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 639: Inclusive Interviews Inspired By NASA
Ep 640: What Is The Value Of TA?
Ep 641: How Is TA Evolving?
Ep 642: Augmenting Talent Acquisition
Ep 643: Career Activism
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Transcript:
Matt Alder: 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, Plum Thrive, you can unlock science based data to help you measure and match human potential to job needs. Plum Thrive 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.
[Recruiting Future theme]
Matt Alder: Hi there, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to the September 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 that you don’t miss out on all the valuable insights my guests are sharing. My thanks to Plum I.O. for their support of Roundup. I think the approach they’re taking to skills based thinking is both highly innovative and highly pragmat. You should definitely check out their website at Plum IO to find out more. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling over the last few weeks and I’ve very much enjoyed reconnecting with old industry friends and making new ones. It’s been a tough 18 months for talent acquisition, but I’m noticing a growing sense of energy and purpose as practitioners and vendors alike are starting to focus on the future and how our whole mindset around hiring needs to transform. The only certainty here is uncertainty, but for those who want to take it, there is a fantastic opportunity to help shape a positive future for talent acquisition. With that in mind, September’s podcast episodes offer the perfect resource to support the transformation. The interviews offer a powerful mix of vision, innovation, strong opinion and practical advice.
First up, in episode 639, we explored a unique way to offer an inclusive interview process. Job interviews have always been a source of anxiety for many people. The pressure of showcasing your achievements to a stranger in an unnaturally structured conversation is not easy, and for many Neurodiverse people it’s pretty much impossible. The use of asynchronous video interviews has helped the situation in some ways, but it doesn’t provide the opportunity for real time conversation and exploration, which is critical in the later stages of the recruiting process. Could a methodology initially designed to combat communication delays in space travel offer a solution that bridges the gap between synchronous and asynchronous interviewing in a way that’s inclusive for everyone. My guest was Rob Brougham, Director and co founder of Braided Communications. Rob worked with NASA to develop a unique way of helping astronauts have real time conversations with people back on Earth on future missions to the Moon and to Mars. It turns out there’s actually a simple and straightforward way of defying the laws of physics. Rob is now using the same technology to make the recruiting process more inclusive and more effective. The unprecedented volatility in the talent acquisitions jobs market in the last three years illustrates that many organizations still see TA as a transactional function turned on or off according to hiring demand. This is a big problem. While the development of ever more sophisticated AI promises much for ta, it also represents an existential threat to the survival of any business function that’s seen as transactional and easy to automate. So how can Talent Acquisition prove its value to the business and live up to its enormous strategic potential? Perhaps the first step would be to understand that value properly.
My guest on episode 640 was Toby Culshaw, Global Head of Pipeline Strategy and Intelligence at Amazon Worldwide Stores. Toby publishes a lot of thought provoking content about the future of TA and has strong views on how TA should position its value within the enterprise. In the interview we talked about adopting new and more meaningful metrics, what’s holding change back, and the importance of taking a consultative and advisory role to the business. Playing an active role in shaping the future of TA is something all leaders need to do. A future focus is critical, but so is dealing with the practicalities of the present. Today’s talent acquisition leaders face an ever growing list of priorities on top of their already demanding roles. From enhancing candidate experience to integrating AI, and from improving diversity and inclusion metrics to establishing more agile operating models. The pressures are immense. So what progress are TA teams making and how do they benchmark against each other?
On episode 641 I spoke to Rachel Dalboth, Director of the Talent Acquisition center of Excellence at the Talent Labs. Based on Talent Labs research, Rachel offers insights into how TA teams are dealing with their current challenges. She also shared her thoughts on the skills required by future TA teams and the vital importance of investing in development. Most conversations about AI and talent acquisition focus on efficiencies and automating repetitive tasks. However, we are missing the point if we don’t start talking about how AI could help reshape recruiting entirely, making it more efficient but also more effective. And why stop at recruiting? AI could revolutionize work and the whole way we think about careers. The current limitations of our thinking were really brought home to me when I attended the Smart Recruiters Hiring Success Conference in September in Amsterdam. An overarching theme was that automation is a given with AI and we should be thinking much bigger. So what does that mean for TA strategies and how can TA leaders ensure that they proactively shape the future direction of recruiting?
My guest on episode 642 was the brilliant Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow. He’s also an internationally renowned digital anthropologist and award winning author. Brian gave the opening keynote at Hiring Success and I caught up with him after he left the stage to get his thoughts on the current state of the AI revolution and the future of talent acquisition. We talked about hype versus Reality when it comes to Genai empowering people with augmented intelligence, the impact of AI enabled job seekers, the three things TA leaders should be doing right now, and what recruiting will look like in 5 years time. With labor markets still undergoing unprecedented shifts and volatility, employers are increasingly strengthening their focus on retention and internal mobility. However, the shrinking lifespan of skills, changing attitudes to work, and the rise of AI are complicating factors here. So how can employers ensure they support their employees future development and drive internal mobility at a time of significant change that renders traditional career pathing irrelevant?
My guest on episode 643 was J.C. Townend, CEO at LHH for the UK and Ireland. J.C. is a strong advocate of career activism, giving employees the tools they need to advance their careers in the way that makes most sense for them. This can drive retention, supercharge internal mobility, and help ensure employers have the right skills available at the right time. In our interview we talked about the end of linear career paths, the need to shift mindsets, and what work and careers might look like in the near future.
A huge thank you to Plum and Smart Recruiters for sponsoring Recruiting Future during the month of September so onwards into October and I’m going to be publishing four more episodes recorded at recent conferences, including the excellent HR Tech last week in my quest to find out what the future of TA is going to look like. On top of that, I’ve got an incredible interview with a former Navy SEAL commander sharing lessons about skills and attributes that he learned during his experience selecting recruits for the elite Seal Team 6. So don’t miss out. Make sure you subscribe 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.
