Terri Foulston, Global Talent Director at Alcumus, is an articulate, tenacious, and highly commercial talent professional with a proven track record of delivering measurable results within fast-paced, competitive/complex environments. She is a motivational, people focused leader who succeeds through others, giving clear direction and coaching individuals to reach their full potential.
Below are highlights of the interview:
Describe your background and what did you do before joining Alcumus?
My career started in B2B sales, where I was selling to C-Level executives of Fortune 500 companies. From there, I progressed to managing a team of phone-based salespeople, supporting their development and learning the importance of being a leader first. I was then approached by the chairman of the business to take on recruitment and training of new sales talent coming into the business and got my first taste of life in HR. I took on this role with zero formal HR experience or qualifications and had to learn quickly on the job (google was my best friend for a short period of time), studying for my CIPD level 5 in my own time to support my development in this area. My remit in this role grew quickly to take on hiring globally, with offices based in Miami and New York in addition to Bristol, UK.
I felt like I had reached a glass ceiling and, with ambition for more, I took a role in a recruitment agency as their Talent Manager—recruiting and developing recruiters, which I did for just over 18 months.
I then made the decision five years ago to relocate back to Cardiff (where I studied for my degree) and joined Alcumus as their Head of Recruitment and Retention. Two promotions, a CIPD level 7 qualification, and chartered status later, I am now the Global Talent Director.
Tell us more about the company.
At Alcumus, we believe everyone should be able to go home safely from work every night, so we’ve made it our mission to build software led risk management solutions that will support our clients to keep their workforce safe. We’re a private equity-backed organisation that has ambitious goals, moves with pace and is delivering double-digit YOY growth across the UK, Canada and USA.
Our solutions provide scalable technology and expertise that enables effective management through digitisation of EHSQ, supply chain, contractor, and COSHH management processes.
Our in-house team of specialists also provides HR consultancy and workplace monitoring services, training, and UKAS accredited certification and accreditation support.
Why did you choose to become a people (talent acquisition) expert?
In great organisations, people are at the heart of everything they do. I believe that if you look after your people, the rest will look after itself, so for me, people success (HR) teams are the key to success, and that’s a very exciting thing to be part of.
I’ve been blessed throughout my career to work with some fantastic people centric leaders (and some not so great ones) who have made me feel really passionately about the difference we can make to both the business, and the people within it (at every stage of that journey).
I can’t say I chose to become a people expert (I fell into recruitment rather than this being by design), but these are the reasons why I have stayed in the profession and thrived.
How do you motivate people to go the extra mile?
Motivational leadership is all about being authentic and staying true to your word. People buy people, and if you don’t build trust in the relationship, you’ll never be able to understand what motivates people beyond the day to day.
The top five key things I live by when it comes to leading people are:
- Only ask people to do what you would be happy to do yourself—there is nothing motivating about hierarchy.
- Treat everyone as an adult. Parent-child relationships don’t empower others to develop and grow. This includes not sheltering others from constructive feedback, or preventing people from giving your feedback in return.
- Equip the team with the skills and autonomy to lead on projects and make their own decisions.
- Don’t promise anything that you’re not 100% sure you can deliver.
Recognise and celebrate success on a regular basis. A thank you can go a long way!
What gets you up in the morning? What motivates you?
My biggest motivator is the success of my team. I’m a big believer that the strength of a leader is how well you develop others to grow and progress, regardless of whether that’s within the team or outside of it.
I’m also very ambitious as an individual. Therefore, working towards a stretch goal or a target gives me energy, as well as delivering on the things that actually make a difference to both our people and the success of our business.
Kindly describe how you will specifically know what success looks like for you.
During my time at Alcumus, we’ve won a number of in-house recruitment awards that enable us to demonstrate our success when benchmarked against other organisations of similar sizes or in similar industries. These include:
- Recruitment Team up to 1000 Employees 2019 Gold Winner & 2021 Gold Winner
- On-Boarding Strategy 2019 Silver Winner & 2021 Silver Winner
- Recruitment Leader of the Year 2018- Gold Winner
- Best Newcomer (Team) of the Year 2018- Gold Winner
Success in my current role would mean building and delivering a proactive and integrated talent function globally, that provides a best-in-class experience for both our hiring managers and prospective employees.
From that, I have aspirations to work up to C-level and eventually set up my own business.
What is some of the advice you give to aspiring woman leaders?
Having spent most of my career in male dominated environments, my biggest piece of advice would be to find your voice and strive to spend the majority of your time outside of your comfort zone, as that’s where the magic happens.
The other piece of advice I would give is that often, as women, we strive for perfection, but I’ve learned along the way that you don’t need to be perfect, you just need to be authentic. In fact, some of my best learning experiences have been from where I’ve made some of the biggest mistakes in my career, and that’s OK.
What are your future plans to sustain Alcumus’s success?
The hiring landscape has changed dramatically over the past 18 months, with candidates driving real change in how we attract, hire, and retain great people. We’re placing a lot of emphasis on how we support early careers and invest in growing our own talent moving forward to counteract rising salary expectations and high levels of demand to sustain our success and continue to hire talent into our business.
As part of the RL100, we work together as a community to create positive change in the world of resourcing. A lot of this work, I take back into the business to support our future success.
Website: www.alcumus.com
