Blog

04/03/2021

By Chris Andrews – Head of Advisory

The driving force behind Stone, Chris’ approach to recruitment is logical and distinctive and withover 20 + years in the industry, he knows his stuff.

Let’s get to know Chris:

How did you get to where you are now? I have been in recruitment for most of my career and having moved from the UK back in 2003, I knew this would continue. I worked in large multinationals where reputation made life easy and in small businesses where you had to sell hard to get in front of a client.

In 2010, I decided, like many others to step it up a notch and go it alone. I was bored of hearing myself complaining about how recruitment could be better and as was probably everyone around me, so, Stone was born. Stone began as an Accountancy recruitment specialist and has since grown from this and now, it is multi-faceted. We develop a complete service for clients; from mapping out how to grow their business, to finding the staff to help them to do so, to future proofing their business model.

What do you love about recruitment? I love working with a massive range of companies and seeing how we, as humans, organise ourselves to achieve a common goal. I also think that being in a position to challenge assumptions and change people’s perceptions of the industry, of themselves and of their goals is quite unique. Having the freedom to work where I like, with whom I like is also pretty great.

How do you think that 2020 has changed the industry? 2020 won’t change the industry beyond speeding up a process that is already happening. That is, the large generalist recruiter with multiple divisions servicing large clients, will fade as a value proposition. The role of a recruiter will be mobile and be based around smaller, more focused relationships.

Recruiters will add value in one of two ways – either they will find a certain niche of candidate way faster than their clients (e.g developers / data scientists), where the cost of a recruitment fee is dwarfed by the growth curve of the client. Or, recruiters will need to add value by playing a more upstream, strategic role in growing their clients’ business, as an outsourced partner for example by building processes, training their Managers and aligning hiring with the company’s strategic goals.  

How does the next 12 months look for a candidate and hiring Managers? For anyone trying to find work, it’s always difficult. Fears around the drop in various federal stimulus packages will add to the concern of contraction in the market, so we expect the next 6 -12 months to be particularly challenging.

On the positive side, there are growth sectors where demand will continue, so we anticipate a large number of people re-training to move out of hard-hit sectors such as tourism and hospitality.

Favourite past time? Spending time with the family, playing guitar and trying to make my fishing boat work.

Favourite food? Anything off the BBQ with a beer, or eggs and bacon whilst camping… and coffee, every day, all day.   

Something you’d tell your teenage self?  Don’t worry about what other people think of you, just enjoy and don’t fear failure – it’s part of the cycle. And cut that hair, you look like an idiot.

Random fact about yourself? I had a hip transplant quite recently and I wish I had done it sooner.

What makes Stone different? We partner with our clients across workforce planning, employer branding and recruitment delivery. Our upstream, long term approach ensures consistent, high quality hiring decisions are made every day.

Contact Chris today and ask about Stone’s innovative approach to recruiting. We design and build the systems & processes which allow our clients to hire the best, every time.