How and Why did we come up with the idea of The Magic Hour?

You may have seen us posting about our new service – which we’ve called The Magic Hour. The name was coined by one of our candidates who we helped with some coaching and advice earlier on this year.

Essentially – The Magic Hour is an individually tailored, one to one coaching session where we review your CV and make recommendations on how to improve it, how to make it ATS friendly and how to show yourself off to the best advantage. We also look at your LinkedIn profile and make recommendations on how to change it and how to post to improve your visibility on the platform. We explain how recruitment in the UK works and how to navigate your way through it. We encourage you to work out and articulate what you enjoy about your role and home in on what exactly you are looking for next.  We also give some general advice around job searching and your individual job search plan.  We believe that it gives candidates a sound base from which to launch their job search and helps them secure their next role more quickly.

My Own Experience:

The idea for this came from my experience of being made redundant a few years ago. I felt like I had been cast out to sea – with no direction or understanding about how to best go about finding my next role. It left me feeling very vulnerable and exposed and the experience of this has been one that has been long lasting in my professional life. I wanted to be able to help candidates by providing a useful service to help them take back control of their job search in these very strange and unpredictable times. I wish I had had something similar – it would have saved me weeks / months of floundering about like a mad woman (read my redundancy post!).

In the normal run of things when we are briefed by a client for a role, we start by having a chat about which candidates on our database and network would be a good fit for the position, and who from that list might be ready for their next move.  Then we’d schedule a conversation and go through a very similar process to the Magic Hour, but obviously tartgeted to the new brief.  So we coach candidates through aligning their skills and experiences as closely as possible to the role profile to make sure that the most relevant strengths are easily apparent to the client.

At the moment we have very few ‘live’ briefs on the go!  But we want to keep talking to people and helping candidates to be as strong and focussed as possible in their job searches, so in order to be able to keep doing that we’ve streamlined and focussed our experience and advice and come up with The Magic Hour. This is a fixed fee service we have priced at £150 incl VAT.

We have talked to candidates across the private, public and third sectors in the UK and internationally – consultancies, agencies and in-house clients – and we have seen what works.  We’ve placed candidates in huge complex global businesses and smaller, owner managed companies, and we’ve been doing this successfully since 2012.  There are thousands of professionals on our database and we’ve talked to them all!

A Complete 360 degree view of recruitment:

Before becoming recruitment consultants we have both been candidates (obviously!) and hiring managers, so we really do have a 360 degree view of the process and we have consistently had positive feedback from our sessions.  In fact our business has grown precisely because our candidates often become our clients as they move through their careers and grow their own teams.  So we are confident that we add value.

We are partnering with some clients at the moment and working on some fantastic opportunities and our network of candidates can absolutely rest assured that we will be actively in touch about those as and when appropriate.  The idea is that you do not need to be a candidate for a specific role in order to benefit from our help and advice, or even a CX professional – The Magic Hour is relevant to candidates across any discipline and industry.

Those who do not undertake The Magic Hour will be at no less of an advantage for future roles with us as we are ONLY interested in fitting the right candidate with the right job. That approach will never change at CX Talent Ltd.

The Magic Hour is there to help keep you going in your job search. If you decide you’d benefit from our in depth advice and book a package – you’ll be helping us keep going too!

Here are some recent testimonials:
‘I’d recommend THE MAGIC HOUR, 100%. CX Talent Ltd care, that shows in the EPIC service they provide!’ –

“I found the conversation, tips and guidance extremely useful and it has given me the boost and motivation to focus my efforts in a constructive and disciplined way to search and secure that new opportunity which is out there somewhere for me!”

‘I loved my magic hour, it was not only informative it also motivated me to do things differently…. a real breath of air. Thanks Jo & Kate’.

Do you need some help with your job search? Jo van Riemsdijk at CX Talent Ltd gives her top 10 tips to get you started.

I hope that the tips I detail here will be of some help to Candidates looking for roles or thinking about their next move.

1.If you are in a job and thinking about moving – my first piece of advice would be – DON’T! Squeeze every last drop of experience you can out of your current role and be grateful you have a job – there are a lot of candidates out there who don’t! Don’t disengage either – you may find that you start to really enjoy where you currently are. By all means get your CV ready and your Linkedin profile ship shape – but please stay put!
2.If you are not in a job – do not despair. We will get through this and the market will pick up again. Contact us and we can have a chat about putting an action plan in place.
3.Spend no more than 2 hours a day (if that right now – probably 2 mins with the recruitment freezes out there) looking on job boards and applying for roles. Then for goodness sake go and do something entirely different. Just because you don’t apply for a role the minute it is advertised – does not mean that you won’t get it.
4.Your CV should be tailored for each and every role – WITHOUT FAIL!!!!!!!!! It’s a competitive market out there and will become more so. Absolutely no stretching the truth! Look at the areas the JD is really focusing on. If stakeholder engagement and influencing is one of the main themes – then emphasise this experience. If its customer experience communications – then bring this to the fore. Don’t assume that the person looking at your CV understands CX, has any interest in CX or your CV for that matter. You need to hit people in the face with your suitability for a role.  DON’T ASSUME PEOPLE READ BETWEEN THE LINES.
5.Come up with a CV that you can tailor quickly and effectively. Good CV’s have a personal statement at the top, a list of key skills and / or achievements. Then professional experience, education and other info. I also like to see training undertaken and any software packages you are familiar with (though this is job specific).
6.Your Linkedin profile is incredibly important. Do you have a picture? Please – DO NOT PUT ONE OF YOU WEARING SILLY GLASSES OR DRINKING ALCOHOL. This is a professional networking site – not Facebook! Linkedin should act as your shop window – does someone have your perfect job and is searching for someone like you? MAKE SURE THEY FIND YOU!! Be specific about your skills and describe yourself as your next ideal role – again telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth! The more specific you are on Linkedin about yourself – the more likely you are to be found. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to do a catch all profile – as it will become so generic that you wont be found for anything.
7.Utilise your network – talk to old bosses, get in touch with old colleagues. You never know – they could be looking for someone to run a programme or project short term. Getting involved in interim or contract roles during this time will do you no harm and conversations had about your job area, industry sector, areas of expertise in general can lead to great things.
8.Get involved in conversations on Linkedin about your industry or area of expertise. In our case this is Customer Experience – yes, I know do as I say not as I do! I am aware that we have not been the most vocal people on Linkedin but we are trying to change that! Post regularly, comment with at least 8 words and thoughtfully on relevant posts. Like posts that are relevant to your interests and skill set. Linkedin rewards people who use the platform by making you more visible. It will increase your exposure to people who might be looking for staff.
9.Is there an organisation you’d love to work for? Why not reach out to the Department Head or Director – for our world this would be CX Director or Head of CX, or the CEO if you are one of our more senior candidates. Don’t be afraid to show you are keen on working for an organisation – it’s terribly appealing to have a strong candidate approach you particularly when you decide you want to recruit either immediately or further down the line. Even if it results in a coffee and nothing more – it’s another contact made.
10.Talk to us – we’d love to be the ones to place you in your next job. But even if it’s not us who place you there, we are keen to help you find your next role. The more we talk to you – the easier you are to place and the easier it is to place for you when you need help with recruiting for your teams.

Businesses and recruiters who are able to empathise and act with (professional) personability will always do best – now more than ever when all brands are under scrutiny about how they are reacting to the COVID – 19 situation.

From a recruiters’ point of view, you are likely to get a larger than normal candidate pool of interest in any roles you are currently looking to fill.  This will of course add pressure to your Resourcing / HR team – but the candidate experience is still an important ‘touch-point’ with the wider world for you as a brand, and the process must still be handled with respect and integrity.

We’re hearing more often about companies ‘ghosting’ candidates with no feedback or replies at all, and hearing too about how unpleasant and even degrading this feels when someone has taken the time and care to apply for your role.  Doing the courtesy of sending a short reply is an easy win in terms of retaining credibility as a brand prepared to care for its’ employees going forwards.

Being open about the interview process and timeframe is another easy win – if you can manage candidate expectations from the outset it is much more likely that they will stay engaged (don’t forget, strong candidates will be applying to other jobs too!).  Especially as traditional processes of face to face interviews in physical offices are being discarded, it’s vital to set out your expectations in terms of interview rounds, assessments and virtual working frameworks. It’s such a shame to lose candidates to other organisations because they were quicker in their processes than you! By keeping candidates engaged in the process – even if you are not as quick as others, you are less likely to lose them.

For candidates – bear in mind that businesses are dealing with higher levels of applicants and be prepared to be patient.  Be extra careful to tailor your CV to each and every application to make sure that your skills and experience align as well as possible with the job description to get through that first stage  – the ATS system.

Also remember – skills and experience are vital of course, but approach and attitude count too!  Try and build in some ‘WHO YOU ARE’ as well as ‘WHAT YOU DO’ into your CV –  think about why you want this role and why you are interested in this particular company.  Mention both these things clearly in your covering letter.  And, walk the walk.  Think about what really drives you and then be proactive (and professional) on social media platforms.  Put together a list of all the things you’ve done in your career to date that you are particularly proud of. In our world of Customer Experience that would include VoC programmes that have worked well, examples of where you have personally improved the Customer Experience, examples of where you have shown excellent stakeholder engagement and influencing skills. Listing all of these examples down will mean you don’t forget them in interview.

The recruitment process can and should be a great start to a long relationship with a new employee and a fabulous chance to show the human face of a brand – it can provide a useful and insightful window into the business for a wider market.  In fact, don’t let it be anything else!  There is a lot of pressure out there at the moment and it’s more important than ever for everyone in the process to be kind and empathetic.  It will pay dividends.

Some further advice – for recruiters think now more than ever what an independent specialist recruiter can do for you in terms of understanding your needs and acting as your front line in finding the perfect candidate, and for candidates – stay positive and proactive!  We have more help at www.cxtalent.co.uk/the-magic-hour/