Jerome Ternynck and Tracey Allison join Lorne Epstein on his eponymous podcast for a frank discussion on the challenges of today’s talent economy.
“The war for talent is over and the candidates have won,” says Jerome Ternynck, CEO and founder of SmartRecruiters, as he sits down with Tracey Allison, Director of Global Talent at Avery Dennison, on the latest episode of the Lorne Epstein “How To Capture Talent In Today’s Candidate-driven Market”, recorded at Unleash Amsterdam 2018. Far from taken aback, Lorne and Tracey laugh in agreement.
“[Recruitment] today is about how you attract talent to your organization,” says Tracey. “You are marketing candidates and bringing talent in, rather than, ‘I have a job – who wants to apply?”
During the next hour, the three experts discuss the needs of today’s talent practitioners from both a strategic and technological perspective, with stories of personal challenges they’ve faced in the field, from diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives to getting a seat at the table. Listen now for the full scoop and check out the top 5 takeaways below.
1. HR technology is a must.
“Why does everyone have great tech except recruiters?” Jerome asks.”Sales, Accounting, and Marketing software are all par for the course, yet people balk at allocating budget for Recruiting systems. Recruiting is a digital function now, and they need the right tools to be successful.”
2.Don’t force candidates to fit your mold.
“It’s about engaging the right way,” says Tracey. “We need to stop ticking boxes and go after talent. Right now, we should be driven more by the individual candidate and how they can be successful – which will really be your department’s ROI – versus just filling a job.”
3. Engage hiring managers, they are your friends.
“The relationship between recruiters and hiring managers is, in many ways, a broken one,” says Jerome. “It doesn’t get supported through technology, which should be the enabler. At the end of the day, hiring managers and recruiters both want to find great people. If you put them together in one place where they can actually work together then suddenly you don’t have the dynamic where hiring managers are the customers and recruiters are the service center. Instead, it’s a shoulder-to-shoulder partnership where recruiters feed the pipe and hiring managers the deal.”
4. Sell a lifestyle.
“In a candidate-driven marketplace, getting the message of what life is actually like at a particular organization is extremely important,” says Tracey. “More and more, the lines between work and life are blurred, and it’s all about the experience.”
5. D&I every step of the way.
“First, you have to go the extra mile to source candidates from underrepresented groups,” says Jerome. “And it’s not good enough to do a regular sourcing effort, and then say ‘oh well, only white guys applied, not our fault’. You have to actively go and source people that are underrepresented. Diversity is critical to business success in every organization. Second, you gotta make sure that once you have that diverse talent coming in, that they’re not being discriminated against. Which, in recruiting, means having some objective criteria to rate these candidates throughout the interview process.”
Learn more about creating an interview process that discourages bias in the full episode, alongside other awesome learnings including examples from Tracey on how TA can be a strategic partner for business success.
