Nick White Salesforce Recruiter

Nick’s Background

Nick White had worked in the recruitment sector for several years before joining Resource on Demand.

With a hankering to work as a specialist recruiter while gaining back control of his life, Nick joined the ROD team in early 2021.

You can read his story below.

What Got You Into Recruitment?

Interviewer: Nick, welcome to today’s conversation. Thanks for taking some time to chat about your experience in the industry and with Resource on Demand.

If it’s okay with you, as a start, I’m curious to know a little more about your own experience. What got you into the recruitment industry, your own experience in the industry?

That will lead us to talk about how you came to be working for ROD? What’s it like working for a completely remote business? Because I know that you would have, you’d been onboarded remotely, you’ve integrated into a team remotely.

I guess if somebody is considering moving and joining a business-like ROD, one that’s remote, hearing about your experience is going to be super helpful. Maybe just set the scene for us, though, in terms of your experience in the industry.

Nick: I fell into recruitment because a company was around the corner from where I lived. They were hiring, and I had various friends in the recruitment industry who were enjoying great success.

I’d be out with them on occasion, and they’d be telling me all about their experiences and how their weeks had been.

Luckily, a company about two minutes away from where I lived were hiring. I went for the interview process and got the job, an IT-based company in St. Alban’s, where I live.

The experience of working for this particular company was good, being thrown in at the deep end. I learned a lot in a short space of time.

I didn’t plan on ever being a recruiter, but once I had started, I realised; this is quite a career; I just fell in love with the industry.

I was in a really good environment of people. It was only a small company, but the projects and clients we worked with were exciting.

Working with people that have been in the industry for a long time, you learn what’s right, what’s wrong, how to be productive, how to organise your day, how to make sure that you’re on top of things to make sure that you’re doing everything to service both client and the candidate.

I learned quite a lot, but after probably about a year, something was playing in my mind because we weren’t particularly a specialist in any technology, for example, like we are a Resource on Demand for Salesforce.

In the back of my mind, I did think, “Do you know what? I probably want to be a specialist in a particular technology or field, and I’m not quite sure where that is at the moment or where I fit into that part of where is my path from here.”

I ended up moving around a few different companies as I built my skills and sector expertise. During this time, I started to appreciate that working for a smaller organisation where decisions are made faster and you were supported to excel was what I wanted; this is what I have at ROD.

There are pros and cons to any size of business. One of the pros of bigger companies is having a marketing department.

I still count working with ROD and the resources we have as a pro.

Luckily enough, with Resource on Demand, it’s almost like we have big company support. We’re classified as a small recruitment company, but there’ is a support element in terms of marketing, and our market reach is huge in the Salesforce market.

I talked to candidates, and they have already heard of Resource on Demand or know someone who does. From the business development perspective of being a recruiter, working for Resource on Demand and with the audience that we have already, it’s an easier sell when I’m trying to pick up new business with candidates as they like dealing with us.

What Led You to Join Resource on Demand?

I decided that I wanted to be a specialist recruiter. I didn’t know where that was going to be at that time because there were so many different technologies.

With Resource on Demand being a Salesforce recruiter, I knew from experience that Salesforce is such a massive technology. There would be a huge opportunity there as it is always evolving.

From working with other Salesforce candidates for some other jobs I was working on previously, I remember they were genuine, just nice people.

Since then, I got to know the Salesforce ecosystem, and it has been a really good choice; I’m happy with where I’ve got to and to be officially called a Salesforce specialist recruiter. It puts a smile on my face.

Tell me About Your Role in ROD and Your Experiences of the Ethos and Culture in the Business?

I started in March 2021, and I’d say it’s been a fun experience. Probably, I can say, the best job in my whole life, not just my recruitment career.

Interviewer: What makes you say that?

Nick: Well, all the different elements. I’ve always had this understanding there are people you must work for because you need a job, and there are people you want to work for because you love working for them, and ROD falls into the latter category.

Lee and Theresa, the founders and owners of the business, are cool to work with. They understand recruitment at a deep level.

They’re very supportive and just every day nice and happy people.

I like to think I’m a happy person. Sometimes, working around people, you know that you can learn from gives me extra confidence to know that I’m in the right place. I always try to think about, “Am I happy with myself at the moment?” and “Why am I happy?”

One of the reasons I’m happy in my personal life, for example, is because my working life is great, as well, being part of this great company.

Interviewer: Lee and Theresa, great people, great people to work with from a partner point of view for us, great to work with as an employee.

Tell Me About The Resource on Demand Culture?

There’s one thing that every single recruitment company or sales company wants: placements.

Get the clients to make the placements, but in many businesses, the approach is very competitive. If you don’t hit your targets, for example, then this never happened to me, but if you don’t hit your targets, then you get shouted out, or you’re put under a lot of pressure to maybe stay behind at work for hours upon end until you reach a certain target, for example.

Lee and Theresa want you to perform and hit targets, yet they do it in a supportive way.

The great thing is, even if something doesn’t go your way, they are there to help you work through it; Good things, and bad things; whatever you do, they have your back.

That’s what I love, is the good family feeling about working here.

Interviewer: Thinking about my own experience of being employed, when you know that someone’s got your back and is so supportive, even if it’s a tough day or it’s not been the best week, you can feel like you want to go the extra mile to keep pushing through when you know that you have that support behind you.

Nick: Lee and Theresa encourage you to take your days off too. I’ve been in companies where they encourage you to work those days because they’re understaffed, but even on my days off, I find myself working because I want to.

Not only for my benefit but also to contribute to the team to make sure that we all hit our targets.

What Does a Typical Day at ROD Look Like?

Well, it’s certainly different to my other jobs where I had to go to an office five days a week in London on the train. I would be up and leaving the house anywhere from 5 am.

I would drive to a certain spot where I didn’t have to pay for parking, and then I’d walk from there to the train station. Then it would be about an hour to work on the train, so a two-hour commute each day.

Depending on what time I finish, I would get home at about 8 pm.

There’s not much more that you want to do by this time at night except go to bed.

Here at Resource on Demand, we work remotely.

I was thinking about this the other day that the structure of my personal life feels a lot more complete and manageable because I have my office set up in my bedroom, which is comfortable.

Because I work remotely, I can also get to the gym before starting work, which is key for me.

I turn my computer on, normally, depending on my workload, between 8:00 and 9:00, and we have a company-wide meeting at 9:00 to discuss our plans and gear us up for the day.

Then we will take off and go on separate ways. Still, we speak either by email, on the phone, or on our WhatsApp group all day long.

There’s constant communication, which is important as we all deliver on various roles, and we celebrate each other’s success.

Remote working and being connected with the team in this way has so many personal benefits for me. My lifestyle is a lot healthier, and my healthy eating and personal life are just working from home; it’s made things a lot more manageable, which I enjoy as well.

Interviewer: It’s good to hear. You don’t have to live in London to gain the benefits of not having to do commutes these days, that’s for sure.

From a Remote Working Viewpoint, How Does It Help You Achieve Results?

The good thing about working from home is having access to a computer and a phone so that you can control your day at any point of the day.

Sometimes, if I finish work at, say 5:30 in the evening, I’ll go to the gym and do something; I’ll have some plan after work to do.

If I work in London or work anywhere else, you get back from work and then there might be some stuff that you wanted to do at work for a little bit longer, but you haven’t got time to do it because of the commute.

Now working remotely and from home, I always seem to have time to do everything I’ve ever wanted to do, including staying on top of my workload to go the extra mile but still having time to see my mum after work.

I was always curious to see how working remotely would work, but it’s turned out a lot better than I ever expected.

There’s a fear of performing as well from home as I would if I’m around people in the office. I suppose that’s up to you to figure out, but at the same time, you do figure it out.

You realise; actually, I’ve done a lot better than working around people because I’ve got time to concentrate and plan everything I need to do to deliver on my work.

How Was it Being Remotely Onboarded as a New Team Member?

Every other single job that I’ve ever had has always been, as I say, office-based, so this is a completely new experience for me.

I suppose the way to look at it is that if the right people are guiding you, it’s clear information, and you’ve listened to the instructions. You understand, and it’s been explained properly, and that sort of thing it works.

I find that onboarding it’s the same with most companies over the first few days, where we are naturally given a lot of information, and some of it you will need to reread.

The main things are that you get set up on the systems and that sort of thing, and then you learn from there. You’ve always got someone next to you normally in an office to ask a question, and this is where it’s good with ROD because the team and Lee and Theresa are always there to help.

Certainly, from my first week, I was on the phone and productive within a couple of days.

At ROD, I have been lucky as Theresa has put together some impressive tutorials that we could go back to in the library function on our database if we needed to refresh ourselves about anything.

We always access those tutorials or pretty much anything that you ever wanted to know. The information was there, and again, Theresa put the time and effort into creating clear tutorials so that anyone could go into our learning platform when needed.

How was it Integrating into a Team as a New Remote colleague, and How Has it Evolved?

The good thing is that most of my time was spent within Theresa looking at the database and the ROD process when I started. We would have a company-wide call at 9 am and then another one at 4:15 pm.

There was still that interaction, although not physical. It was always good to see how everyone else’s days had gone.  I was learning from them, and that was better than– I think at the beginning of my whole career, it’s always good to listen, learn, and then contribute after that.

The two calls daily, certainly, I had that team element there. When I provided candidates on the jobs that they were managing the accounts of, I’d have conversations on the phone with the account managers. They’d tell me more about the company that was hired but then the feedback then to the candidates. I had daily interactions with the guys and the girls, which worked.

Unless things evolved, I was managing my accounts, and then the people onboarded after me, then they’ll have that sort of collaboration on how we could service that client.

Whilst you’re delivering on your work, you’re trying to help your colleagues deliver on their work as well. There’s just the constant cross-collaboration all day long. That was good.

Do The Team Physically Get Together?

Interviewer: I know that there are times when you get together as a team face-to-face.

Nick: I think it was about a week or possibly two weeks after I started that Lee and Theresa drove to St Alban’s to come and see me and say hi in person.

It was just nice that they came down and made an effort to say hi, spend a bit of time, we went for coffee, we went for a walk, I showed them the size of St. Albans. Then we went out for a team night out in London one evening when the European Championships were on.

We have a staff Christmas do coming up, so I’m looking forward to it. I didn’t feel awkward at any point meeting anyone because you’re speaking to your team members all day long anyway, so I wasn’t like, “Oh my God, hi, what’s your name?”

How Are You Enjoying Being a Recruiter in the Salesforce Ecosystem?

There was just something about it. Since I’ve been working specifically in the Salesforce ecosystem, I know that I’ve made the right choice because– I don’t know what it is people are nice in general.

Salesforce is always evolving, which is the other element of being part of something always changing. It’s always exciting. No two days are the same.

Interviewer: Also, I think because, as you said, that when you were researching different technologies perhaps to specialise in Salesforce, the growth of the market has accelerated so much, and will continue to do so.

Nick: I think the key thing to consider here is the world that we’re in now, and the unfortunate event of Coronavirus has changed our lives, altered the way that we operate both in businesses and as people.

Salesforce is that type of technology that is perfect for those events. It’s a cloud-based technology.

The Salesforce market is booming. It’s so busy at the moment. Since I joined, it has got busier and busier. From what I understand, Salesforce has had its best year in terms of signing up new partners.

As they evolve, and as these partners grow, they’re going to need people to help. We’ve been working with many companies where we’ve helped them from that initial inception, where they’ve just become a partner.

Whilst we’re still working with them, we now work with people at companies at the beginning of their careers, as well as establishing ourselves with those much larger companies that used us and then have recommended us to other companies because of our ability to deliver and our knowledge of the market.

It is an exciting market. It’s always evolving, and there are new business opportunities all over the place.

Again, going back to the benefits of working from home gives me the access to stay on top of things and is critical in this type of market. I think you’d be in the office to at least ten o’clock every night if you were in a London-based job, to keep on top of things.

Working from home, it is easy to log in at eight o’clock or nine o’clock at night to send a quick email back or check something on the system or handle an approach from someone on LinkedIn because they’ve seen or been recommended to speak to us by another candidate that we’ve had a good interaction with.

Yes, it’s just so much easier. I have been able to mould my life to fit around my work life.

What Would You Say to Someone Considering Working Remotely for Resource on Demand?

I think it depends where they’re coming from. Everyone’s got their own story about what they want their career to be like.

For example, I’ve got a friend who works for a big recruitment company like I did, but then he’s not happy. It was the same for me until I joined ROD and realised the commute and lack of control of my life made me miserable.

In the new norm, remote working with Resource on Demand is working really well for me. Depending on where the people are coming from or where they are in their careers, you have to ask what offers you happiness.

Again, I’ll keep going back to working with a great team and leaders is what it’s about for me now.

I wanted to go back to the point of wanting to work for people as opposed to having to work for people because they pay your wages.

The whole family and productivity element and the support you get from Lee and Theresa keep you at the top of your game.

It’s definitely what I’d advise if you’re looking for a career move where you physically wake up in the morning and get out of bed because you want to get out of bed. This is the type of move that I would encourage you to go for.

Nick White Salesforce Recruiter – 2022

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