Posted: Fri 20 Feb 2009
In between rolling out an international client and overseeing a team of 20, Fiona Lander, founder of Lander Associates found some time to spill the beans on her world and views on the industry.
Set up 13 years ago, Lander Associates has grown from strength to strength. From its humble beginnings providing training from a "broom cupboard" sized office, Lander has evolved into a holistic organisation that partners with clients at their most crucial growth points.
From recruitment to recruitment
Fiona started her career during a tough economic period in the 70s; initially working on a government initiative in Peterborough, she trained school leavers in job-seeking techniques before moving to Cambridge where she continued to train unemployed executives.
With career progression in mind, Fiona began working at Blue Arrow and spent time working on various desks before she applied her skills to help build up the companies training division.
She says, "I am a qualified trainer, not just a recruiter who trains. I was operational for a number of years and it was fun but my chosen field has always been training and development."
When she recalls her experiences, it's hard to believe how much Fiona has achieved, even managing to pursue an aspiration of moving to the US. On return to the UK Fiona was forced to make a life changing decision.
"I was at a cross roads. I was headhunted for an amazing job and was tempted to take it, but I knew if I did I would never have started my own business. I thought 'if I'm going to start my own business I have to do it now while I'm still enthusiastic and energetic enough', so, I turned down the job and decided to start my own business."
If I had have taken the job, my career would have taken a very different path and I don't know whether it would have been better or worse. You can't think about ‘what ifs'."
It's been 13 years since Fiona made the brave decision to start on her own and Landers Associates has come a long way since its humble beginnings.
"We started in a small office in Regent Street and used overseas language students as back office staff. I trained them all up on how to answer the phones and paid their expenses. We had French, Spanish, Italian, and it was a great little crew. We acquired an international client fairly quickly and it was nice to start internationally while we were still a small company."
Growing Pains
Landers' clients are generally small to medium growing companies and its success can be attributed to honing in on and capitalising on its niche. Helping businesses at crucial growth points is Landers' main focus and Fiona knows only too well of the pitfalls lying in wait for the expanding business.
"It's been challenging because I built the business up to a really good point and then made a bad decision that pushed me back three or four years."
Merging with another company when the country was on the verge of the nineties recession was an unfortunate move for Landers.
"It was a great company, we just chose the wrong time. At that point the market plummeted and it was too much to maintain both freshly merged businesses. I went back to basics and my clients and staff were very loyal; together we have about built it up to where we are today."
As a "boutique" organisation, the team at Landers devise and implement strategies for businesses that are struggling to manage new growth; something Fiona believes can be a alien to small businesses.
"People do really well to a certain size and everything that they've put in place has worked brilliantly; suddenly, they want to go to the next stage of growth and what they did before isn't working. They need help to get over that next stage. If there's half a dozen of you and you want to suddenly be 20, that's hard because you can't be informal any more. If you're 20 and you want to be 50 it doesn't work. If you want to open an office abroad, what you were doing here doesn't work anymore- it's about change for growth."
Often it's about putting infrastructure in and a bit more formality. You start off very informal but that informality can work against you once the business grows. It's about putting in proper induction programmes and leadership development for the next generation of leaders. A lot of companies forget this and then they're forced to promote people into positions when they've got no skills."
Considering the economic period, survival is taking precedence over growth and Landers is partnering with clients to cope with this too.
"In this market we're helping less experienced people in the industry transfer and change skills to suit the environment. People who come in now will be fine because it's all they'll know, it's the people that have moved in since 2003 where the market's been buoyant that will be affected; some senior managers haven't actually ran a business through a recession."
A holistic offering
Adamant that her business offers far more than training, Fiona believes it's important that good practice starts at the top.
"The people strategy has to roll out from board level. It's the glue that links the whole organisational objective, it's not a bolt on to the side, it actually becomes the heart of the business and it's not just training, its engagement and a communications strategy. Communications is a maker or breaker for success within a business, especially if the businesses aren't all in one place.
People underestimate the impact a good training and performance enhancement strategy can have on their overall business and that's where we come in."
Often recruiters who've grown up from the desk and who are very good business people reach a point where they need to get their next generation of managers grown through because there is not enough leadership in the business. As they grow they need more inductions and development and that's got to tie in with the whole appraisal system; all of that is a lot of work."
Civil partnerships
Praising her fully qualified team, Fiona leads by example and ensures that she practises what she preaches within her own organisation. In addition to using incentives to maximise job satisfaction, she also depends on outside resources for development of her own people and never pretends to know it all. She encourages clients to try coopetition (cooperative competition) as her own experiences have been very successful.
"We don't want to be all things to all people. We want to be experts at what we do and therefore we have to work side by side with people who are also experts. I will always say to my customers "if we are not able to help you I'll be able to tell you who is.
I've got a client in Hungary and one in the West End; the client in the West End had a role in Hungary that they said they would probably never be able to fill; I put the two clients together and now they're going to split the fee.
In a tight market place you've got to take down the barriers of limitations on your thinking and think more broadly, you've just got to keep an open mind about how to work going forwards; two together can take on a big project and share it."
A lifetime of achievement
Always busy, Fiona hasn't much time to bask in her success and is modest about it, attributing Landers' achievements to the dedication of a great workforce.
"I'm more proud of my team than myself; I am in awe of them, they're just amazing. I couldn't have done it without them. Some of them have been with me for a very long time and they all keep their enthusiasm and energy. We have really high standards and I'm an exacting person about the standards we run, I drive people quite hard, always breathing down their necks in one way or another.
I'm proud of what the company has achieved. We've got clients that we've helped go from strength to strength and have sold their businesses for millions of pounds."
Last year, Fiona received "Highly Commended" status in The London and South East Life Time Achievement award but seems just as pleased for the winner and one of her past trainees, Broadbean founder, Kelly Robinson.
"He's done so much, he was this young guy promoted to run a business at such a young age. He had such passion and enthusiasm and a great head on his shoulders. He was a risk taker, brave and committed to his staff from day one and he's just gone from strength to strength, he deserved to win that prize ten times over."
"There are lots of individuals that I trained who are now my clients and are CE level which is fantastic. When you get a client who you trained on an induction when they first came into the industry it does two things - makes you very proud of your achievement and makes you feel very old!"
Why recruitment?
Having done great things in the industry, it's a wonder why Fiona hasn't expanded into other markets. However, her passion for the recruitment sector really shows.
"I'm very excited about some of the new things going on, like APSCo and new initiatives. 90 percent of our work is with the recruitment industry, however, we're often referred on to non recruitment firms by our client's clients.
We do work with non recruiters and recruitment affiliates, but we know best how to market to the recruitment sector. We work hard to get to know key people in this industry and it's exciting. You've got people like Ann Swain and James Caan, real characters, people that have built their careers in recruitment and really put their energy and passion into it.
It's still a growing sector in the world. We're all passionate and it's an exciting place to be so why not stay here?"