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

The events of 2020 / 2021 will shape how talent acquisition operates for years, especially when it comes to recruiting automation. In the past automation in recruiting has often been dismissed as impersonal and ineffective. However, as technology has developed and strategies have changed the immense value and inevitability of automation is becoming clear. 

My guest this week is Jeff Uden, Head of Talent for UK supermarket, Iceland. Like all frontline food retailers, Iceland has faced some unprecedented talent acquisition challenges during the pandemic. Jeff gives us an insight into the innovations these challenges have driven, and Iceland's successful use of automation to radical enhance both the candidate and hiring manager experience.

In the interview, we discuss:

   ▪   The challenge of hiring 5,500 people in 8 weeks

   ▪   Maximising simplicity and efficiency in the recruiting process

   ▪   The critical importance of candidate experience

   ▪   Automation with a human touch

   ▪   Keeping hiring managers empowered

   ▪   Return on investment from technology

   ▪   Change management and stakeholder engagement

   ▪   The future of talent acquisition at Iceland

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As I said at the start of the last episode reinventing recruitment marketing is a big topic for talent acquisition this year. Long term listeners to the podcast will also know about my deep-held belief that careers sites are the critical element of recruitment marketing that remains very much underutilised.

Many forward-thinking employers are now turning to careers site systems to maximise the recruitment marketing benefits of careers site and minimise their development pain points.

So what happens when we start thinking about careers sites as sophisticated software solutions rather than one-off creative projects?

My guest this week is James Saunders, CEO of Attrax. Over the last few years, James has been one of the pioneers of careers site systems and has a massive amount of knowledge and experience to share.

In the interview, we discuss:

   ▪   What is a careers site system?

   ▪   The focal point of employer branding

   ▪   Strategic positioning

   ▪   Why employers should invest in their own asset

   ▪   The dreaded "log in to apply."

   ▪   The core elements of sophisticated careers sites

   ▪   Optimising the candidate experience

   ▪   Personalisation and AI

   ▪   Unique stats and analytics

   ▪   Learning from eCommerce

   ▪   Future innovations

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It's still early in the year, but the reimagining of Recruitment Marketing is already a big topic for 2021. This has been clear in several conversations I've had with talent acquisition leaders and in the results of the audience survey I currently have running.

Many employers are looking to transform their recruitment marketing to meet the new challenges they have and leverage emerging techniques and technologies.

So what is cutting-edge thinking in recruitment marketing and what steps do talent acquisition teams need to take to unlock the power of what is possible?

To give us some insights to answer these questions, I'm delighted to welcome Allyn Bailey, Global Recruitment Marketing Leader at Intel, back to the podcast. Allyn is one of the most progressive thinkers in our industry, and this is genuinely a must-listen interview.

In the interview, we discuss:

   ▪   Why and how recruitment marketing is transforming

   ▪   Data decision mapping

   ▪   Collecting target audience data via automation

   ▪   Segmenting audiences by behaviour and motivation

   ▪   Candidate data infrastructure

   ▪   Predictive modelling in recruitment marketing

   ▪   Building purposeful engagement plans

   ▪   Providing genuine value with content

   ▪   Advice to talent acquisition leaders on how to start their transformation

   ▪   What does the longer term future look like for recruitment marketing

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We are living through a time of immense disruption the full scale of which we don't yet fully understand. The pandemic has caused millions to lose their jobs and changed the business models of entire industries. Understanding the skills now needed in the labour market and the level of reskilling required is further complicated by the rise of artificial intelligence and automation.

So what does the future of work now look like and how can companies and individuals navigate the next few years?

My guest this week is Dr Michelle Weise, Senior Advisor at Imaginable Futures and author of the book, Long Life Learning - Preparing for jobs that don't even exist yet. Michelle specialises in the future of work and the future of learning and has some incredibly valuable insights to share

In the interview, we discuss:

   ▪   A more positive vision for the future of work

   ▪   The lack of a common skills taxonomy

   ▪   Data infrastructure for talent mobility

   ▪   Why employers are struggling to articulate the skills they have and recognise the gaps

   ▪   The role of technology

   ▪   Restructuring the working day to enable reskilling

   ▪   Developing an "Education GPS"

   ▪   What does the future look like and how can we solve these problems

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Understanding and assessing talent is something I don't think we talk about in enough detail in our industry. Advances in both technology and neuroscience are challenging traditional thinking in recruiting if this will be another key topic for me this year.

To get the conversation started my guests this week have a simple fascinating story to share. Eric Castien and Andries Van der Leij are the founder and CTO of Brainsfirst. Brainsfirst is a Dutch company that uses cognitive psychology and machine learning to help elite football teams identify future talent. They have brought their learnings into the business world and have some incredible insights to share.

In the interview, we discuss:

   ▪   Talent identification in elite football

   ▪   Studying the link between specific brain function and performance

   ▪   Learnability over capability

   ▪   How understanding brain skills can drive talent redistribution

   ▪   Only assessing skills you can actually quantify

   ▪   Seeing a role as a set of desired behaviours

   ▪   Focusing on future fit

   ▪   Eliminating bias

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Over the last six months, we have talked a lot about transformation in talent acquisition with a large number of employers working hard to reinvent their strategies to meet the new challenges they face.

So what does great talent acquisition now look like in 2021? Well, that's a question I'll be focusing on a lot in the coming weeks and months.

My guests this week are Rona Anhalt, and Ed Nathanson, the Chief People Officer and VP of Talent and Talent Branding at disruptive pharmaceutical startup EQRx. Since their launch early last year, EQRx has done fantastic work in talent branding and talent acquisition and really is a benchmark for what hiring strategies should now look like.

In the interview, we discuss:

   ▪   How EQRx is disrupting the pharmaceutical industry

   ▪   The challenges of scaling up talent acquisition in a pandemic

   ▪   Building a purpose driven culture

   ▪   Diversity, Equality, Fairness and Inclusion

   ▪   Culture add over culture fit.

   ▪   Superpowers

   ▪   Being bold with talent branding

   ▪   The power of people stories and authentic interviews

   ▪   Candidate experience as the ultimate differentiator

   ▪   What they will be focusing on in the next 12 months

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It's only the end of January, and I think we can all clearly see that 2021 will be another challenging year. So what can talent acquisition leaders do to motivate and build resilience in their teams during these incredibly stressful times?

My guest this week is Jen Thornton, a former Global Director of HR Operations who is now founder and CEO of 304 Coaching. Jen is an expert in conversational intelligence, something that can help everyone improve the quality and outcomes of their communication.

In the interview, we discuss:

   ▪   What is Conversational Intelligence

   ▪   Applying neuroscience to workplace communication

   ▪   Having better conversations

   ▪   Motivating Talent Acquisition teams in tough times

   ▪   The importance of resilience and coping with change

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Recruiting Automation will be a topic we explore in a lot of detail over this coming year. The key to any automation strategy is removing friction in a way that saves time and resource but at the same time enhances the experience for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. I wanted to bring this to life by looking at a very specific recruiting process area, interview scheduling.

As we all know, talent acquisition has many nuances, and generic scheduling automation tools can often create more work than they save and damage the candidate experience. So how should we automate and what are the real benefits of doing it properly

To help answer this question my guests this week are Adam Bird CEO and Co-Founder of scheduling platform Cronofy and Jon Eyers founder of tech recruitment company Harvey Thomas.

In the interview, we discuss:

   ▪   Automating interview scheduling in a smart way

   ▪   Improving the candidate, recruiters and hiring manager experience

   ▪   Factoring recruiting nuances into automation

   ▪   Reducing friction to save time and increase value

   ▪   Remembering what humans are good at and recognising what computers are good at

   ▪   The future of recruiting automation

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In this short episode, Matt reflects on the past 12 months and looks forward into 2021.

Episodes Mentioned in this Round Up:

Ep 321: The End Of Jobs

Ep 32: Better Recruitment marketing

Please help make the podcast better, fill in the audience survey.

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Recruiting at the C-Level presents some unique challenges, perhaps the most prominent being the long-standing inequality of the number of women hired at board level. The sudden move to remote recruiting has also significantly disrupted executive search's traditional high touch candidate experience.

My guest this week is Venesa Klein, a partner at international search firm Calibre One. Venessa worked as an in house recruiter earlier in her career and has some valuable knowledge and insights to share on the current challenges in executive recruiting and the drive for more equality in the C-Suite.

In the interview, we discuss:

   ▪   Building an effective in house executive recruiting team

   ▪   How high touch candidate experience has adapted to remote

   ▪   Is female representation in the C-Suite improving and what are the key issues

   ▪   Why internal career pathing is critical to equity at the top

   ▪   Being inclusive

   ▪   How has 2020 changed the market

   ▪   The value of the CHRO

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