In this episode Matt Alder talks to Clare Lewis the Head of Resourcing UK at Willis.
Willis is a leading global risk advisor, insurance and reinsurance broker and like many companies in their sector they are suffering from skill shortage problems when looking for specialist talent. In the interview Clare talks about the innovative approaches they are taking to solve this problem which involve both local outreach and key improvements to the candidate experience.
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:18]:
Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode four of the recruiting Feature podcast. Before we get into the interview for this episode, I just a little bit of podcast news. The podcast is still available on www.rfpodcast.com. it’s still on itunes, but it’s now been added to Stitcher. Stitcher is spelled S T I T C H E R and it’s an Android and iPhone app if you’ve not come across it before. It’s a kind of a series of radio stations and podcasts. It’s a kind of another way of broadcasting and listening to information and I would. I would highly recommend it. So, so download the app from the Google Play Store or the Apple Apple App Store and then search for recruiting future to find the podcast. So that’s Stitcher. S T I T C H E R Now on to the interview for this episode. So in this episode I’m interviewing Claire Lewis from Willis. Now, a really interesting interview. This one touches on something that I think is an issue for lots and lots of recruiters in lots and lots of sectors at the moment, and that’s skill shortages. So Claire is talking about specific skill shortages in her industry and the fairly innovative approach that Willis has taken to dealing with this problem. Again, there’s lots of other interesting stuff about the candidate experience in there as well. So it was a really interesting interview and it is my pleasure to bring it to you now.
Matt Alder [00:01:58]:
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another podcast interview. Today I’m talking to Claire Lewis from Willis. I saw Claire speaking at Recruitment Innovation Conference last year and I thought it would be great to get her on the show and, you know, find out a bit more about some of the things she’s. Some of the things her and her company are up to. So.
Matt Alder [00:02:20]:
Hi, Claire, how are you?
Claire Lewis [00:02:22]:
Very well, thank you. And you?
Matt Alder [00:02:23]:
Yes, very good, very good. Would you just like to sort of introduce yourself and tell us who you work for and what you do?
Claire Lewis [00:02:30]:
Sure, no problem. I am currently head of resourcing for the UK at a company. We’re a risk and brokering intermediary organisation and we have around 17 and a half thousand associates across the globe.
Matt Alder [00:02:48]:
Okay, that’s fantastic. So actually you broke up slightly there when you were actually announcing the name of the company. So it’s Willis, isn’t it?
Claire Lewis [00:02:56]:
That’s correct, yes.
Matt Alder [00:02:57]:
Fantastic. So what are your sort of biggest recruitment challenges at the moment?
Claire Lewis [00:03:05]:
I think there’s A couple of things in terms of the, you know, from a Willis perspective, what we’re looking at is we’re looking to streamline a lot of our processes and really focus on the candidate experience as well as finding the best possible talent for our hiring managers. And I think that leads to probably my second challenge in that we have a skill shortage in the UK at the moment with certain type roles, particularly where there’s a technical requirement or it’s quite a niche pool of candidates that are able to perform the function. So we as an organisation as well as an industry are having to get really creative about A how we attract talent to our organisation but also B, how do we look to grow and develop individuals into roles that perhaps we don’t have the skill set that we need at the moment.
Matt Alder [00:04:01]:
Okay, that’s really interesting. And I know that in your sector there are some particular pressures at the moment. You sort of mentioned being creative about the way you sort of attract this kind of talent to the organization. What kind of things are you doing to solve that problem?
Claire Lewis [00:04:21]:
I think one of the things that we look at and there’s obviously a variety of options, one of the things is that we’ve got quite a large presence in the local Ipswich market which again the challenge with that is that it’s on the main line into the city centre. So we’ve had to look to partner with local businesses and the council to create an awareness of who we are as an organisation. I think when you look at the insurance industry, not everybody leaves school wanting to become an insurance broker. So you have to take what the company does to the market and talk about the different types of roles and sometimes share the excitement. In terms of what happens within a risk and insurance broker, what are the types of things that they do in terms of from a development and long term perspective. Sometimes it’s about looking at attracting the right fit from a culture perspective and then investing in the individual with training, development, sending them on courses or upskilling them in terms of some of the on the job training.
Matt Alder [00:05:34]:
Okay, cool, that’s very interesting. And I can see in that kind of environment why candidate experience would be something that would be so important. What’s your approach to giving a grade candidate experience? Are there specific things that you measure that you look for? How does that work?
Claire Lewis [00:06:01]:
I think it’s one of those things where we certainly by no means at the point where we want to be, but certainly what we’ve started to do is that you take the feedback from your candidates where perhaps it’s not worked ideally or perhaps where they’ve had less than desirable experiences at other organisations and you try and factor in processes to, to make sure that they don’t have the same experience. When you talk to a lot of candidates, often their feedback when it’s been less than positive is because they applied for a job and nobody acknowledged them, they didn’t get feedback. The time between them applying and either receiving a negative or even sometimes a positive response is too long. So in summary, what we’ve tried to do is we’ve tried to, where possible, make sure that we acknowledge every application. We’ve tried to decrease the time in which we get back to candidates. We’ve also tried to make the system slightly more interactive and user friendly than perhaps you would have experienced had you got onto our website 18 months ago.
Matt Alder [00:07:12]:
Okay, so it’s kind of a real driver for you. That’s really interesting. I think lots of people talk about the candidate experience but don’t necessarily do anything about it. So it’s great to hear that you’re kind of addressing that in terms of sort of innovation for your approach and what you do. What does innovation sort of look like for you? What are you sort of doing or trying for the first time or doing to sort of be different from your competitors this year?
Claire Lewis [00:07:49]:
One of the things that we’ve looked at is that we’re almost stripping things back and going back to basics. One of the challenges that we have, and it’s not just Willis specific, I think it’s most organisations today, is that we now have a case where we have five different generations working under the same organisation. And so whenever you look at your benefits or the way in which you attract talent, you can’t just assume that a one size approach fits all. You have to have various ways of interacting with candidates, whether it’s through LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook. And for the insurance market, which very much is quite traditional in the way in which it attracts talent, we’re really having to challenge ourselves to step outside of the way we’ve done business before.
Matt Alder [00:08:41]:
And how are you kind of finding that? Because I know as an industry there are regulations and obviously things like social media haven’t always been perhaps looked upon too favourably. Your kind of sector. How are you sort of finding that challenge?
Claire Lewis [00:09:04]:
It’s definitely a multi pronged approach. I think one of the things that has been particularly insightful is sharing some of those stats with our hiring managers. And it’s often the key is the communication and giving them an insight in terms of the marketplace and when they have insight, they’re able to make more of an informed decision. One of the things we also look to do is we look to make sure that we spend a lot of time talking to partners outside of our organisation. And that’s where your PSL is often so key, because they are the ones that are in the face of the public, if you like. They deal with multiple organizations and they’re able to give you some insight of what works and what doesn’t work. And you take that feedback and that input and you tailor, make it to suit your organization and the different areas that you support.
Matt Alder [00:10:00]:
Cool. Okay. So it’s kind of all about building that, you know, building, building that business case. And I think it’s interesting, an interesting angle in terms of, you know, talking to the people who are, who are talking to the candidates on a, on a, on a, on a daily basis. What else is kind of on your, on your radar? So for 2015, are there any technologies or approaches or anything that, you know, is of interest that you might, that you might be doing or thinking about doing?
Claire Lewis [00:10:28]:
I suppose that, yes, as I said, we’re looking at stripping back what we do and really getting back to basics and really assessing everything in terms of the various different touch points in our recruitment process. So naturally, technology plays a key role there. It’s a relatively new team that I manage at the moment within the Willis UK division. And so we really want to get back to basics. We want to get our service delivery a lot more slick and more robust than what it has perhaps been historically. And once we’ve got those in place, it’s then easier to go from good to great. And that for me is always, I suppose, coming from a recruitment background, it’s all about getting your basics in place, because you can’t be great if you don’t have. Or if you have major flaws in your fundamental processes.
Matt Alder [00:11:24]:
Absolutely. No, I couldn’t agree more. I think that’s a brilliant approach to be taking. Well, thank you very much for talking to me.
Claire Lewis [00:11:34]:
It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in something like this.
Matt Alder [00:11:41]:
Brilliant.
Matt Alder [00:11:41]:
Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:11:43]:
Thanks for listening to episode four of the Recruiting Future podcast. A great interview from Claire Lewis at Willis there. The next edition is coming soon. I’m editing it literally in the next couple of days. And if you want, if you’ve got a story to tell and you want to appear on a future episode of the podcast, please get in touch. You can find me on LinkedIn. Alternatively, you can email me@mattashift.co.uk subscribe to Future episodes of the podcast using itunes or Stitcher. It’s also available on soundcloud and@wwrfpodcast.com thank you very much for listening.
