The early part of any new year is always dominated by articles and videos exploring predictions of the trends that will effect talent acquisition over the coming 12 months. Unfortunately, a large proportion of this content tends to be unsupported opinion, so it always good to see trend research which is based on robust data.
One such publication is LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends Report which is based on a survey of 5000 talent professionals in 35 countries combined with behavioural data from LinkedIn’s own platform. To discuss the findings of the report my guest this week is Mark Lobosco, VP of LinkedIn Talent Solutions.
In the interview we discuss:
• The changing relationship between employee and employer
• How can employers identify soft skills earlier in the hiring process?
• Is workplace flexibility essential or just a perk?
• How companies can be part of the solution for dealing with workplace harassment
• Why pay transparency is vital in shaping the future or recruiting and talent
You can download a copy of Global Talent Trends 2019 here.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from ClickIQ. ClickIQ is an automated job advertising platform that uses the latest AI and programmatic technology to manage, track and optimize the performance of your recruitment. Advertising in real time spend is focused where it’s needed the most to reach both active and passive job seekers across indeed, Google, Facebook and an extensive network of job boards. To find out more about ClickIQ, please visit www.clickiq.co.uk. that’s www.clickiq.co.UK.
Matt Alder [00:01:01]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 167 of the Recruiting Future podcast. The early part of any new year is is always dominated by articles and videos exploring predictions of the trends that will affect talent acquisition in the year ahead. Unfortunately, a large proportion of this content tends to be based on unsupported opinion, so it’s always good to see trend reports which are supported by robust data. One such publication is LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trend Report which is based on a survey of 5,000 talent professionals in 35 countries combined with behavioral data from LinkedIn’s user base. To discuss the findings of the report, my guest this week is Mark Lobosco, VP of Talent Solutions at LinkedIn. Enjoy the interview. Hi Mark and welcome to the podcast.
Mark Lobosco [00:01:56]:
Hi Matt, thank you for having me. Excited to connect with you today.
Matt Alder [00:02:00]:
Absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Mark Lobosco [00:02:05]:
Yeah. So my name is Mark Lobosco. I’m responsible for our customer success and sales teams globally for LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions business. Been with LinkedIn for about 10 years, so considered an old timer here. I’ve had a number of different roles. The majority of the time has been spent in our talent business. Did spend a few years working on the acquisition of Lynda.com, which was core to our long term vision of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce and spent a little bit of time on that learning business, helped kind of integrate it into the company and then launching our Learning Solutions business which now has our LinkedIn learning product available to help professionals acquire and maintain their professional skill set.
Matt Alder [00:02:48]:
Fantastic stuff. So LinkedIn’s in a great position to talk to job seekers and companies about what they’re looking for in both employers and employees. What themes are you seeing this year?
Mark Lobosco [00:03:02]:
Yeah, yeah. So each year, stepping back, we release our Global Talent Trends Report where we survey thousands of talent Professionals to understand what trends, challenges and kind of solutions are kind of top of mind for them. You know, a lot of great themes have come out of the research as we’ve surveyed professionals. And there’s a couple of things. You know, the main kind of headline though is the relationship between employers and employees is fundamentally shifting. But as you look at the responses, not all HR and hiring practices have caught up to a number of these changes. So here’s a couple things we know. From the professional’s perspective, they’re expecting more from their employer, they’re expecting more transparency, they want more trust and they’re looking for more accountability. And from the company’s perspective, they’re expecting their employees not just to have the technical skills, how do they do the specific parts of their job, but also to have the required soft skills, how to think creatively, how to collaborate effectively, and how to adapt quickly to an ever changing kind of work environment.
Matt Alder [00:04:07]:
And what are some of the sort of specific trends you’re seeing, you know, around this theme of this, of this new relationship?
Mark Lobosco [00:04:14]:
Number of kind of insights from the research and the report. But we found four kind of main trends and topics in HR and hiring today that are impacting the relationships in this workplace. You know, one of them is soft skills, the other is work flexibility, the third is anti harassment practices, and the fourth is around pay transparency. So, you know, with the need for employee employer trust is one of the key factors to the ever changing workforce. These were the topics that we found most interesting to really dig into to learn more.
Matt Alder [00:04:47]:
So let’s kind of do that and dig in and interesting to sort of find out the things that you found. So I mean starting with soft skills, they can be much harder for recruiters and hiring managers to identify during the interview process. Do you have any recommendations to help companies identify these earlier in the sort of potential candidates looking at hiring?
Mark Lobosco [00:05:08]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, you know, first off, just like some high level kind of information in regards to soft skills. And you know, as someone who at LinkedIn over the past 10 years has had to hire a few different folks, you know, I recognize the challenges with, you know, interviewing for soft skills. You know, technical skills are certainly a little more easier, but soft skills, you know, prove challenging, you know, and the majority of talent professionals, I think it was over 90% agree that soft skills matter just as much as kind of these harder technical skills skills. And so the challenge isn’t around the value, it’s how do you assess these skills. And so close to 60% of professionals also Share they struggle to assess these soft skills. And you know, there’s a number of ways in which hiring managers have done this historically and still do today. And so that’s everything from asking behavioral questions which can be effective but not always. Others are things like how do you read body language interview or how do you ask the right situational questions? You know, for some folks they’ve gotten world class at this and they can still be effective. But the majority of folks kind of in our research felt like these methods were not as effective as they would like to see. And the consequence of this is, you know, this gap on how do you successfully understand, assess and measure soft skills creates, you know, a major loss of time and money for hiring managers and companies. As the report shows, almost 90% of bad hires typically have soft skills that were not up to par with what the company needed for the new employee to operate effectively within the company. And so there’s a number of things companies are doing to help with kind of assessing soft skills, whether it be continuing to focus on things like asking the right behavioral questions. But we’re starting to see is more of a trend with companies turning to more AI powered solutions where at up to 20% it was about 17% of companies where it’s now using technology to help with soft skill assessment. And so these are things like cognitive games to measure kind of emotional traits as well as kind of behavioral traits for how an employee would operate within.
Matt Alder [00:07:26]:
A company and moving on to sort of flexible work and workplace flexibility. Is work flexibility a perk or an essential part of running a business and meeting employees needs it should companies be more open to employees when it comes to embracing flexible work?
Mark Lobosco [00:07:47]:
Yeah, I mean it starts with the reality of what’s happening kind of in the world today, especially with the amount of progress we’ve seen in technology. So with video conferencing, kind of messaging apps, ubiquitous kind of high speed kind of Internet, employers do have more reasons than ever to explore a more flexible workplace, allowing employees to choose where and how they work. There really aren’t the kind of technical limitations that we’ve seen in the past. And we’ve seen an increase in companies that are also kind of offering this through our own Data. So through LinkedIn jobs, we saw a 78% increase in workplace flexibility mentioned in job posts since 2016. And as we look at companies that have increased kind of workplace flexibility as something they offer their employees, the tech industry is leading the way with with remote work option head of finance, healthcare and manufacturing, which isn’t a Huge surprise. And despite the myths, research does show that not only flexible work is better for work life balance. About 3/4 of talent professionals share this sentiment in the research. But in addition to that, productivity increases and turnover is reduced. So clearly the data is compelling in regards to employers looking at more workplace flexibility, something to offer their employees. This change also may be associated with diversity. So for example, women are 22% more likely than men to cite flexible workplace arrangements as very important as a factor when considering a new job. So we allow job seekers to search for remote jobs on LinkedIn as well. As another example of how companies are enabling this type of search to happen more easily.
Matt Alder [00:09:41]:
Workplace harassment was one of the kind of the four trends that you were highlighting. How can companies take action to be part of the solution when it comes to dealing with this problem?
Mark Lobosco [00:09:53]:
Yeah, I mean, clearly workplace harassment and just in general creating more inclusive environments across all industries is definitely a meme kind of in the broader culture right now. And so the topic of harassment at work has also become increasingly important. During the past few years, we saw 71% increase in workplace harassment content shared on LinkedIn as an example. So you know, things in the feed of what our members and what professionals were sharing. You know, internally, 75% of talent professionals notice some behavioral change from employees. The most common being a willingness to speak up, discuss issues and call out bad behavior. So this openness to have a conversation has led to 80% of talent professionals to say their company has recently taken or is currently planning to, to take some anti harassment action. So clearly there’s a lot happening on this front, both by what we’re seeing on LinkedIn, from what folks are sharing, but also the insights coming out of the report. What we’ve seen is the two most common tactics companies are taking is actually taking advantage of what is already in place. So whether that is things like highlight existing policies or promoting ways to safely report when there is a harassment issue kind of in the office. And so if you kind of take a step back and your listeners are thinking what action to take, I think start with what are our existing policies? Do they make sense? And if so, ensuring they’re well communicated. Communication around something like this is absolutely critical. And for me, I think one of the things that LinkedIn is really important is ensuring this type of communication comes from the top and comes from also leadership and is reinforced by leaders. And this just isn’t a, you know, internal HR thing. I think, you know, all companies really need to, you know, participate in creating the right type of environment. For employees to be successful, it can’t be just driven by a smaller group within the company. You know, other ideas of what companies should do. You know, certainly listen to your employees kind of to weigh in on kind of current policies and where they may not make sense, you know, can’t reinforce enough the importance of getting your leaders to be engaged. You know, as someone who, you know, leads an organization, organization of a few thousand people, ensuring my leaders are engaged and understand the importance of creating the right type of our environments plays a critical role creating that type of inclusive environment. And then there’s also online learning courses that are certainly available to both professionals as well as members. As an example, there’s a LinkedIn learning course called I Believe It’s Preventing harassment in the Workplace, which is another good example for employees or resource for employees.
Matt Alder [00:12:45]:
So in the report, you share that 54% of talent professionals agree that pay transparency is extremely important in shaping the future of recruiting and talent. Why is that trend important?
Mark Lobosco [00:12:57]:
Yeah, well, I mean, there’s a number of reasons, you know, that go into why that’s so important. So, you know, whenever you’re looking to accept, you know, new job opportunity, you know, salary is going to be, you know, an incredibly important insight. You know, the trend of conversation about transparency and salary is really not surprising given as a whole. Transparency in the workplace is becoming key to trust and building a strong culture. And in many ways, you know, things are just kind of catching up with where they should have always really been. You know, pay transparency has historically been one of the hardest conversations to have for job seekers and recruiters. But studies do show that the benefits of pay transparency definitely far outweigh these fears. Close to 30% of talent professionals and hiring managers that we surveyed share salary ranges. And of those who do share close to 70% share pay with candidates early on in the process, almost 60% share with their employees and close to 10% share publicly on job posts. Now there’s a number of benefits that come from sharing salary ranges and streamlining kind of negotiations. This may makes hiring faster and easier. You know, LinkedIn has also been really kind of invested in helping bring salary transparency to job seekers as well as other companies. By making salary information available on job posts and through the LinkedIn salary tool. You know, we want to create kind of transparency, you know, in the marketplace so folks can make informed decisions before they choose to leave their current employer, before they choose, decide to join a, you know, a future employer, you know, so salary transparency, you know, whether it’s provided, you know, based upon LinkedIn’s member provided data or otherwise helps improve the hiring process for both employers and candidates. So it’s something that we only see continuing.
Matt Alder [00:14:51]:
So final question. Where can people get a copy of the report or find out find out more about its findings?
Mark Lobosco [00:14:58]:
So you know, I believe you’ll share it kind of in the in the show notes as well. But if you want to go to I’ll give you the address here. It’s so lnkd.inforward/GTT19 so that was lnkd.inforward/.GTT19.
Matt Alder [00:15:22]:
Mark, thank you very much for talking to me.
Mark Lobosco [00:15:24]:
Thanks for having me, Matt. Hope I can come back soon in the future. Thanks for listening.
Matt Alder [00:15:28]:
My thanks to Mark Lobosco. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future in your App Store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com. on that site, you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
