The move towards skills-based strategies in organizations is still a big topic. This is unsurprising, as the advantages are significant. Skills-based thinking solves critical business challenges by better aligning talent strategies to business goals and offering the skills agility many employers badly need. Skills-based hiring also widens talent pools and challenges the entrenched mental models that sometimes form barriers to companies hiring the talent they actually need.
However, the road to being a skills-based organization is long and complex, and only a small minority of employers are making real progress. So, what needs to change? How can AI be harnessed? How can we anticipate future skills needs? And how should TA teams be reimagined to make skills-based hiring a reality?
My guest this week is Jen Cunningham, VP of Global Talent Acquisition at Pearson. Pearson is leading the way with skills-based people strategies, and Jen has a wealth of experience and insight to share.
In the interview, we discuss:
• How TA is evolving
• Elevating the candidate experience
• Agility, resilience, and authenticity
• Better alignment between people strategy and business strategy
• How do you identify and validate skills?
• Internal and external agility
• How the traditional structure of HR is changing.
• Data, strategy, and influence
• What skills should TA teams have in the age of AI?
• What does the future look like?
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
You know, I’ve recently heard some crazy success stories when it comes to hiring with AI. FedEx is sending offers to candidates within 10 minutes. General Motors saved $2 million in recruiting costs in a year, Chipotle reduced time to hire by 75%, and Nestle’s global recruiting team is saving 8,000 hours annually. The craziest thing, all of these companies did it by leveraging the same technology. Paradox. Paradox is the leader in conversational hiring. Powered by conversational AI, Paradox can be your ats, CRM and careers site or can help automate parts of the hiring process on top of workday. UKG and SAP. Their product suite is driven by a 24.7ai assistant who can handle up to 95% of the hiring process for deskless hiring teams or just automate specific time consuming tasks like screening, interview scheduling and onboarding to allow recruiters to focus on recruiting. Paradox has helped hundreds of the world’s top employers simplify hiring and save money while creating great candidate experiences in the process. Spend more time with people, not software. With Paradox, you can find out more by going to Paradox AI.
Matt Alder [00:01:40]:
Hi there. Welcome to episode 673 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. The move towards skills based organizations is still a big topic. This isn’t surprising because the advantages are significant. Skills based thinking solves critical business challenges by better aligning talent strategies to business goals and offering the skills agility many employers badly need. Skills based hiring also widens talent pools and challenges the entrenched mental models that sometimes form barriers to companies hiring the talent they actually need. However, the road to being a skills based organization is long and complex and only a small minority of employers are making real progress. So what needs to change? How can we harness AI? How can we anticipate the future skills needed? And how should TA teams be reimagined to make skills based hiring a reality? My guest this week is Jen Cunningham, VP of Global Talent Acquisition at Pearson. Pearson are leading the way with skills based people strategies and Jen has a wealth of experience and insight to share. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Jen Cunningham [00:03:02]:
Yes, of course. So my name’s Jen Cunningham. I am the Global Vice President of Talent Acquisition for Pearson. I love what I do and I’ve been doing it for a long time.
Matt Alder [00:03:14]:
Fantastic. Fantastic. And it’s been such a sort of Fascinating few years for talent acquisition. How have you seen talent acquisition change over the last few years?
Jen Cunningham [00:03:25]:
Oh, the recruitment landscape has evolved enormously and will continue to evolve dramatically and at pace. AI and automation are naturally reshaping what work humans do and what the technology will do. Which for me brings both positive and negative implications in that I think it really requires us to think carefully about what should technology do versus what it can do and ultimately at what point in our processes we use it to drive efficiencies and effectiveness. I think equally we need to be thoughtful about the perception from candidates specifically relative to the application of AI, because for me, if we use it well, it can really help elevate their experience and make their journey with an employer seamless and engaging. But on the other hand, there’s a healthy amount of skepticism around the lack of human interaction and what implications that might have on topics such as diversity or bias in process that we need to be mindful of. And I think as I kind of dig into that, I guess more succinctly, there’s a few key shifts that I have seen happening over the last few years and will continue to happen, which is employers elevating and placing a greater degree of emphasis on the human component and human element, bringing to forefront skills, you know, the kind of the skills needed to operate in this new world, such as collaboration or influencing or relationship building, which will become way more valuable, which then kind of filters in to the shift away from traditional hiring methods to I believe, more of a skills based hiring and development methodology. And for me, that isn’t just driven by the technology piece, which I know is front and foremost for most of us right now, but really the demand for agility and resilience across organizations. So I think the only other piece that I would add to that is a real desire from everybody involved in the process, be it a recruiter or a manager or a leader or a business owner is the, sorry, put my teeth. And the drive and desire towards authenticity. And that has been around for a really long time. That’s not a new topic, but I do think that’s being amplified right now, especially with the level of multi generational workforce that we’ve got going on and kind of that conversation of how do we prepare not just our recruiters to operate in that multicultural generations, but support our leaders and our managers and those, you know, growing and developing our talents in that space. It’s quite a, a weird mix of all of the above that we have going on right now.
Matt Alder [00:06:17]:
Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s Kind of a perfect storm, isn’t it? Between technology is and skills and all that kind of thing. I want to talk a little bit more about skills in a second, but I just want to dig in a little bit, a little bit more about what you mean by authenticity. Tell us just a little bit more about that.
Jen Cunningham [00:06:30]:
Yeah, I mean, so if I use the example of the AI as an example, you know, on one hand, and it’s something that’s kind of front of mind for me. On one hand we talk as organizations and we create these amazing EVPs and we talk about, you know, we want innovation and we want effectiveness and we want the best of the best. You know, we expect our talents that we’re hiring within the organization to be able to adapt to using these technologies and do more with less and faster at a higher quality. But then on the other hand, there’s so much noise, particularly in our space right now in, in the TA world around what’s being quoted as deep fakes. So, you know, candidates applying those technologies to actually be better in the recruiting process or the selection process or to write their CV for them. And so for me that, that jars that if we are a business that does truly want talent, who can use these tools and can be effective and efficient in the way that they work, why then wouldn’t I want somebody who can do that during the process? So it’s a fine balance and I think that’s, it’s a hard balance because we want to know that we’re hiring the talent and the skill versus, you know, somebody being able to use a tool. But I think that’s for me, when I think about authenticity, it’s how do we manage that?
Matt Alder [00:07:53]:
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, there are so many kind of challenges and issues to kind of work through at the moment. Digging into the skills bit of this because we could talk for hours about all of this, this kind of sort of move to skills based thinking, you know, skills based hiring. How is that potentially changing the way that organizations work?
Jen Cunningham [00:08:12]:
Yeah, I mean, it’s such a big topic and it really does encompass so many sub elements. But for me, I guess the headline is that it’s really forcing organizations to really look at the alignment between their people, strategies and the direct direction of the business and then mapping backwards from that, which if we’re both honest, we should have all been doing for a really long time. But you know, and it will be a change, particularly I think in the TA space versus broader hr, because I think in TA we’re typically more reactive to the way that we operate. But I think the upside, if you get it right, is that the skills based model creates a level of agility in the workforce that can solve a whole host of the problems that we face. But for me, the first step of getting there is to really unpick the traditional career and job frameworks in favor of a more simpler career architecture which enables a more fluid approach to career growth that bridges the skills gaps internally and externally. So therefore creating a level of, you know, mobility and ultimately in turn, you know, unlocks the potential of talent in ways that traditional role based hiring can’t achieve. I think the thing that I would add to that, and again, this is such a complex topic, I could talk for hours, so cut me off if I go too long. There really is a lack of understanding on how to truly identify skills, the skills needed for the position versus the skills that an individual might have and then ultimately how do we validate them? So when I think about Pearson and some of the products that we have, tools like the workforce planning tool by Fathom can really help enterprises like ours and you know, our customers anticipate the supply and demand factors inside of their own business and aid in the understanding of the impact of technology on those skills. And then when you layer on top of that, you know, a verified digital and credentialing system like Credly, we can provide the validated view of the skills a workforce has now as well as the skills that that organization might need to be successful in the future.
Matt Alder [00:10:21]:
Yeah, I think it’s, it’s really interesting because I’ve spoken to a number of organizations about skills based thinking, skills based hiring, and so many people are kind of stuck on that bit of understanding the skills they have in their, in their business. But I think what you said there was really interesting about actually before you do do that, kind of simplify how everything is kind of structured and simplify that how everything kind of works internally and that, that whole kind of architecture that seems to be, that seems to be a key part of it.
Jen Cunningham [00:10:50]:
Yeah, enormously. And I think combined with that there’s a lot of traditional thinking and I hope I don’t get myself in trouble here given the business that we are. But I’m not a fan of asking for certain levels of education on a cv. You know, we are an education and learning company and obviously there are certain roles that absolutely require, you know, that, that kind of in depth. So lawyers or you know, clinical assessment developers, you know, there’s certain exceptions to that rule. But I think for Me, it’s how do we really break the mold of those traditional paths to entry and open up? And that’s, that’s a whole mindset shift. I mean that’s enormous across the entire, I guess, business ecosystem. Not even just hr.
Matt Alder [00:11:36]:
Yeah, no, no, precisely. It’s, there’s so many kind of long held assumptions and norms kind of sitting there on.
Jen Cunningham [00:11:42]:
Correct.
Matt Alder [00:11:42]:
Yeah.
Jen Cunningham [00:11:43]:
And it create, all it does is create. Again, creates barriers to entry. So again, when I talk about authentic, as I did earlier on, on one hand we say we want, you know, to be a diverse employer and then we put a barrier to entry through, you know, you must have ABC degree or ABC level of education. And so those two things jar for me.
Matt Alder [00:12:02]:
No, absolutely. And I mean, you mentioned a couple of your technologies there, but do you think more generally that AI is going to help with this in terms of data, in terms of, you know, showing people what’s actually going on?
Jen Cunningham [00:12:14]:
Yeah, 100%. And I would probably put it into two separate buckets. So the AI of it and the data of it. For me, data is really the start point to all of this. Without the right clean, organized data focused in the right areas, skills based hiring will likely just fall over. It’s again, to your point. We’ve seen and heard people talk about this for such a long time, but how do you bring it all together? And the data is really the, the pinnacle of the success of this. And then when I kind of take it more from the AI side, the fact is it’s going to be more prevalent in our day to day. It just is. And so the soft skills that maybe once weren’t as valuable are now actually more valuable and are being weighted much more heavily because those are the things that are now going to be needed to navigate this new world. So even if I apply that to my own team, you know, thinking about the recruiter profile I might have hired for, looked for five or 10 years ago would be vastly different to the one that I would look at now in that, you know, at one point I might have wanted somebody with a flair for writing because, you know, my big advocate of a job description is not an advert. How do you take a job description and create a compelling advert? And so writing skills, you know, marketing, that marketing flair would have been something I would have looked for. Whereas now I can pop that into any number of generative AI platforms and have it done in seconds. So I would devalue that to some degree as a skill set in favor of something like critical thinking or prompt Engineering or influencing skills. Because I’m a huge believer that all of these technologies are amazing, but only if you use them correctly and you know, the data is only as good as you, as you put in. So, you know, for me that’s the critical piece. And my expectations of my recruiters moving forward in using all of these things would be to really understand how you’re using the AI to really inform greater business outcomes. And that’s typically not the role of a recruiter. Our role is to, you know, take the requirements, go out and find great talent, present them back to the business and then close the deal. It’s not really driving business direction and influencing decision making based on what we know to be true.
Matt Alder [00:14:42]:
You also mentioned mobility there within the organisations, but there’s also kind of, I suppose, mobility externally to organization as well in terms of people being able to sort of move careers, you know, more easily because skills are more understandable, you know, those, those kind of things. How can organizations kind of, sort of capture all of this and really kind of improve, you know, that, that sort of career mobility for everyone.
Jen Cunningham [00:15:05]:
Yeah. So as I kind of touched on a little bit and just to give you an insight into the way that I think I’m very much a start with the end in mind thinker. So I very much look towards the, okay, what are the needs and the direction of the enterprise that I’m, that I’m working for and what are the needs and the wants and the direction of those that I’m looking to attract into that enterprise? And then working backwards from there. Once you’ve got a very, very clear vision of kind of those two components, can you create mechanisms that ultimately drive that level of agility and career paths, be it across internal divisions or you know, BU’s, whatever language your particular organization uses and, or industries and equally, as I said earlier on creating that way or the mindset shift across our leaders to move away from the traditional requirements of a role to more towards the transferable skills and talents. When I think about that in its, I guess its broadest sense, it then opens up the path to think about the entire talent supply chain. So from kind of almost the cradle to grave, you know, on one hand you’ve got where is the organization going? And potentially within that there are skills that don’t even exist today versus kind of people joining the workforce, what their demands and wants are, what they see for their careers, where they want to grow and what kind of skill set they think that they need. And then from that we can then start to Understand where those skill gaps are and create the routes for employees and individuals to acquire the skills that are valuable to them. I think internally, for us, ultimately, our end goal is to help the employees grow, move or evolve within our organization, facilitating the lateral moves, promotions and access and opportunities and supporting them in acquiring the skills important to them for externally. And again, this kind of leads into our purpose and mission, who we are as a business. It’s really about preparing our employees for success, even if they leave our business, and making sure that we’re offering them the skills development certifications, training in those valuable skills to help them survive. In fact, not just survive, but thrive in the broader job market. And I think for us, one of the upsides of that, again, given what we do, is creating a reputation for ourselves and the talent that we’re developing as being really valuable and therefore driving a level of appeal for us as an employer.
Matt Alder [00:17:41]:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And within that, there is a lot of work between talent acquisition and learning development and talent management. I mean, how is the traditional structure of HR changing?
Jen Cunningham [00:17:55]:
It’s a great question. And it’s, it’s so interesting because it’s almost cyclical in the, in the. Not cyclical, that’s probably the, the wrong word. But it kind of goes in cycles. You know, we see HR teams coming together in the old coe, you know, expert models disappearing, and then they pop back up again a few years later. But that is kind of where I see it going in that the traditional silos within HR will not necessarily dissolve. I do still think that there’s an expertise like that, but moving to much more of an interconnected model where these functions absolutely rely on each other and work together as part of a holistic talent supply chain versus this person over here does the L and D, and then this person over here does the recruiting. You know, if I again put my hat on from where I am today, if I could get to a point where I know the organization, let’s say, is moving into a new market, so I know that that’s the business direction. So then I can go to my data and analytics people, analytics team and say, tell me about the talent availability in that market, tell me about the cost in that market, then I know how to deploy my recruiters and how many recruiters and how long it’s going to take me to deliver that talent. And then we take that back to our learning and development team and say, hey, we can recruit these guys because there’s an availability in the market, but we have a gap here. Okay, do we need an early careers plan. So it’s how do we create that synergy and that red thread where all of those functions are operating as one instead of in our distinctive areas and not really kind of lifting our eyes upwards and outwards to see what’s going on across the broader organization.
Matt Alder [00:19:33]:
That kind of makes perfect sense. And you were talking earlier about the skills that you’d look for in recruiters now and how they’re different from they were before. I suppose, more broadly, in the context of what you were just saying, what is it that TA teams need to be like right now in terms of skills and structure? What would your advice be to other heads of TA in terms of what they should be thinking about?
Jen Cunningham [00:19:56]:
Oh, this is a brilliant one and I love to debate this one. So again, the age of AI. I’ll stick on that very obvious theme at the moment, but the way that I think about it is AI primarily is pulling from, from the Internet, right? And the Internet is full of truths, half truths, as in truths spun through a certain lens and often flat out lies. And so when I think about, you know, the profile of a recruiter, for me, that ability to discern the fact from the fiction is, you know, really becoming front of mind for me. And then I think beyond that, it’s then, how do we use those kind of research skills that, you know, uncovering the data, leveraging the AI to really create the platform for us to have a seat at the table and really drive business decision. It’s then really about how they use it for researching and then how they take that research to influence. So the influencing skills will become much more prevalent, the strategic thinking. And you know, my team will laugh when they, if they ever listen to this, if they hear this, because strategic is, I think, the most overplayed word in all of hr. And yet I interview so many people and they, I see that all over CVs and when I ask them what that means, or to give me an example of it, nine times out of ten, we can’t. So it’s like, how do we really take the work that we’re doing in understanding the, the talent landscapes, the gaps currently, the gaps in the future where our candidates want to grow and learn, you know, their perception of us as an organization to really help pull all of that together in such a way that we can package it and give it back to our leaders and say, hey, if you go to this location or if you handle that process in such a way, this will be the result and really enable us to shift that direction of the organization so they can ultimately meet their goals. I think the other couple of things that I would throw in there is resilience and agility. And again, not. Not a new topic at all. It has been around for a really long time of this notion of recruiters doing more with less. And in fact, it’s not even just recruiters, it’s broadly hr. Every business area has been asked to do more with less. And so how do we get our recruiters to really have thicker skins and, you know, be adaptable to the change? And actually, whilst we’re on the topic, one thing that I would encourage anybody who’s listening or yourself to have a think about is to maybe check out our Pearson Skills Outlook report. So we did a report through our Workforce Skills division. It’s called skills outlook 2 in the employer view, employee view, should I say. And they really dug into all of this and interestingly, the perspective that came out from employees was they were really proactively prioritising their own soft skills because they also believe that that’s how they’re going to drive and advance their careers in the UK specifically. But I think if I was to summarise it, it’s really that ability to discern and interpret data is going to be so important for recruiters moving forward.
Matt Alder [00:23:11]:
No, absolutely, 100% agree with you. So, as a final question, maybe to sort of pull all of this together, what does the future look like? Where is this taking us? What would we be talking about if we had this conversation again in a few years time?
Jen Cunningham [00:23:25]:
I would love to say wildly different. I am going to be optimistic. My perspective is the recruitment industry process has largely been stagnant for many, many decades. And, you know, I kind of break that down to many, many, many years ago. At one point we would pop a poster on a wall or a card in a shop window. The only difference really from that to today is we pop it on the Internet instead. And so for me, I really hope and wish that AI really will be the opportunity to make that breakthrough in our industry. But I think bringing in that balance of human and AI and the deep understanding of how to make those two components play together really will be the critical factor. I do truly believe AI will and can alleviate some of the pressure from the human side. Again, great example of a recent report that we put out was called Reclaim the Clock, which basically found that generative AI could help the likes of you. And I reclaim over 9 million hours a week by just kind of automating and removing some of that Manual work. When I overlay that into, I guess, recruiting and the work that we do, you know, I expect to see that some of the typical expectations of tasks and responsibilities of recruiter will move into that technology state, but with a higher degree of expectation. And again, the skills that the recruiters are bringing to the table being influencing business decision, business direction or decision making. And then I think, as we said earlier on, I think where it starts to get really, really difficult is the balance of that piece to the opposing side, which is that perception of candidates and our own blind spots to those perceptions. So again, the whole notion of deep fakes and, you know, candidates using AI to write their CVs, genuinely, I feel like is a bit of a hypocrisy on, on our part. But equally, I, you know, we’re an assessment organization. I understand we still have to validate that these people, you know, can do and can deliver what they. So for me, it’s a real balancing of those two things. But I do genuinely hope this notion of everybody in the hr, I’ll take HR out of it. Actually, the TA cycle or the recruitment life cycle hates each other. I really hope it’s going to bring us all together and actually show the value that a really good partnership between all of the functions across hr, plus the business, plus the candidates in the life cycle, we can add value to everybody in the process. And I’m really hoping that removing some of that heavy lift that AI can bring gets us to that future state. I’m waiting with bated breath.
Matt Alder [00:26:19]:
Well, let’s hope so, because I think that is a great vision for the future.
Jen Cunningham [00:26:23]:
I was actually asked yesterday what do I want to be famous for? It was in a HR leadership meeting and I said I would like to leave the legacy of making recruiting easy. Yeah, easy for everybody involved.
Matt Alder [00:26:37]:
I’m with you on that 100%.
Jen Cunningham [00:26:39]:
We’ll do it together, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:26:41]:
Absolutely. Jen, thank you very much for joining me.
Jen Cunningham [00:26:43]:
You’re very welcome and thanks for having me.
Matt Alder [00:26:46]:
My thanks to Jen. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on 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. This is my show.
