“Technology is changing the way recruitment services are being adopted and consumed.”
Mark Long joined Salt, a global Digital Recruitment Agency in October 2016 as a Sales Director in the Creative Technology sector. He brings a wealth of experience in the recruitment industry that spans over 20 years. His motto is “helping to make the world a more successful and digital place.”
We sat down with him to discuss a wide range of topics that included his day to day role, challenges and opportunities in the recruitment industry and the impact of disruptive technology.
Describe your role at Salt
I’m a Sales Director – Creative Technology. I am leading a team focused on disruptive innovation and digital transformation shipping modern feature led software solutions, created elegantly, designed beautifully, with design led strategies and lean thinking.
We hire experienced talent with capabilities to include: Creative Design; Product Management; Invisible UI; UX & User Research, and isomorphic front end services (Node, React, JavaScript, Android, iOS). In addition, we deliver integrated candidates with offline design, visualisation, art work, re-touching, presentation, 3D and more.
High priorities within my role include:
- Team Management and looking after the team. Making sure they are doing their job at optimum level. I inspire, train, motivate, and mentor individuals to be the best they can with clear structures and processes within the organisation. Recruiting and hiring alongside our Head of Internal Recruitment to find and attract the best talent to come work for Salt. It’s a great company to work with for any aspiring digital recruiter looking to take their career to unprecedented heights.
- Customer engagement and excellence. I make sure our clients love us and want to do business with us by providing services aligned with their vision. This includes business development and account management. I work with decision makers to understand requirements and meet with customers regularly to review quality. I’m accountable for creating strategies that define how we will deliver talent and recruitment campaigns to our customers. I take a keen personal interest in our candidate and client experience.
- Divisional leadership. This relates to P&L ownership for the division in line with company targets. Problem solving, celebrating success, encouraging cross selling to the other teams and countries, strategy and creation for new ideas and campaigns, general company policies and responsibilities.
Tell me about the challenges in the role
The opportunity as I see it is to work with a global digital recruitment company at scale with its infrastructure and range of services. This brings with two main challenges. The first is building a team of world class recruiters able to deliver outstanding services to their clients. Make sure they are receiving the right training, development, and mentoring. All Salt Sales Directors run training programs to develop and grow existing team members. The aim is to create digital recruiters who are experts in their universe.
The other challenge is ensuring our customers have the best experience they can possibly have with a digital recruitment consultancy. If our customers view Salt in a similar way they would do with brands that are synonymous with a beautiful and elegant customer experiences such as Apple, Tesla, Amazon, Lego, etc. Our customers should feel they’re receiving the highest quality service level every time they work with Salt. Although we operate on a vast scale globally, we will provide that experience and associate it with brand Salt.
How do you see the future of digital recruitment?
Improving customer engagement and experience. Delivering better value for the clients and creating value.
Beyond that, we’re going to see a wider adoption of technology as the recruitment industry is ripe for disruption. Smart recruitment folks understand and embrace that. There’s no doubt they will continue with their style, swagger, and personality by adding value in words and colour, but, it must be through delivering an experience. Recruitment folks who fail to understand that will be bypassed by the fierce competition.
Directly for us here at Salt whilst we have ambitious plans complementing our international growth of the last few years, a clear 2017 outcome is to incrementally improve the performances of our teams, a little better every day!
What are the 3 things you love about your job?
I love changing people’s lives for the better. I changed my job for the first time in 15 years last year and it reminded me what a significant experience changing jobs is. Going through this process has really helped me reconnect with the work we do. Day in day out, we’re the balance that helps people in digital make those choices. The little things like the commute to work, the friendships, the dreams, the everyday details. I’m inspired seeing bold, brave and courageous decisions made that change people’s lives every day.
I love working with people. Recruitment is a people’s business. Helping people in my team who are on their own journeys is amazing, seeing people be inspired and achieving outstanding results is a real highlight for me.
I love working at the intersection of the digital revolution. We are right in the zone. My team is embracing design led thinking, digital transformation, and disruptive technology. Talking with leaders in business shaping the future of this digital revolution by creating products that millions of people use constantly reminds me we are living in exciting times.
Mark Long is a Sales Director of Creative Technology at Salt. You can connect with him on LinkedIn call him on 07767336916 or drop him an email MLong@welovesalt.com
Find sales manager jobs in London, with Salt Sales Recruitment Agency.
