Ten Things I Learned Talking Talent and Recruitment at TREC2015

Whenever you go to recruitment conferences - especially in the 'mature' UK talent market, there is an element of trepidation about what you are going to hear. Will it be relevant, interesting and (importantly) will it be an event you get enough value out of to want to pay to go again? Last week it was the turn of TREC2015 (Talent, Recruitment & Employment Conference 2015) in London to test these questions. 

 

 

It started out well with a format that seemed conducive to discussion and learning - they flipped the normal conference (presentations, powerpoints and prezzies) on its head with panel discussions and round table discussions, with each being facilitated by talent and recruitment leaders. This was topped and tailed with an opening and closing keynote. From my perspective this looked promising from the start - but would it deliver?

 

The MC for the day, Neil Morrison gave us a quick kick in the shins to get us started: “Retaining talent is just as hard as talent acquisition. Companies are kidding themselves in the UK - they don’t do recruitment well!” Not only did he hold his guilty hand up but also I think there were many nodding in agreement with Neil in the audience. So we were off and running!

 

The day was full of great content and discussion

The day was full of great content and discussion – here are ten things that I learned while talking talent and recruitment at TREC2015:

1. People that have left your organisation provide the most honest feedback about your company and your employer brand, so try your best to speak to them.

Colm Coffey (UK People Director @ KPMG) said that as part of a company-wide restructure, they sought the opinions of ex-employees - and those that had left between 6-9 months ago were the most honest with their feedback. Hardly surprising (they had nothing to lose), but brave of KPMG to seek them out and ask!

They found that there was a gap between the aspirations of their employees verses the actual experiences of people working at KPMG. Too many of KPMG’s employer branding initiatives had turned into ambitious marketing campaigns rather than getting their employees to explain what it was really like to work there. [Tip: Workforce aspirations are great but you need to be realistic in setting them.]

Julie Welch (HRD @ Wincanton) added to this by stressing that when collecting the data, collect and use it all – including the ‘bad’ feedback. You need to use all the available data because developing your employer brand is not just a project - it is on-going, and needs to be aligned to your company’s business objectives and values.

2. The ATS conversation will just not go away.

A good mobile experience for applicants is vital

One of the round tables I sat on was focused on innovative recruitment technologies. However, the conversation immediately funnelled back to ATS (applicant tracking systems) platforms and their inability to solve the needs of their clients. And we are not talking about advanced features here, but basics like workflow, filtering, clunky process, poor candidate experience etc. The one thing everyone did agree with (that is still not provided by many of the main ATS providers) is that a good mobile experience for applicants is vital. Wilson Cochrane (CEO @ BigScreen) rightly covered off the need to a return to focusing on personalisation and relationship building with applicants, but there was little evidence of this happening in our discussion.

3. Building a flexible workforce is not as easy as it sounds.

Unconscious bias from line managers and senior managers is having a detrimental effect on companies trying to implement flexible working practices. Inferred perception verses the actual reality is causing issues around recruiting and retention. Johnny Campbell (CEO @ Social Talent) explained further; a line manager that has employees sitting in front of them in their offices can see and monitor what they are doing. The same line manager cannot ‘see’ what their remote workers are doing or how hard they are working. They then develop unconscious bias to the people they can see instead of the ones they can’t. Instead of measuring their outputs, as they should, they remained focused on their inputs.

4. Line managers are critical to your success.

This message was a consistent theme throughout the day. The quality of your line managers affects the quality of your recruitment, your retention levels and the continued success of your employer brand.

 How many great hiring managers have you worked with in your career?

Mel Hayes (Head of OD and Resourcing @ Compass) went a stage further and said HR’s biggest challenge IS the hiring managers themselves. I think the best way of demonstrating this is to reverse this around a little. How many great hiring managers have you worked with in your career? You know, the ones that interview well, sell your company to candidates in the right way, provide feedback, support you in your challenges, are responsive to new ideas etc. There you go, you have just answered the question yourself – not many!

The message was clear and Peter Cheese (CEO @ CIPD) summed it up so well – “the line manager is important - in fact they are critical to your success. You need to train them, develop them and change their behaviours. Empower them and trust them.”

5. Talent pipelining and talent pooling is more talk than action.

I am not sure this will surprise many of you, but it was very clear both from listening to the panel discuss it and talking to many of the attendees, talent pipelining and pooling are like the Bermuda Triangle – everyone talks about them but in practice they don’t really exist!

Everyone acknowledged that it is a hard thing for companies to do – keeping talent warm for the moment when the business wants to hire them. Mark Braund (CEO @ Interquest Group) has now built a team of eight people whose sole role is to engage potential talent using interesting and relevant content, and keep them ‘warm’ for when they are needed. This is working very well for his company.

6. Measure outputs not inputs to really gauge employee success.

Talent is becoming more diverse, and the way people worked in the past is no real indicator to how they will do so in the future

I am an advocate for this, and it plays right into the whole flexible workforce conversation. Does it really matter what hours employees work, where they work or what they wear while they are doing it, if they deliver the required outputs of their job? Charlotte Sweeney rightly highlighted that talent is becoming more diverse, and the way people worked in the past is no real indicator to how they will do so in the future. As Peter Cheese said (about line managers), “train them, develop them and change their behaviours” and “get them to focus on employee outcomes not their inputs.”

7. Giving candidate feedback is important in improving candidate experience.

Only 3 per cent of employers think that giving feedback is the most important improvement they could make. This came from the new research on candidate experience published by the REC. Speakers agreed that they don’t respond to every candidate rejected in their recruitment processes. That is, aside from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, where Donna Miller their HR Director, claimed that they personally respond to over 30,000 declined candidates every year BY PHONE!

Kevin Green (CEO @ REC) took us through some headlines from the new report, The candidate strikes back:

 

While these are not overly surprising, they are disappointing. We as an industry have to improve!

8. 46 per cent of recruiters spend most of their time sourcing on LinkedIn.

This was a stat revealed by Johnny Campbell from his upcoming research report based on 3,000 recruiters. Worryingly it was 7x more than another recruiting sourcing channel!

Come on recruiters, I have told you before not all the target talent you need is on LinkedIn!

9. HR needs to burn their policies!

Peter Cheese finished the conference with a short and powerful message to the HR community – you need to change! Stop living with and accepting all the policies you have created and burn them! Remove them from the business – there are far too many of them and they are too regimental and restrictive. There are three changes that Peter talked through:

• Understand the contextual trends better within your company (and industry). Focus on building a diverse and flexible workforce for the future.
• Move to strategic talent sourcing and get a seat at the C-table.
• Sort your metrics out – you need to get better at measuring your value in the enterprise. Provide stats around the metrics the business want to see, not the ones HR want to give.

10. The best quote I have heard from a long time.

HR brings too much PowerPoint and not enough Excel to the table

The quote was from Peter Cheese at the end of the day, and it made everyone laugh (nervously!): “HR brings too much Powerpoint and not enough Excel to the table.”

So I will now answer my own question at the beginning of the post: did I get enough value out of attending TREC2015 to want to pay to go again next year?

Absolutely – it was excellent and it should be on your agenda for next year.

About the author: Andy Headworth is the author of the No.1 Best Seller on Amazon - Social Media Recruitment. – How to integrate social media into recruitment strategy. He is the founder of Sirona Consulting, a specialist company that works with companies to help them improve their recruitment strategies, recruitment processes, candidate attraction, employer branding and recruitment content marketing strategy. He has been voted UK Recruitment Blog Of the Year (http://sironaconsulting.com/blog) for the last two years, by UK Recruiter and was named by The Huffington Post in 'Top 100 Most Social HR Leaders on Twitter' and '50 Most Popular Recruiting Influencers on Twitter' by ERE.