Distology CEO on the importance of hiring from outside the channel, international M&A plans and Exclusive Networks' IPO
Hayley Roberts speaks to CRN about the need for a wider recruitment strategy and future plans for European growth
Distology's CEO Hayley Roberts has stressed the need for those operating within the channel to hire from other backgrounds following a rise in job vacancies in recent months and is setting her sights on European expansion as the next phase of growth for the distributor.
Job vacancies in the channel have surged recently following a dip during the pandemic. Speaking to CRN back in April, the head of tech recruitment firm Robertson Sumner, Marc Sumner, said channel vacancies had hit their highest levels for 18 months, and recently took to LinkedIn to reveal that the level of job openings continued to grow last month.
Distology CEO on the importance of hiring from outside the channel, international M&A plans and Exclusive Networks' IPO
Hayley Roberts speaks to CRN about the need for a wider recruitment strategy and future plans for European growth
It has led to calls for IT firms to look further outside of the channel to meet the demand for staff, something Roberts, who worked in recruitment prior to tech, believes is key to addressing the number of available jobs in the market, though says it has been tough to fill vacancies since the easing of COVID restrictions.
"I don't know whether it's a combination of people waiting to fulfil their furlough obligations and wait for the furlough period to end, or whether the world has switched back on so much that everybody is wanting to hire and grow and build," she said, when asked about the difficulty of finding staff.
"I think that there is this perception that we somehow need technical people to fulfil all roles. We hire on attitude and energy and, yes, we look for some core competencies, of course we do.
"But I would say 90 per cent of the people in the business (Distology) are from outside of the industry, whether they have come from a completely different industry entirely or they've come from a distribution background or a channel background not in technology.
"We need to be promoting and making it easy for anybody to understand how good it is to work in technology. We've got to think outside the box and try and find people that, firstly, are open minded to learn and, secondly, have the positive mental attitude and the energy levels to be able to make a success of whatever they do."
Distology recently announced that it has moved into a new HQ triple the size of its former base after more than doubling its headcount over the past year, along with the appointment of Lance Williams as chief product officer following a 15-year stint at Softcat.
The Stockport-based distributor, which counts Okta, Yubico and Beyond Identity among its vendor partners, claims to have increased its revenues by more than 75 per cent over the past three years. Roberts said she believes Distology has the right backers in place to grow even more in the near future following private equity investment from NorthEdge in March.
"What the investment has meant is that I've got some great minds who are backing my risk taking. We want to make big changes in the distribution world, and you can't do that by just making the odd change here and there, you've got to keep consistently changing up," she added.
"Nobody could have pre-planned what was going to happen in this pandemic but everybody was working from home if they could, so that caused a huge amount of problems from a tech perspective, and certainly from a security perspective, so we were able to offer our partners and their end users some really good technology to help aid that slick work from home or remote working solution."
Among the areas of focus for Distology's growth moving forward are expanding into the Nordics, acquiring across Europe, developing the business' technical team, growing its services proposition and increasing marketing operations, Roberts said.
"We've got an office in the Benelux that's growing, and we want to grow into the Nordics as well from that office," she explained.
"Then we are looking at acquiring across Europe. We're looking quite seriously at that now, so that will grow, but we want to make sure that everything is humming before we start launching out."
Another European distributor with growth ambitions is Exclusive Networks, which last week announced the share pricing for its IPO on the Euronext Paris later this month.
Roberts believes distributors opting to go public is a positive thing for the industry.
"I think it's a great thing, I love all the investment and the grand plans for distribution because I think that it further bolsters and supports why I'm doing what I'm doing with Distology," she said.
"I think it shows that distribution doesn't just have a transactional, no value place in the channel. It genuinely has credence, so good luck to them and I'll be watching them very closely."