Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to numerous talent acquisition leaders about their experiences during the pandemic and their strategies for a changed future. In this episode, I wanted to bring in the views of two strategic technology and service providers to give us their perspectives on the future based on what they are seeing and hearing across the portfolio of employers they work with.
My guests this week are Nicola Sullivan Solutions Director at Meet & Engage and Pag Miles Global Head Of Alliances at Alexander Mann Solutions. Both of them have some fantastic insights to share, and this really is a must-listen interview for anyone who is trying to understand the current state of the market or who is working on their future talent acquisition strategy.
In the interview, we discuss:
• What support have employers needed in the last six months?
• Panic, Protect, Prepare, Progress
• Automation to support applicant volumes
• Employers priorities for 2021
• Improving experiences with technology
• Virtualised Onboarding and Re-Boarding
• Panic buying and tech stack reviews
• Virtual internships
• 2020’s legacy in terms of talent acquisition and HR technology
Subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts
Transcription:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Meet and Engage. Meet and Engage is an award winning candidate experience technology provider with three products. A Chatbot Solution Timeline, which is an onboarding technology and a live chat messaging platform. Meet and Engage provides the tools you need to digitally engage with candidates 24. 7 in any location, on any device to deliver the best candidate experience trusted by the likes of Arup, Amazon and Diageo. Meet and Engage improves the candidate experience for clients worldwide, helping them to engage candidates throughout the recruitment journey. Find out more by visiting www.meetandengage.com and requesting an online demo today. That’s www.meetandengage.Com.
Matt Alder [00:01:13]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 301 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Over the last few months I’ve spoken to numerous talent acquisition leaders about their experiences during the pandemic and their strategies for a changed future. In this episode, I wanted to bring in the views of two strategic technology and service providers to give us their perspective on the future based on what they’re seeing and hearing across the portfolio of employers they work with. My guests this week are Nicola Sullivan, Solutions Director at Meet and Engage, and Pag Miles, Global Head of Alliances at Alexander Mann Solutions. Both of them have some fantastic insights to share and this really is a must listen interview for anyone who’s trying to understand the current state of the market or who’s working on their future talent acquisition strategy. Hi Nic. Hi Pag, and welcome to the podcast.
Nicola Sullivan [00:02:18]:
Hi there Matt.
Pag Miles [00:02:19]:
Hi Matt.
Matt Alder [00:02:19]:
An absolute pleasure to have both of you on the show. Could you just introduce yourselves and tell us what you do? Nic, you go first.
Nicola Sullivan [00:02:28]:
Hi Matt. Yes. I’m Nicola Sullivan, Solutions Director at Meet and Engage. So effectively it’s my role to ensure that our clients get the most from our suite of technology. I’ve got about 20 years experience in the world of resourcing, so plenty of experience to draw on and yeah, really looking forward to this morning.
Matt Alder [00:02:46]:
Fantastic. And Pag, could you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
Pag Miles [00:02:50]:
Yeah, sure. Hi Matt, I’m Global Head of Alliances at Alexander Man Solutions. I look after all of our different partners. Majority of those are HR technology partners and there’s about over 100 look after. Haven’t been in the industry as long as nick, but nearly 18. Just over 18 years in HR technology and worked for the likes of Deloitte in their human capital practice, IBM and Watson team and Obviously now, Alexander Mann Solutions.
Matt Alder [00:03:17]:
Over the past few months I’ve had a number of practitioners on the show talking about their experiences of the crazy dystopian year that is 2020. And I thought it would just be really interesting to get the perspectives from people who are working with customers in the industry in terms of what you’re seeing across your portfolio of clients. So what have you seen that your clients have needed the most over the last six months?
Pag Miles [00:03:46]:
That is a great question, Matt. So, you know, 2020 has been a bit of a crazy year I think for everyone. The clients that I speak to and work with, and not only the clients, but also the technology partners, have all, I think, been at a different process or different stage, shall I say, in the COVID maturity or journey, we sort of tag it as going from panic to progress and everything in between, sort of the big reset. I think the two things that have really, I think changed things within 2020 obviously is Covid, but is also the BLM movement. And those two have really, I think reset organization in terms of their digital HR transformation tech strategy. I think in terms of, and so go into probably a bit more detail later. But I think the different stages I’ve seen organizations are the four Ps, there’s the panic stage, there’s then the protect stage, the prepare and then the progress, the panic in terms of, you know, I think when Covid first kicked in, organizations were slightly in a panic mode. This is completely new. What do we do? Our strategy that we developed has gone out the window. We need to start completely from scratch. And a lot of it was firefighting, for example, you know, how do we take a traditional, with lockdown, a traditional face to face process and make that completely virtual. And then we sort of moved as we went through the panic, we moved into the protect stage, which was actually, what about our employees? What about our colleagues? The COVID hit us. If we’re an international global business, which Alexander Management Solutions are as an example, we have colleagues and employees and so do our clients that have got completely different experiences. So thinking of, well being, mental health, complex situations, working from home, we had colleagues that were in a one bed flat in Barcelona with complete lockdown for eight weeks. They were not allowed to leave their flat. So I think this protect phase kicked in to organizations and then we went into the prepare phase which was how do we plan of what we need in the new world? And then the progress I think we’re coming to, which is what is business as usual as we go forward. But I think Pre Covid, you know, in terms of HR technology and the talent acquisition teams and the talent management teams that I talked to, the HR tech world was complex already, you know, four and a half, over four and a half thousand technologies out there and they had a strategy or some working on strategies about what their tech stack will be and what their key focus will be on their strategy, whether it’s candidate engagement or back office or dni. I think that was then thrown up, up in the air. And the last point I’d say is probably the first thing in the panic stage was a complete reduction in hiring. They had to refocus their priorities, they had to move everything online. And culturally we work with a lot of banks and their culture was very much, you’re in the office every day and for someone like that, has been doing that for 10, 20 years in senior management roles for their team to go completely remote, working on kitchen tables and, you know, in the basement or in the shed or, you know, that, that itself, I think the infrastructure, everything. So, and, and then, and the BLM movement in terms of, you know, diversity, what is our strategy relooking at that, reinvesting all of that combined? I think every, every organization I was talking through was at a different stage of that 4P journey and trying to look for help and guidance.
Nicola Sullivan [00:07:38]:
Yeah, I mean, I have to say, Pag, that all really resonates. I know you and I speak quite often and certainly have done over the past six months, so none of what you’ve said is a surprise and it certainly resonates in terms of what we’re seeing from our clients too. That initial panic quickly followed, very quickly followed, I think actually by that sort of pause and strategic thinking about what this could then mean for a future model. Speaking to a number of resourcing leaders who said, actually I’ve used this time to think about my future tech stack, my future resourcing model, et cetera. So I think it’s sort of given people a pause for thought as well, a bit of time. Ironically, we’ve obviously seen a sort of marked uplift in interest in what we do from a virtual events capability perspective. And there’s a real sort of sense of actually, why would we go back from this now? I’m not sure going to see the reversal to where we were before. Why would we schlep around the country to various campus events if we can do a series of virtual ones instead? I’ve kind of summarised that, obviously, yes, you’re absolutely right. While recruitment dipped certainly in Some sectors has dipped markedly. In others, it’s bounced back very quickly and really quite quickly. So actually what we’re also seeing is our clients needing automation to support with volumes of candidates coming through. So if they were getting a couple of hundred applications six months ago, they might be getting a couple of thousand now. And that’s no exaggeration for some of the clients we’re working with. So automation is something we’re seeing, particularly at screening FAQs, etc. And I think the onboarding piece has been really interesting as well. I think very early on in lockdown, I was talking to one of our clients in the retail space and she said for the first time in her many years of recruiting, she’s actually now attracting, assessing, selecting and onboarding people without meeting them or without them meeting the business. And so I think that sort of virtual onboarding has moved from something that was perhaps innovative. Twelve months ago, you might have been seen as a bit of an early adopter. Is now actually it’s absolutely business as usual. It’s a necessity. And I guess my very last point is, and I think Pat will probably have seen this too, is clients needing support to articulate how they are intentionally in turn supporting their employees, clients, customers, candidates during the pandemic. So, you know, our tech has sort of been used, whether it’s the live events, whether it’s sort of areas on the chat bots we build, is how are you dealing and protecting your staff and employees and clients during the pandemic has been something we’ve needed to support our clients with. So, yeah, been a crazy but interesting six months.
Matt Alder [00:10:24]:
So we’re recording this at the end of September. It’s obviously critical time in terms of employers planning for 2021. The pandemic is still with us and looks like it’s going to be with us for a number of months to come. How are employers priorities shaping up for 2021? What are people focusing on?
Nicola Sullivan [00:10:47]:
Yeah, it’s a good question. I’ve seen. I’ve had some really interesting conversations, particularly in the early career space, which obviously did take an immediate reaction to lockdown earlier this year. Certainly internships were cancelled to varying degrees, things were put on pause. But a number of organisations I’ve spoken to are still prioritising their future talent intakes for next year. So how are they going to do that? Virtually the main reason being, and I’ve had this quoted on a number of, From a different number, a number of different sources, rather, is actually they’ve learned from what happened after the crash of 0809, which is if you switch the lights off, turn the tap off, then actually it’s so much harder to get started again once you bounce back. So actually they are not putting their brakes on fully on their early careers. They’re still prioritising their pipelines at that early and future talent space. So that’s certainly a theme I’m seeing. And I guess because of the technology, we are so obviously candidate engagement technology. We’re seeing real, you know, people prioritizing how you engage with people virtually. If you can’t get to campuses, if you can’t network with your talent, you can’t meet them during the process. How do you use virtual means to do that? I referenced earlier managing volume. For those who are hiring, whether it’s your delivery firms, whether it’s your major retailers, or actually the government and parts of central government, a lot of our clients who are hiring are seeing huge volumes. So it’s how their priority is. How on earth do we do this on a leaner team? That is genuinely the question they’re being asked by their businesses. I mentioned virtual onboarding. I think that’s going to continue to be a priority for obvious reasons, but I think the sort of. My last point would be probably a slightly different one, which is a couple of projects we’re working on at the moment are very specifically focused on improving hiring manager and employee experience. So employee experience in the onboarding. So how do I get answers to my questions during onboarding? We’re obviously automating that with our chatbots and then hiring manager experience. If I’m expected to run a busy store as well as hiring thousands of people, where’s the technology to help me do that? So I think as well as employee or candidate experience, we’re really sort of scoping now and working in the space of hiring manager and employee experience.
Pag Miles [00:13:25]:
And I agree with everything Nic said. I mean, I think some of the things that I’ve seen split into two camps. One is around organizations and one is around the tech companies I work with. So in the organization side and the clients that I see, obviously when Covid first kicked in, it was absolutely brakes on. Every project that we saw that was technology was put on halt due to the reset of their overall digital strategy. The biggest hits, I guess, were in town acquisition, around, you know, implementing a new app contracting system, being one of those things, or any sourcing platforms. Those were all hit pretty heavily. What we’ve now seen in the last few weeks slash months is absolutely a rise. I think everyone’s now got on board with where we are. I think even if there is a second wave, third wave, we know it’s going to be bumpy for the next 12 to 18 months. And I think everyone has the knowledge now, which they didn’t have, you know, February, March, this year of how to ride the storm. So I think everyone’s had to learn really, really quickly. So I think now we’re seeing a pickup in technology implementations. On applicant tracking, you take something like a smart recruiters. They’ve had one of their best years ever financially. And so, you know, there’s an opportunity here where tech. Tech companies are now, projects are now starting to kick in. They’re starting to implement technology. You’re also seeing tech. You know, this is going, I guess, for businesses as well as tech companies. They are obviously a lot of them are doing. I’ve had to obviously do remote working, but are now taking that policy forward as a more general stance. So if you take smart recruiters, again, they have said it’s pretty much if you want to, it’s 100% work from home. And, you know, the advantages here is that they can then reinvest the savings from their offices back into the product in terms of innovation to help their clients. So I think there’s. The strategies now are starting to shape up. People are now becoming braver. They are. They have got their head around what they’re thinking of doing. And also what’s quite interesting is I think there’s been a bit of a talent grab. So there’s. There’s two bits here. One is that organizations have taken this opportunity to go and get the best talent out in their competitors. How do we target those people? So when we come out of this, we’ve actually got the better people on our side of the fence and we have a competitive advantage. And also because projects dried up, a lot of people that were implementing technology started to put people on the government schemes and so on and so forth. And now they’ve actually gone to find other jobs. And so when it’s come that the project started to pick up again, those skills aren’t there anymore. So I think we’re still in this turbulent situation of understanding the rules of the game, but still actually building out that strategy. But I believe that we’ve got through the worst piece and now it’s actually building on the foundations that have been built. But coming back to that point, every organization I speak to and every tech companies at a different stage of.
Matt Alder [00:16:46]:
COVID very interesting stuff. Now we’d been Seeing a lot of change in the marketplace, particularly when it comes to technology anyway, before the events of 2020 kicked in and that seemed to sort of particularly be accelerating over the last five years. What are you seeing now as the sort of the high level trends in the market?
Pag Miles [00:17:12]:
It’s a great question and actually this is, this is sort of changing weekly. So I’ll give you my what I’m seeing, what I’m hearing. But that could be quite different in a different geo, a different sector. I think it’s, I badge this as you know, I think organizations are thinking about getting the world back to work, right? How do we do that? And coming back to that. Reshaping, resetting of their digital HR strategy, transformation strategy. Number one trend I’m seeing is skills, skills, skills, skills. So this is around what skills and that’s always been there, but I think now is, it’s even more important. And it’s not necessarily external, it’s internal. So you’re going to see the number of external highs I think decreasing and the number of internal movements going up. So internal mobility is I think a hot topic. A lot of organizations are looking at that sprinkled on top, you know, DNI in terms of making sure everything’s completely fair and fine and everyone’s, you know, and we’ve got, you know, each team has got, you know, great, great teams with great backgrounds and they can all bring value to the table. So internal ability and skills I think is absolutely one of those. And how do we find and where are they? You know and sometimes I’ve talked to organizations and they’ve got, they’ve got better data on their employees in LinkedIn than they have in their internal systems. So I think, you know, it’s sort of like, you know, when you said to them how many people you have got the business, they go, what does LinkedIn? So it’s sort of like I think there’s a play there and I think that’s been a problem for quite a while. But this has highlighted that. I think it’s accelerated it also around Nic’s covered this a couple of times which is that the move to virtual I think is absolutely key here to stay massive value advantages. But you know what, people weren’t thinking like that. So typical processes are brand new and I think that is the big problem is I think there was a lot of panic buying going on. I’m not talking about the toilet roll, talking about the technology of, around how do we get technology in to solve a problem. We had a process that was that was face to face. It’s got to be now virtual. And they’ll go and buy Zoom and they’ll think, for example, Zoom can answer all their problems. And I think it’s a quick fix, it’s a quick plaster. And then what’s going to happen is they’re going to review that and then they’re going to have to work out actually what is the platform that we actually need to use. So I think there’s going to be a bit of a review there. Also in the tech space, I think there’s been winners and there’s been ones that have been hit really hard. An example of a winner, I would say is HireVue, HireView, the video interview platform. They were selling hotcakes when everything kicked off. Because if you think of the volume of people, especially in the US that were, they were having to, as Nic said earlier, actually hiring someone that you’ve never met face to face before and actually be able to do everything virtually. So something like a HireVue was doing incredibly well and new concepts were coming up. So like reboarding, right. So the concept of reboarding, which I don’t think was ever a marketing slogan that was ever out there, is now, is now out there in, you know, out there in the market in terms of what we, you know, people were, were pushed out for a certain amount of time out of the office and now they need to be brought back in. If they’re on the government scheme, how do we re engage with them, get them up to speed? Maybe they’ve changed roles and so on and so forth. We’ve mentioned about the talent grab. That was obviously a big one here. Cost is, I think, a big trend in terms of cost has always been there, but now there’s even more approvals to be able to do it. And not just the cost of something. Payment terms, you know, whereas before if you were negotiating something you’d say maybe, oh, the payment terms are 30 days, 45 days or might go to 60, I might even sign a 90 day payment term off. Now everything people are, it’s a cash grab. People want to have that cash there. So that risk I think is increased financially and because of that cost is obviously being looked at a major, I think even more on the agenda than it was before. Some of the technologies, there’s four technologies linked to some of these trends that I mentioned. I just wanted to just talk about when we talked around sourcing that’s going out and attracting and finding the best talent that’s out there based on skill stack ranking. So automating, as Nic said earlier, a couple of the platforms we’ve seen that have really accelerated in that area are Eightfold, which is an AI tool and pocket recruiter. Other areas is AI phone interviewing. So how do we get through high volume of interview calls at speed. I’m talking, you know, 5001000 in a couple of days. So there’s technologies out there like curious thing based in APAC and actually they’ve been helping the Australian government through the COVID period reach out to small businesses and interview them at speed to see how they can help. So the tool’s been as we got the reboarding, you know, what this has done is technology tools are being pushed and new use cases have been created to support market demand. The second last one is around the internal mobility that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, technologies like Globe degreed Aperture Eightfold and Career Conversation, you know, being able to deliver right content to the right people at the right time and be able to find those jobs based on skills is really important. And the last one which we’ve talked about several times is that virtual graduate programs, internships, which obviously Nic being an expert and Meet and Engage being an amazing platform to support that, but how critical that is, if you’ve got 1,600 interns going through what was a face to face program, how do you keep them engaged? How do they tickle the boxes? How do they go through the process again? And that’s learning something new because you’re taking that from a face to face to a virtual process. But that’s what I’ve seen.
Nicola Sullivan [00:23:15]:
Gosh, how do I follow that other than to say I think that to your point, pad around technology and say winners and those, you know, perhaps not solving or feeling quite as relevant at the moment, I’m kind of optimistic that what we’ll see in the HR tech world is a bit of an uplift. Like we saw post 2009 where you saw the startups like Slack, Uber, Pinterest come along, you know, are we going to see a new round of really exciting technology technology? Because actually I think these challenging times give entrepreneurs the space they need to provide meaningful solutions. And I think that’s going to happen in the next 12, 18, 24 months where exactly what you were just saying there pad, you know, challenging times, difficulties that people need to solve. And that’s where I think technology and entrepreneurial thinking will come to come to the fore. So it’d be really interesting to look back in 10 years time and see whether I was right. There we go. So yeah, I agree with everything you said there, Pad. But as I say, exciting times I think, Matt, for HR technology, I’d love to see that being one of the high level trends that continues.
Matt Alder [00:24:21]:
Absolutely. I think that would be a sort of fantastic legacy that would come out of this. And I suppose following on from that as, as a final question, it’s very clear, and you’ve both mentioned it a couple of times since we’ve been talking that we’re not going to go back to the way that things were in January, February 2020. Things have changed forever. So I suppose as a final question, what’s your view on what 2020’s legacy is going to be when it comes to talent acquisition and HR technology?
Nicola Sullivan [00:24:54]:
So I’m going to take the optimist’s view here. I think the following. I think firstly that businesses have allowed talent acquisition to make some really quick and creative decisions over the past six months. So I was talking to someone in my network recently and she’s head of graduate recruitment and she said something that would have taken my business 16 or 18 months to approve has taken me six weeks to get through. I think talent acquisition were given a bit of a pass here to make some really good quick decisions and I’m really hoping that that trust remains that they’re able to do that even when things loosen up a bit and ease up a bit. I also think that technology has gone from being a threat to actually being a really positive part of a solution. You know, even before COVID you know, reducing carbon footprint efficiency, candidate satisfaction, accessibility, all of those things existed before COVID but now it’s being embraced as part of the solution and necessary part of the solution and I think, and a positive part of the solution. So I think that has shifted. There’s been a bit of a dial shift in recruiters and talent acquisitions embracing of technology as a positive. And I also think, and Patrick will have a view on this, I think. But I’ve also seen a real sort of uplifting collaboration between technologies to solve clients challenges. So a number of projects that we’re working on at the moment, we’re working with our clients, ATSS, their CRMs, their test providers and actually that collaboration. And we’ve had to collaborate really quickly, really seamlessly in order to deliver for our clients. So that’s been a real, a real positive. And I guess my last point is that I think the past six months have proved this to be true, that candidates aren’t scared of technology. Actually it allows them to do what they want, when they want to do it. Just like they do in every other area of their lives. Take FAQs or screening. If I want to be screened at 3am in the morning, why not get screened at 3am in the morning or get my questions answered at that time? Technology allows that. So I think it’s a win, win. And certainly that acknowledgement that candidates aren’t scared of tech, they actually enjoy it is a real legacy I think from this year.
Pag Miles [00:27:17]:
100% agree with everything Nic said there. I think coming to a couple of points, I think one is the speed which Nic mentioned there, which is that because of what’s happened this year, organizations have had to make decisions very, very, very quickly. And I think they’ve realized that they have had to have help and support with that to get whatever that challenge is, process online, you know, access for people to work from home, security issues, whatever it may be, and be able to reach out to them to keep them engaged. But I think that is, I think that’s great and I hope that that absolutely stays. But I think it’s also reminded them of making sure they’ve got the right skills in the business. I think it’s also got into their. I think organizations have realized and you know, a lot of organizations are out there still, I think sort of quite old school in terms of, you know, you come into work, you’re there every day, you’re there all day, you’re at your desk. And I think this is, this is, I think managers, again, senior managers have realized actually they don’t need that anymore. Teams can be effective, not inside the office. So hopefully that will go. You know, think of all the technologies, the technology conferences that were big, that had 5,000 plus delegates that were going to it. I think that’s quite interesting in terms of how that will define. I was on my first online conference the other day. I also think that outsourcing I think will increase and this will be different for different organizations. But I think what, what it’s shown is they’ve had to, organizations have had to start to decrease. In some, in some circumstances they’ve increased, in some circumstances they’ve decreased their employee headcount. I think this will make, this has made organizations realize that outsourcing actually, and whether there’s outsourcing and that’s technology partners as well, outsourcing their implementations, their professional services or organizations outsourcing particular parts of the business is lower risk because if something like this happens, they don’t have that continuous cost in the business. So absolutely agree with everything that Nic said there. I truly believe that the HR technology world is being reborn in a different shape and I 100% agree. Looking after the 100 plus technologies, I’ve got the collaboration, all of the technologies are absolutely coming together. And I think what’s been really nice about it is the focus hasn’t been on selling. The focus has actually been on helping clients. That has been the overall focus where pre Covid, if I’m honest, my software writers were selling for money. Covid I think woke everyone up to actually we really want to help our clients forget the money. You know, there was all kinds of free software going in, offers. Everything was happening in order to enable organizations to support the challenges they had. So it was a massive collaboration of technologies and organizations not just bringing together to build an overall solution, but also on on the commercial side.
Matt Alder [00:30:32]:
Pag and Nic, thank you very much for joining me.
Nicola Sullivan [00:30:34]:
Thanks, thanks Matt.
Matt Alder [00:30:36]:
My thanks to Nicola and Pag. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find the show by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search through all of the past episodes@www.recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
