Three security recruitment consultants were brought together at the latest thought leadership webinar chaired by founder Prof Martin Gill of Perpetuity Research, yesterday afternoon.
They were Brett Ennals, of Cento, whose UK recruitment consultancy is on the electronic and technical side of security; Peter French, of London-based SSR Personnel; and in Cleveland, Ohio, Aaron Kutz, Practice Leader at Direct Recruiters, Inc.
Opening, Peter French spoke of some general trends affecting recruiters – given that many clients want to see a short-list of applicants that’s more diverse, that may call for ‘a wider candidate pool’. Businesses, Peter went on, want to understand what emerging talent looks like, ‘and what are the roles of tomorrow’. As for the work of security management, security professionals he said are moving away from physical protection of the ‘front gate’ to being the defender of IT infrastructure, and people. For what is the point of protecting the (physical) keys to the safe, when your secrets have already been stolen (electronically)?
Corporations, Peter said, seek people with leadership qualities and skills; able to communicate to a hybrid workforce, in terms of age and national backgrounds. (Read more by Peter French in the November 2020 print edition of Professional Security magazine – on this link.)
As for covid-19, the pandemic has brought a need for security strategies; for cyber resilience and practical IT solutions; and policies for the ‘return to work’ – which cropped up later in the webinar. On the very question of whether offices will ever re-open as they were before the coronavirus pandemic, Peter believed that people will go back to real estate; for one thing, millenials, Generations Y and Z, ‘don’t want to work remotely’, although they don’t mind it. Because they are collaborative people, they want to (physically) meet other people; hence may use software platforms to talk to people 100 miles away, while sitting in an office.
Peter acknowledged that for people with child care to do, working from home ‘has been a godsend’. On the recruitment implications – will employers go back to insisting on workers commuting to an office? – the panel saw some leeway. Aaron Kutz thought that covid-19 had made employers more understanding of personal issues, while Brett Ennals made the point that people cannot yet see past covid, and don’t know what the ‘new normal’ is – it will probably be a hybrid, of the present and the ‘old normal’, he suggested. He echoed Peter French that ‘we are social beings’; that is, rather than making work in isolation during lockdown the norm once the pandemic has passed.
As in any other walk of life, the panel agreed on changes due to the pandemic, both in terms of how to do the business of recruiting, and what security roles were. Companies and employees alike are adapting because they no longer feel they have to be in the same city as the company office.
As Peter French said, you don’t have to meet in a (physical) room and go for a drink afterwards in a bar; instead you can share your thoughts (remotely, as via the webinar) and then get on with your day. And a lot of people have ‘re-skilled themselves’, he added.
Brett Ennals confirmed the impact of covid; pre-pandemic, employers had a reluctance to allow home working, but have been forced into home working, so that it’s almost the norm. The ‘talent pool’ has increased, for any single employer, because people can see that they can take a job in a different city to theirs, so long as they report in remotely. Likewise a lot of job interviews are by video, certainly in the first round of viewing candidates; ‘and a lot more people are comfortable with video’.
Prof Martin Gill raised first with Peter French a point from his Security Research Initiative study, released only the day before, about the influences on security as a career of choice (or, as for so many, a career of chance – entering the security sector on a friend’s recommendation, or falling into it, rather than seeking jobs through a formal advert). (That SRI report and previous ones are freely downloadable on the Perpetuity Research website.)
Peter French made the important distinction that police are still coming into security management as a second career – but instead of entering after a full 30-year service, they are leaving ‘The Job’ after ten or 15 years, perhaps reacting to recent changes (for the worse) in police pensions. Those earlier leavers are highly trained, for example in intelligence-gathering. Military leavers, similarly, may have exceptional planning and other skills.
The webinar provided a window on three things – the recruitment consultant, who as Aaron Kutz put it is ‘an extension of the client’; the individual job-seeker or career-developer; and the employer, who as Brett Ennals said may have a closed mind in that they hire based on experience, though they may be open to hiring someone to do security moving from the police or military. Security is a ‘stable’ sector, in job terms to use Brett’s word, because demand has been and is increasing.
A recording of this webinar will be uploaded to Perpetuity’s ‘Security and Crime’ YouTube Channel.
Next webinars
The webinars run regularly on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The next is on November 10, titled ‘what’s in a name’ about the confusion of security job titles. The one on Thursday, November 12 is slightly different, in timing and setting, as it’s part of the National Association for Healthcare Security (NAHS) annual conference and AGM, usually in Birmingham, but due to the lockdown held virtually. Prof Martin Gill is chairing a panel on healthcare, security and the pandemic – in the United States, Bonnie Michelman CPP CHPA – Executive Director of Police, Security & Outside Services, Massachusetts General Hospital; Barrie Millett, now of facilities contractor Mitie, West Midlands regional chairman of the national Cross-sector Safety and Security Communications (CSSC); and Jayne King ASMS, FSyI, PGDip, previously chairman, now president of the NAHS.
You can register to attend for free at https://theospas.com/thought-leadership-webinars/. You can listen to the scores of past webinars that began on March 31.
