ but so far have been very lucky in that candidates have patiently waited for the outcome. So that's probably a big thing; losing the good candidates and making sure that I'm motivating the teams to stay focused and keep that pace with the process.

What else keeps me awake? It probably comes back to that candidate experience again. I hate the thought of anybody having a bad experience. I find giving negative feedback very difficult because I'm so emotionally invested in these individuals. You build up a working relationship with them, you get to know them, you know what they're doing on the weekend or if they’re going on holiday and so on, and so actually to deliver that feedback where you're saying, look, I'm really sorry, but…., it's heartbreaking! I probably get too emotionally involved and I feel for them very much. I suppose I’m a huge empath in that sense.

The way I the way I cope with it is that I make sure that every single candidate gets feedback, including those who haven't made it. My approach is to consider how can I still help them in this change in their career, and essentially that's by letting them know where they can improve. It's not about saying you did this wrong; you did that wrong. It's about saying, well, actually, why don't you think about how you approach this? And why don't you consider XYZ? Or actually, you know, when we're investing into this team, we really like to see good examples of this, this and this. So why don't you have a think about how you could bring that into your narrative when you next meet people.’

Matt:

‘What advice would you give to someone looking to join the team?’

Naomi:

‘I’d say pay attention to the ‘little things’ as well as the big things. We often ask ourselves after interviews: Are they respectful? Are they responsive? Do they bring good energy? Even down to are they able to be creative with their diaries to make time to meet with us? It all adds to creating this this bigger picture, the 360 view we touched on earlier.’

Matt:

‘What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out on their career in finance?’

Naomi:

[…] ‘Call me old-fashioned but the hygiene factors (spelling, grammar and punctuation) are much more important than people give credit for!

Further to that, I see a lot of people applying in volume and sending mass emails to funds, without using Bcc. I completely understand it, it’s an efficient way to reach out those places that resonate with them. However, you do need to make sure that you're tailoring your cover letter or email to the fund to which you are applying. That goes not only for getting the name right on a basic level, but also understanding what they do. For example, all too frequently, I see candidates applying to Oakley who say ‘I want to join your M&A team’ - we don't have an M&A team!  So take the time to educate yourself in those funds or those companies that you're applying to and really try and tailor your reasonings and your motivations. We want to see you understand why we are different to XYZ firm down the road. Show that you've done your research; it helps you start building that internal brand we spoke about earlier and I promise it will pay dividends. Finally, as much work experience as possible – use those summer holidays wisely!’

Matt:

‘How much attention do you pay to the CV itself?’

Naomi:

‘Given my background, I'm someone who pays close attention to the format and more than anything else, the clarity. If you sent to me a really clear one- or two-page CV, which is neatly set out, I can see your qualifications, I can see your skills, I can see your experiences, you're far more likely to be respected not only by me, but also by the deal team in terms of jumping through our application process hoops. And it sounds really basic again, doesn't it? I suppose like another hygiene factor, but it counts for a lot. It’s also important to be friendly, not overly so, but just have a warm tone in your written comms and, if you’re being told there are no relevant roles or you’re being let down after an interview then do take time to thank places for their time as building respect and appreciating the network aspect is important - the industry is small!’.

Matt:

Where rejection is concerned, my advice to candidates is always just understand the process and the context a little bit. If you get down to the final stages, you've often done very well to get to that point, even though it’s hard when you're bumped to the role by somebody else. Often the reason for rejection is very superficial because at that point in the process the hiring team have ascertained that you can do the job, so it’s rarely a deep technical reason that it’s a ‘no’. And if it is, there isn’t anything you can do about it. It's almost a toss of a coin at that point. So the feedback you're going to get is going to be polite and respectful, um but probably won't go into loads of detail because there probably isn't loads of detail. So my advice is to come away from it and think, right, to get to the shortlist of three people there may well have been hundreds in the initial top of the funnel. Throughout the search, we're finding reasons to say no, because we just have a massive admin burden to get through, just to get to two at the end. So when you get to the end and you're rejected, whilst it's heartbreaking, it's not something that that needs to destroy your life. It might actually be a lucy escape!’

Naomi:

‘Ultimately, we want to work with nice people who make you feel good and have a good energy. And you know, work should be fun, you should enjoy it, it shouldn't feel like a noose around your neck, should it? And so I agree with you.’

Matt:

‘Looking at the future, then what are the big challenges you think are going to face recruiters in-house and external over the next few years?’

Naomi:

‘Technology, for sure, in terms of how we harness it. A lot of people worry that AI is going to negatively take over the world, but I hope that it will just become a tool that we can use to make us more efficient. In recruitment there are so many human elements I feel it will never take over entirely. I do hope, however, that the industry as a whole can harness remote/hybrid working as much as possible to continue to attract the best talent from all corners of the country.

The future for Oakley specifically, well, we've grown so much that I suspect any new roles that materialise will quite niche and specialized. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out.

Matt:

‘On a final note, how do you feel about the job market at the moment?’

Naomi:

‘I think currently there are more candidates than roles out there, which creates a range of challenges for both employers and those looking for work, but I do definitely feel like there are some green shoots coming through as we return to the workplace after the summer break - I’m excited to see what’s in store.’