INTERVIEWER: MARIAM THABET
About Alexander Mann Solutions: is a leader in international recruitment process outsourcing. It works on transitioning, transforming and delivering world-class processes across all stages of the resourcing and recruitment lifecycle. Alexander Mann Solutions has delivered RPO to international blue-chip clients since 1996.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Give us an idea of your early life and career and what it was about HR that attracted your professional attention?
Harry Marshall: I worked throughout my time at university and one of the jobs I did was in real estate as an agent for rental properties in South London, and sometime later I went on to do telesales for a home improvement company. I did well and enjoyed the pace and dynamism of a sales environment, so I went on to work for Hays in central London as a recruitment consultant handling senior accountancy placements for a variety of organisations based in central and West London. I have a natural sales streak and like to cultivate and maintain business relationships. In addition, I love discovering new people and understanding what makes them tick. Talent Acquisition professionals – whether on the agency side or RPO/in-house side, perform best when they are able to identify, match and then effectively market (or “sell”) that talent where they see it best fits. My friends say my job is a natural fit for my personality – I’m always the one introducing friends to each other if I think they will get on with each other or have a shared interest. A bit of a matchmaker, you could say!
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Your move to Novartis. There’s quite a gulf between industries and banking (Credit Swiss) and pharmaceuticals. What was it about Novartis that caught your interest?
Harry Marshall: Working for Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS) gives you extraordinary opportunity to be exposed to a wide variety of roles either cross-function or cross-industry (and often, cross-country). I left our Credit Suisse account in Singapore as the team was downsizing and AMS assigned me to run a small RPO in Jakarta, Indonesia for Novartis Pharma. It was immediately interesting for me as I was schooled in Indonesia and speak the language. It was certainly a new field for me, but I understood the cultural dynamics and I have to say I loved every minute of it. After our contract ended in Indonesia, I was required for a 3-month assignment in our Manila Shared Services centre, working with (again) Credit Suisse and the Global Sourcing team (where we had a team of 20+ supporting our on-site teams in New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong & Tokyo) rolling out specialised training, re-modelling the team and mentoring the ear-marked Team Leader to take on that role after I moved on. During that time, AMS won the contract with Novartis OTC in the MEA (+Russia & CIS)/APAC regions and I was brought in to run that account based in Singapore, and was tasked initially to build a world class team across several countries and get the operation up and running. I have always been attracted by internationally-focused work – working with different countries, cultures and languages – I find it fascinating and as I love to travel, it has been a great opportunity to visit places I never thought I’d go. I have learnt so much in this role and grown considerably as a professional – it is easily one of the best career experiences I’ve ever had.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: How did you perceive the culture of the business and how it operated?
Harry Marshall: Novartis is a truly global business, with a very entrepreneurial spirit. Novartis operates almost everywhere people exist and I find this fascinating. In theory, there is not a single person on the planet who could not benefit from a Novartis product and I believe it is aware of this prowess and commercial power, but exercises it so methodically and with integrity.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What is RPO? And what is the difference between RPO and Agency?
Harry Marshall: RPO is an industry within the Talent Acquisition arena, which was formed by our CEO, Rosaleen Blair, in 1996. It firstly stands for Recruitment Process Outsourcing and our clients’ outsource to us, or all of their talent acquisition functions. Typical clients are those with often very high volumes or complex hiring needs and are looking to increase efficiency and drive down the cost of recruitment transactions and of their recruitment operation. Usually, clients come to us wanting to reduce agency use, reduce their time to offer, or help them better approach how they resource their talent acquisition team in a more efficient manner. Essentially, we help clients spend less whilst being more sophisticated and agile when it comes to talent acquisition. We provide recruitment professionals, implement talent acquisition technology, provide media consultancy (and buying), implement robust and sophisticated recruitment metrics reporting amongst a wide range of associated products and services; emerging talent project management, executive search and psychometric assessment design to name just a few. Agencies are purely tasked with marketing the vacancies of their clients and submitting candidates to them for which they charge a fee upon successful placement. The average tenure of an AMS client is seven years continuously where we act as a strategic partner to our clients’ Talent Acquisition and HR teams and help them deliver on their global talent agendas. The longest (current) client we have is Vodafone in the UK, where we have delivered their high volume and highly complex talent acquisition programme for over 11 years.
Alexander Mann Solutions operates a business of over 3000 people in 60+ countries and is the global leader of sophisticated talent management solutions, including recruitment process outsourcing and specialist professional services, that help organisations attract, engage and retain top talent. More information can be found at www.alexandermannsolutions.com.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: RPO is new in the Middle East. How do you promote RPO within the region? And what are the difficulties that you have faced?
Harry Marshall: You ask this at a really exciting time as Alexander Mann Solutions is starting to build out our proposition in the Middle East. We have recently hired a regional Head of Business Development and Client Relationship Management, based in Dubai – Chance Wilson – who has a wealth recruitment and RPO experience across the Middle East over several years, to launch our business there. Partly, we work with clients in other parts of the world who are looking to us to provide them with appropriate support in the region, but we also find it a very exciting time to be building an RPO business in a part of the world which has the maturity and available talent to make a RPO business ours, viable there. We currently work with a number of organisations in the Middle East but there will be more to come – watch this space!
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Everyone has their own take on mergers and acquisitions and what can go right and wrong, as it’s all over the news that there is a merger between Novartis and GSK in one of the entities, what was your experience?
Harry Marshall: Mergers and acquisitions are, quite simply, a reality of the corporate landscape and if you are in business, and are going to have a long corporate career one must expect to live through a merger/acquisition at least a handful of times. It is natural for humans to fear the unknown, and when we hear that our organisation is being acquired or merging with another, panic and fear are often the knee-jerk reactions purely because all the facts and figures are never right in front of us. It usually takes a long time for such transactions to complete so my advice would be not to make rash decisions or quit your job just because of what you have heard. It doesn’t mean that everyone is going to get fired. It doesn’t mean your company or department is going to shut down – and if that were to happen, it would not certainly happen overnight. Consider what good such an event could do for your career.
Novartis OTC and GSK’s Consumer Healthcare business are forming a joint venture that will create the worlds’ largest consumer healthcare organisation and the worlds’ first Fast Moving Consumer Health (FMCH) business – I find that pretty exciting – and the vast majority of employees on both sides of the transaction will benefit from this evolution in terms of greater exposure, product experience and enhanced career opportunities. The joint venture is yet to complete at Novartis but we are excited by what the future holds. Novartis has worked tirelessly to ensure that there are regular communications about the progress of the deal and what it means for their businesses, their products and most importantly, their people going forward.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Focusing on driving efficiency, though, is a bit of a blunt instrument. What are your thoughts about that?
Harry Marshall: Driving efficiency has to be the top of any business manager’s agenda. The propensity to waste is mind blowing, and having worked with a number of high profile clients through the years, I’m often struck by the waste that you come across – of course almost all of it is unintentional – and more worryingly – unseen by the most influential people in the company. Waste comes in many forms – in process, in productivity, in money, in resources, in hardware and real estate. I’m sure we all get a bit jaded hearing about “driving efficiency” and “managing costs” but for people and businesses to succeed, they need to be operating at optimum efficiency and profitability whilst keeping their costs in check and waste is the number one enemy of this. A few years ago at AMS, in our (small) Singapore office we looked at our monthly office phone bill. Every month we were spending close to US$9,000 on a high volume of typically high-cost international phone calls. We took to using Skype and our own Microsoft Lync to communicate and conducted more calls via telephone conference so using local numbers to connect, and in a few months we managed to bring the bill down from several thousands to just several hundreds. It was a really simple act, and one that meant we contributed to our business meeting budget that year which meant we all got a decent bonus! We didn’t even have to stop doing anything we were already doing (making international calls), but it was a simple change that had a big impact. In England we have a saying that goes “look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves”!
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What advice do you have for our professional young readers who seek an HR Career?
Harry Marshall: It would probably be the same for any young person entering the job market now – learn, learn and learn. Be hungry to discover more and more about this industry and those who operate in it. In the first, say, five years of your career, you have the ability to try out new things maybe even switch direction if you need. Find out what you love, what you are good at, and what naturally interests you. Careers can last 30, sometimes 40 years, so in the beginning, be bold, take risks, try new things, push yourself and always strive to move out of your comfort zone. Don’t worry about making mistakes, you will learn and grown from them. Don’t just move jobs for money – look at the bigger picture – will you be happy? Where can an opportunity take you long term? We spend more time doing our jobs than really any other activity in our lives – enjoy what you do, find your passion! The money will follow and in all the years I’ve been working I really have realised it’s not everything. I would much rather be happy and have less money, than have lots of money and be miserable. That’s no life for anyone.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Thank you so much for sharing your valuable experience and time.