This week sees a first for the show, rather than me just interviewing one guest, in this episode I’m interviewing two. I recently headed down to Pepsico’s UK offices in Reading to have a conversation with Kevin Hough, their Head of Talent Acquisition for the UK and Ireland, and Dan Fitzpatrick, Talent Acquisition Lead for PepsiCo Global Concentrate Solutions.
We covered a lot of ground in our discussion and it was great to hear Kevin and Dan talk about some of the everyday realities of in house recruitment within a large corporate.
In the interview we discuss:
• PepsiCo’s recruiting challenges
• Anticipating STEM recruitment needs
• How Talent Acquisition is changing as a discipline
• Is recruiting the same as marketing?
• The changing skill set of the in house recruiter
• Rethinking relationships with recruitment agencies
• The role of technology
Kevin and Dan also give us their views on the likely future for talent acquisition.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Wreckfest. Wreckfest 2017 takes place on July 6th and is the definitive destination of the summer for in house recruiters to be celebrated and educated. This year RecFest is taking over industrial foodie haunt Hawker House in London for a forward thinking exploration of an industry awakened over the three stages. Thirty speakers will be sharing their vision of the future of recruiting, case studies and and insight with over 600 in house recruiters. So if you want to join the Recfest revolution you can find all the details and book your place@www.thisisareckfest.co.uk. that’s www.thisisrecfest.co.uk.
Matt Alder [00:01:10]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 89 of the Recruiting Future podcast. This week a first for the show with not one guest but two. I recently headed down to PepsiCo’s UK offices in Reading to have a conversation with Kevin Hough, their head of Talent acquisition for the UK and Ireland, and Dan Fitzpatrick, talent acquisition lead for PepsiCo Global Concentrate Solutions. We covered a lot of ground in our discussions about the evolution of talent acquisition and it was great to hear Kevin and Dan talk about some of the everyday realities of in house recruitment within a large corporate. Enjoy the interview.
Matt Alder [00:01:52]:
Hi guys and welcome to the podcast. Hello. So could we start? Could you just introduce yourself? So tell us who you are, where we are and what you do.
Dan Fitzpatrick [00:02:03]:
Okay, so my name is Dan Fitzpatrick. I’m the talent acquisition lead for the concentrate business within PepsiCo. So you’re here with us today at the PepsiCo head office in Green park in Reading. A little bit about me. So my background is all recruitment. So back in 2006, which seems like a very long time ago when I had hair and was a lot slimmer, I started out life in RPO and then had a number of stints across a number of different organisations. So worked for Bupa, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Tesco and then joined PepsiCo in 2006 and I’ve worked across pretty much all of the core functions, so across commercial R and D supply chain and then most recently in the concentrate business.
Kevin Hough [00:02:43]:
Hi, I’m Kevin Hough, I’m the head of talent acquisition for UK and Ireland here at PepsiCo. So work very closely with Dan. Most people may remember that I worked for lv, the insurer, not Louis Vuitton as people like to say. But yeah, so my background previous to that project management, information management. I guess my passions are around employer branding, as you well know, Matt, but also team transformation and getting the proposition working really well.
Matt Alder [00:03:13]:
Well, cool. And thanks, guys, for inviting me, inviting me down to wedding and also thank you for this big box of PepsiCo brands, including Doritos that you’ve bribed me with.
Kevin Hough [00:03:25]:
We couldn’t have you showing you some of the products.
Matt Alder [00:03:28]:
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.
Kevin Hough [00:03:31]:
We won’t munch our way through those, though.
Matt Alder [00:03:32]:
It gives me, gives me something to eat on the, on the, on the train home, which is great. So I think one of the things it would be good to find out a bit more about are the sort of recruitment challenges that you guys, that you guys face. I mean, who do you recruit? Where, you know, where. Where is that particularly, particularly difficult? What, what kind of people do you look for for a, for a company like this?
Kevin Hough [00:03:53]:
I think, for me, I think the surprise for an organisation such as PepsiCo is that it’s the breadth of roles that we recruit. So we could be recruiting anything from someone who tests our crysts and is in the sensory team to find out are we developing new flavours, are the standards right through to sports scientists, through to your typical sales marketers that drive the growth side of the business. So there’s an extreme amount of breadth, I would say, and I’d be interested to see Dan’s point of view also. But I guess there’s also quite a few very niche roles. So within our supply chain, research and development businesses, there are some real difficult roles to hire that we need to focus on.
Dan Fitzpatrick [00:04:32]:
Yeah, I mean, we certainly have a whole range of disciplines, as Kevin said, you know, whether we’re recruiting for R and D specialists or supply chain specialists, finance specialists, HR specialists, you know, they’re challenging in some locations less so than others. The reality is, you know, we’re. My particular role is a global role, so I would have, you know, folks in Ireland, it’s a relatively good market to recruit into. Having said that, we would recruit folks in Singapore, which is not an easy market to recruit some folks into. So there’s a whole host of skills that we look for, you know, globally. Lots of that you can link to kind of the STEM conversation and it’s a very difficult subject to talk about, you know, how do you fix for the, you know, the STEM challenge? You need a level of foresight into what the future actually holds. Not many businesses can genuinely tell you what, what they’ve got on the horizon in the next five to 10 years. So it’s very hard Then to build a STEM roadmap to, for us as a TA function to deliver into that just a conversation we’re having. We obviously have STEM councils, we have those conversations, but it’s, it’s very difficult to get clear line of sight on some of those, those challenges.
Matt Alder [00:05:45]:
So first up, it would be great to get your perspectives on the challenges that talent acquisition is facing and how it’s really sort of changing as a discipline to answer some of those challenges.
Dan Fitzpatrick [00:05:56]:
Yeah. Okay, cool. So I think from my perspective, the challenge we will always face is finding the right talent in a really timely fashion. In fact, sometimes getting the right talent before the business even knows it is where we want to be. The reality is there are a number of themes around that in terms of how we do that. So we operate in a candidate driven environment. Candidates, they do want to be wooed, they do want to be seen as VIPs. We need to be mindful of that all of the time. So what we do can be very transactional and that’s the nature of recruitment. Sometimes in a volume environment, you can just get stuck in that rut of just driving through and churning through candidates. We need to then step back and be really mindful that these candidates are super important. So we need to take time to educate them on the business, make sure they do have that VIP experience as they come through the process. Even if they’re not successful, they still need to walk away feeling really positive about their experience. Ultimately, we are a consumer brand. At the end of the day, we still want people to go and buy our products and recognize where we sit in the market, etc. So that’s really important. Linked to that is relationships. We need to be able to clearly articulate who we are, both through personal conversations, be very high touch with our candidates, but also through what we do in terms of attraction, whether that be as simple as a job advert, all the stuff we’ll do in the social space, which Kevin can talk much more about. So there’s a number of elements there. It’s a two way street as well. I think it’s one of the other things to mention. It’s not just about us. Candidates come with lots of questions and lots of challenges and we need to be able to really sell ourselves as a business. We’re not the only employer out there. Candidates will always have choice and we need to make sure that we differentiate ourselves and stand out from others in the market.
Kevin Hough [00:07:46]:
I’d absolutely echo that. I think Dan’s spot on. I think from my perspective, if we look at where talent acquisition teams are needing to go, where businesses need to be. In fact, the challenge for us here at PepsiCo is about being a really forward thinking, proactive talent acquisition function. So it’s moving away from that. The terminology that I like to use is moving away from that post and pray approach to that proactive pipelining. And again, that becomes more effective when you introduce all of the things that Dan talked about in terms of engaging with the candidates using social. We know people want to check out what it’s like to work at employer. How can you deliver that reality and how can the team really understand its market and partner with the business to understand what they need and to Dan’s point, really understand the people they don’t know they need.
Matt Alder [00:08:37]:
So would you say then that recruiting is becoming more like marketing? I mean, it’s kind of a controversial statement and there’s always lots of argument about, you know, what does that mean and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, broadly, do you think that’s the case?
Kevin Hough [00:08:53]:
I would say yes, probably in the first instance. And I’d caveat to say not everyone is good at it and not everyone needs to be good at it to be successful. So I think people need to think about how can you attract the best talent? Well, it’s writing the best adverts, it’s connecting with the right people. It’s the whole employer brand, the look, the feel. If it’s not looking professional, if it’s not feeling, feeling professional, that’s going to turn people off. So people, rightly or wrongly will have expectations when they apply to us about the big brands. Do they get the expectation, you know, when they go through the recruitment process? Exactly the same with big brands like Amazon, for example. So for me, I think absolutely, it is needing that marketing steer. But it’s how teams can cleverly execute that without trying to have a team of marketeers. Because I’m very clear that you need some really great recruiters and recruiting talent to actually execute on that.
Dan Fitzpatrick [00:09:50]:
Yeah, I think you’re right, Kevin. I think the other key thing we should always remember is you can have all of the wizard campaigns and marketing and all of that, but ultimately it boils down to the fact that people are recruited by people. So it doesn’t matter what we put out there, that first real engagement will be over the phone, might be through an email, through our ats. At some stage we have to engage on a level with that person. You know, just having the right advert and the right campaigns out there won’t get people through the door. They need to buy into us as people.
Matt Alder [00:10:21]:
And I think that’s really interesting because, you know, you’re talking about having to have a sort of a number of, a number of skills here. So, you know, marketing, savvy, relationship building, you know, good old fashioned kind of recruiting skills. How do you think this sort of skill set of in house recruitment has changed? What are the most vital skills for any in house recruiter to have in the current environment?
Dan Fitzpatrick [00:10:43]:
Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a good question mark. There’s a whole host is the honest answer. So we’ll find ourselves wearing a number of different hats throughout the course of the day. So, you know, you’ll have your stakeholder management skills, you’ll have your business partnering skills. All of that underpinned by being able to build relationships. So the same as we would with candidates, we need to build relationships with our internal stakeholders, we need to be able to project manage. So it’s not just about putting bums on seats. At the end of the day, there’s a whole lot of other stuff we do in terms of added value projects, initiatives. So, you know, technology plays a part, employee referrals, all those kind of initiatives. We have to project manage. You have to be commercially savvy. So you have to know when the time is right actually to maybe engage with a third party, spend some cash. And I know all in house teams are focused on not spending cash, but actually there’s a time and a place for it and you’ve got to make the decision, you’ve got to be resilient. So sitting in house, for me it’s about being exposed, which can be scary but can be exciting at the same time because you always have to have a solution. You can’t run away, you can’t not answer your phone because someone will stand at your desk. So you’ve got to be super resilient, resourceful and actually not afraid to face into a problem and not always have the answer. So for me it’s about having the relationships with the stakeholders. That means you can go and be honest and authentic and say, I don’t know the answer, but actually let’s get the right people in the room, let’s have a conversation and let’s try and find a solution to whatever the problem might be.
Kevin Hough [00:12:11]:
Yeah. Again, I totally echo Dan’s comments. I think the commercial savvy one is definitely one that I see time and time again. And I think partnership, you know, partnering with the business is definitely the approach and one that we, we echo here. And part of the work we’re doing as a team is actually looking at, you know, expanding our roles to actually encompass some of these skills and behaviours, because that’s now become the requirement of the role. I think the commerciality piece that Dan touched on is a real key one. It’s a definite hot topic for in house recruiters where I believe the world has switched from in house, don’t touch an agency to actually you need to partner with core people that can help you deliver those niche roles and you should be almost schmoozing in some respects. And that’s a real flip and it’s very tough to get that balance right. But this comes back to delivering what the business needs and the roles the business needs. So I’d say all of that stuff that Dan talks about, but someone who can understand when those skills are appropriate and when they’re not.
Matt Alder [00:13:09]:
You mentioned spending money and investing and obviously, you know, there’s a whole host of technology providers out there who almost on a daily basis are releasing, you know, platforms and solutions that allegedly make your lives better and make your lives easier. What role does technology play in this? Do you think it kind of overplays what it, what it delivers, or is it a vital part of what you guys do?
Kevin Hough [00:13:34]:
I’d say, I’d say it’s definitely a vital part. If I think back to the applicant tracking system, there’s no way that we could control the volumes of applications if we were doing it on an Excel spreadsheet, for example. But I think going back to the point that Dan made about people recruit people, we’re very keen to make sure that our candidate experience, line manager experience, has got that human touch as well. So whilst we use things like video interviewing, we use online testing and tools such as that to help the process and help inform the hiring decision. It’s definitely the enabler, but not the solution. So we always look very carefully at a solution that comes to, you know, pop out the person at the end and that’s who you need to hire. Because we believe there’s that real strength in the people side too.
Dan Fitzpatrick [00:14:19]:
Yeah, I think you mentioned, Kevin mentioned video interviewing there. I think there’s, there’s two elements to use in tech for me. There’s, there’s clearly, there’s a time element, so it makes us more efficient and we can respond more timely. But obviously we’ve talked about being fairly high touch as well. So candidate experience is key in front of mind always, but also the hiring manager experience as well. So if we think about video interviewing for instance, that was a big leap for our organization. It’s been a big leap for a number of other organisations to take away the human touch. But actually that’s a great enabler because it offers candidates a whole level more of flexibility in terms of when they can interview. You’re not duplicating process, you’re not asking candidates the same questions. So actually that acts as an extension of really putting your employer brand in front of a candidate in some cases before you’ve even actually had that physical conversation. So there’s things like that which lots of businesses are starting to embrace and it is efficient but it also plays to the enhancing the candidate experience and enhancing the line manager or the hiring manager experience experience as well. So there’s you know, from an in house perspective we have the two customers if you like, the internal guys and then the candidates that we’re talking to as well.
Matt Alder [00:15:33]:
Okay, final question now we’re actually recording this the week that the snap British general election was called. And if that tells us anything, it tells us that predicting the future is impossible, particularly predicting the future these days. But I’d like to kind of ask about this in the context of, of talent acquisition. Anyway, you know, where do you think you, where do you think we’re going? What should we be looking at or looking out for over the next sort of 18 months to two years in this space?
Kevin Hough [00:16:04]:
I think from my perspective, I think tech will always play a role in this. There’s a lot of work been going on with predictive analytics. I saw some great work around virtual reality assessment centers which reach know really, really interested by. So I think there’s, there’s definitely that that’s going to bubble around in the background. I think for me it’s around the strategic workforce planning side of things which is how do you predict skills that you don’t know you need in the future? So how do you start planning for that and then really starting to balance that, you know, what you buy and what you borrow from a TA strategy perspective.
Dan Fitzpatrick [00:16:39]:
Yeah, no, I think Kevin’s right. I think the strategic pieces is a key unlock but also the tactical piece. So what does the next 12 to 18 months have on the horizon from a business perspective is really important for us. I think some businesses or smaller businesses are new entrants to the market, can do things quicker than bigger corporate organizations. That’s a challenge that big business will have in terms of how agile can we genuinely be. Can we offer careers at the pace that some people will want a career versus a small textile. Might be able to get you to a great place in five or six years. Certainly won’t happen in a big organization like ours. It’s being able to have the right proposition for the right candidates at the right time, which is tricky. But it’s working out. What do we build? Borrow? Buy? How is that makeup focused in our organization? And again, that links to stem. That links to internal talent deployment. It links to having a real focus on what direction the business is going. So there’s a number of interdependencies within that. It’s not as easy as we’d like it to be. I think it’s the answer.
Matt Alder [00:17:46]:
Guys, thank you very much for talking to me.
Matt Alder [00:17:49]:
My thanks to Kevin and Dan. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes on Stitcher or download the show app on your smartphone. Just search for Recruiting Future in your app Store. 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.
