Get Social - The Connected Leader Podcast - Carl Marotta, CEO, Life Science Executive Search, Skills Alliance

Michelle Carvill: Hello, and welcome to the Get Social Connected Leader podcast, where I, Michelle Carvill interview business leaders around the practicalities of how, in this hyper-connected digital age, they are embracing digital technologies to tune in, connect, and communicate.
You can find all episodes of the podcast, together with show notes via our website, CarvilllCreative.co.uk/podcasts.
In this episode of the Get Social Connected Leader podcast, I'm delighted to interview Carl Marotta, CEO of Skills Alliance. Carl is an experienced staffing and services professional, with over 15 years experience working within the life, science, and technology sectors. He began his career working within pharmaceutical drug development before moving into executive recruitment. Having grown one [pan 00:00:58] European, and a second North American recruitment consultancy, Carl has since utilized his vision and network to transform Skills Alliance from a small startup business to a leading global pharmaceutical services organization.
So, Carl, it's great to have you here on the podcast. Thanks for being here.
Carl Marotta: It's great to be here, Michelle. Thanks for having me.
Michelle Carvill: So, we met, if you remember, a few years ago now at a social CEO round table with LinkedIn. It was a really interesting event because it was bringing together a number of leaders around digital literacy and what people were doing in the social media space.
I remember at the time you being quite active, even back then. Can you tell me a bit about how you started with social media, and how it fits into your role as a leader so far?
Carl Marotta: Yeah, sure.
I actually remember that meeting well. It was a really positive event, and I think I learned a lot, as did a lot of the people who attended.
I've only been using social media from a business perspective since the early 2000s, maybe 2002, 2003. I'm relatively young, I guess, as a CEO, at 37. I was using LinkedIn, I guess, initially to get my first job, if I'm honest with you.
I left university in 2002, 2003, and back then LinkedIn was a very, very immature website with very little amount of information on it.
Michelle Carvill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl Marotta: It was purely business focused, and for people who were trying to network, really.
I put my details on there, and luckily enough I got headhunted for a role in industry. It kind of did it's job. Worked in the pharmaceutical industry for a few years before I ended up in staffing. Again, I used LinkedIn to update my profile, to make sure that all my details were on there, really as an aid to get a transition into the recruitment in staffing world.
For me, an early adoption of a social media was purely selfish and beneficial to try to find a job, and progress my career.
Michelle Carvill: I'm sure for a number of people, that still very much is the case. It's still used, and now it's normal, isn't it? Like you said, you were quite an early adopter back then, but now it's part and parcel of what we do, getting our own platforms out there, really, and our own profiles out there.
Tell me a bit about how your engagement with platforms have evolved, then, over the years?
Carl Marotta: From a business sense, I guess, initially it was on a personal level. When I moved into staffing and progressed within recruitment, I used it more of a business tool to find and engage with potential candidates and clients.
Again, 12, 13 years ago, social media or online presence of high level professionals was a lot less, so it was hard to find candidates, and it was hard to find essential clients. I really used it to map my network, map my market, and try and develop relationships with people. Whereas today, it's a bit more of a social tool.
If we look at LinkedIn specifically, back in the day it was really business focused. That's why I try to keep my network, even today, as tight as possible and connect only with people who are really relevant. I used other platforms for various other areas, In my personal life, I use Instagram and other things for social, but on the work, I try to keep it independent, and therefore my posts on LinkedIn are purely work focused.
Michelle Carvill: It's interesting that on the podcast, I've been interviewing quite a few different people and different perspective. One of the questions I always ask is what's the view about balancing that personal life and business life? Some people have said, oh, they're inextricably linked, it's very difficult to separate them. I do find some of my person life weaving into what I do in business, and some of my business life weaving into what I'm doing in social media.
Do you find that, or are you saying you keep them quite separate, and you purposely do that?
Carl Marotta: I prefer to keep them separate. I definitely agree, that the two intertwine. Business and pleasure intertwines anyway. A lot of people I develop relationships with on a work perspective become good friends or colleagues I socialize with. It's not that I completely separate social, or personal and business, but I think when I'm communicating, especially if I'm communicating from a company perspective-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Carl Marotta: If I'm on my company LinkedIn page, for example, it's work focused, and it's focused on the audience that I'm trying to build a relationship with. I think you always have to think about what your audience looks like, and who you're trying to interact with, and make sure that your posts are relevant to that. What I post on my business site versus my personal site are a bit different.
T one thing I've read a lot of, and it does work, is if you include personal information into your posts, you're much more likely to get attraction because people are interested in people.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah, you're right. People do engage with people.
On that front, then, given that your environment is staffing, is social something that is embraced within your organization? Do you encourage your teams and your employees to get involved as the leader of that organization?
Carl Marotta: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, staffing is a social job anyway. It's really important that we're active with our community.
It's 100% embraced, along with everything else we embrace at Skills Alliance. We encourage flexible working, remote working, and we really believe in empowering our staff to utilize every tool they can at their disposal. All of our staff are trained, encouraged, supported to really engage online. That means writing blogs, discussing topics, and really trying to become thought leaders in their market, and then communicating that to the online community.
We embrace it. The way I always view my staff is they're running their own little business, I guess. It's really important for them to be seen as, I guess, market experts at what they do. Anything they can do to, I guess, show that externally via social media, their online presence, or anything else that might make sense, we really encourage, and showing their personality along with it.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Chris Barley, another one of the interviewees on the podcast, he was saying a similar thing about building up thought leadership within the organization. That can only be good for the organization, and good for the employee.
The question I posed then, I'll pose it again. Of course, some people would feel that there's a big risk there, in building up this wonderful talent, only for it to go elsewhere?
Carl Marotta: I mean, I think that's a really naive approach to anything in 2019. You could say the same about protecting your data, and worrying about every candidate you put on a CRM or ATS system. I mean, people are ... information is really available, and people are free to choose what they do with it. I think a person is with you for two years, and spends that two years promoting themselves, but also your brand, adds to the bottom line, is a really active and positive part of your business, encourages the social aspect of your business, and that's a benefit to everybody.
If they move on at some point, good luck to them and thank you for everything you've done.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Carl Marotta: I really don't think you can view it ... You can't view data in any other way than freely accessible to everybody, and therefore you just need to use it, make the most of it, and embrace it, really.
Michelle Carvill: I really like that. It's a current way of thinking, isn't it? It's almost ... I like the idea of every employee is running their own little business, and has that freedom and is empowered to use the tools in order to do the role in the best way that they can possibly achieve it. That's a great way to think of it.
Carl Marotta: Yeah.
Michelle Carvill: You've been using social for a number of years, it's a big part of the business that you drive. You mentioned yourself, I supposed you are a millennial so one would say that there's no ... If you don't mind me saying that. It's aligned with what you've been used to from, like you say, coming out of university, using these tools and now obviously driving your business and encouraging the people that you work with to do the same.
What kind of things ... There were a lot of leaders, a lot of CEOs, a lot of people in management positions, and every level of leadership thinking about what they need to be doing, potentially, with digital technologies, and social technologies. There's still a lot of fear, there's still a lot of skepticism. What would you say to people around that? Is it optional now to be on these channels?
Carl Marotta: I don't think so, I think you really need to embrace it.
I believe in really clear, open, honest communication with all my employees, that's something that's really important to me, and I think that needs to be communicated both internally and externally. Social media is a great way of doing it. It reinforces that honesty and that trust.
I am a millennial, just about, I squeezed into that, and it's a pretty natural behavior for me, but I think for a lot of people it's not so much. I went to a round table a few weeks ago, and it was a lot of CEOs, MDs of staffing and recruitment businesses. A lot of people had a surprising amount of fear and hesitance around using social.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Carl Marotta: It was quite surprising.
The talk was actually on AI and automation, and I think we were the only business that have implemented a lot of automation tools to really ease the burden on our day-to-day lives.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Carl Marotta: We talk about social, but it's technology as a whole. I really believe in using the technology that we have at our fingertips to make our lives easier, and more streamlined, and quicker, and more efficient. That really gives us more time, as leaders, or even as employees, to do what we're tasked with, which is build relationships with people and focus on our vision and goals.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Carl Marotta: Which is to support our client base, with our end goals as well. I believe in people dealing more on the people side, and using technology to really take the burden off of all the administrative work that traditionally staffing firms have had.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah. You know, you make a very valid point there, that social technologies are just one component, aren't they, of the digital landscape?
Carl Marotta: Yeah.
Michelle Carvill: Its digital literacy, and everything that goes with it. If organizations and leaders are just catching up with social, well, there's a whole load of other stuff to be considered as well, isn't there? Like you say, AI and all of those aspects, as well.
So, that's another point that I think is really valid, because I often think around ... You mentioned there about communicating internally and externally, and that openness, that transparency, and that social technologies enable that. There is that freedom of being able to connect with you, that you're not this hierarchy CEO sat away in a board room that nobody sees. You're there, you're visible. I know in your organization, you've got offices around the world. You can't always be visible physically, but you can be through the social technologies, and accessible through those technologies.
That's an important part, isn't it? It's not just about the external facing with your external stakeholders, it's your internal ones, too.
Carl Marotta: Yeah. We're trying to ... I'm trying to improve our internal communication because I don't think it was at all times as good as it could be. We have a Marketing Manager now, who has helped with that. Really we use, again, little pieces of technology to just help communicate in real time.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Carl Marotta: We use Microsoft Teams, which has been really good for us to chat across all the offices at all times. There could be searches for a global, or mandates that we're working on with a global client, and we have real time conversations on Microsoft Teams. It's really helped us.
That communication is both social and business related. It's also about what people are doing outside of work to keep the culture positive, as well.
We also do live blogs, which has been a really, really key learning point for us. We have a weekly blog writer ... Probably biweekly right now. We have all of our employees, one by one, research a topic. They then have to present that topic internally to the rest of the business. It's like an hour Q&A every Thursday morning between 8:30AM and 9:30AM about a new, hot topic in our market.
They present it, then there's a fairly healthy discussion which is shown across the businesses. In the UK, it's normally the Swiss and the UK office. Then, they write a blog on it, and the blog is published on our website, and there's communication on social afterwards.
Michelle Carvill: Great.
Carl Marotta: We try to tie in the internal communication with the external presentation of what we're doing, and that then also ties into our thought leadership.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah, I love it.
Carl Marotta: They are thought leaders in their market, they're experts, and they're trying to show that.
Michelle Carvill: That's a great loop, isn't it? I love that, because it's hugely collaborative. It's also empowering for the individual to have to go off everybody's learning, so you've got that shared community learning aspect, the breaking down of those silos for internal comms. Then, of course, you've got the optimization of all of that content. Not only are you creating as a thought leadership piece, you're also then taking it and chopping it up, and sharing aspects of it to socialize it, as such. To expand the reach of it.
Both internal and external communications working beautifully, there.
Carl Marotta: Yeah, it's actually a real positive in the office. It gets the business thinking, and it gets the individual to have some original thoughts around a piece of work that isn't just day-to-day staffing. They get to do some research, they get to really talk about the area of the market they're passionate about, then they get to show to their colleagues that they are market experts, and also learn a bit more about public speaking, which a lot of the more junior staff we have are sometimes fairly hesitant about.
There's lots of little learns there that really help.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah, brilliant.
How about video in the business, then? From the blog perspective, that's all research. Have you taken to getting any of your team up on video connecting that way? Showcasing-
Carl Marotta: Yeah, sorry.
We use video quite a lot internally, but we're not at the point where we're really using it externally. I think that's just been a conscious decision.
If you look at all of our training sessions, we use various different tools, but probably the one we use most right now because it links all the offices is a video platform called Blue Jeans. You can record all of your training sessions and watch them back, make sure there's all audio there. All of the training we do internally in one office, it could happen in California, London, New York, wherever the training is happening, can then be shared across all of our offices. It's stored on SharePoint, so then we have access to all of the training sessions that have ever happened, from any hiring manager to our L&D department at any one time.
If people miss it, they can pick it up. If people want to go back on it, they can review it again. All the notes are with the presentation, as well.
Video is great, we use it. We also use it internally to interview candidates, and to speak with clients. We're very social when it comes to making sure that we can assess people's behaviors on a visual way, not only via audio. We just don't use it to advertise jobs externally, or to speak externally on LinkedIn right now.
Michelle Carvill: Brilliant. It sounds like you've got some really wonderful systems going there, optimizing all the conversations, the content, and indeed the education that's going on within the organization.
Digital and technology is clearly a big part of Skills Alliance then, isn't it, within the framework of your operations. What has been, would you say, your biggest learning so far around digital and social technologies?
Carl Marotta: Yeah.
If you look at all the technology we've implemented or researched over the last 18 to 24 months, I think really it's not to panic about whether you're using the latest AI tool or latest technology piece, because there's so much around, there's just such a plethora of options when it comes to sourcing, automation, or outreach. It's more about making sure you choose the right tools for your business, and more so, actually integrating it.
You can end up with 10 different platforms and they don't talk to each other, and then there's a real issue with people actually utilizing the technology that you've invested in.
I spent a long time last year ... We have an office in California, so I spent a few weeks in San Francisco, and also a few weeks in London just speaking with startup tech businesses, to really try to understand what they could offer us and how they could partner with us for various different aspects of the recruitment process, all the way from outreach through to video assessment, cultural assessment, personality assessment, all these kinds of things that are really important. The learn for me was to work with the company who is able to integrate into the systems you already have, and not to overload the staff you have.
Every day, you could go online and find 10 new technologies that could potentially benefit your business, there's lots of good companies out there, and it's a really hot topic. Software sales is a big career opportunity for people as well. It's just about making sure that you use the right technology for you, not allowing it to become overbearing, and make sure it's integrated into your core systems.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah, good advice. The more friction, as you say, the less appetite there is for using it, isn't there? Then it's just a wasted investment. I think we've all been there, where there's the latest tech's coming in and yet nobody wants to use it.
Carl Marotta: Yeah, yeah.
One of our ... We have a few values, but one of our core values is continuous improvement. We believe in 1% improvement daily, and that aggregates into a really good learning process.
People generally, or experienced highers generally find it harder to learn, or are less committed to learn because they are used to a way of working. You really need to show them the benefit of the technology, and you need to make it usable.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Carl Marotta: If you give them five pieces of technology, and they're not usable, and they take up more time initially then perhaps they used to, they just won't integrate it into their daily workflow. It's really important that you demonstrate the benefits of using it. The fact that it's streamlined, the fact that it's integrated, and the fact that it will save them time and improve their processes.
Michelle Carvill: Brilliant, brilliant.
Really useful advice there, Carl, for us. Across social, across digital transformation, and digital technologies, around not panicking, about thinking about all the tech, but getting the right tech that's right for your organization. Like you say, that works for you, that is as friction free as possible, and is going to be utilized. I think that's a valid point, because there is a lot of [inaudible 00:22:48], a lot of overwhelm that can happen.
I'd like to end, I'd like to wrap up our interview with just three very quick fire, learn about the leader style questions.
Carl Marotta: Okay.
Michelle Carvill: They're quite big questions, but this is not War and Peace, we're just going to go with whatever comes to the top of your mind. Are you okay if I fire these questions at you?
Carl Marotta: Yeah, sure, sure.
Michelle Carvill: Okay, good.
The first ones, if you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?
Carl Marotta: Okay, good question.
Probably for me, the mass amount of excessive food waste that happens and is happening around the world right now. My sister set up a company a couple years ago that was really focused on tackling this. I guess, it's something that's reasonably close to our hearts. There's a lot of waste happening. You look at the issues with the climate, as well, and plastic.
I think just the excessive food waste would be something people should consider before the continuously buy without utilizing the stuff they've already got.
Michelle Carvill: Brilliant, I love that.
It's a topic we were talking about in my household just this morning, actually.
Carl Marotta: Oh really? Okay.
Michelle Carvill: My daughter told me they learned about it in school, and we had a really big discussion about it around breakfast.
Carl Marotta: Oh, wow. Okay.
Michelle Carvill: Very poignant, actually. Good. And very worthwhile.
Which book have you read recently, Carl, that's inspired you?
Carl Marotta: Probably the book that I've found the most value this year, or probably last year, actually ... We were, as a senior management team, trying to set new goals, new values, and make sure our vision and purpose for the business was really clear.
Michelle Carvill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl Marotta: A book I read, it's a book called The Advantage. I think the guy who wrote it, his name is Patrick Lencioni, if I remember correctly. I'm not quite sure how you pronounce it.
It's a really clever business book based on how to set business goals, make sure that you have clear purpose, make sure that your employees understand that purpose, and that then you cascade that communication to the wider business.
Michelle Carvill: Brilliant.
Carl Marotta: Really interesting read, really helpful. I'd recommend that book to anyone who is building a business, and isn't quite sure what their vision, values, purpose is and how to communicate that.
Michelle Carvill: Brilliant. Also, not just building it, but sense checking that it's all in place and communicated. I think that's very valid. People can have things on the wall, but that doesn't really mean anything if it's not communicated and being heard by the employees. I haven't heard of that one, The Advantage. I will definitely put that link in the show notes as well for people, and I will check it out myself because it sounds interesting. Good, thank you for that.
Carl Marotta: Yeah, sure.
Michelle Carvill: Last but not least, what's the best piece of advice you have been given to date?
Carl Marotta: There's always one thing, actually, that sticks in my mind. It's sales oriented, I guess, rather than leadership oriented. When I joined the staffing industry back in 2004, my first boss said to me ... Sales and staffing is, I guess, related to financial gain as well as other worthy areas.
He said, "Don't worry about the money. Do your job to the best of your ability, and the money will come."
Michelle Carvill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl Marotta: That's been something I've always focused on. People do focus a lot on what they're earning, or what their next paycheck looks like, but I think if you focus on doing your job to the best of your ability, if you really focus on being client-centric, supporting and partnering with your client base and your candidate base in the staffing industry, and doing the best job you possibly can, everything else will fall into place.
Michelle Carvill: Lovely, I love that.
I think that's a great way to end our interview, Carl. Thank you very much for taking your precious time, because I know you've got a new baby on the way.
Carl Marotta: I do.
Michelle Carvill: You need all the rest you can get, so I really do value you coming on to the podcast, and indeed sharing all of that insight with us. It's been really, really good fun having you on the show. My sincere thanks.
Carl Marotta: Yeah, thanks Michelle. I really appreciate it. Always good to catch up, and I really enjoyed reading your book, as well. It was very helpful.
Michelle Carvill: Thank you, thank you.
You've been listening to the Get Social Connected Leader podcast. Thank you to my guest, and indeed, thank you to you for tuning in. Please do feel free to share the podcast with colleagues and friends who you think will enjoy it, and indeed subscribe to tune in for more episodes.
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For now from me, Michelle Carvilll, your host on the podcast, thank you so much for tuning in, and goodbye.
Oh! PS: if you're a business leader with something to share around digital and social technologies, and you're keen to be a guest on the podcast, then I'd love to hear from you. You can email me, michelle@Carvilllcreative.co.uk.