A former reseller sales boss has vowed never to ‘ghost’ candidates after launching his own recruitment business.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Dan Hicks said he was tempted to launch ‘HicksTech’ after several recruitment pros urged him to make the move into channel recruitment.
He has spent the last 24 years in IT sales, recently heading up teams at Logicalis, CAE and Trams and also serving stints at Kelway/CDW, Zones, Six Degrees, Daisy, Cisilion and Vohkus.
“I’ve walked the walk,” he said.
“Plenty of recruiters out there have never worked in the IT sales industry, but I’ve been a hiring manager for those sales organisations.
“One of the negatives I always picked up from recruiters was that I could be deemed a job hopper. That certainly wasn’t the case, but I’m looking to turn that into a positive because I know plenty of people out there.
“I’ve got an extensive network, and from the response I’ve had this morning I’m hoping I’m going to do well.”
Giving up the ghosting
In a LinkedIn post announcing his career move, Hicks vowed “ghosting will never be part of my approach”.
Expanding on this, Hicks acknowledged that some recruiters get a “bad rap” for treating candidates as numbers.
“For me, it’s about realising that they’re human beings on the end of the phone,” he said.
“It’s an insult to people who are reaching out to recruiters like myself if you don’t even give them the time of day to come back to them with news, good or bad.”
Hicks added: “I was a great salesperson because I had really good grounding with Phil Doye and Dan Laws at Kelway when I first started out. My mantra as a sales leader was that qualification is just as important as execution.
“The same thing has to happen within recruitment. I’m going to make sure I’m hiring the right people to the right roles, and not working with people who don’t want to work with me – rather than throwing muck against the wall, hoping some sticks.”
Although HicksTech’s main focus will be on IT sales, Hicks said he had spotted a gap in the market around flexible resourcing.
“I’ve built up an extensive network of technical consultants,” he said.
“There are plenty of really good people out there sitting around with contract roles that need to be filled, and – equally – I’ve worked for companies that have a very slow go-to-market strategy around bringing in external resources to help fulfil projects.”
Despite optimism in some quarters that the IT channel jobs market is beginning to pick up, Hicks characterised it as “still quite flat”.
“We’re not in 2021 anymore. There aren’t lots of peole hiring hundreds of roles left right and centre,” he said.
“I think there are roles out there for good people. I think it just needs a little bit more care and attention to actually find those good people. I’m going to be looking for the people that are other people’s diamonds in the rough.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
