In last week’s episode I featured interviews with nine people who were searching for innovation at the HR Tech Conference in Chicago. This week I wanted to continue the same theme but with more of a focus on specific trends in recruiting.
My guest this week is Andy McIlvaine who is conference chair for The Talent Acquisition Technology Conference and The Recruiting Trends Conference both of which are organized by Human Resource Executive (the company behind HR Tech) and take place in Austin Texas in November.
In the interview we discuss:
• The changing role of video in the talent acquisition process
• Candidate Relationship Management and Candidate Experience
• The latest social media methods and Recruitment Marketing Platforms
• Whether talent shortages are genuine and what employers can do to solve the problem
• Unconscious bias in recruiting
• Predictive Analytics and Artificial Intelligence
Andy also gives us a taster of the case studies that will be presented at the conferences and shares what has surprised him the most as a journalist covering this sector.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Chemistry Labs. The Chemistry Group is an award winning organization that specializes in measuring potential and predicting performance in human beings. They do this for some of the largest organizations in the world, helping them deliver their business strategy and dramatically shift business performance to ensure they continually bring innovation to their clients. Chemistry have recently formed their own lab which will focus on exploring new ways to measure potential and predict performance through data science. For more information please visit www.thechemistrygroup.com. that’s www.thechemistrygroup.Com.
Matt Alder [00:01:03]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 70 of the Recruiting Future podcast. In last week’s episode, I Featured interviews with 9 people who were searching for innovation at the HR Tech Conference. This week I wanted to continue the same theme but focus more on trends in recruiting. My guest this week is is Andy McIlvaine. Andy is conference Chair for both the Talent Acquisition Technology Conference and the Recruiting Trends Conference, both of which are organized by Human Resource Executive, the people who organised HR Tech in Chicago. They both take place in Austin, Texas this November. In the interview, Andy gives his perspective on recruiting trends as a journalist who covers this space. Hi Andy and welcome to the podcast.
Andy McIlvaine [00:01:52]:
Thank you Matt. Great to be here.
Matt Alder [00:01:54]:
Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone who you are, what you do?
Andy McIlvaine [00:01:59]:
Yeah. My name is Andrew McIlvaine, I go by Andy and I’m Senior Editor of Human Resource Executive Magazine and chair of the Recruiting Trends and the Talent Acquisition Technology Conferences. I’ve been covering HR and recruiting for just over 20 years.
Matt Alder [00:02:18]:
Fantastic. Just in case there are people listening who are not familiar with your company and its fantastic events, could you give us a little bit of background into what the company does, where the events are, who comes to them, that kind of thing?
Andy McIlvaine [00:02:34]:
Well, sure. Human Resource Executive magazine is of course owned by LRP Incorporated. LRP also puts on a number of trade shows. Probably the best known by far in the HR space space is the HR Technology Conference which just concluded last week, the first week of October in Chicago. We also are introducing a brand new conference this year called Talent Acquisition Technology, the Talent Acquisition Technology Conference along with the Recruiting Trends Conference which we purchased last year. And these two conferences will be held together in Austin, Texas on November 14th through 16th at the Austin Hilton in Texas.
Matt Alder [00:03:25]:
Fantastic. I actually just came back from HR Tech and it was, yeah, it was a wonderful event. Very, you know, significantly, significantly large in terms of, you know in terms of its scale. So really kind of interested in this conversation to get your thoughts around, I suppose, both round recruit recruiting trends and talent acquisition technology. What you know, what’s kind of on your radar in 2006 in terms of recruiting trends? What are the hot topics? What are you seeing the most interest in and discussion around?
Andy McIlvaine [00:04:01]:
I think it’s for one thing, video, both in terms of video interviewing, which is continuing to evolve, and also the use of video to get the word out about a company’s job openings and its culture in a meaningful way. I’ve talked to a number of people about how you can do that, how there are certain ways that you can really post content that will actually get potential candidates attention rather than just sort of being passed over because it’s too generic or canned. At the conference, I was listening to Kathryn Minshew of the Muse. She was explaining how companies like Dropbox post video interviews of employees to get them actually talking about the specific things they like about their job, such as opportunities to work on a cool new program or unique project they’re working on, rather than just posting feel good testimonials, groups of people saying oh, we strive for excellence here. That comes off as really boring and not genuine. Another trend, of course, is getting employees to share information about job openings and your company’s culture via social media, and how applicant tracking systems can help them help them access their networks and post jobs to those networks. A lot of focus on candidate relationship management, really focusing on the candidate experience. As you know, Matt, when people have a lousy experience interviewing for a job or applying for a job at a company, it’s so much easier these days to share that lousy experience with so many people on venues like Glassdoor. Indeed, their social networks and research shows that it doesn’t just hurt your employer brand, it hurts your overall brand. And it goes beyond just not getting a response after you submit your application, but just a bad interview experience itself, unprepared interviewers being sent to the wrong location, and so on. I’ve also seen some Matt, you probably heard about how we’re in the midst of a talent shortage, but I’m seeing some healthy skepticism about that, and that the issue may be that companies just aren’t looking in the right places or are using the wrong sort of specifications, that they may be overlooking people who’ve applied to jobs before, people who may already be in the organization, or people who may not have the degree from the right college or university, or who may not have worked at a Google or a Twitter, but still have really great coding experience. And I think there’s, there’s, there’s some focus on new ways to find these people.
Matt Alder [00:06:56]:
On that topic, the thing that really struck me at last week’s HR Tech conference was the sheer amount of recruitment marketing platforms that there were that were kind of in attendance, and the. The real focus on marketing to, you know, talent pools that you already have, trying to find those amazing candidates in the ATS or persuade who’ve shown an interest in the company but aren’t ready to apply to really kind of nurture them through that process. And I saw a lot of technology that supported that at the show. Is that your kind of experience as well? Do you think that’s a particular area that people are sort of focusing tech on at the moment?
Andy McIlvaine [00:07:40]:
I do, I think. Starting to grab people’s attention because rather than going after the same old people and just engaging in bidding wars and poaching people from here and there, I think it makes sense from a company perspective and from a candidate perspective to really take a hard look at where you’re looking for people, how you’re sourcing for people, and whether you need to reevaluate how you’re going after talent, because there are lots of great people out there and no one’s knocking on their door. And it’s just a shame. It’s a shame for everyone involved.
Matt Alder [00:08:19]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s interesting to look to technology to sort of help solve that problem. I think I interrupted your list of trends. Is there anything else that is kind of on your radar at the moment?
Andy McIlvaine [00:08:35]:
I think another interesting development we’re seeing are the rise of vendors, such as there’s a company called Textio which can look at your job descriptions and quote, scrub them, unquote, of implicit bias or keywords, things that will turn off, potentially turn off women and minorities from applying to your company. And I think that it’s just implicit bias. As you probably know, Matt, it’s a big problem in society all over the world, really, and it hurts. And just similar to overlooking really great people, it also hurts both candidates and companies. And so I’m really focused on what are some new and interesting ways that companies and vendors are finding to rid their hiring processes of implicit bias as well as their workplaces.
Matt Alder [00:09:38]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really big topic. And there’s, you know, we’ve had a couple of sort of shows in the past with, with people talking about how are they are facing up to that problem, whether it’s, you know, using a technology solution or you know, looking at the culture of the organization or training hiring managers, whatever, whatever that might, that might be what. So obviously they’re the, the sort of trends, the, the trends that you’re seeing and for, for all of those trends we know there are, you know, there are a number of vendors offering products and services to sort of, you know, to help solve the problems and move things forward. From a, from a company perspective, from a kind of corporate recruiting, HR perspective, who are the companies that you are seeing who are doing some particularly interesting stuff in the, in the areas that you, that you talked about?
Andy McIlvaine [00:10:33]:
Well, you know the software company VMware, they, they’re working with a company called HackerRank which has coding compet to help companies find talented engineers who may not have gone to Stanford or Carnegie Mellon or MIT but are nonetheless extremely talented. Many coders are self taught and these people could be great assets to your company. And VMware found through working with HackerRank some really great people that they would have otherwise overlooked. And it was through these coding competitions in which these folks get to actually showcase what they can do. They’ll actually, if I can make a subtle plug here for the Talent Acquisition Technology Conference they will be presenting at our conference and explaining how they did it and the results they got.
Matt Alder [00:11:30]:
Fantastic. That sounds like a fantastic case study. Any other kind of organizations that you’re seeing doing interesting things, employers adopting some of these approaches?
Andy McIlvaine [00:11:45]:
Matt, There are. So if I could sort of, in fact they will be presenting at the Talent Acquisition Technology Conference. For example. Fidelity Investments uses video to help managers. They coach managers on how to talking about a position in a video interview. Coach them to really be more engaging when talking about a position within their units. And Fidelity will be showcasing this at the conference. We’ll also have a company called Opower talk about how they’re recruiting, what their recruiting department learned from sales. As you probably know, recruitment marketing, as you mentioned, recruitment marketing is a big topic and so I think that’s really interesting as well. And just getting back to the whole candidate experience topic, we’ll be partnering with the Talent Board which presents the annual Candidate Experience Awards. They will be at the Recruiting Trends Conference and they will be a number of the companies they’ve worked with, including American Airlines AT&T Capital One will be talking about how they revamped their recruitment process and their candidate experience to make recruiting really an asset to their company brand, not a potential liability.
Matt Alder [00:13:15]:
Good stuff. Those guys do some great work. So I think it’s always interesting to see you know, some of the statistics and things that come out where people are sort of paying proper attention to candidate experience. So, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s great to hear, just to sort of, I suppose, look maybe slightly further forward into the future in terms of trends that are sort of emerging now that may be big over the next couple of years. One of the things I noticed at HR Tech last week and a number of people commented on was the, the kind of emergence of what people are calling sort of recruitment, artificial intelligence, AI. Now there was some debate as to whether it was genuinely AI or whether it was, you know, something a bit more, a bit more scripted. But it was very clear that this is going to be, this is an emerging trend, and obviously it’s an emerging trend in other industries as well. What are you seeing in that space? What do you think might happen and where do you think that might go?
Andy McIlvaine [00:14:20]:
Well, really, Matt, I think the best response right now is only time will tell. Because right now it does seem that there’s more talk than actual widespread adoption or cutting edge adoption of artificial intelligence and recruiting. I met with IBM Smarter Work Force, and they are doing, you know, they’re doing some, you know, it seems like they’re doing some interesting things, but they, they were really weren’t willing to share a whole lot about clients that were using this to find candidates. But I think we should really keep our eye focused on them as well as other companies that are sort of experimenting with this, because I do think that there’s so much potential. You know, we all saw IBM, Watson on Jeopardy. Just kicking butt. And so I think there’s a lot of potential there. And it’s one of those things that we’re definitely keeping our eyes on.
Matt Alder [00:15:13]:
What about analytics? One of the things I see a lot of talk about is how recruiting can have better analytics, predictive analytics, sort of use of data. Is that another trend that you’ve seen sort of grow in the last couple of years?
Andy McIlvaine [00:15:30]:
Oh, definitely, definitely. And I think one of the things to keep in mind also is the fact that there’s sort of a careful balance that I think needs to be exercised in terms of the power of predictive analytics and its potential to actually undermine people’s privacy. And it’s sort of scary how, for example, I mean, you may have heard the case study about how Target uses predictive analytics to find out that a person is pregnant before she’s even told anyone, just through analyzing her buying patterns. I think it could emerge as a really interesting Topic as the use of predictive analytics becomes more widespread. Because I know people are using it to find out, well, will this person be a really good match for our company culture? How long will this person stay in this job? Will this person mesh well with the people who already work here? And it’s really, it’s really interesting, but it’s a little unsettling at the same time.
Matt Alder [00:16:36]:
Yeah, I think you’re right. Having seen, you know, some of the, the people who are sort of playing in that space and seeing where they’re getting their data from. You know, everything from analyzing patterns of employees, emails to, you know, tracking their, tracking who they’re phoning and all this kind of stuff, you know, I think, I think you’re right. I think, you know, privacy, privacy and feeling uncomfort about that are the kind of the, you know, where, where the trade off is going to be in terms of the, the, you know, the business insight that data brings. So. No, I agree. I think that’s going to be, I think that’s going to be a fascinating, you know, a fascinating area to watch. So final question. So in sort of putting these, you know, conferences to together and sourcing the speakers and the topics and things like that, what’s the thing that’s surprised you the most about what’s happening in the market at the moment?
Andy McIlvaine [00:17:31]:
What surprised me the most? I just. It’s the sheer number of vendors in this space, Matt, and the sheer, the huge amount of venture capital money that’s being poured into this space. It’s really, I mean, if you saw our, you know, if you saw, of course you saw the expo floor at this year’s HR Tech Conference. More than 500 vendors spread out across the McCormick Center. Of course not all of them are going to make it, but at the same time, it’s so exciting that there’s so much rapid innovation going on and whether it’s been brought about by the rise of mobile, social, what have you, there’s just so much going on, it kind of makes it hard to choose from when you’re putting together a conference. Who do I include and who do I not include? It’s really tough. And we make our final decision based on do you have a great client story to tell? Do you have a client whom you’ve really helped and has serious results to show for the work you did? And that’s kind of the parameter we use when putting together these conferences. But it’s just this huge, gigantic ecosystem, I guess you’d call it, that really stands out for me?
Matt Alder [00:18:50]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think the sheer amount of. I saw some graphs just illustrating the amount of VC money that’s going into the, the HR tech space and into sort of talent acquisition technology in particular. And it is, you know, absolutely astounding. So. Yeah, no, I completely, I completely kind of agree with you. So finally, could you just sort of remind everyone how, or tell everyone even how they can find out more details about the conferences?
Andy McIlvaine [00:19:21]:
Sure. For the Talent Acquisition Technology conference, go to www.talenttechconf c o n f dot com. You can see the entire program and you can register for Recruiting Trends. Go to recruitingtrendsconf.com and learn about the program there. We’ll also be having the Talent Board will be having its Candidate Experience Awards Banquet on the second night of the conference, and attendees at both conferences can attend that banquet for a discount. So we think we’ve got a really great program, we’ve got a ton of sessions, we’ve got great keynote presenters, and we’re really excited about it.
Matt Alder [00:20:06]:
Andy, thank you very much for talking to me. My thanks to Andy McIlvaine. You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes Stitcher, or via your podcasting app of choice. Just search for Recruiting Future. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about Working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
