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

The world of work has changed in many ways, and one fascinating area is the adoption of a more agile approach to talent. Project-based contracting is on the rise employers work to ensure they have the right skills at the right time in rapidly changing business environments.

So what mindset do employers need to adopt to be successful in the project economy, and what are the implications on the career paths of knowledge workers.

My guest this week is Kate Duchene, CEO at RGP, a human capital company redefining how professionals work in more flexible and collaborative ways. Kate is at the cutting edge of the project economy and has some very valuable insights and experiences to share.

In the interview, we discuss:

• What is the Project Economy?

• The drive towards agility and mobility

• Renting or borrowing talent

• Run this place vs change this place

• Thinking differently about careers

• The importance of choice

• Skills development in portfolio careers

• From command and control to learning, listening and empathy

• Culture, productivity and performance

• The role of technology

• A future of increased flexibility

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Perhaps the hottest topic of 2022 so far is how employers can speed up recruiting while simultaneously maintaining or improving the quality of process and quality of hire. It's something that I'll be getting a lot of different perspectives on in the coming weeks, as I know it is a crucial challenge for many of you.

My guest this week is Shannon Russo, CEO and Founder of RPO firm Kinetix. Shannon's organisation is working with many employers to help them speed up hiring, and she has a tremendous amount of expertise and experience to share.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Challenges in the market

• Why speed has never been more important

• Speeding up hiring and improving quality

• Same day offers

• Finding talent

• Reaching back out to existing candidate databases.

• How are companies standing out

• Recruiting Technology

• The role of RPO in 2022

• What does the future of recruiting look like

Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.

For many people who take parental leave, returning to work can be a very challenging time where they are not getting the support they need from their employer. So what should employers be doing to support new parents, particularly when talent retention is such a big issue?

My guest this week is Lori Mihalich-Levin, founder of Mindful Return. Mindful Return is an organisation focused on helping parents and employers manage effective transitions back into the workplace, and Lori has some valuable insights to share.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The common issues and difficulties for parents returning to work after parental leave

• The dangers of managers making assumptions

• What are employers getting wrong

• The importance of dialogue

• Making the transition an intentional and thoughtful process

• A mindful mindset, logistics, leadership and community

• Skills

• Culture, belonging and retention

• What are the best employers doing

• What does the future of flexible working look like?

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With so many challenges in talent acquisition, process improvement and optimization are a constant theme as employers attempt to speed up their processes. But how do you speed up recruiting while protecting the integrity of quality of hire and DE&I?

My guest this week is Erin Crask, Director Solutions Architects at SHL. Erin and her team use science and data to help enhance people strategies, and she has a tremendous amount of experience helping companies to streamline their external and internal recruiting processes.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Current challenges in recruiting

• The danger of reactive decision making

• The dangers of scaling back assessment to speed up recruiting

• Making evidence based changes to processes

• Protecting the quality of hire while also shortening the selection timeline

• Using automation to provide feedback for all applicants

• Defending the integrity of the process with internal stakeholders

• Measuring the right things

• The critical elements of a high quality candidate experience

• Asynchronous processes to empower candidates

• Automation trends

• What does best in class internal mobility look like

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For many people, remote working now feels like business as usual; however, most employers still haven't evolved their working practices to embrace its advantages. 

Adopting an asynchronous model or work has been something that remote-first companies have been doing for years, and there are proven benefits in terms of both productivity and wellbeing. So what are the strategic differences between synchronous and asynchronous, how does leadership work in an asynchronous model, and what steps should employers be taking to adapt to different ways of working in a remote world of work. 

My guest this week is Liam Martin, founder of a remote-first company with people in 43 different countries and no office. He is a thought leader on asynchronous work and co-organizer of Running Remote, the world's largest conference on building and scaling remote teams.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The difference in mindset between asynchronous and synchronous

• Advantages and disadvantages of asynchronous management

• Clarity and autonomy

• How did the early remote-first companies develop this way of working

• The rise of the introverted leader

• Reprogramming teams to work in a different way.

• Issues with hybrid and the problem of distance bias

• First steps to take to become autonomous

• Long term implications of remote working

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Episodes mentioned in this Round Up:

Ep 409: Inclusive Hiring

Ep 410: Recruiting Fundamentals

Ep 411: EVP In A Hyper Competitive Market

Ep 412: Scaling Recruiting

Ep 413: Into The Metaverse

Ep 414: Change & Complexity

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Destigmatizing career breaks is something that I feel very strongly about and something that talent acquisition needs to take very seriously. With so much lip service paid to diversity and inclusion and the current difficulties of finding talent, it makes zero sense to still view career breaks negatively.

This week LinkedIn have announced Career Breaks on the LinkedIn Profile to better reflect the realities of career journeys and, in turn, begin to normalize career breaks in the recruiting process. 

My guest this week is Jennifer Shappley, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Linkedin. As well as talking us through the new career breaks feature, Jennifer discusses the key findings on LinkedIn's latest Global Talent Trends report and shares her thoughts on the future of talent acquisition.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Global Talent Trends

• Wellbeing and flexibility

• Trust

• LinkedIn's new Career Break profile section

• How can talent acquisition support people who have taken a career break

• How is talent acquisition changing, and where is it going?

• Making interviews equitable in a hybrid world

• What are the biggest challenges talent acquisition teams are facing

Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.

One thing that really annoys me is when commentators, consultants or vendors offer advice to talent acquisition teams that doesn't recognise just how complex organisational hiring dynamics can be. Change is constant, but driving effective change in a complex organisation that radically improves talent acquisition is incredibly challenging.

My guest this week is Jenny Cotie Kangas, Director, Digital Experience Talent Acquisition at Regis Corporation. Jenny has an incredible story to tell about the power of adopting a beginner's mindset to use technology to transform talent acquisition in a highly complex company. 

In the interview, we discuss:

• The talent acquisition challenges in a franchised organisation

• A beginner's mindset

• Calibrating talent acquisition as business critical

• Delivering intentionality to the candidate

• Identifying a recruiting technology partner

• Designing the candidate experience

• Offering consistency and flexibility in the recruiting process where one size fits all doesn't work

• Modular technology

• The results so far and the next stages

• Advice to talent acquisition leaders

• What does the future of recruiting look like?

Listen to this episode in Apple Podcasts.

For over a decade now, I've been flagging up the development of virtual reality as something talent acquisition should have on their radar. It's taken a while, but with tech giants like Meta and Apple making multi-billion dollar investments in technology and infrastructure is now finally the time for our industry to fully embrace the Metaverse.

So how does would this work, and what talent acquisition and HR activities are already in play in virtual reality. My guests this week are Misha Krymov and Jennifer Regan, the CEO and Head of Experiences at Morpheus XR. Morpheus XR is already designing recruiting, onboarding and leadership development experiences in the Metaverse and have a massive amount of knowledge to share with us.

In the interview, we discuss:

• What is the Metaverse, and who is building it?

• Creating space for meaning and meaningful moments

• How environment shapes human behaviour

• How VR gives agency to users that Zoom / Teams calls don't

• Unbiased recruitment using VR

• Onboarding

• What should talent acquisition teams be doing to learn about the Metaverse

• Inclusion and alternatives to headsets

• Untangling science fiction from science fact

• Extending reality

• What's the potential for VR, and how will it be used in the future

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This year, scale and speed are an essential focus for many talent acquisition teams. But how do you scale recruiting and speed up hiring in an environment where recruiting recruiters is as tough as it is right now?

My guest this week is David Spencer-Percival, CEO of Life Science People and formerly the founder of high growth recruitment businesses Huntress and Spencer Ogden. David has decades of experience scaling up and recruiting recruiters in various markets. He has developed a tried and tested methodology that many talent acquisition teams can learn from

In the interview, we discuss:

• Recruiting, training and nurturing fantastic recruiters

• The academy model

• Selection

• Building the right culture of success and incentive

• The relentless pace of change

• Recruiting processes for a candidate driven market

• What are the most successful employers getting right?

• The role of technology

• Advice to TA leaders on building effective working partnerships with agencies

Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.