Bdaily meets experienced recruiter, Lawrence Mallinson

It’s Labour Market week on Bdaily. Lawrence Mallinson, managing director and owner of James White Drinks Ltd, commented on how he recruits staff into the different roles within his company, and why it’s important his workers have a strong work-ethic. He currently employs 28 people.

“When I bought James White Drinks 24 years ago it was a defunct local cider producer which was famous in Suffolk, but nowhere else. We started off making single variety clear, pressed apple juices, but over the years have increasingly expanded into vegetable juices.

“Our major brands are Big Tom spicy tomato juice, granted a Royal Warrant in 2002 and Beet It, our range of beetroot juices, which have been developed in conjunction with medical and sports performance research into natural dietary nitrate supplementation. It’s been a difficult market for high quality organic/ premium drinks, but these two leading brands are doing really well..

“Recruitment of employees has been achieved over the years in many ways. Starting off in 1989, I inherited three production workers with the company, who are still with me today. We have grown slowly and steadily reIying on relations of existing staff and other local connections for many positions.

“We are really a rural business but are located close enough to Ipswich to mean we have a large potential source of labour with a good range of skills. Over the years the company has gradually taken on more staff, but that has been a very slow process. We have never had to launch a big recruitment drive.

“Of the 28 people I employ, there are only a few that were recruited for specialist roles – general manager, food technologist, financial controller, dispatch manager . Everyone else learns on the job.

“We have found that advertising in our regional paper to be very successful for these specialist roles. I know this is a rather old fashioned method but it still works. I have always been very resistant to using recruitment agencies as they are very expensive for what they actually do, and do not save much time. Doing it ourselves works.

“A well worded advertisement is important to provide the key information to attract the right candidates. Do not oversell the position. The number of applications varies widely and vetting these is time consuming but covering letters often give a lot away. I am a great believer in short CV’s focused on facts and with as little “self-puffery” as possible.

“We have had adverts that produce well over 100 applicants – but this is not always the case. There are normally only a maximum of 10 that actually fit the qualifications that we are looking for – despite us spelling these out clearly. Then they get a quick e-mail rejection or a request to come for an interview with the warning it will last only 5 minutes.

“This works when recruiting locally. I have recently discovered the benefits of doing this first interview by Skype. In my opinion 5 minutes is enough time to ascertain if a candidate is a serious contender or not. I can just hear the personnel managers yelping! There is nothing worse than going through the motions of a full interview having realised within a couple of minutes that the candidate is not suited to the role.

“With luck there will be 2 or 3 candidates that merit a longer interview. Once these are finished it can be difficult to chose. It is important to follow up references where possible over the phone. You can learn a lot about someone and I have often only finally made a decision after such conversations. The key is to be focused on whether the candidate has the essential skills, has the right motivation for wanting the job and personality to work as part of our existing team.

“Recently I advertised on the internet for the first time. I wanted a specialist sales manager who had knowledge of the sports nutrition market. I used one particular jobs site and was very pleased with the result. We got a good response from mainly correctly skilled applicants and have now appointed someone.

“Another internet triumph came when I recruited my personal assistant from an advert we put on our website.

“Recruitment for our less specifically skilled jobs is quite a different matter. We let our existing staff know that we are looking for a new recruit and they often recommend someone. We rarely need to advertise. We’ve recently appointed the son of a sales manager as an apprentice in production, and the daughter of a production worker is now working in the office.

“Being still a small company there is not really a career path on offer other than growing as the company grows. But over the years we have brought in a few experienced skilled staff and it has been great to see us grow as a professional team. There is a strong ethos of all working together on something about which we are proud.

“I look for people who are flexible, with a can-do attitude and a strong work-ethic. The production staff are a really friendly team - if someone has a crisis and has to leave, then everyone else rolls up their sleeves and works that bit harder to get the job done. We do not have a culture of regular overtime, but when it is needed everyone helps out.

“I have found if you treat people well and give them as much flexibility as practical (this is difficult for production jobs), they respond to that. In larger companies workers often take advantage of that - but because we are just a small team, people cannot get away with it.”

For more from Labour Market Week, check out; Focus on STEM subjects will drive innovation;overcoming the UK skills gap; why recruiters need to search for the x-factor; recruitment among growing industries; Bdaily meets the labour market advisor.

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