Round up is the monthly show on The Recruiting Future Podcast channel that highlights episodes you may have missed and gives you my take on some of the key learnings from the guests.
This Round Up episode also features a short interview with Clive Meyers, Director of Public Sector Strategy at Indeed, talking about some up coming events to support refugees across Europe
Episode mentioned in this Round Up:
Ep 537: Strategic Workforce Planning
Ep 538: The Rise Of Short-Form Video
Ep 539: Building TA Technology Strategies
Ep 540: AI & Recruitment Marketing
Ep 541: The Skills-Based Revolution
Ep 542: Building A Global TA Strategy
Ep 543: Hiring At Speed And Scale
Ep 544: Transforming TA Teams
Ep 545: Using AI Strategically
Ep 546: Transforming Frontline Hiring
Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts
Transcript:
[Recruiting Future with Matt Alder theme]
Matt: Hi, there. This is Matt Alder. Welcome to the August Roundup episode of the Recruiting Future Podcast. If you’ve not listened to Roundup before, it’s a short review of the episodes that I’ve published in the last month to make sure you don’t miss out on the valuable insights my guests are sharing. So, I hope you had a good summer, despite the wild weather, or in the UK’s case, the wildly disappointing weather. August was an incredible month for the podcast with near record downloads. Thank you so much for your support. It really means the world to me.
I’ve had the privilege of talking to an amazing set of guests over the last few weeks, covering fundamental topics such as strategic workforce planning, technology strategy, skills-based hiring, and recruiting automation. Before we dive into the Roundup itself, here’s a short conversation with Clive Meyers, Director of Public Sector Strategy at Indeed.
Indeed have been running a series of events across Europe to help match refugees looking for work, to employers looking for talent. I wanted to give Clive a platform to talk about the great work they’re doing.
Hi, Clive, and welcome to the podcast.
Clive: Hi, Matt, how are you doing?
Matt: I’m very well, thank you. A pleasure to be talking to you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Clive: Yeah. Hi, everyone. My name is Clive Meyers. I’m the Director of Public Sector Strategy at Indeed. I’m really pleased to be here today. It’s a great opportunity and thank you, Matt. I work with public sector organizations across EMEA and APAC, and over the last three and a half years, I’ve been doing quite a lot of work with the National Health Service in the UK, where we’ve been helping them with their healthcare support worker and in particular their maternity support worker programs. Last year, we started running large in person hiring events for them in various different sports stadiums across the country. The NHS really wanted to hire people at volume and cut down the hiring process. From that, which was really successful with the seven events we ran. The awful atrocities that was happening in Ukraine and elsewhere across the world as an organization, we thought to ourselves, “Well, how could we replicate that for refugees?”
So that’s why I’m here today.
Matt: Tell us more about the work you’re doing with refugees, who you’re partnering with and how it works.
Clive: Essentially, we have a global OKR as a business to help 30 million people with facing barriers get jobs this year, and displaced people and refugees definitely fall within those criteria. So, last December, we partnered with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency and Tent Partnership for Refugees, to host two events in Poland, one in Krakow and one in Warsaw. This really was a massive step into the unknown for all three organizations because we’d never done this before and we wanted to make a difference and we wanted to help. We know that for refugees, the most important thing is a job because it opens up everything for them. It opens up housing, it opens up a future, it provides security, and safety for their families. So, it’s really, really an important aspect of their life. So, we went to Krakow and Warsaw and we were blown away by the results from those events, which resulted in over 650 refugees getting job offers from those two events.
So, from there we decided we need to continue doing this. Unfortunately, the war isn’t stopping. More refugees are coming to Poland and other countries as well. So, we got together as the free organizations and decided to run some more this year. We ran another one in Poland, in Warsaw in April, and we have another four planned in October. So, it’s going to be a busy month, but something I’m really really excited about, and I’m sure I’ll talk about more.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Tell us a little bit more about what happens at a refugee job fair and what’s Indeed role in all of this.
Clive: We have an internal target that everyone that arrives on the day has to have a positive experience. Now, ideally, the positive experience is a job offer, but we understand with some roles that just isn’t possible. So, some of the more highly skilled roles, you can’t really do an interview on the day and offer someone, but for the more higher volume roles, that’s what’s happened at previous events. So that can happen, which is great. But the job fair is a chance for refugees to come and get advice and learn more about what their future looks like. So, we have various different NGOs at each event. We might have a childcare NGO, for example, that explains to the refugee what happens once they get a job, because a high percentage of the refugees that are arriving at our events are women with children, and this might be the first time in a long time that they’ve looked for employment. So, we explain what that situation is.
We have legal NGO support, we have housing NGO support, and then we have partners across the countries that come and help with CV writing as well. In Europe, we have a professional headshot. That’s not very much something that happens in the UK, but in Europe it’s very much a prominent thing on CVs. So, we have them, having a professional headshot. Then also from an Indeed perspective, we facilitate these events, we work with Tent to get some awesome organizations who are looking to hire refugees at the events. Then, we also have an Indeed stand as well, Matt, because there could be somebody who turns up, there are 50 companies there and none of them are a right fit for them. So, they can come to the Indeed stand where we have Indeed colleagues who are there to help show how the job search works on Indeed, how the app works.
Could maybe set up some job alerts for them so that they can then go off and then still find employment after the event as well. Because what I think is really important, Matt, is these are one day events, but these problems are still ongoing, so we need to create a safe place for them to find a job for their future as well.
Matt: Oh, absolutely. How do you deal with things like language barriers?
Clive: It’s a really good question because there is a lot of different languages. For example, in Poland, the majority was Ukrainian, so we had translation support there from the UN. But each event is very different, Matt. So, we are very fortunate from an Indeed perspective that we’re a global organization in 60 different countries. So, we have a lot of different language speakers at Indeed and we have volunteers that have put their hands up to come over for each event and be able to speak in local language. But in short, Matt, we have a sticker system where when the refugee turns up on the day and registers, they say what languages they speak and we have sticker colors to represent those languages. Throughout the course of the event, we have people who can speak different languages. And if there is language barriers there, then a translator can come over and assist with them as well.
Matt: So, what type of employers have you had at the events? Are you expecting at the events in the future? You mentioned things like high volume jobs. What type of employers is it? What sort of jobs are featured?
Clive: It’s a real wide spectrum and that’s something that I’m really proud of because we have to have a wide spectrum of roles because the kind of refugees that are turning up. For one of the events, we had a very very senior person who had worked at one of the Big 4 for 20 years in Ukraine and it was the first time he was looking for a role. We were lucky that day to have another one of the Big 4 there as well, that we can facilitate that introduction to. We have Hospitality there, Marriott’s there. For example, in the UK this year, we have the National Health Service coming. I’m really happy to say that every single foundation, trust, and integrated care board in London is going to be at the event. But then we also have delivery companies. We’re hoping to have a real wide spectrum of employers that are going to be at these events.
Matt: Tell us about the next events, when are they happening and where are they happening?
Clive: Yes, so we’ve got a really busy month in October. It’s going to be fantastic. We’ve got four events coming in October. We have Milan on the 2nd of October, which unfortunately is already full for employers to register. But we do have a waiting list and people can reach out to me to discuss that in more detail. We have London at the Kia Oval on the 11 October. We have Berlin on the 19th of October in Alte Münze and on the 24th of October, we have Amsterdam at the Johan Cruyff Arena. All of these events are from 10:00 AM to 04:00 PM. If people are interested, then they can reach out to me for more information, and I’m sure I can share that with you on this podcast as well.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say, how can people find out more? How can they get in touch?
Clive: In the first instance, the best thing that they can do is just reach out to myself and my email address is clive@indeed.com and I can then speak to them about it, get the registration form over to them and they can express interest that way.
Matt: Great stuff. So, I mean, tell us more about the future plans. Is this something that you’re looking to do outside of Europe in the future? And also, I suppose, give people a sense of how many job seekers might turn up at one of these events that you do.
Clive: Yeah, definitely. So, each country very much depends on density of refugees. So, for example, the highest amount of refugees in Europe at the moment is Poland. We had 1400 turn up to Warsaw at the event in April. So, we are expecting for each event a range between about 750 and 1000 refugees at a minimum for each event. Yes, we are looking to continue these, Matt, and we would be interested in looking more globally as well. It’s not something I can 100% confirm now, but what I can confirm is at the Tent European Summit this year, we as a business made a pledge that our commitment is to support more than 15,000 refugees over the next three years. In addition to that, we’re organizing those five events across Europe. So, we’ve got four of them confirmed. So, there will be another one coming up at least.
I’m super excited to see where this goes because we understand as an organization that we have the opportunity to help and that’s what we want to do. This is something that we did at the start of the pandemic. Is this something that we do regularly to try and help job seekers facing barriers and making it easier for people to get a job? And that’s what we would love to do. Indeed’s mission statement is, “We help people get jobs,” and with events like this, I’m very fortunate that I get to see that come to life. It’s an amazing thing to be a part of.
Matt: Well, it’s amazing work that you’re doing there. Just one more time, give people your email address so they know how to get in touch.
Clive: Yeah, it is clive@indeed.com. If they want more information. I don’t know if you can put this when you put the podcast out, Matt, but jobfairs.indeed.com is the URL page for the refugees to express interest and register, and there’s more information. And companies that sign up appear on this website so that the refugees can browse jobs before the event as well. So jobfairs.indeed.com as well.
Matt: Clive, thank you very much for talking to me.
Clive: Thank you so much, Matt. Really appreciate this.
Matt: My thanks to Clive, and kudos to Indeed for their efforts to help refugees all over the world. One of the key themes I’ve observed emerging over the last few years is the need for employers to think about talent holistically. To achieve this, progressive organizations are already breaking down the barriers between talent acquisition, talent management, and learning and development. The central tenant is strategic workforce planning. So, what does effective strategic workforce planning look like? How is AI changing thought processes? And what role does talent acquisition need to play?
My first guest in August on episode 537 was Sadhana Bhide Strategic Workforce Planning Subject Matter Expert at Faethm by Pearson. Sadhana has expert insights to share on the current state and future development of strategic workforce planning, and this is a must listen for TA leaders everywhere. We talked about the six B’s that underpin strategic workforce planning, the role TA needs to play, and what the future might look like.
[ad]
Over the last few years, TikTok has driven a revolution in short form video content, racking up billions of views and forcing its competitors to adopt similar formats. Recent data, ironically released by Google has also highlighted that a significant percentage of young people prefer to do their research on TikTok and Instagram instead of using Google. However, while a few employers are doing a great job in this area, overall, there’s still very little recruitment, marketing, or employer branding content on these platforms. So, what do employers need to do to connect with the millions of people consuming short form videos effectively? What part should this type of content play in recruitment marketing and employer branding strategies?
My guest on Episode 538 was Omar Khateeb, Founder and CEO at JobPixel. JobPixel is helping many employers to embrace short form video content. And Omar has expert insights to share on what works and how to build effective workflows for this type of content. The amount of technology available to TA teams has exploded and innovation is moving so rapidly that it’s almost impossible to keep up. In a world driven by shiny object syndrome, taking a long-term strategic view when it comes to TA technologies is crucial. However, the challenges around this are considerable and it’s not just about the amount of choice. TA leaders need access to specialist skills to help them make the right decisions and simultaneously need to ensure their voice is heard within the business around tech procurement.
On Episode 539, my guest was Rob Cohen, TA Ecosystem Manager at Philip Morris International. Rob has the kind of role I can see becoming more common in TA teams in the future. He’s a genuine technology expert who sits outside the IT function and is responsible for all the technology that touches candidates and helps recruiters to do their job. Rob has some fascinating insights on technology strategy, TA tech stacks, and the AI-driven future, making this an absolute must-listen interview.
A few short months ago, many commentators predicted that AI would be a revolutionary force in recruitment marketing that would drive automation, efficiency, and engagement. So, how does the hype live up to the reality and what have we learnt about how AI and humans need to work together to create effective recruitment marketing? Kat Kibben, CEO and Founder of Three Ears Media was my guest on episode 540.
Kat is a recruitment marketing expert with a focus on job postings. They have some valuable insights and informed opinions on the relationship between recruiters, AI, and recruitment marketing. The skills-based organization and skills-based hiring have been talked about for several years now. Despite this, many employers are yet to start a shift toward skills or are still at a very early stage of the process. So, why is being skills based so important? what are the implications for companies that haven’t yet started a transition towards skills-based hiring and talent management? Is this another HR fad or a critical reimagining of how we think about talent in a world of continued disruptive change.
My guest on Episode 541 was David Blake, CEO of Degreed, a skills-based learning and development technology platform. David is a passionate advocate for the advantages that skills-based organizations will have in our AI-driven future of work. We talked about skills-based hiring directly translating into business success, evolving the recruiting process to hire for skills, and how AI will define the future of work. Being a global head of TA in 2023 is highly challenging. Dealing with disruptive talent markets and global hiring nuances while building a consistent approach to candidate experience and stakeholder relations and keeping on top of emerging technology trends is complex to say the least.
My guest on episode 542 was Chet Ritchie, VP of Global Talent Acquisition at Manulife. Chet is driving a TA strategy based on transparent relationship management and a core, common and custom approach to the critical elements of recruiting and employer branding. Earlier in the summer, I collaborated with the SmartRecruiters team to interview four fantastic practitioners who spoke on the Hiring Without Boundaries stage at RecFest in London. We recorded the conversations backstage at the event, and the next three podcast episodes is where I shared them. Hiring for frontline retail positions has always been a challenge, but since the pandemic, it’s a challenge that’s increased exponentially. So, how does an expanding retail group fill 30,000 roles a year at pace while ensuring a high quality candidate experience that reflects the fact that their candidates literally are their customers.
My first RecFest guest on episode 543 was Adam Reynolds, Head of Talent at Frasers Group. Frasers Group is a multi-brand international retail chain, and Adam and his team have used technology to transform their TA strategy to meet the needs of the business in a very tough talent market. It’s an unprecedented time of disruption in talent acquisition.
Economics, demographics, and technology are driving seismic shifts in how companies think about hiring. With the pace of change continuing to increase, the most successful TA functions will be the ones that adapt the quickest.
My second RecFest guests on episode 544 were Lindsey Stone, Group Head of Talent Attraction & Resourcing at Greene King and Eric Houwen, Head of Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding at Deloitte in the Netherlands. Although they work for two very different types of business, there are a lot of very interesting commonalities in Eric and Lindsey’s approach to TA transformation. Talk about generative AI is everywhere, but most of the conversation is inflating the hype or dealing with highly tactical short-term techniques and use cases. So, how can TA leaders think about AI strategically to embrace current opportunities and plan effectively for the future?
My final RecFest guest on episode 545 was Ben Handyside, Director of Talent Acquisition EMEA at Colliers International. Colliers have recognized that ChatGPT was already being used by many people within their organization and are harnessing the advantages to boost innovation and make TA a key strategic driver of value.
As we saw in the episode with Adam Reynolds, frontline hiring continues to be highly challenging with ongoing labor shortages in many countries. The business impact of understaffing is both significant and quantifiable, meaning hiring speed is a critical lever for business value and competing effectively in a competitive talent market. So, how can employers speed up their process while offering a great candidate experience and improving.
On episode 546, I spoke to Joshua Secrest, VP of Client Advocacy at Paradox. During his time as a Global TA leader for McDonald’s, Josh used technology to reduce frontline hiring times from 21 days to 3 days. He is continuing to help employers automate recruiting and innovate with AI at Paradox, and he has many valuable insights to share. In our wide-ranging conversation, we covered the business impacts of understaffing and the critical importance of speed and technology in a successful frontline hiring process.
My thanks to Paradox and SmartRecruiters who both sponsored the show during August. So onwards into September, and I know that many of you are going to be entering the planning phase for 2024. I’m keeping the pace up with another set of highly knowledgeable guests coming up in September to help you make informed decisions about the way ahead. So, don’t miss out. If you haven’t already, then make sure you’re subscribed to the show in Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, make sure you go to recruitingfuture.com to subscribe to my monthly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast.
Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
[Recruiting Future with Matt Alder theme]
