Everything else is HR #3 – 18 Years!
In October 2024 Top Recruitment Cambodia turns 18!
In this podcast in our series: ‘Everything else is HR’ our MD, Kevin Britten talks to Tim Montero about his background and life story and how the company came to be set up all those years ago.
Duration: 25 minutes
Full transcript
Tim: Hello and welcome back to ‘Everything Else is HR’. Today we have a special anniversary episode. Hi Kevin, how are you?
Kevin: Good afternoon Tim. Yeah, I’m good, thanks.
Tim: So again, congratulations for I believe 19 years? No, 18. 18 years, sorry. 18 years. 18 years in Cambodia. How does it feel to be in year 18, Kevin?
Kevin: Well, 18 years on October the 6th since the company was registered.
I’d been here a couple of years before that. We actually started operating in January, 2007, but we consider October to be our anniversary month.
Tim: So it’s the 18 years in October. 18 years. So it’s basically Top Recruitment debut. Yeah, so it’s good. It’s a big party then.
Kevin: Perhaps we’ll see.
Tim: Anyways today we have a special episode as mentioned. Today we will be asking our Managing Director Kevin Britten. Kevin, could you share us a little bit about yourself? Maybe we could start from a little bit about your career and how you ended up in recruitment in Cambodia And how tough recruitment started 18 years ago, and then we will top that off with a bit of, uh, trivia. Some questions about Cambodia specific. And cultural questions and then personal and thoughtful working questions at the end so that everybody will enjoy today’s episode. So, Kevin, you can start with a little bit about yourself and how Top Recruitment started 18 years ago.
Kevin: Thanks, Tim. Well, I’ve, I’ve lived here since about 2004, 2005 when I relocated here from Brunei where I’d been living for 17 years. I came over here with a company that was doing electronic fire and security, and I was involved in occupational health and safety. Um, but I’ve spent most of my career in Brunei, working for the Brunei government as an education officer in a variety of roles.
But when I got here in 2000, uh, 2005, and I left that company in 2006, I also opened this company. That was the beginning of something called The Secretary, which was then a serviced office company. The serviced office company quickly changed into, uh, it added the service of recruitment for the clients because they were all inbounds and startups and they were all looking for people. So, my team started looking for people for them – that morphed into a recruitment agency. We left the serviced office and we’ve been doing recruitment and staffing ever since.
But before I came to Brunei, I hadn’t been involved in that at all. I’ve been involved in education, training, occupational health and safety, as I said, in Brunei for 17 years, working for the government, the government of Brunei. Before I went to Brunei, in my twenties, I’d been in Sudan, Cyprus, and Spain, and before that in France, all as a teacher that was through my twenties.
Tim: Cool. So you were, so you were basically teaching in the government, like under the British government?
Kevin: No, no. I worked for the Brunei government, which employed, and it still does, employs foreign teachers and foreign education officers there. They have a bilingual education system, so some classes are in Malay, some classes are in English. They employ fewer and fewer these days, but when I first went back in, 1989 when I went there were quite a lot of foreign teachers.
Tim: Kevin, the teacher, the English teacher.
Kevin: Oh yeah, I was a teacher for more than 20 years. I got out of it when I was about 40 in the year 2000. I just felt I was at the end of the road for that. And so, I got into something, well, Occupational Health and Safety is close to it, but it’s a bit different.
Tim: So how was the transition to that? Was it an easy transition doing something new, especially here in Cambodia?
Kevin: Yeah, I, well, I, this was in Brunei and I retrained. I trained as an occupational health and safety professional and, it was, it wasn’t that difficult, but it was, it was, it was challenging.
Tim: Overall, the experience in Cambodia, it must have been, was there any culture shock, was there any interesting things that you had to deal with from Brunei transitioning to Cambodia?
Kevin: Well, Brunei and Cambodia are quite, quite different countries in many, many ways, but they’re similar in some ways. I mean, obviously they’re both in ASEAN. Their cultures have some similarities. Brunei is a monarchy, the same as Cambodia, but it’s Islamic and obviously it’s a tiny country. It’s only got a population of around 400, 000 and so it’s, it’s a small country. It’s, it’s got a lot of oil and gas wealth and that makes it quite a different country to, to here. The infrastructure was perhaps better. And the way of life was quite different.
Tim: Maybe if you could point out some things, what was the main difference that you noticed?
Kevin: Well, in some ways, Brunei obviously had been an ex British colony, so it has close links to, to London. And many Bruneians are British educated, so it’s very British in some ways, whereas, of course, here, British influence is fair, but much, much lower because Cambodia had French connections as a French colony.
Tim: Right. And you mentioned from The Secretary to Top Recruitment. How did you start, basically, to recruit? Was LinkedIn very important? Were you using LinkedIn 18 years ago, or was there a medium of recruitment?
Kevin: There were very few LinkedIn professionals on LinkedIn in Cambodia. Most of the LinkedIn users in Cambodia, in fact were foreigners. So no, we couldn’t really use LinkedIn. We actually used personal networks, referrals and advertising and we built up a database of the kind of staff that our clients were looking for, and they were generally looking for accountants, office managers, admin assistants, PAs.
So, we started from there and developed into other functions. As clients from outside the serviced office started to come and ask us to recruit for them. The first client I actually remember quite well. I was approached by someone I knew who was setting up a production of, I think the correct name is novelty dog chews.
It’s those things that look like a bone, but they’re actually made out of raw hide, dried chicken, and they’re baked. Well, a company was setting up here for production of that. I think it’s still in production as well. They supply that mostly to American supermarkets, but in very large numbers. So this friend or business acquaintance approached us and we helped him set up his management team.
Tim: Right now we are, as everybody knows, especially our listeners, Top Recruitment is known for specializing in C level positions. Seniors and all that. How did we end up doing that?
Kevin: I think it’s just the way we’ve responded to market demand and it’s our skills. We’ve never really specialized in blue collar and we generally have worked on back office positions, although a lot of clients have asked us for sales marketing positions.
That’s a staple function that we do. But I think it’s just the natural progression that we made as an agency over the 18 years.
Tim: Wow. There you go. Thank you, Kevin, for sharing. And I’m sure most of us now. For our listeners, for those who don’t know how Top Recruitment started, we actually started as The Secretary. That’s pretty cool, Kevin. That’s pretty cool. So, okay. So some thought provoking questions, if you’re okay.
Oh, wait, let’s start with Cambodia specific and cultural questions, if you’re ready. Sure. Yeah. So just for our listeners, I’ve never sent this to Kevin. So these questions are very random. So he’s not prepared. So forgive if his answers may not satisfy you. But Kevin, you have a lot of freedom to answer this as much as you can. So let’s start with our first question.
So for our first question, what is your, what’s your favourite hidden gem in Cambodia that you recommend to visitors? Yeah, let’s go for that.
Kevin: Oh, well, when I’ve got foreign visitors in town, or when people are talking to me about planning a trip to Cambodia, I would usually recommend that they, it’s hardly a hidden gem, it’s the second city. I’d recommend they go and visit Battambang.
I really like Battambang I think because it’s so authentic and it’s a fully functioning, the commercial capital of the Northwest. But at the same time, very close to Battambang are lots of quite interesting things to do and to see.
And the area around Battambang is very pretty. It’s got rolling hills, the land is very fertile, so it’s where a lot of fruit is grown. It’s a It’s actually a very, very pleasant and a very untouristy area. And of course, the town centre itself, the city centre along the river is very, very pretty. A lot of the old buildings have been preserved, and it’s, it’s just a pleasant, relaxed place for people to have a quite authentic, I think, an authentic Cambodian experience.
Tim: Yes, if you want to get the authentic Cambodian experience, Battambang is the place to go. Yeah. So I also understand Battambang is also where a lot of the rice is grown.
Kevin: Sure. Because the Northwest is the big centre of rice growing. So you see plenty of rice drying, storage, milling going on in the area around the city and the, the city services pretty much the whole of the Northwest of the country.
Tim: Cool. So if you want to have the authentic Cambodian experience, and you like rice Battambang is the place to go.
All right, second question. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned from Cambodian culture that you applied to your business? Which is topical, yeah?
Kevin: I think the clearest lesson of Cambodia is a respect for work life balance, which is often expressed in some foreigners as this frustration that people aren’t doing what they expect or Cambodians aren’t carrying out things the way they want. But I, I always back up and I try to try to say to people that I see it as work life balance having a lot clearer definition here than in many other places.
And the people are unwilling to give up parts of their life in order to work more. So the balance is very, very clear. And I think respecting that, that’s a lesson that I’ve learned in Cambodia.
Tim: Yeah, because a lot of, I mean, I’m a Filipino myself and we always compromise our work life balance. And some other companies as well, international companies, Yeah. They tend to abuse this and I, I myself have learned this as well in Cambodian that, work life balance is very, very important. Like if, if it’s time to work, it’s time to work. If it’s time for family or for myself, yeah, because you could never get them to, they have this kind of discipline.
So, what’s your favourite proverb or saying that inspires you for our third question?
Kevin: You know, I mean, my Khmer isn’t very good and I, I don’t know that many Cambodian proverbs, but I always think about the one that Cambodians use to refer to the natural cycles of life. “When the water comes up, the fish eat the ants, and when the water goes down the ants eat the fish.” I think that’s a proverb reflecting the cyclical nature of life. It’s got deeper meanings. It’s got other meanings. And I think it’s a very typically Cambodian proverb.
Tim: So how does this inspire you basically?
Kevin: It makes you think, it makes you think first of all, of the river and this way in which life in Cambodia is run by the seasons. Right now the river is very, very high. The fish are eating the ants at the moment and another part of the year, it’ll all change. And it’s part of the cyclical nature of life in a country. Where nature and the natural world is very, very close by.
Tim: So basically life goes on, you know, it is what it is, we go as the river flows, if that’s how I understand it. Okay, so another thing, what’s the one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you first started your career and in this case, you were a teacher, right?
Kevin: Well when I started that part of my career in 1992 I hardly knew anything. So basically almost anything that I know now would have been helpful then. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a career goal. So I think now it’s not something I know now, but it’s something I ask myself. Should I have had a career plan back then? Maybe, but it feels like a very long time ago. 1992 was a long time ago when I started, when I first went from UK after I graduated. I went out to, teach in Sudan.
Tim: For everyone listening, I was born in 1994. So basically, when Kevin started his career, I was not born yet. Okay. If you could write a book about your experience in the recruitment industry, what would the title be?
Kevin: Well, Tim, I’ve written two books.
Tim: Yeah, you did? How can I read your books?
Kevin: I thought it’d be a good project to write a book, a guidebook called “How to Recruit in Cambodia”. So, I did and it’s never been published and it would have to be adapted quite a lot to update it because I probably did this 10 years ago, but I took myself off and I wrote that.
And of course, during COVID, everybody wrote a book. That is also sitting somewhere in a hard drive. It is a, is a novel which also hasn’t been published, which was actually based on my experience in Sudan in the early 90s, and that is called “Swimming in the Nile”. It’s a bit autobiographical, but again, it’s not very good, so it’s never been published.
Tim: So regarding your experience in the recruiting industry, regarding recruitment, what would the title be?
Kevin: Well, if ever I went back to it, I’d call it How to Recruit in Cambodia, a guidebook, a handbook for people trying to recruit in this country
Tim: So what’s the biggest challenge you’ve overcome in your career and what did you learn from it?
Kevin: Was it the challenge I brought on myself when in 2000? I changed from being a teacher to being a trainer. From working for the government of Brunei to working the private sector and this change. And what did I learn? Well, the basic lesson is I learned is that change is good. Change is stimulating. Change keeps you young, and, at the age of 40, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making a change and going back to the beginning. I think the lesson is, you know, change is good and change is a natural part of life and you learn from it and, you become a different person in a different career, doing different things.
Tim: It’s increasing, you know, with ai we are seeing more changes and we are looking at more changes coming quickly in the future with where AI is going.
What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
Kevin: Oh, my job, variety, variety, doing different things, doing different things every day. And that’s because I’m dealing with different people every day. So, variety, the variety that naturally comes from dealing with all sorts of people and that stops it getting boring Recruitment is about relationships so we have built relationships with different kinds of people throughout different kinds of industries. And it’s, it’s for me, the most rewarding part.
Tim: Awesome. If you weren’t in the recruitment and consulting industry, what would you do?
Kevin: Oh, well, I can’t imagine not working or at least working part time. I think I’d probably try to rewrite that novel, polish the guide to recruitment in Cambodia and maybe keep writing other things, you know, keep writing. I need to go back and polish it and edit it and improve it.
Kevin: I’m not sure if people are interested in a novel about 1990s Sudan. I think the guidebook to recruitment in Cambodia, is probably a more worthwhile project.
Tim: Awesome. Awesome. And lastly, Kevin, if you could give one piece of career advice to every job seeker in Cambodia, what would it be?
Kevin: Well, that’s easy. That’s the advice that I gave my kids when they were talking about choosing a course to study at university and setting off down their path after high school. I said to them, well, choose something you enjoy, because if you enjoy something, you’re probably going to be good at it. And if you’re good at something, you’ll get more satisfaction out of it. Which means you’ll get more enjoyment. So it’s a cycle, you do things you’re good at. And you get more enjoyment and you do more things that you’re good at. So, enjoy what you’re doing by choosing a career in something you enjoy, because that’s going to be something you’re good at. It’s a short but clear cycle, between satisfaction and achievement and more achievement and good things.
Tim: So there you go. There you go to top things off, Kevin. Thank you. Thank you very much. Again, it’s always great to talk to you and it’s great to learn more from you and the company.
Kevin: You’re welcome, Tim.
Tim: And that’s our anniversary episode special today. I hope you guys enjoyed today’s podcast. This is Tim Montero speaking. This is ‘Everything else is HR’. See you on the next one.