Recruiting Future with Matt Alder - What's Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?

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.

Episode mentioned in this Round Up:

Ep 547: Generative AI – A Deep Dive

Ep 548: Rethinking Background Checks

Ep 549: Rethinking Work, Jobs and Recruiting

Ep 550: Promotion, Motivation, Commitment and Retention

Ep 551: Interviewerless Interviewing

Ep 552: Hiring Innovation in LATAM and Asia

Ep 553: The Strategic Value of Talent Acquisition

Ep 554: Perfect Business Storytelling

Ep 555: Using Skills To Predict Job Performance

Ep 556: How AI Is Transforming Recruiting

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We've talked about generative AI a lot this year and its incredible potential to change and disrupt talent acquisition. A lot of our industry conversation has been about creating with Large Language Models to generate recruitment marketing content and automate interactions with candidates. However, the impact of AI goes much deeper than this, and its effect on the speed of vendor innovation is highly significant. AI is already changing the way candidates are found, and matches are made and has the potential to make boolean searching and keyword matching obsolete in a very short space of time.

So what is the art of the possible here, and how can TA Leaders ask the right questions of vendors to ensure they are dealing with genuine products that are ethical and legally compliant?

My guest this week is Mark Chaffey, CEO of Hackajob. Hackajob has integrated generative AI into its technology to vastly improve matching between candidates and roles. At the same time, they have a strong focus on using AI to improve diversity in tech hiring and are already getting some significant results.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Every company is a tech company.

• Market differences between the USA and Europe

• The continuing skill shortage in tech

• The impact of generative AI on vendors

• Building technology that actually solves problems

• Moving beyond boolean and keywords with richer LLM-driven datasets

• The questions TA leaders need to ask vendors

• Improving diversity in tech hiring

• Opt-in self, disclosed diversity data.

• Will AI change the way we think about skills and hiring

• What does the future look like?

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

When we're talking about the future of talent acquisition, Generative AI has been taking all of the limelight this year. However, arguably, although it grabs fewer headlines, the steady evolution of skills-based hiring is potentially even more disruptive to traditional recruiting norms.

There is an enormous amount of data, science and research going into understanding the relationship between skills and job performance, and the results are smashing some of our longest-held assumptions about hiring.

My guest this week is Andy Nelesen, Global Head of Talent Acquisition Solutions at SHL. SHL has done an enormous amount of work to establish the link between skills and performance, and their research has revealed 12 skills that universally predict success. There is also a significant discrepancy between the skills employers ask for in job ads and the skills the science shows they actually need, so this is a must-list interview for everyone who wants to hire more effectively.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Why understanding skills is so important

• The adoption rate of skills-based hiring

• What does potential mean?

• Overlaying soft skills against performance

• The 12 skills that universally predict success

• Why a growth mindset is more important than resilience and adaptability

• Moving away from academic credentials and previous experience

• Are skills the key to diverse hiring?

• Talent mobility

• What does the future of work look like?

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Are you going to be at the HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, October 10th? Recruiting Future has teamed up with the lovely people at Hackajob to host an early evening soiree that we're calling Hack A Pod. 

We will be crowdsourcing a live episode of The Recruiting Future Podcast on the roof terrace of BrewDog Vegas's very own Scottish brewpub, and one of the best viewing points there is to watch the sun set over the Vegas strip.

So please come along to join in or just watch and mingle with some great people. We've got free drinks, food, and even a magician to keep you entertained. Not only that, BrewDog is only a short walk or an even shorter taxi ride from The Mandalay Bay, where the conference is being held.

We've only got limited capacity, so to find out more and register for your free ticket, go to mattalder.me/vegas

Regular listeners will know just how essential I believe it is for talent acquisition to learn the art and science of storytelling. Being able to craft stories that resonate isn't just part of effective recruitment marketing; it is vital to building internal stakeholder engagement and developing more influence to move TA up the corporate strategic value chain.

So why is effective storytelling so powerful, and how can we all build our skills in this area?

My guest this week is Karen Eber, CEO of the Eber Leadership Group and author of a new book called The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories That Inform, Influence and Inspire. The book deals with the science and structure of good storytelling in business and is full of advice that can help everyone tell more powerful and engaging stories.

In the interview, we discuss:

• What happens to your brain when you listen to stories?

• Being memorable and engaging

• Why business storytelling is so important

• Understanding your audience

• Conflict as fuel to drive the narrative

• Telling stories with data

• Context, Conflict, Outcome and Takeaway

• How do you know if your story is resonating?

• AI and storytelling

Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.

The talent acquisition landscape is changing rapidly. 2024 has been difficult for many people in the profession, with many layoffs and an incredibly tough job market for recruiters. At the same time, advances in AI and automation technologies are driving types of change that we couldn't have imagined a few years ago, and post-pandemic labour shortages are still a reality in many talent markets.

All this disruption is forcing employers to think differently about jobs, work, skills and recruiting, creating an incredible opportunity for talent acquisition to illustrate its long-term value to the business. So what role does TA play in the future, and how can TA leaders prove its strategic value when many of their teams are being downsized?

My guest this week is Jessica Zwaan, COO at Whereby. Jessica is a cutting-edge HR thinker and has written a book detailing how People Ops should be run using product management principles. In our conversation, we talk about the future role of TA, and Jessica offers practical advice on how TA leaders can prove their strategic value.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Talent market challenges

• Building a people team like a product team

• Work as a subscription model

• Output metrics and funnel thinking

• Why businesses cutting TA teams are getting it wrong

• Building tools and products for the employee subscription lifecycle

• The shortcoming of working in silos

• Closing the gaps between TA and People Ops

• Can existing HR functions evolve towards this model?

• A COO's advice to TA Leaders on proving their strategic value

• What TA can learn from marketing

• The impact of AI and what the future might look like

Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.

If you have been listening to the recent episodes of the show, you'll have noticed the considerable amount of innovation currently happening in high-volume hiring. Driven by skill shortages and automation technology, high volume is the area that has given us an insight into what the future might be like for talent acquisition.

In episodes 551 and 552, I'm diving deeper into automation and AI in high-volume hiring by speaking to technology CEOs with products that are helping to shape the future. 

My second guest in this mini-series is Max Armbruster, CEO at Talkpush. Max does extensive work around high-volume hiring in Latin America and Asia. Technology is driving innovation for different reasons in these markets than in the US and Europe, and Max has some deep insights into how hiring is developing and where things are heading.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The hiring market beyond the US and Europe

• Automation to reduce recruiter numbers and broaden talent pools

• Emerging markets and future economic powerhouses

• Cost per hire

• How AI improves the quality of hire

• The impact of the accessibility and affordability of AI

• Communication channels and candidate experience

• Developing local toolkits

• Advice to employers hiring remotely in these markets

• What's the future for recruiters?

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

If you have been listening to the recent episodes of the show, you'll have noticed the considerable amount of innovation currently happening in high-volume hiring. Driven by skill shortages and automation technology, high volume is the area that has given us an insight into what the future might be like for talent acquisition.

Over the next two episodes, I will dive deeper into automation and AI in high-volume hiring by speaking to technology CEOs with products that are helping to shape the future. 

My first guest is Stephane Rivard, CEO and Co-Founder of Hiring Branch. Several Hiring Branch's customers have used technology to move away from human interviews completely. Stephane talks us through the results they are getting and the implications for the future of talent acquisition.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Is recruiting automation gaining traction?

• Predicting job performance via scenario-driven assessment

• Previewing the work and showcasing skills

• Removing bias

• Will this approach spread beyond high volume?

• Hiring within 24 hours

• Selling the role and organization

• Improving the quality of hire

• Resources, efficiencies, budgets, legislation and regulation

• Recruiter career prospects and advice to TA leaders

Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.

Attitudes to work are more complex and varied than ever, making identifying trends and patterns harder. There are currently critical questions around retention and productivity that employers need to understand. So, how can we make sense of our ever more complex motivational drivers and attitudes to work?

ADP have access to massive human capital management datasets, and by combining this data with qualitative research, the ADP Research Institute is helping to shine a light on complex questions about work.

ADP Research Institute has recently launched a new quarterly workforce report called Today At Work, and my guest this week is Ben Hanowell, their Director of People Analytics Research. As well as looking at patterns in worker sentiment, the report has revealed a surprising inverse relationship between promotion and retention.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Using data to make sense of the labor market

• The vital importance of retention

• The Employee Motivation and Commitment Index

• The impact of promotion on retention

• Implications for talent acquisition

• Why having a good bench is important

• Individual contributors vs. manager

• Why career development doesn't end with promotion

• Motivation and commitment are a state, not a trait.

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcast.

The way we describe work and jobs is mostly by long-standing assumptions that have been in place since the Industrial Revolution. The world is now a very different place, and the employers breaking free of our ingrained mindsets around jobs and recruiting are giving themselves considerable talent market advantage.

My guest this week is one of my favourite thinkers around the reinvention of work. Dart Lindsley is Strategic Advisor for People Experience at Google. Dart believes that rather than being seen as resources or units of production, employees are actually customers of a product we call work. There are some vast implications for talent acquisition here, and this is a must-listen for anyone developing a strategic plan for the future.

In the interview, we discuss:

• How we should be looking at work

• The legacies of the industrial age

• A multi-sided business

• Business architecture

• Employees as customers, not as units of production

• The implications for HR

• Bringing marketing thinking to HR

• Market research, product market fit and route to market

• Work as a subscription model

• A land and expand sales motion

• Job to be done theory

• How do recruitment marketing and employer branding need to evolve

• A different data model for describing work

• The implications of AI

• What does the future look like?

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.