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

As the move towards skills-based hiring intensifies, the role of assessment tools is becoming increasingly important. As employers focus on being more inclusive, it is critical to understand how the science behind assessment tools works to support this.

My guest this week is Kristin Allen, Senior Manager of Psychometrics at SHL. SHL has an applied research initiative, SHL Labs, driving talent technology innovation. One of the key research pillars is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and SHL has recently published the first results from its neurodiversity research program.

In the interview, we discuss the following:

• The role assessment plays in helping employers build diverse workforces.

• Fully inclusive talent solutions

• Using assessment to reduce bias

• Job analysis and validation

• Transparency

• Disability inclusion

• Using language that encourages candidates to ask for accommodations

• Spiky profiles

• Emerging best practices

• What does the future look like?

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A volatile talent acquisition market and the immense disruption we are seeing to traditional ways of working our driving significant changes in employer branding strategies. Culture, EVP, and employer brand marketing are going through a period of intense evolution, and it is essential to understand what's happening in this space.

My guest this week is Charu Malhotra, Global Head of Talent Branding and Recruitment Marketing at PA Consulting. In our wide ranging conversation recorded at UNLEASH World in Paris, we discussed some of the current issues in employer branding, culture, and retention.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The impact of external forces on talent acquisition

• Building inclusive workplaces when workforces are increasingly remote

• Proximity bias in hybrid working

• How do you create, manage and flex a culture

• Embedding values in high-performance cultures

• How does employer branding work on an international scale

• Focused segmentation and a constant heartbeat of content

• Employer brand and retention

• The importance of assessment technology

• Changing the balance between internal mobility and external attraction

• Reimagining EVP projects as nimble and responsive instead of one size fits all.

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A full transcription will appear here shortly.

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 465: Curiosity At Work

Ep 466: UNLEASH World

Ep 467: Automation & Personalization

Ep 468: Embracing Neurodiversity

Ep 469: TA Technology Transformation

Ep 470: Disability Inclusion

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October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and with so much focus on DE&I in the workplace, this significant proportion of the population needs to be included and not overlooked.

My guest this week is Dr Jennifer Luebke, Chief Workforce Inclusion Officer at PRIDE Industries. PRIDE Industries is a social enterprise creating sustainable career opportunities and training for people with disabilities, and Jennifer has some hugely valuable insights to share.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The story of PRIDE Industries

• Projecting a welcoming attitude as an employer

• Accommodations and adjustments

• Misconceptions about hiring people with disabilities

• How does disability inclusion fit into DE&I?

• The Advantages of employing people with disabilities

• Neurodiversity in the workforce

• How to tap into new communities of talent

• Making it safe to disclose non-apparent disabilities

• Advice for employers

A full transcription will appear here shortly.

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With recruiting challenges so acute and talent acquisition technology developing at such a great pace, tech stack adoption and transformation strategies are critical for many employers.

So what are the key issues, and how are talent acquisition teams specializing and evolving to exploit new technologies and methodologies?

My guest this week is Samantha Ramsay, Head of Experienced Hire UK&I at EY. I caught up with her a couple of weeks ago at UNLEASH World in Paris, where she was delivering a presentation about Tech Transformation.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Current challenges in talent acquisition

• Driving change in recruiting

• Asking five whys to get to the root cause of the problem

• Building stakeholder consensus

• What makes a great vendor/employer partnership

• Talent intelligence

• Using CRMs in the right way

• Developing specialist skills within TA functions

• Building long term engagement and affinity with talent pools

• What does the future look like?

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One of the most encouraging aspects of our changing world work has been the number of employers actively seeking to recruit neurodiverse talent. However, it is estimated that 15-20% of the world's population is neurodivergent, and there is still a vast amount of work to do to ensure that our workplaces are inclusive for all and that employers benefit from supporting everyone to work to their full potential. 

My guest this week is Genie Love, an Executive Function Coach who works with neurodiverse professionals to help them achieve their personal and professional goals. In our conversation, she offers many practical insights into how employers can support their people at work.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Understanding the unique strengths of neurodivergent people

• Time, attention, decision making, and organization

• Energy levels and strategies for deep work

• How can employers be more inclusive?

• Re-imagining job descriptions and interviews

• The power of thinking differently 

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Anyone who has seen me speak this year knows that I consider personalization the next big trend in talent acquisition. If they get their strategies right, the rapid growth in automation technologies allows employers to offer a bespoke candidate experience at scale. So which employers are doing this well, and what can we learn from them?

My guest this week is Lisa Scales, Head of Talent Acquisition for the UK and Ireland at Nestle. In our wide-ranging conversation, recorded at UNLEASH World in Paris, Lisa talks us through Nestle's strategies around personalization and the results they're getting.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The turbulent market and conflicting tensions for talent acquisition

• Scarcity of skills

• Removing repetitive transactional tasks

• Using conversational AI to answer previously unanswered questions

• The power of personalization

• The time, place and wishlist for automation

• Personalized onboarding

• Why automated selection can amplify systemic bias

• Moments that matter, interesting technologies, and the deskless workforce

• What does the future look like

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A full transcription will appear here shortly.

One of the best things about 2022 is that face-to-face events are back. It's been a pleasure to connect with people in person again for the first time in a long time, and great to see such enthusiasm for face-to-face conferences and events after everything that has been happening in the last few years.

Last week I was at UNLEASH World in Paris, and as well as hosting some fantastic speakers on the Talent and Recruiting stage, I did a lot of podcast recording. Thank you to Kate Graham, Marc Coleman and Jon Kennard at UNLEASH for organising a dedicated podcasting booth, which Recruiting Future shared with The Chad & Cheese Show and the Tech Talks podcast.

I recorded long-form interviews with three speakers; Lisa Scales from Nestle, Charu Malhotra from PA Consulting and Samantha Ramsay from Ernst & Young. I'll be publishing these over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, I wanted to give you a taste of the event, so here are four short interviews to provide a flavour of the topics that are top of mind in the industry at the moment.

First up, you'll hear me sharing my thoughts on the event in a recording made for The Chad and Cheese Show. Next is a conversation with my co-author and collaborator, Mervyn Dinnen, followed by fellow podcaster David Savage from Tech Talks. Finally, as a bit of a bonus, I've got a quick-fire discussion with Bas van de Hatred about the recently published 2022 edition of his annual research into the state of corporate careers sites.

Albert Einstein once said, "I have no special talent; I am only passionately curious". I like this quote so much that I use the phrase "Passionately Curious" as the tagline for my consulting business. So you can imagine my delight then when I came across a book on workplace curiosity written by Stefaan van Hooydonk, the founder of The Global Curiosity Institute, who is my guest this week.

A former Chief Learning Officer, Stefaan has done some pioneering work on the science behind curiosity and why improving the skill of curiosity is essential in the modern world of work, both at an individual and organizational level. 

In the interview, we discuss:

• The story behind the Global Curiosity Institute

• Intentional curiosity

• Why and how you can train curiosity

• The importance of curiosity to organizations

• Measuring curiosity on an individual and organizational basis

• Creating a curious culture

• Awareness, Intentionality and Measurement

• The importance of learning something new

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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 458: Recruiting & Retention In The Current Market

Ep 459: Underrepresented Communities of Talent

Ep 460: Equity & Inclusion

Ep 461: Talent Acquisition Realities

Ep 462: What’s New In Candidate Experience

Ep 463: Fractional Hiring

Ep 464: Optimization, Automation and Augmentation

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