At YF, one of our most popular services for client brands is people recruitment. I find it fascinating as a bellwether for the industry.
Which brands and categories are in growth? Which are in decline? Where are investors putting their money, or pulling it out?
All these things, in our experience, tell us a huge amount about the likelihood of a challenger brand to succeed. After all, people problems translate incredibly quickly into financial problems – and vice versa.
So in the spirit of bellwethers, the recent waves of senior appointments in challenger brands should be seen as insight into the maturing of the industry. As should the fact that over the last three years, YF’s executive search business has grown more than 600% while our graduate recruitment business has shrunk by 75%.
The shape of team-building in these brands has changed quite fundamentally. What used to be briefs for a “young, hungry, ambitious grad who can turn their hand to anything” has evolved to “experienced, knowledgeable right-hand person who can take weight off me and drive real growth”.
What used to be “one to two years of experience is plenty – I can develop beyond that” has evolved to “I don’t want to have to develop them – I want them to know exactly what they’re doing”.
And what used to be “surely they will take a pay cut to work for a startup” has evolved to “I know we have to be competitive to win the best people”.
They are also increasingly coming to us to help them hire non-executive directorss – reinforcing the same trends.
This was always the structure for brands at a certain stage of life, but now it’s happening earlier in the lifecycle of new brands. Founders are no longer taking risks when it comes to people – they want the finished product. And, on the whole, they are willing to pay for top talent.
Why? We believe it stems from a combination of factors: hybrid working making it harder to develop people, rocky and unpredictable waters making the need for specialists more pressing, and increased pressure from investors to ensure teams are fit for purpose (I know this because investors are briefing us a lot too).
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean businesses are spending more on people – it usually means they’re hiring fewer people with a higher salary per head.
Equally as interesting is the briefing of executive search for challenger brands. There are commonalities between the leaders challenger brands are seeking that we don’t see in other parts of fmcg.
Leaders in challenger brands must be structured but not too structured. Commercial but not blindly so. Excellent strategists, but comfortable with ambiguity and rapid change. Big business-trained but challenger-minded. I have heard many search specialists shrug these off as paradoxical, but to me it makes perfect sense and is absolutely correct.
Beyond all else, they need to be hungry and ambitious, demonstrably passionate about the business they are applying for, and ready to devote themselves to the goals of the business for a good chapter of their lives.
This is the beginning of the recruitment bar being raised in the challenger brand world – something their buyers and investors will very much welcome.
As we look forward, it will be interesting to see if and how this trend accelerates the pace of innovation. Or, counterintuitively, will the introduction of many people with best practice and proven track records drive challenger brands to lose what makes them different in fmcg? I reserve judgment.
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