Interview with a Recruiter - No 3

An Interview with George Thompson - MD of Harrison Scott Europe Ltd

Having spent the earlier part of his career in retail management, George Thompson's first involvement in recruitment was in 1987, when as Director of a London based plc he was one of the main driving forces behind the company's diversification into recruitment.Within a relatively short time the company boasted a high profile client base with companies such as Glaxo, Carl Zeis, Nikon and many other blue chip names.
George was then headhunted to join Harrison Scott Associates. However, before he joined Dominic he spent a number of months in the U.S observing the methodology used by the top recruitment companies. This proved to be the inspiration for Veriqual®.
George plays a major role in every Industry in which the company is involved, but is best known in the Printing Industry where he has had many articles published and in late 2001 was voted by Printing World as the 34th most influential person in the whole Industry. In this highly respected magazine he is described as " without doubt the highest profile print career management specialist".

How did you get into Print/ Packaging Recruitment?
I was a director of a recruitment company that served the pharmaceutical and FMCG industries. As most of these companies were household names the people, mostly at middle management level had an over inflated view of their own importance. In 1986 I started to deal more in print and found the MDs much more down to earth and more enjoyable to deal with. I then decided to specialise in print, packaging and paper and have enjoyed all my years serving these related sectors.

What advice would you give to Job Seekers on landing their perfect job?If you are offered an interview do as much research on the potential employer as possible. Everyone knows that you should look at their website thoroughly and if you can, get their figures from companies house however the best research is tracking down someone who works for the company and ask what they are like to work for. Even if you don’t know the person you will be surprised how helpful people are. Us Brits are a good lot.

What is your “killer” interview question you always ask?
“Please think about your most significant accomplishment. Now can you tell me all about it.” I can learn so much information about the person from this one question.


How can Job Seekers attract your attention and stand out from the crowd?
Show past results. Many CV’s talk a good game however the ones that stand our are “When I joined the company the turnover was X. I did Y and the result was Z”. It is no good saying that you joined a company at £10m and it is now £14m and implying the increase was you. I once bought shares at Vodafone and the shares rose by 127% during the time I had them, however that had F all to do with me. You have to specify what you did that contributed to the increase in turnover or the improvement of productivity.

What can we do to attract new talent to our industry?
Offer the prospect of training and a career path.

What is the strangest job you have ever had to fill?
I could make myself appear really “windsweap and interesting”, as Billy Connolly would say and make up one like I had a client in China who wanted to recruit someone to drink alcohol on their behalf for business entertainment, as she didn’t want to appear rude by not drinking. (For those of you who understand the Chinese business ethos you know that this is a real job). Problem is that although we have a reputation for being a light hearted company to deal with we are ultra conservative in the types of jobs we will take on. We don’t take on any work outside of print, packaging and paper and the jobs are all account exec to MD. Put us down as boring for that question.

Tell me about your funniest story in recruitment? This candidate, who was virtually unemployable as he had 15 jobs in 10 years, must have had a right good bevy and decided that evening to send one of my consultants an email telling us how useless recruitment companies were. The email included a number of choice words. The next morning, after sobering up and realising that we may be useful to him in the future, sent us an email to say that he had a break-in, someone had stole his laptop and luckily for him the police recovered it within 4 hours. During that time, the thief got an internet connection and then proceeded to send rude emails to people in his address book.


What is your “ideal” job?
Head of auditions at a Lap Dancing Club.

What are your hopes and aspirations for the next 12 months?
I hope that our clients have a much better time financially than they have had in recent times.