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So, what made you leave the recruitment agency to move in-house?
My approach to recruiting has always been internally led. To me, my clients were really partners, and I used to embed myself inside their businesses to understand them better, their culture and what made a successful employee. This gave me the best chance of finding them the right person. It also made in-house a natural next step.
And why choose a startup?
Working in a small organisation was a prerequisite for me because of the impact you can have.
I joined my first company straight from university as its first employee, alongside the two founders. This meant I was given more responsibility than my experience warranted. Soon I was managing people and exposed to how a business is run, so when considering a move, I wanted more than being pigeonholed into a single role.
I was lucky to find Multilocal, and my role and responsibilities have grown exponentially over the last four years.
What are your key roles and responsibilities? And what does a Chief of Staff do?
Originally, I was Head of Operations, but I also lead the people function and now have my Chief of Staff responsibilities too.
My role covers business operations as well as the people side, encompassing HR, talent acquisition and retention, well-being and culture.
And the third component is the Chief of Staff element, which I see as the conduit between the senior leadership team and the wider organisation. I spend a lot of time with that team to make sure their important messages are transmitted across the business effectively and clearly, so everyone is well informed about all aspects.
Combining the Chief of Staff role with my people responsibilities works particularly well because, by understanding our people, I have a sense of how they’ll interpret and react to messages from senior leaders. And in the business, we aim to strike a balance between allowing people to use their skills and ideas to do their jobs while ensuring there’s a single focus across the company on what’s important.
How have you seen recruitment change over the last 5-6 years?
It’s changed significantly.
Pre-COVID, you'd never hire someone without meeting them face-to-face because it’s the best way to build rapport. Now this has totally changed with the adoption of remote interviewing.
As a result, I’ve had to develop my interview style. I’ve become more self-deprecating and open about myself in conversations to break down any barriers and highlight my human side to make candidates feel more comfortable. In one respect, it’s trying to replicate meeting face-to-face, so people show their best selves in this still unnatural virtual environment.
The second significant change is around motivations. Traditionally, salary was the main driver when people looked to move. While this remains important, the desire for flexibility is increasingly a critical consideration. For Multilocal, as a remote-first business, being able to sell what we offer to prospective employees now gives us a real advantage.
And as the nature of work has changed, what challenges has this brought?
Flexibility, as I said, is a huge benefit, and this makes the need for openness more critical.
Because you see each other less with remote working, deliberately being more transparent as a business about your direction, the state of play and company performance is key. This was something that really impressed me when I joined Multilocal.
We're really open with colleagues about year-to-date progress, how we're tracking, where we're looking to get to and what needs to happen to deliver success.
In the past, you would’ve picked up a lot of this by physically being in an office. Now, over-indexing on communicating with people is so important so they don’t miss out and feel in the dark.
How do you build a culture in a totally remote business like Multilocal?
Well, it’s harder, but it’s just as important in a fully remote business as it is in a traditional one. And we really lean into what we do well: caring for our people, focusing on their development and being transparent.
A critical area we actively address is overcoming a feeling of disconnection.
When I first joined Multilocal, I met and introduced myself to everyone, virtually, of course, deliberately asking them about their home office setup and where they worked. Because for many, the reality is that they live on their own and work out of their bedroom. And if you’re spending most of your life in one room with potentially little human interaction, it gets lonely.
My team and I spend a lot of time working with managers to foster the correct environment based on the individual needs of their team members. While our client-facing teams have a lot of human contact because of the nature of their roles, others doing technical tasks may not. For them, a daily check-in helps ensure they feel needed and recognised.
And as I said earlier, that’s why an open culture is so important to ensure what we lose by not all being in the office is compensated for by strong communication. That’s why we have mechanisms in place for managers to share good work from their team members, so everyone’s contribution is recognised.
Being remote also forces you to always think about how to involve people. For example, I make a conscious effort to talk through with my team how I plan to approach specific issues, so they learn. In the old days, they’d probably sit next to you, so they would be exposed to it naturally.
And our culture and remote-first nature shape our recruitment, which means hiring good people is critical because that’s how we build a good culture.
For people early in their careers, we look for those who are inquisitive and eager to learn because they’ll be more willing to come forward, ask questions and seek direct contact to help their development. Meanwhile, for more senior hires and managers, we want people who are friendly, easy to approach and committed to developing people. This ensures their teams are comfortable contacting them and don’t feel like they’re being disruptive. In effect, it’s trying to replace that walking up to someone’s desk scenario that happened all the time when we were office-bound.
Being remote-first has allowed us to accelerate development as a company by being creative about how we grow. We’ve been able to expand and open new markets much quicker than if we had been constrained by needing physical offices. And interacting with colleagues from different cultures, backgrounds and perspectives is a huge plus for Multilocal. If we’d been a traditional business, things would look very different.
