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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 626: Taking A Strategic Approach To AI
Ep 627: The Future Global Workforce
Ep 628: The EVP & Employer Brand Landscape
Ep 629: A Personalized Candidate Experience
Ep 630: Assessment in Skills-Based Organizations
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Matt: Support for this podcast comes from Plum. Plum is a revolutionary workforce solutions provider that knows when people flourish, business thrives. With their powerful new platform, PlumThrive, you can unlock science-based data to help you measure and match human potential to job needs. PlumThrive provides personalized career insights, improves quality of hire and creates high-performing teams from a single simple-to-use platform. Want to learn more? Visit www.plum.io, and discover all the ways that Plum can help you thrive.
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Matt: Hi, there. This is Matt Alder. Welcome to the July Round-Up Episode of Recruiting Future. 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 that you don’t miss out on the valuable insights my guests are sharing.
My thanks to plum.io for their support to Round-Up. I think the approach they’re taking to skills-based thinking is, both highly innovative and highly pragmatic. You should definitely check out their website to find out more.
So, I spent a lot of July on holiday, visiting some of the more remote and rainy parts of Scotland. But I did manage to get down to experience RecFest UK before I went away. Huge congratulations to the RecFest team for another record-breaking event. It was excellent. And a huge thank you to everyone who came to my presentation. I thought I might struggle a little bit for an audience being on first thing in the morning, but I was delighted that it ended up a standing room only. Thank you all very much.
Being off the grid in rural Scotland meant less podcast episodes this month, but what July lacked in quantity, it more than made up for in the quality of the conversations. It was great to speak to some really deep thinkers and expert practitioners about some really important issues and topics. So, let’s dig into the Round-Up.
It’s becoming clear that company CEOs are taking AI very seriously. And it’s starting to inform the strategic direction of many businesses. For example, 44% of CEOs responding to PwC’s 2024 Annual Global CEO Survey believe that Gen AI will drive efficiency and boost profits in the next 12 months. It is now critical that talent acquisition leaders take AI seriously and build strategies that closely align with their business’s strategic direction. Unfortunately, in most cases, this isn’t happening with the urgency that the situation requires. So, what are the barriers here? Do we fully understand the challenges, and what can TA leaders do to ensure they stay in step with the rest of their business?
My first guest of the month on Episode 626 was the brilliant, Paul is a highly experienced Global TA Leader who has worked at a diverse range of major public and private organizations. Paul firmly believes in the importance of approaching AI strategically with a sense of urgency and shares some pragmatic advice on how best to achieve this.
The distribution patterns of the global working age population are starting to change dramatically. North America and Europe, both have aging populations. And by 2040, the African continent, with a projected population of 1.1 billion, will have the largest workforce globally. So, how are African countries preparing, and what opportunities are there for employers to tap into this mega talent market?
My guest on Episode 627 was Hilda Kabushenga, CEO of The African Talent Company. The African Talent Company is a group of pan-African businesses working together to bridge the talent gap in Africa via career development and recruiting solutions. Hilda gave us a unique insight into the current African talent market and its incredible future potential. We discussed the opportunities for global employers to access African talent, reskilling for the future of jobs and the impact of AI.
It has been a highly volatile few years for talent markets and hiring. So, how is all the uncertainty and disruption shifting employers’ thinking around EVP and Employer Branding? Is it still considered as important as before, and what might the future direction look like?
My guests on Episode 628 were Neil Harrison, an independent employer branding consultant, and Mike Heal, managing director at WDAD Communications. Neil recently collaborated with WDAD on qualitative research into the current EVP and Employer Brand landscape. The findings give some unique insights into the priority employers are giving to their employer brands and how things have changed since the pandemic.
Providing a quality candidate experience remains a significant challenge for many organizations. This challenge has been intensified in recent years by evolving candidate expectations, volatile talent markets, shrinking TA teams, and technology that has yet to be designed with the candidate in mind.
However, are we on the cusp of an era when technology, rather than making the candidate experience worse, can actually help provide the high-quality, personalized candidate experience we have all been seeking?
My guests on Episode 629 were Luke Smith, Talent Acquisition & Experience Specialist at Toyota GB, and Euan Cameron, CEO at Willo. This discussion offers many great insights into what personalization is possible now, and what will be possible in the future when it comes to candidate experience. We talked about Toyota’s customer centric approach to candidate experience, automation, reducing bias and busted some common myths about video interviewing.
One aspect of any journey to becoming a skills-based organization is having effective skills assessment strategies in place. This doesn’t just apply to hiring and leadership development. Some of the most cutting-edge organizations are using assessment as part of the onboarding process to help understand the development needs of new employees.
On Episode 630, I spoke to Simone Jacobi, Global Director of Talent Assessment at McKinsey. In our conversation, Simone talks about how McKinsey is gratifying assessments in its journey toward becoming a skills-based organization, how their talent acquisition process is evolving and what will be the essential skills for the future.
A huge thank you to Plum and Willo for sponsoring Recruiting Future during the month of July. So, onwards into August, which I know will be holiday time for many of you.
August is always a big month for Recruiting Future, as more travel and free time means more podcast listening for many people. So, we’ll be back up to two episodes a week with some great content, including the audio of my presentation on the future of TA teams recorded live at RecFest. Make sure you don’t miss out on any of the conversations by subscribing to Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
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