Q&A with Declan McNiff

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Meet the Patrons interview with Declan McNiff of Realtime Recruitment

As part of the Learnovate Centre’s Meet the Patrons series, we speak to Declan McNiff, Managing Director of Realtime Recruitment, Ireland’s leading Tech and Digital Transformation recruitment specialists.

A native of Co. Down, Declan co-founded Realtime Recruitment with his brother Niall in 2005 after six years as a senior consultant with Computer Futures in Dublin. Now, almost two decades later, Realtime Recruitment employs 33 people at its offices in Dublin, Belfast, and Boston in the United States.

The firm recently celebrated being named the All-Ireland Recruitment Company of the Year for 2024 by the All-Ireland Business Foundation – the second successive year Realtime Recruitment has been awarded the honour, which recognises the company’s impact on quality and standards in the Irish recruitment industry.

Declan plans over the coming years to continue building out the company’s presence in Ireland and on the east coast of the US, a region currently lacking for recruitment services, while expanding RealTime Recruitment’s offering to related sectors.

“In the UK, there is two-and-a-half-times more recruitment agencies than in the whole of the US. We see the US market as having a lot of potential for growth. Tech and transformation are all we’ve done up to now, but MedTech and Bio-Tech are spilling into our area more and more. Being a niche player has worked well for us but we might have to rethink that going forward,” he says.

What are the biggest lessons you learned in your career?

You can’t keep everyone happy – that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned. You might have 100 clients and 99 could love you but one not so much. In my early years, I would lie awake at night wondering how to get that one client onside, instead of sleeping soundly that we had 99 great clients. Over time, I’ve come to realise that expecting that everyone is 100 percent satisfied all the time is totally unrealistic.

Another related thing is the importance of really knowing your market and your customers. My mother owned a fashion shop in Newcastle, Co. Down, for 34 years. She is still the best  salesperson I’ve ever known because she knew when all her clients upcoming celebrations were on. Communions, confirmations, weddings and christenings were happening in the locality and SHE would buy dresses in advance for individual customers, all in the perfect size and style for the individual. When they came into the shop looking for something, Mum would say, ‘I’ve just the thing for you’. She could do that because she knew them well and because of that they trusted her. A lot of businesses came and went in the town over the years but hers survived until the day she retired.

What was the best advice you ever received?

Do what you say you’re going to do. Our company values are Accountability, Integrity and Rapport. The acronym is AIR – it’s what we breathe. For my brother Niall and I, integrity is key. We always treat with people with respect and that’s borne out in our client retention rate, which is 97%.

How would you define your work style and how has this changed over your career?

I have become a lot calmer over the years. Age brings knowledge and experience, so my best attribute now is that I don’t get flustered when things get stormy. When I see junior staff getting stressed at certain scenarios, I have the capacity to help them find the solution and take the pressure off them. I also try to be open and communicative with everybody. I don’t like being so prescriptive. I like spontaneity. Niall is the opposite. He’s more analytical, but apparently that’s the perfect combination in terms of two personality types running a business. We have disagreements but the business always comes out the better for that. Niall has got a brilliant head for business. The fact that we have each other to bounce off, and great people at a senior level in the business, is a big plus.

What have you learned about managing teams and individuals?

We have done a lot of work on getting our core values right and then we hired people that were most in-keeping with those values. That has helped us to keep standards consistently high across the business. In terms of individuals, we found out over the pandemic that there’s no one-size-fits-all response to dealing with people. Everybody is different. To get the best out of them, some people need oversight and guidelines and firm goals. Others need an arm around the shoulder. The key thing for us is that the standards come from the senior team. If you set standards high, the team will follow.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Don’t worry, provided you have the best of intentions, things will work out. Not every decision is going to be right. You’re going to make mistakes. You don’t try to make them, but you do. Make your peace with that.

If you had not chosen your current career what you love to do?

I would have loved to have been a professional sports commentator. Think of the iconic sports commentators, like Jimmy Magee when he worked on boxing or Micheál O’Muircheartaigh on Gaelic games – they bring you there and get you into it. Usually, if you’re into sport, you’re passionate about it. I don’t know anyone who goes halfway with it. There’s a lesson there for anyone to apply to their business: passion is amazing and infectious.

How has AI impacted your organisation/industry?

We recently implemented a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solution that’s heavily embedded in AI. It’s making a lot of administration much more straightforward, which is what AI should do. AI technology will help people onboard and upskill quicker as admin processes are automated, so they won’t have to spend time learning them.

In terms of the industry, maybe AI is coming at a good time. I know clients that can’t get their graduate trainees to come into the office five days a week. And even if they could, they don’t have the managers coming in five days to mentor them. That means that the learning curve for trainees is going to be slower. AI-driven learning technologies could provide a solution in that regard.

What are the opportunities and/or risks from AI to your business or sector and/or the learning technology industry?

There’s no doubt that AI is going to be used in candidate selection. It should speed up the hiring process, but AI makes decisions based on inputs and the risk is that bias will be built into the system. For us, if we have AI tools that are effective, it gives staff more time to engage with candidates directly, so we shouldn’t need as many staff. We should get more for less.

On the flip side, advancements in AI in the learning technology industry could be a huge boost for companies and staff in terms of using training and upskilling to get staff back into the office, which in turn allows companies to realign the values and expectations of employees. In my opinion, it’s impossible to build a company culture through fully remote working so learning is now seen as a great way to build culture again and show staff that you’re ready to invest in them. In America they’ve given this a name: re-boarding.

Why is R&D important in your industry?

We aim to take a holistic approach to recruitment. That’s why we try to understand the trends in learning. If clients get the internal learning and development piece right, and the environment right, their employees are reengaged. If you’re an employer, you want to become an employer of choice. You want people to want to join your company because they’ve heard that they will receive training, continuous professional development and promotion opportunities. R&D gives us insight into the industry.

What are the biggest skills challenges to your business or sector?

For us, it’s business development. Good salespeople are very hard to come by now. That’s not just in Ireland, it’s in America, too. Why is that? Well, I think people have become much more transactional and, since Covid, it’s difficult to find people who want to go out and meet people on a day-to-day basis. The pandemic brought benefits. Video conferencing meant that markets became bigger, more global, but video conferencing is very limited in terms of building relationships with clients. I meet with CEOs of big companies and they all say that the level of travel is down. That might be because staff want to work from home more, or resources are stretched and companies have slashed their travel budgets, but from the perspective of driving sales, face-to-face meetings with clients cannot be beaten.

How can third level address the skills gaps/challenges you are facing?

There’s a lack of talent coming through in the technology industry. We recently completed a project with education institutions in the North that focused on promoting diversity in skillsets. Everyone thinks tech jobs are in coding but there are an array of roles and people aren’t aware of them – whether it’s Data, Business Analysts, Testers, Scrum Masters or Product Owners. The tech industry suffers badly from a lack of gender diversity and breaking down the barriers to entry for women and people with disabilities is a way to get more people into the industry. That means third-level institutions need to be better at demystifying the skillsets. For instance, if you have a good personality, you can be a customer success manager in the tech industry. The variety of roles must be filtered down to the schools.

What book would you recommend on learning, technology, business or understanding people?

Never Split the Difference by Christopher Voss.

The author is an ex-FBI negotiator who would have negotiated hostage releases with terrorist organisations. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in terms of understanding questioning and the different techniques you can use to get the desired result. Before negotiating with someone, put yourself in their shoes and ask what they want. Then you have a better idea of how to resolve things.

Traction by Gino Wickman is another I would recommend. The book proposes a model for an Entrepreneurial Operating System based on the business’s core values and a structure that requires people to take accountability for one of six key business components. We’re in the process of implementing the EOS here.

What are your favourite tools and resources in work?

The Remarkable 2 Digital Notepad. It’s my favourite tool as I write notes by hand and the digital pad turns it into text. I use it every day, all your notes in one place.

Any interesting podcasts or other media do you consume that you would recommend on learning, technology or business?

I listen to a lot of autobiographies and especially love the ones narrated by the person themselves. Some of my favourites are Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, The Storyteller by Dave Grohl and Green Light by Matthew McConoughey. I love them because you get real insight into them, their personalities. In your head, they’re superheroes but then you realise that they’re all human. No one has a fairytale story. It makes it very real and relatable.

Why is membership of Learnovate important to your company?

We do a lot of business already in EdTech sector so Learnovate connects us with clients and keeps us up to date with trends in the market. Learnovate is an industry leader and its work is important because investment in people is essential to any business – especially in terms of learning and development. Whatever you put in, you’ll get it back in spades.

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