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.
Episodes mentioned in this Round Up:
Ep 573: The Power Of Employee Value Propositions
Ep 579: The Value Of Employer Branding
Ep 582: Employer Branding With Gen AI
Ep 576: Generative AI – A TA Progress Report
Ep 578: The AI Hype Cycle
Ep 574: Building A Successful TA Function
Ep 575: RPO Evolution
Ep 577: Hiring In Challenging Talent Markets
Ep 581: An Inflection Point For Recruiting?
Ep 580: A New Community For Women In TA
Ep 583: Re-Inventing Your Career
Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts
Transcript:
Matt Alder: Support for this podcast comes from Plum. Plum believes that when people flourish, business thrives. With its unmatched scalability, this powerful talent assessment tool uses science backed insights to measure and match human potential to job needs, enhancing talent decisions across the employee journey from hire to retire. To learn more, visit their website at plum.io.
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Matt Alder: Hi, there. This is Matt Alder. Welcome to the December Round-Up episode of the Recruiting Future Podcast. If you’ve not listened to Round-Up 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.
My thanks to plum.io for their support of round-up. Please make sure you take a look at their website and all of the great work that they’re doing. So Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to what promises to be a very interesting 2024. Although I took a couple of weeks off over the holiday period, the podcast didn’t miss a beat. With 11 new episodes being published in December, a new Recruiting Future record. Rather than just run through them chronologically, I thought it would be useful to sort them by content.
There were four distinct themes to the episodes in December, which I think nicely summarize where we got to by the end of 2023 and underline some of the critical issues and challenges, we’re going to face in 2024.
First up, with skill shortages continuing to be a big issue in some talent markets, and retention being a growing issue for pretty much every employer on the planet, it seemed like a good time to revisit EVPs and employer branding. In a must listen, Episode 573, I spoke to Vicki Saunders, founder of the EVP Consultancy. Employee value propositions are potent tools that attract talent, retain talent, and shape the future of organizations. However, we don’t talk about EVPs enough and they’re regularly confused with employer brands when they are discussed. So what are the benefits of an effective EVP and how do you define one?
Vicki is a highly experienced expert in this field and has worked on EVPs in-house at Currys, BAE Systems and Boots. In our conversation, we discussed the value to employers of an effective EVP in terms of hiring and retaining talent they need to build the future of the organization. We also covered key issues such as DENI, technology differentiation, measurement, and the practicalities of developing a powerful EVP.
Episode 579 built on this conversation by exploring the value of employer branding. As companies reinvent their employee experience post pandemic or look to rebuild their reputation post layoffs, employer branding has never been more critical, particularly for employers recruiting in challenging talent markets. Definitions are fundamental here because in the same way that developing an EVP isn’t employer branding, employer branding isn’t recruitment marketing.
My guest was John Tarrant, managing partner at DNA. DNA is a UK based employer branding agency with an impressive client list and vast experience in helping employers develop employer brands that are compelling, distinctive and drive tangible value for the organization. We discussed employer brand as a strategy to appeal to current and future talent, the challenge of increasing levels of candidate expectations, how employers going through tough times can rescue their employer brand, the impact of AI and what the future of employer branding might look like.
Speaking of the future, in Episode 582, we got a glimpse of what employer branding and recruitment marketing teams might be doing in 2024. Most of the conversation around generative AI in 2023 focused on its potential and long-term future strategic impact. However, many talent acquisition teams have been doing some hands-on experimentation with the tools to see what’s achievable right now. My guests on this episode were Bryan Peereboom, head of recruitment at Wortell, and Friso Visser, lead recruitment marketeer at Wortell. Wortell has been using generative AI to create recruitment marketing content over the last year to make them stand out in the market by engaging with hard-to-find audiences. In our conversation, Bryan and Friso discuss their experiences using the tools, how they stay up to date with a rapid pace of progress, and their plans for an AI-First Future.
Continuing the AI theme, it’s been just over a year since generative AI burst onto the scene and took over the entire TA conversation for 2023, and I’m sure it will continue to do so in 2024. Some of the predictions made back then about its immediate impact on the world of work were a bit out there, even for something that clearly has so much disruptive potential. I had a bit of an end of year quest in December to attempt to find the signal in all of the noise generated around generative AI and understand a bit more about what 2024 might bring us. So where have we got to? What are the genuine use cases? What’s still hype? And how will AI actually transform talent acquisition over the next few years?
It does feel like 2024 could be the inflection point where we can push away from the hype and start to see what impact AI is really going to have on talent acquisition, so I decided to ask three technology innovators who are hands on developing AI solutions for talent acquisition. For their perspective on this extraordinary technology revolution, my guests on Episode 576 were Adam Godson, President and Chief Product Officer at Paradox, and Yael Florentine, VP of product at Paradox. Adam was also on the podcast in March, and it was fascinating to see how quickly everything had developed in the space of a few months. We talked about the potential short term, medium term, and long-term impact of AI in TA, the urgent need for TA process reengineering, and the implications for recruiters and their careers.
Following on from this, my guest on Episode 578 was Tom Chevalier, general manager at Appcast Labs. A division of Appcast that focuses on innovation and creating the next generation of recruiting technology. Tom and his team are literally building part of the future, and unsurprisingly, he had some very valuable insights and important advice to share, as well as covering a lot of the topics that I spoke to Adam and Yael about. We explored the AI hype cycle, the real problems that AI solves, and the potential for fast adoption via the bundling of AI into established TA technologies.
Historically, the pace of change and innovation in talent acquisition has tended to be slower than we anticipate and certainly much slower than other areas of the enterprise. Unsurprisingly, then, we are more likely to talk about evolution than revolution when predicting the future of the function, that is all about to change. As the next few years are likely to see fundamental disruption driven by technology, new definitions of talent, and a fundamental rethinking of recruitment. This is going to be a key theme of the podcast throughout 2024. And in December there were four episodes exploring the shifts that are occurring and the revolution we’re about to all experience.
The rapidly increasing speed of change in talent acquisition means the skills, strategy, and types of thinking needed to build, retain, and develop a successful TA function are also evolving quickly. So what does a high performing TA function now look like? And what do TA leaders need to do to make sure they have what they need in place?
My guest on Episode 574, was Melissa Grabiner, an award winning former Global Head of TA who now works as a consultant for One Digital. Melissa has built talent acquisition teams from the ground up. She is now using her considerable insights and experience to help startups and scale ups in the biotech industry build strategies to acquire the talent they need.
One of the key themes from my conversations with TA practitioners on the podcast last year was the importance of flexibility and agility. This isn’t surprising, as we seem to be bouncing between panic mass hiring, and panic mass layoffs faster than ever when it comes to in house recruiting teams, this situation cannot be sustainable. However, opportunity always comes out of chaos and outsourcing to achieve the flexibility needed in these disruptive times is certainly something on the radar of many employers. So how are RPOs evolving to meet current market conditions? And what might the future of the TA function look like?
On Episode 575, I spoke to Don Farr, managing director North America at Talent Works. Don is a highly experienced previous head of talent acquisition and is the perfect person to talk about the future relationship between TA and RPO. We discussed the post pandemic trajectory of RPO towards being more hybrid, customized and project based, and Don shared some great advice for TA leaders on the selection, implementation and onboarding of RPO services. Despite the recent increases in applications that some sectors are experiencing, there are still many talent markets with acute skill shortages where hiring is a considerable challenge. So what long term strategies are employers using to ensure they’re recruiting effectively when talent is in short supply.
My guest on Episode 577, was Ellie Harte, head of recruitment at AtkinsRéalis. AtkinsRéalis is developing its strategy by focusing strongly on skills-based hiring, as well as using employer branding and employee advocacy as attraction tools to compete in a highly competitive market for talent. They’re also thinking long term, working to champion STEM education in schools and inspire a future generation of engineers. If AI is the engine driving the TA revolution, then skills-based thinking is the rocket fuel that will turbocharge the change. Despite massive advances in technology and IO psychology over the last 20 years, the recruiting process has stubbornly stuck with norms established nearly 100 years ago. There is a massive body of scientific evidence that debunks the effectiveness of resume-based screening.
At the same time, narrow definitions of talent and inflexible thinking make it impossible for many employers to recruit the skills they need for their business. But are we finally about to see things change? Two potential change agents are the mass access to generative AI, which threatens to break recruitment systems as employers become overwhelmed by automated applications. And the rise of skills-based hiring being used to solve talent challenges.
My guest on Episode 581, was Caitlin MacGregor, CEO of Plum. Caitlin is on a mission to make recruiting fairer and more effective and help companies discover the true potential of their employees. Recruiting is changing and this is a must listen interview for anyone wanting to understand the direction the change is going in. We discuss the ability to predict long term performance and retention, that’s not possible with legacy selection processes, democratizing access to assessment, and how employers can accelerate their skills-based transformation.
2023 was a brutal year for many people in talent acquisition, with a lot of layoffs and a very tough job market, making it challenging for people to find other roles. This removal of certainty and stability has been mirrored in many different talent markets and looks like it’s becoming the norm moving forward.
The final two episodes of the December Roundup look at different ways of thinking about careers and job hunting and the awesome power of community in TA. One of the things I love about our industry is the sense of community. Wherever talent acquisition professionals gather, whether online or face to face at industry events, there’s always a strong emphasis on peer-to-peer learning and support.
My guest on Episode 580 was Krista Tan. Krista is a TA leader and the founder of Talent Collective. A nonprofit organization building a community to help support the careers of women working in talent acquisition. In our conversation, Krista discusses the motivations for starting talent collective and the benefits curated communities can bring. With so much disruption in the market, we also discuss the advantages of working fractionally and what the future looks like for talent acquisition. Traditionally, switching careers or industries has been very challenging, but will the rise of skills-based thinking change this moving forward? So how do we now think about careers? And what do employers need to ensure they’re getting the right skills in their business?
In Episode 583, I spoke to Ilana Golan, founder and CEO of Leap Academy. Leap Academy is a coaching program that helps professionals fast track their careers by changing functional industry, by moving into leadership, or by making the jump to be an entrepreneur. We talked about adapting, learning and reinventing to cope with a challenging pace of change, dealing with ageism, and how job seekers can rise above the noise and find the right role for their talents. A huge thank you to Appcast, Greenhouse, Paradox, Talent Collective, and Plum for sponsoring the podcast during December. If you’re interested in supporting the show as a sponsor in 2024, now would be a great time to get in touch. Just drop me an email on matt@metashift.co.uk or send me a message on LinkedIn.
So, onwards into the New Year, and I’m going to be doing a lot more speaking and podcast guesting this year and I’m very much looking forward to starting the year off with the amazing AI4Talent Virtual Conference on the 23rd and 24th January. To find out more, go to their website which is ai4talent.com. And use the discount code EARLY99, to get a discounted price on your registration.
December was an epic month of interviews and I’ll be keeping the momentum up in January with some extremely insightful guests to set us up for the year ahead. So don’t miss out and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. There’s a lot of innovation coming to recruiting future in the next few months, so make sure you keep up to date with developments by subscribing to our monthly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast. You can sign up by going to recruitingfuture.com. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
