Q&A: Spirit Executive managing director Mark Burgess

db caught up with Mark Burgess from Spirit Executive to discuss how to attract talent to the drinks industry and what it takes to build a strong team.

How did Spirit Executive come to be?

At the start, the goal was simply to create a more effective and efficient proposition, putting both the client and candidate at the centre of everything we do. We aimed to create a culture that would focus relentlessly on relationship building, trust and delivery.

We identified an opportunity to re-engineer the recruitment process. This insight emerged from discussions with brands and candidates, who were becoming more dissatisfied with their interactions from both search and mainstream recruitment firms. The gap cantered around transactional models that did not engage in leveraging relationships and networks. The breakthrough was understanding that a relationship flywheel was going to deliver better and faster results that improved over time. It would also enable us to move into a pipeline model, where we could identify and present talent easily and when needed.

We had the opportunity to prototype this strategy with William Grant & Sons focused on a strategic project to build global brand teams across Hendricks, Sailor Jerry and the newly acquired Tullamore Dew. This project validated our assumptions and moved us away from being an external provider and towards an extension of their talent team. This is the dynamic that we have strived for since.

On the more personal side I was helped by the fact that recruitment was very much in the family. My father and brother had both built successful careers locally and globally, building recruitment networks and businesses. Both have served as advisors on an ongoing basis, which I’m very grateful for.

What makes you excited when working with a brand?

Everything starts with the passion for a brand. This permeates into every part of our process. This is where we get all of our energy and enthusiasm from. As a boutique consultancy, we have been fortunate to be able to choose the brands that we want to represent. Doing great work for a collection of inspiring brands will always be more appealing than volume work with brands we are less engaged with.

When we are talking to potential talent, we want it to be immersive, not formulaic. We want to feel as excited about the brand as they will. So whether I have a fridge full of White Claw or a cabinet full of Glendalough, Tullamore Dew, Redbreast, Baileys or Hendricks, that deeper engagement is the difference between having a job and doing what you love.

What does Spirit Executive do differently, and how does this help to win “the war for talent”?

I believe that we operate in a fundamentally different way to our competition. We live and breathe the sector. We invest into initiatives to fine tune clients and candidate relationships and insights, instead of a more outbound advertising model. Most significantly we are 100% referral driven. Many of the candidates are not applying for any adverts, instead reaching out to us at a decision point in their careers for advice. Once you realise you have a really expansive network and trust in a sector, you have to make the most of those relationships and behave in a less transactional manner.

When we go to market, we look for the current and upcoming superstars in every vertical, wherever they may be. Leveraging that top tier of talent into conversations and turning those conversations into opportunities. It seems simple and obvious, but takes decades to build that network and trust. Truly effective networking and referrals is proven to outperform traditional advert-based Search & recruitment, over the long term.

How does your approach change depending on the brand you are working with?

There actually doesn’t need to be any difference at all. The relationship with the organisation will be dictated purely by the trust you have built with the key stakeholders. Partnering with larger corporates will usually mean more interaction with internal talent teams. In recent years, some of my most rewarding relationships have come from these interactions. You get so much deeper into the workings of an organisation through these projects and relationships.

Global work allows us to really push the value of our network. This is where we have done some of our best work. Organisations setting out to scale brands globally allow us to deliver the full array of our services, collaborating on the road map of current and future talent requirements.

What do you feel is the key hiring trend within the industry? How might this help increase employee retention?

Here are some of the key trends we have been monitoring:

There is a long term and systemic change as leading candidates think about their work and their life as a single entity. This is especially true for the most coveted international talent.

Employee centric cultures will dominate in this new norm, as these high value individuals increasingly seek out an employer that recognises and caters for their evolving needs.

In addition, a large volume of top talent is moving towards a flexible engagement model, where they can spend concentrated periods of time, delivering high impact project work. Our research suggests that an increasingly significant number of individuals are either open to or fully engaged with a contracting model. This is a recent and significant shift.

Diversity and Inclusion is at the centre of talent attraction and team succession planning particularly within the larger corporates. We have been lucky to have been involved in several of the most impactful projects of this type.

What is the secret to building a great team in the drinks sector?

Firstly, it’s important to recognise that building a great team not only means finding the best possible people. We also need to engage and retain these individuals, nurturing and developing future leaders. Culture will always be at the core and is built from the top down. Teams ideally should be built in the same way.

Find leaders that have the track record and road map to deliver your company’s vision. Hire for the future, not only for the here and now. Seek out the highest levels of leadership talent wherever they may be found and create a hiring proposition that will attract them to your brand. Empower these individuals to build and develop the team structure and dynamic that will deliver the best possible results. Identify roles where candidates experience accelerated progression and are engaged and challenged throughout. Organisations such as Diageo are incredibly effective at doing this. Continually developing skills sets, within defined promotional timeframes as well as moving individuals cross functionally to develop depth of skillsets. This is a great example of programs focused on building future leaders.

We actually collaborated on a more creative talent attraction strategy with the Hendricks team a while back. Creating specific video content that conveyed the individualism of the brand. Working with Muiris O’Riada (Global Brand Director Hendricks Gin) and his team is always a pleasure. [The link to the video can be found here]

Strategies like this will disrupt your target audience, standing out and walking a different path can be highly effective. Partner with a talent provider who really loves your brand and is already talking with your future leaders. That passion will ensure your project is so important to them that they will walk through walls to find your best outcomes.

What project is Spirits Executive proudest of?

One engagement in particular comes to mind. We have embedded ourselves alongside the Mark Anthony Brands International team, building functions across the full surface area of the global organisation.

This has been transformative for us and has pushed us beyond what we thought was possible to achieve. Our work started at the inception of the global structure and continues through to today . We are proud to support one of the most aspirational, disruptive and successful organisations in the sector deliver on their mission. We tirelessly deliver the highest possible calibre of talent and we believe our journey together is just beginning

Is there anything coming up for Spirits Executive that you can speak about?

We are exploring productising the referral program to anticipate and deliver talent across the business. This is hugely exciting and challenging but we will continue to do what it takes to support growth of our trusted partners and community of senior executives. Expanding the search arm of the business is what’s keeping me busy. We are making great progress working senior assignments around the world, mainly but not exclusively in the alcohol sector.

We are also assessing the viability of creating a contracting entity focused on senior global roles. This initiative is driven from our recent research on the substantial shift of interest from senior marketers to short and long term contracts. We are in discussion with a few key contacts in the industry with great insights who we love working with.

To find out more about Spirit Executive, click here.