Datafin hits the airwaves
Datafin Co-owner Lindy Sollinger speaks about the business of “selling people”. She also reveals how to market yourself to get the job on CapeTalk radio.
Ahead of Worker’s Day, Sollinger joined CapeTalk’s lunchtime “On the couch” show host Bianca Reznik. They chat about Tech Recruitment and Sollinger provides some expert advice to those job-hunting.
From Pj’s to having an actual office space to now running an entirely Remote team. Sollinger explains how she started Datafin and how the Recruitment Agency has evolved with the times.
“I left university and decided to go into Recruitment, almost by chance… worked in Temp Recruitment and after 6 months my Manager left so I was able to head up the whole division, got a lot of experience. I went to the UK, worked there, came back and worked in Financial Services Recruitment and decided I should open my own business.
“And then in 1999, from my flat in Sea Point in my pajama’s, I opened up Datafin and the rest is history. And Bev, my sister and partner, joined a year later.”
She explained how the entire Datafin team consists of all women - mostly working Moms and all working from home.
“We fully remote and it’s actually amazing because we allow a level of flexibility but with accountability, so it works well.”
She also vividly recalls how during the Covid-19 pandemic, they had reluctantly and sadly, made the decision to terminate the office lease.
“I was actually crying the day we left the office in Covid, I was so upset to work remotely and now it’s been life-changing, the best thing we’ve ever done.”
The Datafin team utilize MS Teams to carry out daily operations. Sollinger attests to the fact that the virtual team has proven to be one that is “more productive”.
She told Reznik that the Recruitment Agency has transitioned from focusing mainly on the niche area of IT Recruitment to now serving multiple industries including Logistics, HR, Medical, Legal, Online Marketing and Sales.
“So we’ve become Generalists but what’s very, very awesome is we started off as Specialists, so we’ll always have that Specialist niche leaning but we can also do the other roles and what’s actually really fun, is to do both because the Tech world is very much a scarce skills market and then on the other side where there are lots of people looking for jobs, they’re so nice to us, a pleasure to work with it’s just very meaningful placing someone whose unemployed or hasn’t been working for a while”.
Reznik questioned Sollinger about how the face of Recruitment has changed since she started in the industry.
“We were faxing CVs and couriering CVs so that’s years and years ago but over time things have changed and things have gone online. What’s also happened, which I find the most interesting, is in the early 2000s in Tech, people would say get me a Developer and just let him or her sit in a corner and code. Now, people are looking for nice people, kind people, team players… so it’s very much more focused on a personality.”
She further expressed that it’s how candidates can connect with people that proves hugely beneficial to them getting that all important job offer. It also ties in with Datafin’s own ethos of recruiting by “connecting on a human level”.
Sollinger provided various tips and responses to callers including steering clear from using AI tools like ChatGPT for Cover Letters and CVs, that clients still often give preference to applicants with Degrees from reputable tertiary institutions and warned against using Recruitment Agencies who charge you to help find a job.
Other tips included conducting research on the company you are going to interview with, providing reasons for gaps on your CV and as a Graduate to put down voluntary work or where you may have done casual employment in Retail or in Hospitality like waitering.
One of Reznik’s final questions put to Sollinger was about what the impact of AI has been on Recruitment.
“I think on the Recruitment side; we are selling people you know, we not selling cellphones and they’re not homogeneous. What we want to know is, where is the guy on a Saturday night? Is his girlfriend in the country? Because one can aggregate CVs till the cows come home, you can skills-match but who is the person behind the skill and for us that requires a human to actually find out about it. So, I think the market is shrinking a bit but there’s always going to be that part for that human involved in the process.”
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