Staffing Industry Spotlight: Suky Sodhi, President of Professional Selection

Staffing Industry Spotlight is an interview series with staffing leaders who are shaping the staffing industry. The series is brought to you by Ascen, an all-in-one employer of record and back office platform for staffing agencies. In this installment, we spoke with Suky Sodhi, President of Professional Selection, a top rec2rec recruitment agency in North America, and the founder of the Canadian Staffing Industry Summit, a leading staffing industry conference. Suky is also the author of the book How to Launch a Staffing Agency and coaches top recruitment agency founders.

Francis:

Suky, thank you so much for being on the Staffing Industry Spotlight. The first thing we'd like to know is, who are you, and what do you do?

Suky Sodhi:

I'm Suky Sodhi, founder of Professional Selection and Elite Global Recruiters. Been in this industry way too long. Put it this way, I started when there was no ATS. Literally, you had these cards, really thin lines for your candidate management. Now all I do is recruit and coach the recruiting industry around the world, and without meaning to, I've become a disruptor in this industry.

Francis:

A disruptor?

Suky Sodhi:

Yep. And I enjoy it. That might make me sound a little crazy, but I love disrupting the industry. Why not disrupt, as opposed to be disrupted?

Francis:

You have two firms, Elite Global Recruiters and Professional Selection. How did those get their start? How are they different?

Suky Sodhi:

Professional Selection is the original business name. That's what I launched back in England, and we'd recruited for the data securities industry. It wasn't even a rec-to-rec at that time. I dealt with the data securities industry and we recruited across EMEA. One of my clients asked me to relocate to Canada to take on their business in 2005. That's when I flipped industries and thought, “Hey, why not disrupt the Canadian market?

Then Covid happened. I had to ask myself, what now? As you know, we had a much stricter lockdown here. At the time, I found myself naturally coaching industry professionals who had been in business for years and people who had just started.

So I went to the bank, took a loan, and launched EGR [Elite Global Recruiters], our coaching arm. With EGR, we recruit and train the recruiting industry. I work with executives one-on-one to help them grow their businesses and their teams. But, shameless plug here, what's also happened since then is it's morphed into two more business lines, as I've now launched the Canadian Staffing Summit. We've had two sell-out summits. We were fortunate to have you at the last one. But literally, I just got off on a call announcing the Recruitment Professional Forum.

We did the soft launch about two weeks ago. We already have 25 or 26 members. So when I say I enjoy disrupting, I do.

Francis:

When is the forum?

Suky Sodhi:

No, so the forum is actually a membership community for the recruiting industry and partners to the recruiting industry.

Francis:

So this is sort of the underlying forum for events like the Canadian Staffing Industry Summit.

Suky Sodhi:

But not only that, there's going to be learnings in there. There will be regular meetups, round tables, and one place for the staffing industry to come together, regardless of size or sector. We've got retained search people signed up, contingency, independent recruiters, and then we will be working with partners. In Canada, you've got the largest economy on our doorstep, the US. We actually have an event on September the 11th, where we are going to be hosting a session for the members. This is how you do business in the US. So there's going to be loads of learning, round tables. You name it, this community, this forum will be doing that. It's already open to international partners, and we are going to be opening it up to US staffing agencies as well.

Francis:

Oh, wow. So, it is not just Canada.

Suky Sodhi:

Well, why not? I’m closer to the US border than the rest of Canada. It's easier for me to jump on a plane and get to the US than it is to get north of Canada. I don't even know what the north of Canada looks like, So why not?

Francis:

What does the membership look like? Do people have to pay to get access?

Suky Sodhi:

Yep. The founding membership for the member side is only $350.

Francis:

A month or?

Suky Sodhi:

A year.

Francis:

Oh wow, great.

Suky Sodhi:

I have heavily subsidized this to bring this community together.

Francis:

Yeah, that's just barely administrative.

Suky Sodhi:

It's not even administrative. My accountant doesn't like this bit.

Francis:

You're doing basically a community service at this point. But I guess maybe that's the point, to have a vibrant community.

Suky Sodhi:

Correct. And look at the legislation. You know how tough legislation has been here, and getting it, and getting our voice heard. Especially if you're a smaller agency. So yeah, the focus of that really is the community.

Francis:

What’s interesting is that in the US there aren’t many rec2rec recruiters.

Suky Sodhi:

UK, yes. Not so many in the US, but Australia, yeah.

Francis:

In the US, I feel like there are not that many rec-to-recs. We know of about four firms. That's kind of it for US rec-to-rec. But in the UK, there are many. There are what seems like 150 rec-to-rec recruiting firms. The industry is so saturated, and it sounds like you saw that there just wasn't that in Canada.

Suky Sodhi:

There wasn't. I was the first rec-to-rec. I literally thought, if I'm serious about this, I've got to put some money behind it. So launched it, brick and mortar. We have a 2000-square-foot foot office hired in downtown Toronto. So it's a serious investment that I decided to make.

Francis:

Obviously it's gone very well, and now it's developed into the community, like Canadian Staffing Industry Summit and the coaching.

You see a lot of companies when they're first starting out. What kind of challenges do you see the firms that you're dealing with, the ones that come to you? Is it all about recruiting challenges, or is it more operational? What are the biggest challenges to the firms that you see?

Suky Sodhi:

So the biggest challenges are a couple of different things. First, they come and say, "We can't find the talent," It makes sense. If you're an accounting and finance [recruiting] firm, your database is not recruiters, although you have a network.

I just covered a search in Hong Kong and Singapore. It was trying to find the right talent in this market that can bring a book of business and really turn their business around. It's that sales piece. Everybody wants that sales piece. They want leaders that are sales-focused. Nobody is really asking me to do that same depth and breadth for recruiters for the candidate side.

Francis:

In the UK for instance, they go 360 model, where the salespeople are recruiting a lot of the time. But you’re saying agencies are just looking salespersons?

Suky Sodhi:

We deal with executives all the way to desk level. We've got a retained search arm. But if I look at the common denominator with all of them, the candidate's career mut be heavily focused on the sales channel.

Francis:

It's interesting you bring up the book of business. Do you see that actually happening? I mean, getting a great salesperson, and they bring their book?

Suky Sodhi:

No. That doesn't happen to the extent people think it's going to happen. First of all, it's a huge integrity issue. And this is what I say to clients. If you want to bring in someone who's going to day one, give their book of business to you. What do you think they're going to do when they leave? They want to do it to others, but they don't want others to do it to them. If you think about it, it's not as easy to transfer a book of business as companies are sometimes tied into long-term agreements. Some relationships may transfer in six months or 12 months.

Francis:

Naturally, like natural attrition, as opposed to taking that book from their former employer.

Suky Sodhi:

Yeah. Think of it from the client's perspective. They put 100 contractors in. You move. Unless they have a business case, they're not going to disrupt their business just because you went somewhere else. If there's a business case, they'll disrupt it. I'm not saying they won't give you future business. So I think people have got to be really careful when they're looking at it and saying, oh, but this person, I need him to bring a book of business.

There's this desperation in the market right now for net new clients, and there's pressure on margins. I know we're going to slightly digress, but I'm currently working on two retained searches in the US, and they desperately want somebody who understands a particular vertical. It’s an level executive role within retained search. They want candidates who understand one specific vertical that they want to break into.

I had to work with them to say, "Why not look at people in related verticals?" They may not bring a book of business from day one, but they still know who to talk to. Their response was, "But we need to set up this division. We're putting a lot of money into it." So, I'm even seeing it at that C-suite executive.

Francis:

They're trying to get somebody like a cookie cutter. "No, I want this exact person, I want their book of business, and I want to slot them in." And that doesn't happen. In reality, like you said, if somebody understands a similar space, like an adjacent space with a similar cost structure, they will probably work. If they understand a certain type of, let's say it's in IT, they understand DevOps, they are probably going to understand cybersecurity. It's similar. If you can the CTOs of organizations, it kind of doesn't matter. You can have a similar product.

Suky Sodhi:

Absolutely. So, if you've been in aerospace and have been selling X into aerospace, you know the decision-makers. You know who to go to. As long as you have strong existing relationships, you can network your way to the hiring managers through referrals.

But the other piece we should talk about here is that these successful candidates are not there because of their base salaries. They're there because of their total compensation. And you want them to leave $3-400,000 on the table, come over here, and you'll pay them $100, maybe $120? Why would somebody do that? So there's this huge disconnect.

The irony of it all is that this is precisely what they tell their clients. I'm going to make this up. Let's say they're looking for a vice president of sales transportation. That individual's on a $250K base with their commission; they're doing $350K. When their client says, "We want that person, but we only want to pay them $200K," they're educating them and saying, "But hang on a second. This is the package. This is what the market value is of that person." They're educating their client and saying, "No, you've got to give me more money."

Yet, when hiring themselves, they're often not having the same internal conversations. I often end up saying, "Well, what do you tell your clients?" then there's that light bulb moment, an a-ha moment followed by a but.

Francis:

That's such a good point, people totally get how this works in recruiting, and then they forget it the second they need it. When the tables are turned, they forget that this is how you need to think to get it done. This is kind of how people treat their business lives versus their personal lives. In business, they might be very good and calculated at risk-taking. In their personal life, they're pinching pennies in a way that doesn't make sense.

Suky Sodhi:

Yeah. And is it rooted in fear? Partly. Is it rooted in fear or desperation? Is it rooted in just narrow-minded thinking? I see all of it. I won't name names, but we fired a massive US company within four months.

Francis:

Oh, no.

Suky Sodhi:

Oh, yeah. There's like 50 roles. It was a big deal. Just because they couldn't wrap their head around this bit.

Francis:

They weren't prepared to pay what it takes?

Suky Sodhi:

They said they were prepared, so we started working all the rest of it, but the cracks appeared. And it wasn't just that. It wasn't just the money, it was how they were treating the candidates, as well. That was what really broke the camel's back. Chief of sales role, I'll just give you an example. That role was total package, about $500K. Imagine not turning up for the call.

Francis:

Oh, no.

Suky Sodhi:

Not twice.

Francis:

Oh, my God.

Suky Sodhi:

Yep. There was situation where everybody loved the candidate internally, but he had to go through their internal process. Three times, the final interviewer failed to turn up for the call—not once, not twice, three times.

Francis:

That looks so bad for you too, right?

Suky Sodhi:

Yeah. That kills our brand.

Francis:

Yeah. Your firm just looks terrible to that candidate. You're burned, basically

Suky Sodhi:

I can almost forgive them if I can say that’s because they know no better. But as a staffing industry, we know better.

Francis:

Right.

Suky Sodhi:

We all talk about candidate experience.

Francis:

Do you notice the difference? You're doing searches all the world. I mean you're doing Canada, you're doing US, you're doing Singapore and Hong Kong.

Do you notice that the way the staffing firms recruit talent?

Suky Sodhi:

I guess in many ways it's all the same, yet different, in the sense that, so when I do international stuff, I do it for my large clients, and they have that mindset. So let's say they're an American company and they're going into Singapore. It's a very different market. They go into Singapore with that Americanized mindset, but Singapore has a very different work culture. So, I often find that it takes a while to get the education piece done.

Francis:

Are you educating the client on what to expect in that market?

Suky Sodhi:

Yeah, exactly. They get there in the end. The Philippines is another one. Filipinos are naturally soft, calm, and caring and don't say no. So if you tell them to do this, they're literally going to follow the exact direction you give them.

When you look at Hong Kong, with everything that happened there—the riots, COVID-19, etc.- people are exhausted, and I mean physically and mentally exhausted. So you have those types of challenges there, but fundamentally, everyone's looking for the same person.

Francis:

Right. They're looking for somebody to sell for them.

Suky Sodhi:

Correct.

Francis:

It probably takes a long time to educate the clients. What do you do to get them prepared?

Suky Sodhi:

What we do, and it doesn't matter whether we're helping a UK or US firm come into Canada or a Canadian firm expanding into the US, one of the first things we do is ask whether they actually understand the market they're going into. So, it's almost a crash course on the staffing landscape there.

I'll use English companies as an example. One of the things I tell them is that most of Canada and America don't care about your pool table or the beer fridge. Sure, that's nice to have. In the US, what they care about is income, career, and remote work. That's a big one. Whether it's hybrid or 100% remote from home, the North American market tends to want to do their job, go home to their families, or whatever it is they're going home to. However, if you look at the English market, you will see that we spend a lot of time socializing.

Francis:

In the US, people are so businesslike. It's like they do their job, they have their life. Whereas in the UK, I’ve always noticed people are constantly having pints together with their team.

Suky Sodhi:

And then they wonder why this person isn't fitting in. Well, you're judging them because they're not going out.

Francis:

Right.

Suky Sodhi:

Yeah. So, no, because that works over there. And I don't know if it's working as much these days. I grew up in that culture. But people here don't care about that. Yes, they want to feel part of the team, but no, they don't want to ring the bell because they made a placement.

Francis:

You see the bells, you see the videos!

Suky Sodhi:

Yeah. Americans, Canadians don't care about that, for the most part. There's some that love that kind of thing. But no, they don't care about that. They're like, "What are you doing?"

Francis:

My first company that I did was in the UK and I loved the business culture there. It was so different. It was so much more social than the US. The US is very business-oriented. Doing the company there was a lot more fun. But ultimately--my second company that was based in the US and that we sold--you make a lot more money. But it's a lot less social, it's more business. The market's so big. People are very transactional. What we found, I don't know if you've seen this as well, but we found that in general, everything is very transactional in the US. You get straight to the point for things. Whereas in the UK, you build a relationship. I don't know if you've noticed that as well. Running a business is just so different from Europe to here.

Suky Sodhi:

Yeah, 100%; that surprised me when I moved in 2005. If you didn't want to do business with me in England, you're like, "No, Suky, I'm not doing business with you, but should we go and get a drink? Do you want to go and grab coffee? Do you want to grab lunch?" So we could still talk. There was still an opportunity to create a relationship and do business in the future.

Francis:

So bring it back to the forum, and so you have this coaching business, you've got the Canadian Staffing Summit, which we went to, and it was electric. I think the way that you set it up was really interesting. I think there were 300 people.

Suky Sodhi:

We maxed out. The room capacity was 235 or 236.

Francis:

Do you think that there will be more events like that, that are that size, or is that going to be the flagship event?

Suky Sodhi:

There's probably going to be more, okay? You've heard this first here. I'm actually going to do one in the US next year.

Francis:

Do we know where do we know where?

Suky Sodhi:

I've got some ideas. I'm leaning towards Texas. I just love working in Texas. I love the fact that you said the atmosphere was electric, because that's what I wanted to create. Hey, I’m North Indian. We are the party state of India. So, I try to bring that to everything I do. You unfortunately couldn't make the night before, but next year's summit, the night before, I've had to go and get a much bigger private bar. I think upstairs, we maxed out at 50, hit maximum capacity, and overflowed. So we've doubled it for next year.

Francis:

I'm super excited about the US event as well. You can't go wrong with Texas.

One thing that I do want to ask about is your book. One of the first interactions I had with you was about your book, How to Launch a Staffing Agency, which I think came out two years ago.

Suky Sodhi:

Yep, two years ago.

Francis:

At what point did you decide to write a book?

Suky Sodhi:

If you had said to me five years ago I'd do that, I'd be like, no way. No way. I am not a pen-and-paper type of girl. I'm very much a visual, verbal person. But my coach at the time was like, "You've got to put this on paper. You've got to do this." So, in many ways, I begrudgingly did it.

I can't believe how well it has done. I was at dinner last night with a senior executive from one of the largest agencies worldwide, and she said, "Suky, I'm on page whatever." She's literally reading the book. I did not write the book for experienced people. I wrote the book for people who are contemplating the industry. The book was the hardest thing I've done.

Francis:

Harder than organizing events?

Suky Sodhi:

Yeah, 100%. My husband and I went to Florida a couple of times, and I locked myself in a hotel room with the mantra, "I've got to write a chapter."

Francis:

You lock yourself in Florida somewhere...

Suky Sodhi:

And my editor—bless her—I used a lady out of the US. She said it normally takes three to six months to get the book sorted. I was like, "Well, you can double that with me." She kept coming back to me and saying, "Suky, you've got to simplify this a little bit more." Which was frustrating. I think I'm pretty straightforward in the first place. But yes the book was way It was out of my comfort zone.

Francis:

I read the book, and I thought it was great. One thing that you said that was interesting is that your coach told you to do this. How do you think about coaches? Is that something that is for just super high-level executives?

Suky Sodhi:

Oh, no. My regret is not getting a coach sooner.

Francis:

How soon are you talking about? How soon should you have gotten the coach?

Suky Sodhi:

Day one.

Francis:

Day one of when you started the business? When you were back, when you were, before you started the business?

Suky Sodhi:

When my daughter came into the workforce, I told her, "Get a coach." So, she's used one of the coaches that I've used. Because as you grow, if your coach isn't growing with you, the relationship fails to add value. But I think everyone should have a coach. My personal belief is that your coach must understand your sector and your industry. In my case, I couldn’t find an industry coach back then. So, I used coaches with experience of disrupting an industry.

Francis:

How often do they meet with you? What's the cadence of interaction with the coach?

Suky Sodhi:

Typically, it is monthly, but some I meet with weekly. They all have my mobile phone number. They can just voice note me, "Hey, Suky, this just happened. I think I'm going to do this." So I can support them in the moment.

Francis:

"I am about to make a really bad decision.”

Suky Sodhi:

I'll give you an example. There was one client. She engaged me last June. We knew there were two decisions she had to make. She knew the decisions she needed to make, but she just couldn't.

Francis:

What were those?

Suky Sodhi:

Let go of two individuals.

Francis:

Oof.

Suky Sodhi:

A bottleneck to the business. But they'd fed her that she'd lose the clients. It took me four months to get her to the stage where she felt comfortable with making a decision. In the meantime, she needed to put a plan in place. So, think of it like a muscle. If you've hurt this muscle, stabilize the surrounding muscles to support that." So we spent so much time doing that, and she was so nervous when letting the first person go. She messaged me, saying, "I'm going to do it." I'm like, "Fantastic, let's talk it through." But the weight lifted off her shoulders. That was beautiful to see.

Francis:

Wow. And so, it turned out well. Do you think a lot of coaching is, the mentee, the sort of person being coached, do they often know what to do but they need someone else to tell them.

Suky Sodhi:

One particular global CEO springs to mind— I spoke with him his morning. He knows what he must do; he needs to let someone go. He doesn’t like doing that and is struggling with it. So yes, they know what to do; they need to be able to talk it through—that safe zone. Suppose you're the CEO of a couple of billion-dollar businesses. You can't go to your peers and say, "I don't know how to make this decision."

Francis:

Yeah, you can't say, "I don't know."

Suky Sodhi:

Right.

Francis:

Speaking of these decisions, so we deal with many of founders of recruiting agencies that are our customers. What are the kind of things that you would, if you had a few words of advice for a staffing firm that's in Canada or in the US, they're new, it's working, but they're stuck. Maybe they're stuck at a million dollars a year in sales. Which is like, okay, that's fine, but people want to grow. What kind of things do you tell them to do?

Suky Sodhi:

So, first of all, getting from a zero to a million is tough. Then, making that next leap. Happens to all of us. What got you from zero to a million will not get you a million to $10 million. And sometimes, the person that needs to change is yourself. You may be the wrong person to take the business to the next level. It doesn't mean you are letting go of control or are a failure. In my PSI business, I'm the first to admit I was that bottleneck.

Francis:

What did you do to fix that?

Suky Sodhi:

I finally gave the reins to Sanjay and Chris because I realized, and my coach helped me realize, “let them do the job.” That allowed me to open up everything else. They've just made a hire who starts on Monday, and I remember them saying to me, "Do you want to meet her?" The old me would have said yes, but I asked a few questions, and then they made the offer.

Francis:

It is a great point that, in a way you find great people, you have to trust them to actually do the business.

Suky Sodhi:

But Francis, the crazy part is, Sanjay's my son. Even then, I was nervous to hand over the reins.

Francis:

One advantage of having family involved is that you have an extra layer of trust.

Suky Sodhi:

So the advice is to get out of your own way, and sometimes the person you've got to replace is you. That is a big thing.

Francis:

Great points. This is the kind of advice that our customers definitely need. At some point, you can't rely on just your sales ability, your operation ability, or your recruiting ability. The folks that get stuck, the founders, become the bottleneck, as opposed to scaling with the rest of the team.

Suky Sodhi:

Think about it like this. If the business is you, just you, no one's going to buy you, because when you are gone, there's no business left.

Francis:

Fortunately there are folks like yourself who can help find good people to scale these businesses. So, Suky, thank you so much for being on. Great advice, and awesome to hear about the conferences and the new forum.

Suky Sodhi:

Thank you.