Blueprint for Building Great Teams

Why Every Application Gets Read by a Human (with Sarah Mukherjee MBE)

How do you build a recruitment process that genuinely tests for values, in a 50-person organisation operating in 120 countries? Sarah Mukherjee MBE (CEO, IEMA, former BBC Environment Correspondent) shares the practical operating model behind a small, global, values-driven team: human-read applications, peer interviewers, a welcome letter at the front of every job description, and why ‘soft skills’ should be renamed professional skills. You’ll learn: * How to test for values without relying on rehearsed answers * Why every application is worth a human read * What the ‘welcome letter’ front-page does to your applicant pool * Why ‘professional skills’ is a better, fairer name for the things that actually make business work #ValuesDrivenHiring #ProfessionalSkills #HumanInTheLoop #JobDescriptions #PeopleAndCulture #NotForProfit #Sustainability #TeamBuilding

Why I Scrapped the Probationary Period (with Ken Mackness)

What if scrapping probationary periods was the most powerful trust signal you could send a new hire? Ken Mackness (CEO, membership, charity, private and local authority sectors) makes the case for hiring on values, trusting from day one, and building boards that challenge rather than echo. Plus, why most recruitment failures are the company’s fault, not the candidate’s. You’ll learn: * Why values and transferable traits beat technical experience * How to use trust as the operating principle of a team * Why scrapping probationary periods can lift performance from day one * What separates a culture fit board from a culture add one #Hiring #Leadership #Trust #Probation #CultureAdd #Membership #NotForProfit #TeamBuilding

The framework angle Clarity, Connection, Confidence: The Three Cs of Hiring Young Talent (with John Yarham)

Why do so many employers say they want young talent, then build processes that quietly filter young people out? John Yarham (CEO, The Careers & Enterprise Company) shares 25+ years of practical insight into what genuinely works: essential skills over soft skills, reimagined work experience, the apprenticeship opportunity most employers miss, and the three Cs that decide whether early talent succeeds. You’ll learn: * Why ‘soft skills’ should be called essential skills * What reimagined work experience looks like, and why SMEs can run it * Why ‘recruit from the left’ wins for most UK businesses * The three Cs that decide whether early talent thrives or stalls #EarlyTalent #Apprenticeships #WorkExperience #EssentialSkills #Hiring #Education #YoungPeople #TeamBuilding Links discussed * Measure your early careers outreach with CEC’s free 25-minute assessment here: https://employer.careersandenterprise.co.uk/#/registration [https://employer.careersandenterprise.co.uk/#/registration] * Find your local careers hub: https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/careers-hubs/contact-your-local-careers-hub [https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/careers-hubs/contact-your-local-careers-hub] * The new Skills England skills classification tool is here: https://skillsclassification.org/ [https://skillsclassification.org/]

Why "Will to Succeed" Beats Skill Every Time: Building Modern SDR Teams (with Frances Ingham)

If you hire the right person, you're 70% of the way there. The rest is process. Frances Ingham (Head of Sales Development EMEA, Vimeo) breaks down why "will to succeed" matters more than skill, why most modern SDR teams are over-reliant on automation, and where to find SDR talent that nobody else is looking at. You'll learn: * How to spot the will to succeed in an interview * Why graduate academies and non-traditional talent pools outperform second jobbers * How to turn an underperforming SDR around (and when you can't) #SalesDevelopment #SDRHiring #SaaS #CommercialLeadership #TeamBuilding

How do you cut £170,000 of annual recruitment agency spend without breaking hiring?

Caroline Oxley (Chief People Officer, Evolve) walked into a business spending £208,000 a year on agencies and reduced it to £38,000 in 12 months, whilst the team grew by almost 50% and Evolve was ranked #15 in the Best Companies Technology Sector list. You'll learn: * How to build an internal recruitment function hiring managers actually want to use * Why managers unconsciously recruit in their own image, and what that costs you * Why "subject matter expert" recruiters are often overrated * Where AI genuinely helps in hiring, and where it makes a bad situation worse #InternalRecruitment #PeopleAndCulture #HRStrategy #RecruitmentCost #AIInHiring #TeamBuilding