It is accepted wisdom that technology is changing everything when it comes to employer branding, recruitment marketing and recruiting itself. But how are things working in practice and how are shifts in technology changing the way large employers identify and interface with future talent?
My guests this week are Alexa Mershcel, US Campus Recruiting Lead, and Ashley Lasher, Northeast Assurance Business Recruiting Manager, both from PwC. Campus recruiting has been undergoing some serious evolution at PwC, and it was great to gain some insights into this change.
In the interview we discuss:
• How technology is changing the campus recruiting experience for both candidates and recruiters
• The importance of aligning Talent Acquisition closely to the business
• Replacing giveaways with virtual reality experiences
• Transparency and the new power of the job seeker
• The importance of the “post-offer event.”
• Content that resonates in campus recruiting
• Automation versus human interaction
Alexa and Ashley also share their thoughts on video interviewing and what is in store for campus recruiting as technology expands further.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from the Innovation Circus, the latest experience from the Recruitment events company. Hosted in partnership with Broadbean. The event takes place on 11 May at the British Library in London and this year the focus is on social recruiting and future innovations. Speakers from Google, Facebook and Vodafone, amongst others will be on hand to share their stories and offer real life case studies for the over 200 in house recruiters in attendance. Plus two workshops will offer delegates a more hands on experience to solve their real life challenges. Go to www.innovationcircus.co.uk for more information and if you use the Code podcast you’ll receive a 20% discount on your ticket. That’s www.dotinnovation circus.co.uk.
Matt Alder [00:01:12]:
The ages of history. Hi everyone, this is Matt Holder. Welcome to, welcome to episode 124 of the Recruiting Future podcast. It’s accepted wisdom that technology is changing everything when it comes to employer branding, recruitment, marketing and recruiting. But how are things actually now working in practice? And how are shifts in technology changing the way large employers identify and interface with future talent? To answer these questions I interviewed two of PwC’s recruiting leaders, Alexa Mershcel and Ashley Lasher. I’m really grateful to them for sharing some great insights into the evolution of PwC’s campus recruiting strategy. Hi Alexa and hi Ashley. Welcome to the podcast.
Alexa Mershcel [00:02:07]:
Thanks for having us.
Matt Alder [00:02:08]:
My absolute pleasure. Could you guys introduce yourselves and tell us a bit more about you?
Alexa Mershcel [00:02:14]:
Sure thing Alexa Mershcel I actually was recruited off campus to join Pricewarf PwC and I started in client service and I went into HR and talent acquisition. I’ve been with the firm a total of 20 years and I have a national role right now where I’m leading our talent identification efforts from a campus and experience perspective which is all around the branding and attracting and identifying of talent in both campus and experience.
Ashley Lasher [00:02:43]:
And I’m Ashley Lasher. I was actually recruited off campus as well to work in client service. I joined our PwC recruiting team about, let’s say seven years ago and I’m currently one of our campus talent acquisition business recruiters in our Boston Massachusetts office. So I focus on the business recruiting for one of our specific practices.
Matt Alder [00:03:05]:
So as I say great to have you guys on the show and it’s, it’s not often that I have two guests. So that’s, that’s, that’s particularly, that’s, that’s particularly good. So one of the things that we’re going to talk about is how recruiting has changed, you know, in general, but maybe particularly at sort of PwC over the last, over the last few years. Maybe we could start by talking about what your experience was of the recruitment process when you joined the organization.
Alexa Mershcel [00:03:33]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I know I made reference to the fact that that was 20 years ago. Right. Looking for an internship and being hired into the professional services experience from campus. PWC did not come to my campus that I went to. And I actually proactively printed out letters off the computer, sent my resume to. At the time it was, I was looking to get into accounting, into the big six and sent them up north to, from. I went to college in the south and I wanted to start my career up north and I directly sent them to the recruiter. So it was via snail mail. I didn’t do too much research on the Internet. It was much more because the Internet was just about breaking at that point and coming out. And I leveraged friends and family and network to get an understanding as to the profession that I was getting into. I was lucky enough to receive callbacks from four of the big six and it was in person interviews and hard copy offer letter that was sent. And I had some decisions to make and ultimately decided to, to start my career at that point in time was PW before the merger of PW and Cooperson Lynbrand.
Ashley Lasher [00:04:53]:
So mine was a little bit more probably similar to how it is today since it was seven years ago. I applied through my campus career center. There were formal events, had an on campus interview in person and then an in person second round interview. Thinking about Alexa, I actually think I had a hard copy offer letter as well, but which now that is not the case. It is all electronic. And so it’s just very interesting to see the similarities between what seven years ago and now, but then also so many differences just due to technology and that we’ve both seen those changes over the years.
Matt Alder [00:05:26]:
So I’m kind of interested in how, you know, how things have changed between sort of 20 years ago and seven years ago and now. But also, I mean, obviously technology is a driving factor, but are there any other reasons that recruiting the way that you guys do recruiting has changed over the last few years?
Alexa Mershcel [00:05:47]:
Yeah, most certainly. The candidate experience has certainly changed and a lot of that is due to technology, but it is. We’re in a market where we’re wanting to get a lot more personal with our candidates and the job seekers and to make sure that we’re individualizing the experience for them. So not only on the candid experience side, it’s changed for our recruiters as well too. And the talent acquisition, being aligned to the business, has really emphasized the skills that are necessary in order for our client service professionals to be successful. And there’s been a real focus on diversity as well. So I would say the candidate experience, recruiter experience, and then really the focus on skills and diversity of our hires has changed over the years as well.
Ashley Lasher [00:06:34]:
I mean, I think even just thinking about my role in particular, I’m aligned to a business. And so being able to be strategic and work with the business, what are the needs, what is the talent that they’re looking for? I think we are really able to be strategic in going to campus and hiring the correct individuals with the technology skills and analytics skills that we’re looking for these days.
Matt Alder [00:06:57]:
So you mentioned that one of the big things that’s changed is the candidate experience. Could you sort of give us some more insight into that? You know, what’s different about it? What does it look and feel like now?
Alexa Mershcel [00:07:11]:
Yeah, absolutely. As I look at the candidate experience, really break it out into three areas of branding and attracting. So, you know, the employer brand and how we showcase that to a job seeker, then the selection and the interviewing process and then also the hiring. So. And technology’s really played a role. Like if I look at branding and attracting, recruitment, marketing, the leveraging of social media 10 years ago is when Facebook and Twitter were just on the Horizon. And at PwC, we regularly are using Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn in order to really showcase the culture of the firm. So there’s a bit of an inside look into who we are as an organization. It’s kind of interesting. Lots of times on campus we’ll go out to career fairs. A lot of that has gone virtual. Right. That’s our opportunity at these career fairs to start to brand and attract ourselves and interact and engage with these students. And something interesting this past fall that we just recently rolled out was we decided to step away from providing giveaways. What we did is really create an experience and how can we leverage virtual reality to give the job seeker an inside look into our environment. So we went to campus at these career fairs and we had virtual reality glasses with a video of our Boston office and they were able to explore the office. So it’s kind of interesting. We had about 68,000 job seekers visit the Boston office over a six month period of time because of that. And as they go through, they’re interacting with people and they’re seeing what the office space looks like and it allows the student to ask questions and really us to start to build relationships with those individuals because there’s real content that is coming across in those videos that they’re able to then get a better understanding as to who we are as an organization.
Ashley Lasher [00:09:18]:
It becomes more of a conversation versus just handing out a pen or a notepad and hoping we see them again if we’re interested and may never see them again if they’re not or we’re not.
Alexa Mershcel [00:09:30]:
And I also think what’s so interesting in that branding and attracting space, right, there’s such transparency now. You know, no longer is the employer in the driver’s seat. It’s really the job seekers have immense power and they have access to so much information. Right. With all those employer reviews that are out there, Glassdoor, even some of the job boards now are incorporating feedback on these, on employers. And that voice of the consumer goes such a long way that you really do have to rely upon a strong employer brand. And luckily we have one at PwC and we want to certainly showcase that as much as possible too.
Matt Alder [00:10:14]:
I think that’s kind of a really interesting, a really interesting point. And I suppose my next question is kind of round candidate expectations. I mean, how are you finding that the expectations, expectations of candidates have changed in the last few years now, you know, obviously talked about transparency and the expectation that they’ll be able to find out a lot about the business. But what else are you finding that’s different in terms of, you know, when you, when you’re sort of interfacing with, you know, potential hires directly.
Alexa Mershcel [00:10:47]:
Yeah. You know, I think about their desire to immediately know if they have an option offer or not so that, that speed to offer. There is a desire for efficiency in the process and the ease of that hiring and interviewing. So if I look at the hiring process we have recently from an individual like interview scheduling, we’ve been able to rely on technology to help us with that. So it’s all automated and the candidate can then go in and you know, out on their own time, look at their schedule schedule and determine when will they be able to meet with us. We’ve also really incorporated video interviewing. So this past fiscal year we had over 14,000 entry level recruits that we did video interviewing with. Right. So the ability for them to, it really reduces the amount of time that they’re having to travel and come for a face to face interview with us and it improves the candidate Experience by really reducing, you know, not taking them away from work that they may have and their busy schedules too.
Ashley Lasher [00:11:59]:
And even thinking about my experience going from on campus interview, then it took a week or even longer to then get into the office. Like Alexis said, the time to travel to that office, and if it wasn’t local, even farther travel, plane, flights, whatever the case may be, and then maybe another week to even get the offer. And now we’re able to move so quickly because of technology. And I think that really helps with these candidates because exactly like she said, that’s what they’re hoping for and wishing for is that speed to offer at.
Alexa Mershcel [00:12:28]:
The end of the day and that ease of transaction. Right. So they also are very interested in our culture. So, Ashley, why don’t you talk a little bit about the post offer event that we host?
Ashley Lasher [00:12:39]:
Yeah. Yep. So with this process now with the implementation of the virtual interview, these students may not have ever seen our office or the office that they would be working in. So we’ve now created this post offer celebration event where they come into the office, they get to really feel the culture, experience what the people are like, the people they could be working with in the future because they have an offer. Whereas in the past they would come to the office when it was time for their interview. And they have this interview looming over their heads when they’re in the office. And I feel like they didn’t necessarily get to really experience all that they could. And so now that they have an offer, they can take it all in. Maybe some have already accepted. So these students can see, oh, this other person across the table from me, they would be in my interview, internship class. And so really being able to give them this experience of what PwC is all about has I think really helped our process as well.
Alexa Mershcel [00:13:32]:
I would just wrap that one up by saying it’s really the candidate looking for that efficiency in the process, the flexibility in the process, and then also the just the transparency to understand the organization and the culture and their job, what they will be doing.
Matt Alder [00:13:46]:
Obviously technology is playing a big part in making that process work and making things quicker and delivering that kind of improvement to the candidate experience that matches with the changing expectations of candidates. There’s obviously lots of talk about technology automating parts of the recruitment process. How important is the sort of human face to face aspect of recruiting in terms of what you do? Is that still an important aspect or do you think technology is replacing that?
Alexa Mershcel [00:14:23]:
It is extremely important to us that human interaction, that human interaction might not be face to face and in person. It may be through a computer, it may be through a Google chat or a Skype. Versus face to face. We have explored that kind of video, the interview with automated interview, right where there’s a computer asking questions and there’s responses and they’re videoed. And we really feel that that doesn’t embrace our culture or showcase who we are as a fir. So we really do. Those initial interviews that we’re conducting on campus are face to face. At this point in time we are doing some exploration as it relates to schools where we have a virtual presence where, you know, this past year we hired 205 individuals off campus where we had never met them face to face. It had all been through a computer conversation and a video conversation. I do see us potentially leveraging technology, whether that be AI or bots in the future from a screening of resumes and a matching of job descriptions. Potentially, but we’re not quite there yet. We need to do some further investigation. Most certainly the other area in which we’re really leveraging technology is just again in the branding and marketing space in the client relationship management tool to, to really start to personalize it and understanding all the data points and the hits of where people have interest of searching our sites and how can we kind of market to them and personalize the experience for them.
Ashley Lasher [00:16:06]:
And I think about with the virtual interviews, freeing up us as recruiters in our time a little bit more with planning those. It allows us to build that relationship with the students throughout the process and connect them with even more professionals because they, they do want that human interaction.
Matt Alder [00:16:23]:
You’ve talked about sort of employer branding and you really sort of engaging with, you know, engaging with potential candidates. Obviously recruitment marketing is a very, very noisy space at the moment and you know, the sort of the best people that you can hire are kind of being exposed to lots of sort of messages about different companies and why they should work, why they should work for them. What have you found in terms of sort of content and messaging that really resonates with a campus audience?
Alexa Mershcel [00:16:55]:
For us it’s really, you know, at the end of the day, people work for people and it’s really showcasing the stories of our individuals who work here. They want to, you know, as we do, accept decline surveys and trying to understand why people have accepted an offer, declined an offer with us. The reasons they’re accepting is the relationships that they have formed, it is the opportunities that exist and it’s the culture and the environment. So those are the same reasons that they accept as they do decline. So our whole focus is to really want to on social media platforms, through videos, allowing our people internally to speak to their experiences. The opportunities here, the culture really has resonated well with the student population because they’re directly hearing from some of their peers and who they may potentially be working with. And videos have been extremely successful too.
Matt Alder [00:17:58]:
So what about internships? Are they still an important part of what you do?
Alexa Mershcel [00:18:02]:
Interns, that’s the main focus. That is what we are going to campus to find and to really for PwC, early identification is the name of the game. So we’re engaging and interacting with students. Freshman sophomore year, their junior year is when they’re going to be doing an internship and then hopefully come to work for us from a full time perspective. So really the evolution of the internship, that’s always been important to us. We’ve had interns. I spoke to the fact that 20 years ago I was an intern. But 95% of our interns receive full time offers. 90% of them accept their full time offer. So it is a great investment for us here at the firm. Funny story, actually. Ashley and I both have been focused on the intern milestone event that we host. It’s a capstone program and it’s creating a premier end of internship experience for our hires. So Ashley, I led the team and Ashley and I work together and We’ve spent over 30 days working in Orlando together actually. But the whole intent there is to create that experience. Right? I spoke earlier about intern acceptance because of the relationships and the opportunities and the culture. When we have these early identification events as well as these internship experiences, it’s all about developing those individuals personally and professionally and investing that time. You know, whether it be showcasing blind spots or a gender equality event, or you know, bringing a case competition or a leadership program, the firm is very much focused on starting to help those individuals develop themselves so that they can then understand our environment and be successful working here in the future as well.
Matt Alder [00:20:00]:
So obviously some, you know, some huge changes, some really interesting things going on, some sort of fascinating trends emerging. What happens next? How do you think recruiting is going to change in the next, in the next few years? What’s on your radar? What have you got an eye on?
Ashley Lasher [00:20:18]:
So I think really what’s next is some more virtual interactions with our students. We think about the talent outreach Alexa talked about earlier, really having potential career fairs, virtually talking with students, virtually through Google hangouts, Skype. There’s only so many people that we as recruiters can meet in person. And so being able to offer up some of these virtual aspects in terms of recruiting. I think is going to be front and center maybe even this next year to really take advantage of the talent that’s out there that we physically cannot reach in person.
Alexa Mershcel [00:20:51]:
Yeah, I would say definitely looking to again around videos, job descriptions I would love only 1% of the job descriptions are in video. I would love to personalize them, bring them to life a little bit more. We will be looking at assessments as we have a huge pipeline of talent that is coming in the door and how can we leverage some assessments. We’ve done some investigation there but would like to do that from an efficiency means of our recruiters in trying to target their appropriate talent. And I also think artificial intelligence and helping from a screening perspective and matching in the future as well too.
Matt Alder [00:21:33]:
Alexa and Ashley, thank you very much for joining me.
Alexa Mershcel [00:21:35]:
Great. Thanks Matt for having us.
Ashley Lasher [00:21:36]:
Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:21:38]:
My thanks to Alexa and Ashley. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future in your App Store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can also find the show there. 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.
