UP516 Smart Recruitment: The Brentford Model, in partnership with Indeed

0:00Hello, welcome to Unofficial Partner, the Sports Business Podcast. I'm Richard Gillis. The story of Brentford Football Club is one of the most interesting and quoted case studies in European football over the last decade. The West London Club has been transformed on and off the pitch from being saved from extinction by its own fans to a new era under the ownership of entrepreneur Matthew Benham. The club was promoted to the Premier League in 2021, marking a return to the top flight after 74 years. Since then, it's become the go-to case study for smart recruitment and a data-driven approach to management decision making.

0:36So what's gone right at Brentford and why is it hard for other clubs to copy its blueprint not just for surviving but thriving in the most competitive football league in the world? Our guests are John Varney, David Ornstein and Matt Price. John Varney is Chief Executive Officer of Brentford Football Club. David Ornstein is Football Correspondent of The Athletic and Matt Price This is Senior Sales Director of Indeed. Today's episode was recorded at Brentford Community Stadium and is a collaboration with Indeed, the club's official recruitment partner. Let's start over here and then we'll finish here.

1:17So, David, just give me a line or two about how you normally introduce yourself. I'm David Ornstein, football correspondent at The Athletic. And there I'm responsible for working mainly in football news journalism, breaking stories around all manner of topics from football transfers, new contracts, managerial changes. And previously to that, I spent 12 years at the BBC from a writer on the sport website all the way up to being a sports correspondent for BBC News. And that brings me to the present day. And The Athletic now is also The New York Times? Yeah, The Athletic a couple of years ago was taken over by The New York Times in a football-style buyout worth, I think, about$550 million was the published figure.

2:11Before we move on, one of our early podcasts was about the launch of The Athletic. I'm trying to think when that was. We had Alex Kajowski, who's now gone the other way. He's gone to the BBC. He's done the reverse, David Ornstein. Yeah. Yeah, that was... Reverse Ornstein. Is that what we're now calling it? Yeah, remontade of journalistic practice. So, yeah, that was the summer of 2019 and it had launched in the US, I think, in 2016. There was also a lot of jealousy on the media side, wasn't there? A lot of journalists saying that weren't picked because there was a lot of money flying around, wasn't there, at that time?

2:48Yeah, so that brings us nicely into what happened in the UK. So they were able to grow and they targeted the Premier League in European football as their first expansion outside North America because they had Canada as well at the time. But it saw a number of desks, sports desks, not quite decimated, but shorn of some of their finest talent, whether it be national newspapers or websites or broadcasters. There always comes a bit of suspicion. What is the internet? Internet, but also just scepticism, nervousness. What might it mean for traditional media and newspapers, for example? We're going to come back to some specifics.

3:29Yeah. Same question. I was going to say, that's one hell of an intro. Sorry, I've got to back that up. They say, hello, I'm from The Athletic. Yeah, yeah. So Matt Price, I'm Senior Sales Director at Indeed. Very much a different industry from the likes of David. We work in the internet, as you put it so perfectly. but we're out there in the marketplace supporting both job seekers but also supporting employers to find that match to find the right talent. It's been an interesting journey for me indeed I'm in my 14th year so I think it's fair to say somewhat institutionalized but it's been an interesting journey for the business as a whole so when I joined in 2012 there were fewer than 200 people in the business and we're now at circa 10 ,000 and in many many markets as well so back then in 2012 our staple market was North America and then we reached out to the UK so it's been an incredible journey in terms of the job platform in itself where it's come from and we're now just about to celebrate our 21st birthday so yeah very very different different industry but we've grown handsomely over that period of time and currently many many markets.

4:41Brilliant okay and we're going to come back to the sort of link what links us all so John. I thought we'd had big growth, but 200 to 10 ,000? Yeah. That's incredible. Pretty impressive, isn't it? That's going to be one hell of a 21st birthday celebration. Well, the 20th was pretty good, I have to say. But yeah, absolutely. So it's still, I think, to the point there, you know, it's a challenging market. A lot of industries, businesses are going through challenging times. So yeah, it's still a fun place to be at. Absolutely. So I've got an idea of what the chief executive of a Premier League club is.

5:18It's almost certainly wrong. Oh, do let me know. A load of misconceptions, mistakes that I'll make. You put me right. What is the job? Well, a bit of background on how I got to the role that I'm doing now. I started my career in the ticket office at the RFU at Twickenham. Had a great time there. Then moved on to a Spanish sports marketing firm called Dorna, who introduced a new advertising system into the UK, primarily around Premier League football clubs, then ended up working on football sponsorship at Coca-Cola, left Coca-Cola, set up a sports marketing agency with Theo Paphitis, which was fun.

5:59What happened to him? He's still around, don't worry about Theo. Left there, sold that to a sports marketing agency called Octagon. Left there, became commercial director at Premiership Rugby for eight years, which was an amazing journey. And then went to Pitch International, was a partner at Pitch, which is television rights, sponsorship business, primarily looked after commercial rights to the Brazil national football team. And then the phone rang to, you know, would I be interested in becoming chief exec at Brentford? To which I immediately said no, because it's my team. And it's what I do at the weekends to get away from football at that point and then they said but read the job description read the brief you know the football side is in good shape but we need some help from a commercial perspective want to go through a big period of growth and I read the brief and annoyingly it really really rang good bells with me and um and and the minute I decided I wanted to do it I could think of nothing else other than getting the role so was it was it a tough interview process John it was do you know No, it was very, very formal.

7:08I think I had three rounds of interviews with board, director of football, you know, various presentations. Yeah, it was very, very thorough. Yeah, it was rigorous, which is kind of what this organisation is known for. You know, one of the things that Matthew Benham, our majority owner now, you know, he's very big on what we call premortems. So, you know, looking at where errors and mistakes potentially could happen and trying to mitigate those issues beforehand. And, you know, that's why there is a lot of rigour and process on everything that we do at the football club. So what let's talk about growth, because that'll be a theme of what we're going to talk about.

7:52What's the difference between running a championship club and a Premier League club? I think the core component parts are very similar, but the scale is very, very different. So if you look, when we exited the championship, we had turnover of about 17 million. We're being near 190 million now in the Premier League. Yeah. When we left the championship, I had an off-field staff of around about 60 people. and we're above 180 people now, so three times growth. So, yeah, and the spotlight is on you in the Premier League. No question about that. And therefore, all of the decisions that you make across the organisation are under the microscope.

8:41So, you know, but I think that the basics, the component parts are very, very similar, but the scale is very different. And where does the growth come from? So from 60 to 180, is it a particular department that's blown up or is it just across everything? It's across the board, across the board. You know, clearly going into the Premier League, you're in a more significant regulatory environment. Yeah. So a lot around legal compliance, safeguarding, you know, so those areas grow very rapidly. but I think the the other big growth area is around you know off field effectively is split into two there's a business operation side where legal and finance and compliance all those areas sit but at its core off field we're a sales and marketing business yeah you know and I think the marketing team is now around about 30 32 to 35 people you know I think when we left the the championship it was probably no more than half a dozen so you know those areas have grown significantly partnerships has grown significantly because you know our business model as a football club is quite different from some others you know we don't have the biggest of venues so the levers that we can pull from a financial growth perspective are very much around player trading which people are very familiar with, around commercial partnerships, sponsorship revenue.

10:15That is probably the most controllable area for us. So therefore you want to put your resource behind that and then broadcast. And you only unlock the broadcast revenue whilst you remain in the land of milk and honey. So therefore everything that we do is focused about on-field performance to maintain and grow that Premier League status. There's a couple of spinoff questions for you guys. One is about that question of growth and how you get from, you know, let's use the framing of championship to Premier League. But that's you see what the what are the problems, the pitfalls? What is the stuff that companies look at when it gets to, OK, we need to go from 60 to 180 people?

11:02What are the what are the issues there? well there'll be a raft of issues uh that are possibly at play i think in in order to maintain that that growth that consistent growth that controlled growth is you don't want to be deviating away from like what is your mission as a business what are your core values that everyone signs up to and that really needs to be embedded into the fabric of that business and people need to live it and it needs to start from the top all the way down. So for me to move through that growth period, an organisation shouldn't move away from what is really important to them and how they want their people to convey that message.

11:47And it really centres around those core values. So just on that, I'm just going to push it back to John, what are they from your point of view? Because it's a good point. And Brentford is one of those clubs that I think instinctively has something there but you need to articulate what that actually is because I again I've got an idea of it but you tell me what you think I think we're very lucky and fortunate that we're in an a very purpose-driven industry you know I think our staff whether it's on field or off field understand what we're trying to achieve you know we spend a lot of time working on our strategic plan.

12:26I always say one of our super strengths is our alignment as an organisation from owner, through the board, staff and the fans as well. I think everybody understands what their role and responsibility is within the organisation. And what we try and do is really empower each of the individuals to go out there, take some calculated risks, because we have to as an organization you know we don't have the the resources and the financial clout of some of our bigger competitors in the league so we have to think slightly different yeah to those organizations so for me it's about empowering people and making sure that they really understand what their role responsibility is to deliver the strategic plan and then empower them to go off and do it give them the wings to fly rich rich i was gonna add the other thing as well what it fundamentally boils down to is that that organization whichever it size is what is the culture of that organization what are people how do people feel is so so important so if you're going from say a startup as i joined indeed back in 2012 with fewer than 200 people it was rough it was ready it was incredibly exciting and to stay within a business for 14 years you've got to love what you do fundamentally it boils down to you've got to enjoy it the business hasn't moved away from ensuring that it still has a really good culture and there's different elements that play into that and that is so for me fundamentally important because we just spend more waking hours at work yeah when we're at home with our loved ones so you've got to have a real good harmonious culture there's a david there's a question about i hear a lot of club other clubs say you know So not just in the UK, but across, you know, maybe even across European leagues, they want to do a Brentford.

14:23And I'm always interested in what that means and whether actually it is something that is, you know, we'll take John's playbook and trot that out over here in this league. But I'm interested, you know, and it's never as easy as that. But give me a sense of where you think the culture question, I guess, from your lens. Well, just before that, I actually took a lot of similarities in what the Athletic did to what you're describing there because they were a startup and entering a very traditional market here in the UK. the chances are that they would fail many have tried and fallen by the wayside so they needed to create a clear identity a niche a usp but crucially as you point out a culture and some values of what you're going to do how you're going to make your mark in british and european and sports journalism and how it's going to be sustainable and they've managed to fill what i think was a bit of a gap with no disrespect to what was already there for sort of quality and integrity and producing some long form features and some articles that many of us you're not sort of under pressure to follow the crowd to the contrary try and think of something different when you come to a match or when you break news or when you do an interview so that you're offering value and then the the sort of ethos and the culture sort of permeates throughout the organization one that you're proud of being a startup and you're new and you're trying to make an impact but two that you all know the culture of what you're trying to do and how you're trying to do it differently from what existed before if we extrapolate that to your actual question on on the football side of things I think Brentford and dare I say at Brighton given the ownership histories they've tried to do something different they've tried to grow organically and in the right way i don't sense for a matthew benham here at brentford tony bloom at brighton and there are other good quality owners and clubs and stories that they've taken it on as a play thing to just invest the billions they've made in other industries on shiny hollywood signings and gimmicks that could bring success could boom could bust they've tried to create something organic and sustainable and really intelligent.

16:51Largely in the work that I do, you learn about this through the recruitment of players and the building of academy and the strategy on the pitch where it's fascinating. We may come on to talk about it, sort of where data plays a role, analytics, the gambling. Well, let's talk about it now. I mean, in terms of, again, lots of cliches around data, but we're 20 years on for Moneyball. Is that still the game that is being played? is a question that I was wondering about. Where does that play in your world? What access, you know, you're looking... I'm really, before we get to the data question, I'm really interested in the sort of why we're so obsessed with transfers.

17:32Yeah. Because you've built a job around it. Yeah. So I'll finish the last one and then lead into that question. So where Brentford, we speak about specifically, have become the example to many is that their record in recruitment is phenomenally good and it's translated onto the pitch and it's been underpinned by data, proven data. It's not just some sort of fad, trial and error, sort of peak and a trough. It's brought them consistency. It's been vindicated in results on the pitch and progress through the leagues. And there are some exceptional individuals working at this club. Some have gone, others have come, but there's been a consistency at the top led by ownership and several of the directors and the ethos.

18:23They've, I don't know if I'm being a bit extreme here, but made a bit of an art form. I really like Brentford's recruitment and similar with Brighton and others at a time where recruitment is so important. So let's just dig into that, because I think that's a good question. But the data thing, and this is for both of you, but John, when everyone's got the same data, what's the edge? And trying to explain Brentford is quite difficult, I find, because I think that there's, I'm assuming everyone's got the same information about the players, or pretty much, so there's the interpretation of it. Something's happening.

19:00Yeah, I think for us, obviously everybody talks about the data, But it's just one component part of making good decisions. And I think we use the data very much at the front end of our decision making and at the back end when we're validating that decision. But there's an awful lot that happens in between, you know, which are the more traditional methods of football scouting. Trusting the eye and character checks. Correct. And character checks and making sure that, you know, going back to that culture, that they are the right people for the environment. And that's not just on the pitch, that's off the pitch as well.

19:42You know, and we talked a bit about earlier about kind of the scale of the business that we are at the moment that, you know, we cannot we can't really afford to go out into the market and bring in tried and tested long term Premier League players. You know, we have to look in other areas and therefore the use of data can help us significantly narrow down that search. But once that's narrowed down, there's still a lot of traditional methods used on that recruitment. Yeah, I might just jump in there. And there are exceptions like a Jordan Henderson. But from the outset, that's the thinking of a club like Brentford.

20:27Your question is about doesn't everybody have the same data? Yeah, many of them do, but it's the same in every industry. Hollywood, you have loads of great actors and producers, but there are small percentages that make a big difference between the good and the great or how it's used, the data. So many Premier League and European and Championship EFL clubs and global clubs, they have the same resources, databases, software, but some create their own algorithms, whether it be a Brentford or a Brighton, who I've mentioned, and many others. So these two clubs that I've mentioned happen to be more gambling-related data, and the depth of it is beyond my intelligence level.

21:09So it's interesting that because, again, you hear that a lot. And I wonder if that's just a story. I mean, I'm from, you know, I live in Brighton. I'm very familiar with that one. But there's a, I wonder if it underplays what's actually happening. It's an easy story to tell that there is a secret source that has linked to the background of the owners. I wonder how real that is and whether or not actually what you're saying is it's sort of a simplification. No, I think, you know, Brighton and Brentford, we know their ownership structure and data is used in other areas. So that model has been refined over long periods of time.

21:47So, you know, it's data that we trust. You know, and as David said, there are a vast majority of football clubs now are using significant data sources across all areas of their business. It's not just Brentford and Brighton. Totally. And so there are secrets to their relative success. Ian Graham at Liverpool built his own system and algorithm, and it's now formed a company called LudaNautics that other clubs and organisations are benefiting from within the industry. Arsenal had stat DNA, so it was written themselves. So within that, feeding in our data companies and resources that many benefit from.

22:32But there's little edges that have been augmented to themselves. But then, so it's, many describe it as being, they call kind of like the data scientists, the chefs. And then you have the data as the ingredients. And it's how well you cook those ingredients as the chef for your restaurant. And you serve it in a particular way. So it's like horses for courses. it's becoming I think less about the differences in the data and more about the application of it and I'm conscious I didn't answer why transfers such a big thing in my work and and in this society it's because for many reasons but there's the razzmatazz of the Premier League and and and European and world football it's about hope as well it's hope there's always been a luster to transfers but now as the stakes get ever higher the determination to win the games like football manager that make and social media that make people feel they're a part of it the intrigue the lifting the curtain that people like me who can get a bit of an inside track at NBC and this is an Americanism they entitle me their Premier League insider and I know insiders in baseball and American football and basketball are the same.

23:53So, you know, giving the public things they didn't know before. So that's why the transfer news and the scoops are becoming salivated over, like a sport within a sport. You can break a transfer story during a Premier League match, and on many occasions you'll find there's a bigger buzz and more interactions about that transfer story than the match that's going on itself. It's a sport within a sport. With BBC background, there is a... The incentive to be early rather than right is always hanging around this, isn't it? Yeah. Particularly on social media. How do you... Because BBC has to be right.

24:30It doesn't have to be early. It doesn't have to be first. You were early, weren't you, on Saturday with Ange, who left Forrest. I saw that being streamed straight away. But I was like, crikey, that was early. I mean, he was early his departure within 17 minutes. Is that when you saw he had a cut on his face? Yeah, I don't think you've been right. You won't write on that because I think it was Mancini, wasn't it? Well, that's a slightly different topic that I'll come on to as well. What I report often, because it's a blessing that people trust what I and others say, they seem to take their own interpretation, and I think you may have just done it there, on what I actually said, and you form a view on what you think I meant.

25:16So I said that Mancini had been spoken to as part of the process, which nobody, actually the Telegraph reported it at the same time, which is absolutely true. But many people, because of my reputation of he doesn't speak that often. So when he speaks, he means something different. They took that to mean Mancini's getting the job, which I never said. And it is quite interesting that that's the interpretation you take. But the right versus first thing. And yeah, I came through the BBC, but before that I worked for others. I was at the Guardian on a traineeship. I spent time with the London Evening Standard, the Sunday Telegraph.

25:51I did a journalism degree at Bournemouth University, three years. And I swear by that, I learned many of my values and morals and ethics and practices from there. And tons of spells of work experience and now at The Athletic. And the rules are pretty much the same. Editorial guidelines, you need to at least double. independently source every bit of information. And that's become even stricter since the New York Times took over the athletic because accuracy and the truth is ever more important in this era of public scrutiny. And so the priority is always to be correct and accurate. Okay, we do make mistakes.

26:32You don't try to and you try and eliminate them as best you can. But there is a desire to be quick, of course. as has there been as long as journalism has existed and communication and the passage of information. And if you're lucky enough or you are good enough to deliver accurately and quick and maybe first, then well done, congratulations. It's a privilege that it sometimes happens to me and it happens to many others. But you are really learning now that if you are not first, it's okay but you better be right because people are unforgiving in this society and they remember and they come for you and i think it takes a hell of a lot long time to build up a reputation that i'm fortunate to have and and some others in our industry too but it can be broken so quickly and i'd be mortified to knowingly get something wrong there are slip-ups and hiccups and things change which not many people in society have sympathy for and especially in football transfers until the ink is dry and there have even been some remarkable cases where it is done in inverted commas but it's not fully done and it makes you reflect as a journalist should I report until it's official because but then then the essence of journalism or the work I do is to try and break news and and it's it can be a bit of a poison chalice but we are living in there is a bit of a race out there especially with social media the because of the big business of transfers and i i was purposeful when i was saying about the razzmatat it all links why the clubs are so focused on it because it's a revenue generator like john talked of it's it's helping with success on the pitch, sustainability, and these things are all intertwined.

28:31The media's reporting of it, the fans' appetite for it. But this all places such great emphasis on trying to do it properly from my perspective. I'm looking for a bridge here because we were talking about there's the data question and you've been in this job a long time and there's an ai question hanging around here and says to me you know so just take me inside what i'm not i think i know what indeed is and what it does but again i'm probably wrong in in my framing but just take us inside that and what ai is going to do to this world because there's it's obviously football is almost like the metaphor it's the route in but there is also day in day out in terms of our relationship with where we work yeah so i'll kind of talk about where maybe briefly indeed has come from to where it is right now and then i'll kind of elaborate a little bit further on your question around ai so when indeed uh inception back in 2004 it was traditionally a job site which is we would get employers that they would post their roles uh we would attract job seeker candidates to the platform and then we would marry the two up so the the adverts the job adverts would be advertised the job seekers would see it following a search and then whatever stoke their interest they would apply through through our platform and naturally over the course of the 21 years we've evolved dramatically we are fundamentally back in the day a search engine and now where we're moving to as a business is very much an AI engagement platform so you're You're going to have to explain what that means.

30:13Yeah, no, absolutely. So in essence, what we're trying to do is connect employers. That's never changed. We want to connect employers where the jobs are with the job seekers that are obviously searching for those roles. The problem right now, and it's been a problem for decades, is the recruitment process, generally speaking, there's many flaws in it. And I think, David, you were kind of talking about getting out there with the story first. And I think for me, that boils down that time can be a killer. And in recruitment, it's very, very pronounced that time can be a killer because it's so competitive.

30:47Whether you're an SMB, whether or not you're an enterprise business, it's a competitive market to find top talent. So once you find and source that top talent, you want to get it across the line and to make sure that you put pen to paper. So the recruitment process is still broken. Time is a killer. Too many steps for job seekers to go through to apply for a vacancy. So to give you a perfect scenario, we did some research last month where we surveyed a thousand employers and both employers and job seekers were saying the biggest killer is time. That's the biggest problem that both face. So from a job seeker standpoint, now that's one of our values is job seeker first.

31:27We're always thinking about the job seeker, how we can break down those challenges, break down those obstacles. Their biggest gripe right now is that they will apply for a job. They may have to wait for days. they may have to wait for weeks or worst case scenario they won't hear at all so then straight away if they don't hear from that employer that they've applied for then that has a detrimental impact on that employer brand so therefore that job seeker is less inclined to apply for another job because the experience that they faced was frankly awful yeah then you got it from the employer's standpoint which is there's very arduous prolonged processes, administrative protocols, and that's probably heightened based on the industry.

32:10And they have to go through many steps to go through that process. And then when it comes to sourcing talent, if they say get inundated with applications, there's a lack of resource to go through that. So then that becomes a problem for them because they're not quick enough to get after the talent. And if their competition is swift, then they're going to lose out fundamentally. So that's been a problem for quite some time. That still exists within traditional recruitment. And what we're trying to do at Indeed is to really develop and evolve AI. And we had our internal marquee flagship event last month, which was held in New Orleans in America, where we basically get a large contingent of North American clients, but we'll also fly in other international clients from other markets.

33:00And we'll get together over the course of two or three days. And this is really our vehicle to say to the global markets, the industry media, this is where we're going as a business. This is our direction of travel. And this is where we're focusing our attention. And that attention is AI. And that's really what's getting us excited. So there's two main products that we are in development stage right now that we're looking to roll out in the US primarily, and then it's going to be rolled out into other markets. which is to support both the job seeker and also the employers as well to make the process fundamentally swifter and quicker.

33:35The first one on the job seeker is what we're calling CareerScout. So that will be, in essence, a talent AI agent for the job seekers. So it will support them in everything in terms of, OK, what is your skill set right now and what jobs are out there that match your skill sets? And we'll support them in terms of CV, hygiene and also prepare them for interviews. So is it sort of special, it's a sort of jobs GPT type? Exactly. So it's basically an agent. It's an AI agent that will support them throughout that journey, which is a very pressurised experience to go through interviews, several interviews, as you mentioned already, John, with three interviews, which I thought actually was quite light.

34:17I thought you'd probably go through about five or six based on your seniority. But it's a challenging and it's an emotional process. So we are looking to support the job seeker. Now, on the flip side, we've got the employers who equally have a lot of pains and challenges and basically slowness throughout the process. So we're going to be supporting them in terms of presenting the right candidates for their jobs. So AI will do that for them. So we're calling that product Talent Scout and Talent Scout will support them there. It will support them with the messaging. It will support them with the sourcing and it will also integrate with their ATS.

34:54So those two products, which are our big bets, will streamline the process for both job seekers and employers and fundamentally make it quicker, easier, and simpler for both parties. And the relationship with Brentford, what does that do in terms of from a marketing perspective? Presumably that's why I choose Brentford to ally with. I think I know the answer, but just you talk me through it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think John will obviously be perfectly placed to talk about Brentford side of things, because it's a partnership. And obviously, we're looking at what's right for us. And Brentford will be looking at different brands out there in the marketplace in terms of what's right for them.