HR Interviews Playlist

As the debates about the future of talent acquisition rumble on, it's important to focus intensely on the critical value effective hiring brings to the organization. Talent remains a key differentiator that drives competitive advantage for a company, and this will be even more true in the future.

My guest this week is Simon Taylor, Head of Organization Effectiveness at Gap Inc., who has authored a forthcoming book called "Build Smart: A Blueprint for Building a High-Performing Organization." Simon has a TA background and, in the book, outlines just how critical hiring is for companies. In our conversation, he shares his insights into what makes great hiring and its role in high-performing organizations.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Common talent issues companies are facing.

• How important is recruiting in 2024?

• Competitive advantage from high-quality talent acquisition

• The long-term impact of bad hiring

• What makes a great hire

• The importance of potential

• Upskilling hiring managers and changing their mindset

• How to get buy-in across the organization

• Leveraging data to illustrate opportunities

• Why AI will be huge for talent acquisition

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

TRF welcomes Mike Ehrle CEO at ClickBoarding

Bringing an impressive background in the employee benefit industry, Mike knows a great technology when he sees it. 

• The launch of their Click Retain product and the partnership with Alight to name a few. 

• Best practices for pre-boarding to eliminate day one ghosts

• Onboarding, listen to why anything above zero, is a problem.

• Prepare to be impressed, Mike give us some well informed predictions for 2024

We say a lot of things on the podcast that people disagree with. Most people stop short of writing a blog post about how wrong they think one, or both, of us are. However, Jeff Dickey-Chasins, affectionately known as Job Board Doctor, decided to put the virtual pen-to-paper and express how wrong Joel was in his analysis of how job boards are facing a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the form of Google / LinkedIn, AI, automation and the gig economy. Just when you think the debate will get too nasty to take, Chad swoops in as peacemaker ... or is it instigator? A must listen for every job board employee and customer alike. The Doctor is IN.

The future of recruiting is a popular topic these days. With AI and automation tools that are on a whole other level to tech of the past, many wonder how the future will play out for the profession that has for so long been a staple of corporate strategy. Fortunately, we have wise ol' veterans who know the past, but can also see around corners better than most. Age and vision are in short supply. That's why we had Kevin Wheeler, author, speaker and founder of Global Learning Resources, to the podcast. Kevin has a new book coming out in February entitled, “Talent Acquisition Excellence: Using Digital Capabilities and Analytics to Improve Recruitment,” that will prove helpful to those hoping the navigate the future like an ancient oracle. We're talkin' predictions for 2024, the pandemic impact, labor uprisings, how the kids are alright, and much more. Listen, subscribe, like and share.

Background checking is an area we've never really covered on the podcast. In the past, it has just felt like a necessary but very functional part of the hiring process. However, with the explosion in our digital footprints and the power of AI, that has now changed.

So, how can background checks now help prevent workplace misconduct and improve the quality of hire? Where does AI fit in, and how can we ensure everything is legal and ethical?

My guest this week is Ben Mones, CEO and Founder at Fama, an online screening technology company working with employers worldwide. If you haven't looked at what is happening in background screening for a while, this conversation with Ben will help you get up to date with what is possible.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The impact of workplace misconduct

• Talent screening

• How background checks have evolved in the last 10. years

• The "Cambrian explosion" of digital information

• Using AI to unlock the signal from the noise

• The importance of applying human expertise and judgment 

• The dangers of hiring managers doing their own checking

• How does AI-driven screening work

• Legislation, Compliance, Ethics and Bias

• Improving the quality of hire

• What does the future look like

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

This week on TRF we cover:

• Wayfair CEO says uses his outside voice - again. He thinks he’s Elon Musk and can get away with saying whatever pops into his head. Its cringe worthy.

• Flockity, friend of the show Tracy Parsons creates the first Influencer platform for jobs.

• Hiring Branch study shows some surprising data on language skills connection to success on the job.

In the News

• Canada pumps the brakes on the number of International students, for all the right reasons.

• WebMD parent company Internet brands return to office video is so bad, we don't think their employer brand will ever recover.

Tip of the Week

• The top 15 jobs people want to quit. This list is a recruitment marketer's dream. Leverage this for the skills that will easily transfer to your organization. 

Recruiting Insights

• The weirdness of the US labour market continues. Job seeker behaviour is changing, more discerning than ever before. 

• Job postings in November took a nose dive and the rate of hiring dropped like a rock too, something we’ve not seen since the 2008 crash.

• Adriano Herdman strikes again. This week is the 21 Talent Acquisition Tatics comparison chart. Just brilliant.

With so much focus on potentially AI-driven disruptive change and debate about the future, it is sometimes easy to forget that many employers are still struggling to develop and leverage their culture, and some still lack basic standardized processes for talent acquisition and other aspects of the people function. 

Looking at what is happening in start-up and scale-up businesses is always interesting. They build business functions from a blank sheet of paper and often develop interesting new ways of thinking and working.

My guest this week is Roza Szafranek, Founder and CEO at HR Hints. HR Hints acts as the external HR team to over 70 scaling companies. Roza has used this experience to develop the Culturivy method of building organizational cultures and processes, which she has shared in a recent book called Culturivy: The Power of Changing a Workplace. Roza believes employers should address some long-standing issues in TA, such as candidate experience and biased hiring processes. She also has a counterpoint view on the current efficacy of AI in hiring.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Building and scaling organizational culture

• Managing a burnt-out workforce

• Leveraging culture to power engagement

• Practices, behaviours, and values

• How should companies think about talent?

• Strengthening the candidate experience

• Will AI and Automation have the impact we think they will

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts

The Recruitment Flex welcomes Cameron Laker CEO at MindField.

• If you think RPO is just rent-a-recruiter, prepare to be blown away by what Cameron has built, right here in Canada. 

• 12,000 jobs filled in 2023, makes us dizzy just thinking about how to pull that off. He shares how he did it.

• Cameron openly shares his POV on HR tech and hints at some of the NON-industry thinking behind their incredible success. 

• Fears and reality of the hourly worker in Canada.

• 2024 looks to be the year of the RPO

We had employee referral software solution Real Links, and their CEO and co-founder Sam Davies, on Firing Squad four years ago. Chad gave them a rousing applause, while Cheese was a bit more tempered, giving them a gold clap. Needless to say, a lot has happened in the world since January 2020, so we thought a reunion would be apropos. When we last talked to Davies, they had just raised a little over a million bucks, employed nine people and were considering changing their domain from dot-io to a dot-com. So what's new? Ya' gotta listen to find out. Spoiler alert: LinkedIn has been as integral to their business as they thought it'd be. Visit www.reallinks.io for more.

The ever-shortening shelf life of skills, fast-changing business priorities, ageing populations, and changing attitudes to work means that retaining the right talent is not only more difficult than ever, it is also likely to remain so for years to come.

It's not surprising, then, that Talent Leaders are starting to think differently about the structure of their function to remove silos and foster collaboration between Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, L&D and other vital people functions.

So what kind of overarching vision is needed to drive effective cross-function thinking, and what strategic role should TA play internally within the organization?

My guest this week is Hélène Loine, VP of Human Resources at Ekkiden. Hélène has a background in recruiting, working at rapidly scaling companies. Her focus at Ekkiden is building a shared vision of employee experience to connect HR silos to improve hiring and retention.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The TA challenges in scaling different types of business

• The importance of understanding your target audience

• Automation and AI

• Using technology and a shared vision to connect the silos in HR

• Different ways of thinking about talent

• Building a people-centric talent function

• Looking at employee experience holistically to drive retention

• Personalization

• How can TA use data and insights to contribute strategically inside the business?

• What does the future of TA look like?

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.