Skills are very much on the agenda at the moment as many employers review their talent strategies to ensure they are adequately preparing for the future. Having the right skills is also vital for talent acquisition professionals with the profound changes we have seen in recruiting approaches and processes likely to become permanent.
My guest this week is Catalina Schveninger, Chief People Officer at Futurelearn. Catalina has a dual background in talent acquisition and learning and development, so is very well placed to talk about the skills talent acquisition teams will need in the future and how talent acquisition professionals can acquire them.
In the interview, we discuss:
• The increasing demands of learners around the world
• Has the pandemic changed the way employers think about skills?
• Total talent thinking, what is the role for Talent Acquisition?
• Futurelearn’s Course on Online Recruitment and Onboarding
• The skills Talent Acquisition teams need right now.
• What does the future of Talent look like?
Futurelearn’s course on Virtual Recruiting and Onboarding
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Transcription:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:00:25]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:23]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 305 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Skills are very much on the agenda at the moment as many employers review their talent strategies to ensure they are adequately preparing for the future. Having the right skills is also vital for talent acquisition professionals, with the profound changes we’ve seen in recruiting approaches and processes likely to become permanent. My guest this week is Catalina Schveninger, Chief People Officer@FutureLearn. Catalina has a dual background in talent acquisition and learning and development, so he’s very well placed to talk about the skills talent acquisition teams will need in the future and how talent acquisition professionals can acquire them.
Matt Alder [00:02:15]:
Hi Catalina and welcome to the podcast.
Catalina Schveninger [00:02:18]:
Hello Matt, thanks for having me.
Matt Alder [00:02:20]:
An absolute pleasure to have you back on the show. I should have said welcome back to the podcast actually, for people who may not know you, could you just introduce yourself and tell us you do?
Catalina Schveninger [00:02:29]:
Sure. I’m Catalina Schveninger. I’m currently the Chief People Officer of FutureLearn, an online learning platform. I was previously for many years with Vodafone in last role as the kind of equivalent of Chief Learning Officer and previously as their global Head of Recruitment and employer brand. And I think you and I kind of both miss going to unleash and meeting each other at different conferences where we used to bump into each other a lot when I was still taking care of recruitment at Vodafone.
Matt Alder [00:03:00]:
Absolutely. The days of travel and face to face conferences. Let’s hope they return. Let’s hope they return soon. On that point, I mean you’ve Got a really interesting background because you’ve worked in talent acquisition and you’ve also worked in learning and development and you’ve got an interesting, interesting role. Now tell us a little bit about the company that you’re working for at the moment.
Catalina Schveninger [00:03:20]:
Look, FutureLearn is a very interesting company. Obviously I’m biased. It’s a company that was established about seven years ago by the Open University who are one of the leaders in distance learning learning. It’s now a company of about a bit over 200 employees based out of London with a global footprint and working with higher education institutions and industry partners to cater to the ever increasing demand of learners around the world. To learn, right, to get their skills, to get new jobs, if you look at the digital world, but also to learn to reinvent themselves or even to learn a new hobby. I think it’s, you know, the reason I joined is my last role was in learning and I was obviously very close to the education tech world and I had the ambition of working in a startup and going into experiencing, you know, that kind of other side of work after a career of 20 years in corporates. And I’m very excited now. I think. Little did I know when I joined back in January that I would be coming in into a global pandemic and having to close offices and work or workforce remotely. But it’s very, very exciting times, especially for our industry. We’re very, very lucky to be in learning in these times.
Matt Alder [00:04:41]:
Absolutely.
Matt Alder [00:04:41]:
And it has been such an interesting year in terms of, in terms of learning and digital learning platforms with the access to everything that’s available. During the pandemic I found myself taking courses in everything from sound engineering to behavioral economics. It’s kind of a really interesting time. On that note, we, we’ve sort of talked about digital skills and how employers can get digital skills into their companies in the past. How is the pandemic changing everything or driving everything in terms of how employers think about skills and, and also how people manage are managing their careers now.
Catalina Schveninger [00:05:19]:
Look, I’ve seen two trends in the last months. I mean, I think all of us as individual learners have got all of a sudden more time on our hands. Right. Just by not commuting every day to work, you got yourself more time to think about your skill set, to learn something new even without applying those new skills. So we’ve seen an ever increase need of all sorts of learning. I think we saw, we’ve seen an increase of fourfold versus before which is very, very, very interesting. In addition to that, we’ve seen that the trend of the demand for the new skills, right, going from data science, data analytics, cyber, the skills that get you the hot jobs at the moment, that demand has stayed as high as before. And why is that? Simply because with the shifts in the workforce, these are the jobs in demand. These are the skills in shortage as well. And I think a lot of companies have come to the realization that it’s probably less costly to buy than to build talent in this space. So you’re better off reskilling, upskilling your workforce. And also people like us who unfortunately were impacted by the pandemic and maybe either furloughed or lost our jobs. We appreciate that there is a time when you have to shift gears and redirect your career towards the roles in demand. So on one level there’s a need to get into this jobs by acquiring the new skills. On the other, on the other level is just, you know, the propensity of learning has increased. Not just for digital skills. Yeah, I think interesting digital, it’s always been a high demand has not been changed really by the, by the dynamics of the pandemic.
Matt Alder [00:07:07]:
I suppose going into 2020, for many employers these things tended to work in silos. So you had a talent acquisition team, a talent management as a distinct thing, learning development as something else. I kind of get the sense now that employ employers are looking at talent from a very, very different perspective. What role do you think talent acquisition should play when it comes to skills and skills development within, within the businesses that they work in?
Catalina Schveninger [00:07:37]:
Look, it’s, it’s a really good question. I was reflecting on that when I was back in my old Vodafone role. I still don’t understand why the operation model is such that talent acquisition and talent development are separate. I look to a day when there will be one team, you know, looking at talent end to end and it will just differentiate themselves by the solutions they go after. You know, if the people analytics show you that there is a lack of that skill in the company will take you too long to get people to be reskilled, then maybe we should go external. Right. Whereas right now, I think in most companies, including my own, you kind of have Chinese walls between internal talent, external talent. So I think the pandemic also told us that you have to have more end to end talent strategies because cost cutting means that you might not be able to hire from outside. So you have to be in the position that you look at your current workforce and make do with what you have. But as I said, I Think in the near future you will see that talent will be one, one team, right? And of course you still need a specialization, you still need to know, you know, techniques to attract talent. You know, social media, digital marketing, you know, good analytics, good, you know, good hunting skills. But at the same time, I think, you know, again, as I said, talent would become just one function where you have this end to end view of, you know, internal external alumni, gig workers and so forth. And I think, I think you’ve seen that trend as well. Some companies are moving into the space, but I think that the shift is not, you know, fast enough.
Matt Alder [00:09:27]:
On that note, in terms of skills and in terms of skills of talent acquisition teams, I know that during the last few months you’ve actually put your own course together on talent acquisition.
Matt Alder [00:09:37]:
Tell us about that.
Matt Alder [00:09:38]:
Why have you created that and what’s it all about?
Catalina Schveninger [00:09:40]:
Yeah, I think I went back to my first love, recruitment and the reason, you know, I produced this course which is online, available free. It’s called Online recruitment and Onboarding, providing continuity for business and candidates. You know, what’s in the name is basically a set of resources that I’ve built together with some of industry’s best from different companies from my old company, but also from gsk, from bp, from IBM is to share that kind of experience. We built over the last months of hiring completely remotely, you know, the kind of, the good, the bad and the ugly, the techniques that we found that worked, the things that you can do even on a shoestring when you don’t have a budget. We felt that we should help especially smaller companies that maybe don’t have the sophisticated tech stack that they don’t have, the very experienced recruiters that maybe some large multinationals have. And we realized that we saw that in the beginning of the pandemic a lot of smaller companies went in a bit of a paralysis mode, right? They were, they put a lot of hiring on hold because they just didn’t know how to cope of not seeing someone face to face, not shaking their hand, not giving them the tour of the office. And at the same time, I think at the, towards the end of the lockdown, especially here in UK in August, we saw that a lot of companies became much more, you know, they felt, they felt more equipped and braver to actually go and embrace this completely digital hiring process. But in that time, I think back in July, we put this course together to just, you know, equip people with kind of the basic knowledge around, you know, how do you, how do you assess actually someone’s potential and skill over zoom. How do you make sure they fit culturally? How you make sure that you actually give them a realistic preview of what the company and the culture is like when they don’t get to see the offices and, and shake hands of the people. And we’ve worked with the Recruitment and Employment Confederation here in UK as our kind of endorsement partner and we’ve done some research before we started the course because we kind of knew that from talking to our network that there is a big need. But we commissioned the research and we found that 80% of recruiters across all sectors that we interviewed, including in hospitality, retail, social care, et cetera, found remote hiring very challenging. And we also found that more than 50% of the recruiters said that they were not equipped to hire fully online. Interesting. The positive of that was that only 14% of them saw a reduction in the levels of unconscious bias through the hiring process. And about quarter of them clearly said, look, we’re not prepared or trained to shift to the new ways of working and we appreciate that these ways of working will continue even after the lockdown. So that research made us put this course together. The course has attracted over 1000 learners from 105 countries until now, and it’s still open for enrollments. It was really, really heartwarming to see that doctors and engineers and salespeople took it. So it wasn’t just recruiters or hiring managers, let’s say in the profession, but also different professions who thought this is a very useful course. So, yeah, thank you for mentioning that. I would love to invite other people to take it. It’s free to take unless you want to upgrade and you have the opportunity to have a dialogue also with fellow learners who come from all over the world and share their experiences online. It’s not just a one way, kind of typical online learning where you learn from the educators.
Matt Alder [00:13:39]:
I’ll absolutely make sure that there’s a link to it in the show notes so people can click through and register and join the course. Now, you collaborated with quite a few people putting the course together. What was the most interesting thing that you learned from some of the experiences that were being shared?
Catalina Schveninger [00:13:58]:
I think that the highlight for me was that, you know, it doesn’t take much to give candidates reassurance and a great experience, even again, as I said, even when you don’t necessarily have means and huge budgets. So keep it very simple, keep it very human. A lot of people are going through an emotional rollercoaster right now. As I said, a lot of our candidates that we see talking to us at FutureLearn are telling us about how they lost their jobs, how they are unsure about the current market. So I think this is a fantastic opportunity for recruiters to kind of step back and go back into their kind of, you know, kind of human skills, right. Listening, showing a lot of interest, being empathetic, being more patient, putting process first, but putting the human side first. And that was the biggest highlight of, you know, whoever I spoke with from experts in employer brand assessment, culture building. That was kind of the key takeaway. Kind of go back to basics and engage in a human way with your candidates. Don’t treat them like numbers. Yes, look at the funnels, measure everything. But maybe spend more time than you usually would do to have to show that duty of care. And that will pay back. Yeah, that will pay back later on. I think people who have now good experience with brands will remember that and will be engaged longer with your brand, be it as candidates or as, as customers. And also I think I remember IBM, Helena Perry, who’s an expert in recruitment and transformation. IBM was sharing some really cool things that they’ve done in IBM to make new joiners feel welcome even before they join. Right. So more care put in by, in this example, IBM of creating that community, pushing content to these people, even giving them access to learning before they step into the door, you know, in the virtual door on day one. So that was something that really resonated with me also coming obviously from a online learning, learning company. I learned a lot personally from, from these contributors. But then what it’s more exciting is actually listening to the case studies that the learners share. You know, we had someone from Kazakhstan who’s never, you know, never hired online before, works for a small company, oil company, and you know, she was very openly sharing about her experience as a, as a recruiter in kind of the digital world. So yeah, those are kind of my highlights from, from the course.
Matt Alder [00:16:41]:
Fantastic stuff. And I’ve, I’ve looked through the course and there really is some great content in there. You mentioned that in your survey. A lot of the talent acquisition professionals and recruiters who responded said they weren’t prepared for what’s, what’s happening at the moment. Being that this is likely to continue in some way, shape or form in the, in the long term. What skills do you think talent acquisition teams need to develop to, to really, to really kind of thrive in the, in the situation, the ongoing situation that we find ourselves in?
Catalina Schveninger [00:17:16]:
I think one, one thing that the whole function probably needed to, you know, to get under the bonnet really quickly was how you use technology to work for you to both pre skin candidates. I mean, I think we’ve all seen higher volumes of applicants these days because just, you know, because of the trends in unemployment, unfortunately. So how you make the most out of prescreening effectively without excluding good talent, so without doing kind of simple filtering. I think a lot of companies have now learned and embraced video prescreening. We’ve talked to Workable, who we work with and other providers and they’ve all seen kind of an increase of traffic and demand for video screening. And it takes a different skill to actually assess and prescreen based on the video interview versus cv. Right. So that’s, I think, you know, using technology and getting better at pre screening when volumes goes, volume goes up is really important. You know, how you make sure that you take sound decisions in terms of assessment. That’s another thing that I think we as a function need to get better. How you don’t fall into a traps of, you know, yeah, of asking the questions just to tick the box, but really active, you know, active listening and understanding the, you know, the evidence that your candidates bring you in interviews. Again, I think the third one is being very, very, very process focused, making sure that throughout the process you give people a good experience that you follow up, that you close the loops, that you chase. Line managers, you know, none of this is probably a new skill, but I think it’s kind of zooming in and doing them better than normal and paying more attention to this because again, as I said, because of the psychological. Where candidates are, because of where line managers are also struggling with this change. So as, as a recruiter, you’re in the midst of kind of helping everybody and being that glue that brings the process and the, and the people together and, and yeah, and at the same time, obviously on a personal level, you’re also working from your home with the kids in the background with the dog barking. Right. How, how you kind of sel sane whilst managing so many stakeholders, demanding hiring managers, emotional recruiters and so forth. So I think that as I said earlier, the empathy and the, the interest in, you know, in kind of listening and, and building that rapport with people remotely, that’s, that’s also a key skill.
Matt Alder [00:20:07]:
Final question, we’re obviously a really interesting inflection point in terms of learning development and skills and career and talent management and talent acquisition. What does the future look like from a sort of skills, career and talent perspective in your view?
Catalina Schveninger [00:20:26]:
Well, that’s a tough one, I think we will see what was previously a very niche function or set of skills that will blend and be bringing together. So as I said, I’d see as a trend as merging kind of talent development, talent acquisitions into one. So all of a sudden I think recruiters are in a pole position if you want, because a good recruiter has already really good assessment skills. So you can apply those skills into a talent development area, which is great. I think a big emerging skill. It’s not emerging anymore, but I think we still need to work on bridging that skill gap is people analytics. More focus on getting your numbers well, not just on the reporting side, but also on predictive analytics, analytics, understanding the shifts in talent, kind of spotting the. The gaps before they come to life. So becoming much more. If you want, you know, data analysts for, for talent. I think those are kind of the, the emerging skills. And I think in terms of careers, I mean, I have a fortune in my career that I was both a generalist and a specialist. And I think up until a couple of years ago, I was a pure T shape. Right. So deep expertise in recruitment kind of, and a generalist, obviously. Now I feel like more of an M shape because I’ve been in learning as well. And that’s probably a trend. Right. And you need to be flexible and be open to have different experiences and stretch yourself to have that kind of breadth of skills so that especially when roles are more limited and talent is in demand, that you can actually jump from, you know, swiftly from being a generalist and being a specialist at the same time. I think we all appreciate deep specialism. Right. I’ve just hired a fantastic tech recruiter and I love the fact that she’s a deep expert. Right. I’m working with her to also develop her into more generalist, you know, business kind of business facing roles. But it’s refreshing to see how people actually also have the deep functional expertise. And you. And you like to have to be surrounded by expert as well. So I think there’s pros and cons of that, but typically I think T shape careers are back in fashion after maybe 20 years. They’re having a comeback in our space.
Matt Alder [00:22:52]:
Catalina, thank you very much for talking to me.
Catalina Schveninger [00:22:55]:
Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:22:56]:
My thanks to Catalina. 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 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.
