HR Interviews Playlist

Work and jobs are changing, and the speed of change continues to accelerate. Whether you are in the fourth decade of your working life or looking for your first job, managing a career against this background of disruptive, often unpredictable change is a challenge for everyone. Things are also being made worse by continuing pay inequality and workplace bias.

My guests this week are Grace Puma, the former COO of Pepsico and Christiana Smith Shi, the former President of Direct to Consumer at Nike. Grace and Christiana have recently authored a book called "Career Forward - Strategies from Women Who Have Made It". The motivation behind writing the book was to empower women to maximise their career journey, get paid what they are worth and navigate the unexpected shifts that happen in the current world of work. There is some excellent advice here that Grace and Christiana believe is applicable to everyone looking to develop their career in our turbulent times.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The Career Forward Mindset

• Having a "Cardinal Direction" instead of a North Star

• The importance of mentors and sponsors

• Steering into the skid to deal with unexpected challenges

• Building career equity

• Dealing with pay inequality

• Reinventing work-life balance

• How can employers make the workforce fair and equitable?

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TRF welcomes Chano Fernandez Co-CEO of Eightfold

• Chano brings an impressive track record with his career built in the HR Tech world and his incredible depth of knowledge from industry giants like SAP and Workday

• We tackle the topic of how Eightfold, by design, has 2 CEOs.

• Chano shares his expertise on how AI is being applied for the betterment of HR within organizations. 

• Internal mobility is the top trend in our space, identifying skills development opportunities and how generative AI, like Chatbots can help co-pilot the HR professional and Leaders. 

• Advice for organizations considering Talent Intelligence platforms; ask yourself, “Am I ready for this?”  

Who's ready for a new generation to enter the workforce? Well, like it or not, Gen Z is on their way in, and - stop me if you've heard this one before - they're different from all the preceding generations. How exactly? Well, no clue. That's why we invited Anthony Onesto, advisor, chief people officer, Gen Z & Future of Work Visionary and author of The New Employee Contract to the podcast. All kidding aside, a generation who's grown up in the shadow of 9/11, the Great Recession and a global pandemic, all while never knowing a world without internet and a smartphone are bound to introduce a wide variety of nuance to the world. And that, of course, includes recruitment and retention in new and sometimes scary ways. If you're hiring Gen Z, and hoping they stay awhile, you owe it to yourself to tune into this episode.

The shelf life of skills is getting ever shorter, which has significant implications for talent acquisition. It is essential that TA leaders take an active role in developing the overall skills strategy for their business. If employers want to be effective skills-based organizations, it is clear that talent acquisition, talent management, L&D and strategic workforce planning must be closely aligned.

My guest this week is Malcolm Taylor, Head of Capability at the UK Health Security Agency. In the last few years, Malcolm has led a highly effective initiative to use data to drive upskilling, talent development and talent acquisition. In our conversation, he shares valuable insights on skills strategy and some interesting perspectives on the likely role AI will play in L&D in the future.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Why upskilling is so essential in 2024

• The shortening life cycle of skills

• Engagement and retention

• Teaching people how to learn

• Mapping skills within the organization

• Can AI create a common skills language across professions?

• Data-driven decision making

• Community-based learning

• The role of TA in skills-based organizations

• The importance of removing silos in the people function.

• What does the future look like?

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One of the most interesting and controversial book in the HR section in a long while! Hilke brings the investigative journalist and an industry outsider to her new book “The Algorithm: How AI decides who gets hired, monitored, promoted & fired & why we need to fight back now.”

• A fateful cab ride was the genesis of the book, when the Lyft driver was gobsmacked by being interviewed by a robot for a baggage handler job at the local airport, Hilke began her quest to learn more. 

• The one-way video interview and its inevitable demise when HireVue’s claims of facial expressions to predict candidate’s honesty was proven to be crap.

• Talent Intelligence platforms like Eightfold can prove to be a positive force in helping organization know who to promote and like any double edge sword, cursed for its contribution on who should be laid off, 

• How do we fight back? Hilke gives some sound advice to HR Leaders. 

• Crystal ball predictions for 2030, sound pretty accurate to us!

No one in the world of work likes form-filling, complex systems and bureaucracy. Yet, teams need to feel motivated, aligned, and accountable on the job, which usually means a lot of that stuff we hate. So what's an employer to do? OnLoop is here to turn every manager into a supercharged coach, and CEO and founder Projjal "JJ" Ghatak is on Firing Squad to try and prove his company has the juice to fulfill that promise and take it to established players like Lattice, 15five, Culture Amp and others. Does this former Uber executive's startup have what it takes to survive Chad & Cheese? Gotta listen to find out.

Conversations about AI's impact on recruiting tend to focus entirely on the employer and recruiter viewpoint. However, it may well be that the most potent force of change for talent acquisition comes from AI-facilitated shifts in jobseeker behaviour. 

Employers are already seeing a rise in applications they suspect are being driven by AI tools that facilitate bulk applying. The use of LLMs to create or edit resumes is undoubtedly widespread, and we are also seeing examples of AI being used to hack online interviews and assessments. There is still much debate about where these activities fall on the scale, from legitimate assistance to outright fraud.

What is very clear, though, is that this is an unstoppable tide that will have severe implications for recruiting processes. What do employers do when they are inundated by applications perfectly tailored to the role that are impossible to assess using current tools and techniques?

My guest this week is Richard Collins, Co-Founder of CV Wallet. Richard has decades of experience in recruitment marketing and talent acquisition. He has recently been diving deeply into the issues caused by jobseeker use of AI and how the solutions to the problems might make recruiting better for everyone.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The current talent marketplace

• AI-driven changes in job seeker and applicant behaviour

• The potential impact on the recruiting process

• Challenges of dealing with an increasing volume of applications

• Unreliable applicant data

• Pre-qualifying and pre-verifying without creating friction in the process

• Will we see a revolution in assessment and selection?

• How do we define what is cheating or fraud?

• A shift to assessing soft skills

• How does recruitment marketing need to adapt

• A cost-per-qualified application model

• Proactive versus reactive change

• How much change will there be in 2024

• What does the future of recruiting look like?

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In case you missed it, the nursing profession is going through a pretty challenging time. Whether it's COVID burnout, a severe lack of skilled workers or the Baby Boomers putting immense pressure on the health care system - just to mention a few - times are tough. It's certainly an issue Chad & Cheese aren't qualified to solve, let alone fully understand. That's why Dr. Beth A. Brooks, president of The Brooks Group, joined the boys to discuss a wide variety of topics, such as the current state of nursing, how the gig economy is impacting the profession, the power of pay transparency and if / when the robots will finally be the ones giving colonoscopies. It's a must listen for nurse recruiting professionals, healthcare networks around the country and, frankly, nurses themselves.

Round Up is the monthly show on The Recruiting Future Podcast channel that highlights episodes you may have missed and gives you my take on some of the key learnings from the guests.

Episodes mentioned in this Round Up:

Ep 584: Talent-Centered Design

Ep 585: Embracing Automation

Ep 586: Removing Silos to Improve Hiring and Retention

Ep 587: Getting The Basics Right

Ep 588: AI, Background Checks and Quality of Hire

Ep 589: Talent Acquisition As A Competitive Advantage

Ep 590: The Road To 2030

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The last few years have taught us that no one can predict the future. However, you can develop the insight necessary to make accurate forecasts with the right combination of trend analysis and strategic thinking.

We are currently in a period of accelerated change in talent acquisition, and it is essential to understand the direction of travel even if we can't predict the final destination. We must anticipate the skills that will be required in the future, how we can recruit them, and how talent acquisition must change to be fit for this new purpose.

My guest this week is Russell Beck, Director of Inspiration at ImagineThinkDo and author of a new book called "The World Of Work to 2030". The book looks at the megatrends shaping the future, and Russell's background and experience in RPO means he can provide some relatable insights into the likely future of talent acquisition.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Six megatrends shaping the future

• Future skills and how we hire them

• AI is removing your uniqueness.

• From STEM to STEAM

• Artistic engineers

• The cost of bad hiring

• How does TA need to change

• How can we future-proof our careers?

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