The Recruiting Future Podcast - Innovation In Hr And Recruitment

The balance between global consistency and local nuance in recruitment marketing is a difficult issue that provokes a lot of debate. It has become clear to me from working with a number of employers in this area that there are no right answers and every company needs a bespoke approach to be successful. My guest this week is John McCall who oversees Talent Branding for Groupon in the EMEA region. Groupon has grown via acquisition in EMEA, creating a number of challenges for brand and marketing consistency. In the interview we discuss:     •    Groupon’s definition of Talent Branding and how they are positioning themselves as an employer of choice.     •    Creating a core central truth with local variations     •    Marketing effectively in multiple languages     •    The role of mobile video and social engagement     •    The importance of messaging consistency throughout the business John also talks about what is next for Groupon and gives us his thoughts on the future of Talent Branding This episo

Changing established ways of thinking is difficult. Changing established ways of thinking about recruiting within large organizations can seem impossible. However, with economies fluctuating, technology improving and people’s communication preferences developing, driving effective change is a key part of the job for every in house recruiting leader. My guest this week is Samantha Ramsay, Head of Resourcing and Employer Brand for House of Fraser. Over the last two years Samantha has been systematically challenging assumptions, moving mindsets and embracing new technology to order to drive change within her organization. In the interview we discuss:     •    The difference between recruiting and resourcing     •    How fundamental change creates massive impact     •    Questioning standard practice in recruiting     •    Why House of Fraser prioritise behaviours and traits over past experience     •    Success with bespoke online assessment and video interviewing Samantha also shares her view on the re

Employer branding has never been a more popular discussion topic with a huge amount of content and conference time now dedicated to it. However, when you dig below the surface, there is very little that addresses the day to day concerns of employer brand practitioners, particularly those working within global organizations. Working in partnership with my regular co-collaborator Mervyn Dinnen and in conjunction with employer brand solution provider Papirfly, this summer we did a piece of research design to restore the balance by uncovering the real issues in employer branding. On the podcast this week I’m joined by Sara Naveda, Client Director at Papirfly, to discuss the research and its findings. In our discussion we cover four key issues: • How to align internal and external brand to greater effect • Why employer brand becomes even more important in times of commercial turmoil • How to adopt employee generated content to grow your employer brand at scale • The importance of measuring effectivene

Planning and executing a social media strategy for recruiting and employer branding is never a straight forward undertaking. However, doing this within a global organization can be particularly problematic. Complex stakeholder relationships with PR, marketing and comms are a key issues as is getting the right segmentation of channels across geographies and audiences. Local versus Global is a debate I’m often asked my opinion on. My guest this week is Charu Malhotra. Charu has a wealth of experience working as an interim within a range of global organizations and has some unique expertise in building global social recruiting strategies. She is currently leading EVP and Employer Branding projects at Ferrero. In the interview we discuss:     •    The specific challenges social media presents for complex global organizations     •    Transparency and fishing where the fish are     •    Content types     •    Alignment, stakeholder relations and project management     •    Global versus Local     •    The

Over the past five years there has been an investment boom in technology products aimed at the talent acquisition market. The industry is getting more complex by the day and making sense of it is a constant challenge for corporate recruiting leaders. My guest in this episode is Jon Kestenbaum Executive Director at New York based think tank and incubator Talent Tech Labs. Talent Tech Labs have done a huge amount of work to map out and understand this technology market and has developed a taxonomy that identifies 27 different categories of product in the sourcing to onboarding journey.  In the interview we discuss:     •    How to make sense of the complex market by cutting through the marketing spin     •    Disruptive solutions versus point solutions     •    The importance of analytics     •    The Five key trends of 2106     •    Levels of innovation and tech adoption being seen among corporate employers and staffing companies. Jon also tells us what has surprised him most during his two years at Ta

I realized recently that in the previous 60 episodes of this podcast we’ve had hardly any discussion about Applicant Tracking Systems.  I’m very keen to rectify this. ATS systems are crucial to so many employers as a key part of the recruiting process. Many people feel that they have not kept pace with the changing nature of recruiting and the expectations of their users. This is certainly true of some systems but there have been some recent innovations in the ATS space that I wanted to get some opinion on. My guest this week is Jess Hayes, Talent Manager and HR Lead for Lost My Name.  Jess has worked with a number of different types of ATS during her career and I wanted to get her views on the changes in the space. In the interview we discuss:     •    How the purpose of an ATS has developed over the last few years     •    Expectations of the ATS and why software should adapt as user requirements develop     •    The responsibility of the recruiter     •    Limiting the administrative burden so recrui

Recognising and addressing unconscious bias in the recruitment process is one of the biggest issues HR and Recruiting professionals face.  Dealing with it can be difficult, especially in large organisations, but it certainly not something that is impossible. My guest on the podcast this week is Jon Hull Group Head of Resourcing at Carillion. Carillion have been running diversity and inclusion initiatives that addresses issues with unconscious bias head on and they have had some seriously impressive results. In the interview we discuss:     •    How neuroscience helped Carillion make sense of their problem     •    Why bottom up is better than top down     •    Diversity and Inclusion as innovation     •    Unconscious bias in recruitment marketing and employer branding     •    How HR started to think differently about themselves Jon also talks through the results Carillion have seen from these initiatives and gives his advice to employers who are looking at how to deal with similar issues. This we

We live in interesting times. Technology is evolving constantly around us and unsurprisingly everyone’s attention is often focused on what will be the next disruptive game changer for the recruitment industry. What we don’t pay enough attention to though is the experiences and frustrations of candidate who have to try and stand out in a noisy world using the tools that are completely outmoded in other aspects of life but jealously held onto by the recruitment industry. A shiny new CRM or a brilliant assessment algorithm may make recruiters’ lives easier but they don’t really make the experience of recruitment very different for the candidate when everything still hangs round them having to use a word document CV or static LinkedIn profile to get the recruiter’s attention in the first place. The situation is untenable in the long term and it shouldn’t come as a shock that eventually the jobseekers were going to take things into their own hands. My guest on this week’s episode is Esther Crawford creator of a

Ep 58: How To Nurture Passive Talent One of the biggest issues I’m seeing Resourcing leaders face this year is the challenge of introducing digital marketing methodologies and behaviours into their strategies. There are some great tech tools out there if they are not utilized in the right way then failure is assured, especially when working with passive talent. There are a number of organizations who are adapting brilliantly to the new recruiting reality and using digital marketing tools extremely effectively to help them achieve their resourcing objectives. One such company is Salesforce and my guest this week is Jennifer Johnston who is their Head of Global Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing. In the interview we discuss:     •    The challenges of recruiting 7000 people a year in the toughest geographies and talent segments     •    The importance of reputation and how to actively manage it     •    How to qualify talent pipelines to avoid wasting people’s time     •    Nurturing passive can

We live in an age of digital noise and distraction. How can you be sure you are getting the attention necessary to persuade the right people to join your company? Over the last few weeks I’ve been doing a number of presentations and webinars on the concept of “Talent Attention” as I’m finding it is becoming more and more of an issue for employers all over the world. This week’s episode is a recording of a webinar I did last week and in the presentation I talk about:     •    The Talent Attention problem and why it is getting worse     •    Why it is easy to blame the tools but actually we need to think about Talent Acquisition in a different way     •    A metaphor to illustrate what recruiters often get wrong when attempting to get the attention of potential hires     •    The complexity problem     •    A simple model that can help you radically improve your strategy and ensure you get the attention of the right talent I hope you enjoy this departure from the normal podcast style, next week’s episode

Using Employee generated content for employer brand communication is a topic we’ve covered a couple of times on the podcast now. In this episode I want to take things to the next level and talk about using employees as brand ambassadors to strategically distribute and amplify brand content as a way of reaching targeted networks of talent. I’ve always considered this to be the key to social recruiting success and my guest this week, Craig Fisher the Head of Employer Branding at CA Technologies, is certainly someone who shares this view. I’ve known Craig for a long time now and he has always been a practitioner who operates at the cutting edge of social media, experimenting with different tools and techniques to get tangible recruiting results. In the interview we discuss:     •    Why EVP should be “inside out” with the employees themselves communicating and carrying the brand     •    Using employee advocacy platform technologies     •    The 5-1 “give to ask” ratio and why it is vital to success     • 

In my work as a consultant, I’m constantly seeing examples of employers whose recruitment marketing and employer brand activity is ineffectual because they are lacking content from their employees that illustrates what working for them is really like. Generating, managing and optimizing this kind of content is hard and can potentially take up huge amounts of resource. Unsurprisingly then we are now seeing a growing number technology companies providing products and services to help employer brand managers in this area. My guest on this episode of the podcast is Phil Strazzulla the Founder and CEO of LifeGuides, a company that is helping employers capture and tell their employees stories. In the interview we discuss:     •    The advantages of using “Employee Authored Content”     •    Some of the reasons employers struggle in this area     •    What makes great employee content and the vital importance of authenticity     •    The problem with “Frankenstein” job descriptions     •    How data insights

Predicting the future of work is not an exact science, however one prediction that most people seem to agree with is that there will be a significant rise in freelance and contract working. This trend is already here; recent years have seen both a significant rise in the contingent workforce and the advert of talent marketplaces shaping the “gig economy”. My guest this week is Connor Heaney, Managing Director of CXC Corporate Services. I first met Connor last year when I spoke at CXC’s future of work summit in Dublin. Since then Connor has been running future of work think tanks all over the world and has some important perspectives on how companies should be preparing themselves for the future of work. In the interview with discuss:     •    The positives and negatives of the rise of the gig economy     •    The lack of government readiness to understand the changes and give the new workforce the support they need     •    Predicted growth rates for the contingent workforce and its implications for trad

People Analytics is one of the hottest topics there is in HR at the moment. A data revolution is starting to make companies radically rethink their approaches to attracting, retaining and developing talent. Technology is transforming the kind of qualitative research that underpins employer branding and employee engagement strategies, providing the ability to generate instant insights that would have previously taken months of work to produce. My guest this week is Andrew Marritt from Organization View. Andrew is a pioneer in the field of text analytics for HR and has some fascinating insights into the potential for data in the talent space.     •    In the interview we discuss:     •    The relevance of Big Data for HR     •    The power of using technology to bring meaning to the free text data found in performance reviews and employee surveys on a massive scale     •    How free text analytics can help to develop subtle differences in employer brand messaging to give maximum appeal across multiple tar

The popularity of moving recruitment in house continues to grow and is now something that is happening across all types of businesses whether they are large corporates, SMEs or high growth start ups. Setting up a in house recruitment function can be a learning experience both for the company and for the recruiters involved as the reality is often much more complex than the theory. My guest this week is Nick Yockney Head of People for Property Partner, a property crowdfunding platform. Nick has set up two new in house recruiting functions since making the transition from agency recruiter to in house recruiter and is very open and honest about his experiences. In the interview we discuss:     •    The Difficulties for recruiters when moving from agency to in house     •    The motivations businesses might have for bringing recruitment in house     •    The importance of understand the rhythm of the business and the value an in house function can add if it does this     •    The dangers of over-promising

Gartner Research predicts that by 2020 75% of business will be a digital business or preparing to become one. Digital Transformation is the number one priority for many CEOs and I think it is crucial that HR and Recruiting positions themselves to be key drivers in this business revolution. The companies who can attract and retain the right talent at the right time in the right way are going to be the ones who win the raceGovernments tend to have terrible track records when it comes to technology and the UK government is no exception. However in recent years The Government Digital Service has managed to break the mould and make some fantastic progress with the digital transformation of many core UK Government services. My guest this week is Zeshaan Shamsi who is now Head of Talent Acquisition at background check company Onfido. Previous to this he was Head of Recruitment for the Government Digital Service and his experience there is the main focus of our conversation.In the interview we discuss:    •    The ba

Employer Branding continues to be as hot a topic as ever and we’ve covered it from a few angles different angles on previous podcasts. One aspect I’ve been doing a lot of research into this year is how large companies deal with the issue of EVP and employer brand consistency across different countries and different job types. My guest this week is John Wilson the CEO and Founder of RPO WilsonHCG.  WilsonHCG have offices all over the world and work with many clients on a global basis.In the interview we discuss:    •    How companies can make their employer brands globally consistently but also make sure that they resonate locally    •    Which companies do this well    •    Dealing with social media in multiple languages    •    The difference between C-Suite perceptions and EVP reality    •    The role of employee generated content in employer brand engagement    •    The global impact of employee review sitesJohn also gives us his thoughts about the future and the commercial implications of a poor employer

When industry commentators write and speak about talent acquisition, there is a tendency towards generalized truisms that seemingly apply to all employers. The actual truth is much more nuanced and there are distinct differences in the reality of talent acquisition both between industries and between SMEs and large enterprises.My guest for this episode is David Mason. David has worked at a senior level driving talent acquisition innovation at a number of very large corporates in some progressive industry sectors.In the interview we discuss:    •    Three key things that have changed in Talent Acquisition over the last five years    •    Which industries are driving innovation and why    •    The problems large corporates have with embracing new technology    •    Where Talent Acquisition leaders should focus in order to drive changeDavid also gives us his views on the future and the role he sees being played by “Applied Artificial Intelligence” in recruiting.Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes

Sometimes if you want to be innovative you need to challenge the status quo by taking the tried and tested ways of working and turning them on their head. Often you’ll find they are tried and tested for a reason but sometimes subverting the norm will bring results that make everyone think differently.On the show last year I talked to Neil Morrison the Group HRD of Penguin Random House about an experimental entry level recruitment programme his team were running know as The Scheme. One year on The Scheme has been so successful Penguin Random House are running it again and I was keen to catch up with Neil to find out what they had learned.In the interview we discuss:    •    What it is like to run a recruitment process with no CVs or insight into the background of the candidates    •    Why Penguin Random House have now dropped the requirement to have a degree from all of their roles    •    Things they learned from the Scheme last year and what they are doing differently in 2016     •    How they are using Sna

This week sees the return of one most popular guests I’ve had in the 47 episode history of The Recruiting Future Podcast.Matt Buckland joined me for Episode 11 of the show last year when he was working for Forward Partners and shared his thoughts recruiting tech talent. It’s almost a year on and Matt is now Head of Talent and Fashion Tech company Lyst. He also recently appeared as the resident recruitment expert on  “Who’s The Boss” the BBC TV series which experimented with the concept of “collaborative hiring” In the interview we discuss:    •    The likely future of recruitment    •    The advantages and pitfalls of collaborative hiring    •    Why recruitment technology can be a bad thing    •    Snapchat and its relevance to recruiting    •    The role of LinkedIn and Job Boards    •    Recruiters v MarketeersMatt also shares what he considers to be the most important skills a good in house recruiter needs and tells us about the book he is currently reading….Links to things we talk about:Matt’s previous