Category: Talent Advisory

Learning and Development Programmes for Long-Term Retention & Employee Satisfaction

Posted on by jpatel

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a bright spotlight on company values and culture, separating employers who truly live up to their promises from those who rarely take action where it matters. And, employees are paying attention – as well as growing more critical of organisations that they’re considering working for.

Meanwhile, according to the latest Engagement and Retention Report from Achievers Workforce Institute, 52% of currently employed respondents said they would hunt for a job in 2021 – up from 35% in 2020. But, why are more than half of employees looking for a new job this year? The short answer: They’re disengaged. Whether from lack of recognition; poor diversity and inclusion practices; remote work burnout; or a feeling of disconnectedness, 71% more employees are disengaged in 2021 than 2020.

In fact, lack of career growth is the number one factor holding employees back from feeling engaged at work – making it a key area of opportunity for employers looking to remain competitive. Plus, as organisations are in the midst of the Great Rehire, talent acquisition teams face the challenge of filling a number of unexpected open roles – and high turnover exacerbates the issue. As such, maintaining a strong retention strategy is essential to avoid overloading these already lean teams.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the benefits of learning and development programmes; explain how to create an effective strategy to promote career growth; and share examples of ways that organisations are investing in their people.

Benefits of a Learning & Development Programme

Launching an effective learning and development programme typically requires investing in resources. However, when done right, the benefits far outweigh the costs. Specifically, not only does a strong learning and development programme help employees in their career growth, but it can also improve the performance of an organisation as a whole. More precisely, some of the key benefits of implementing a learning and development programme are:

Closing Skills Gaps
A training and development programme is a great way to address skills gaps within an organisation – especially if your company had to scale down during the pandemic. But, by performing a skills audit, you’ll have a better idea of which gaps exist in your organisation – which can then help you determine the areas that make the most sense for reskilling your workforce. Then, as a result of improved efficiency and more highly skilled employees, you’ll also increase your ability to fill open roles from within.

Increasing Retention & Employee Satisfaction
Not only will employee performance improve, but retention and satisfaction will increase, as well. That’s because employees feel genuinely cared for and valued when an employer shows a willingness to invest in employee growth and development. And, with an improved set of skills and knowledge, employees will be more likely to stick around at a company that believes in them and wants to see them succeed. This employer loyalty will then increase retention and decrease turnover rates.

Staying Competitive & Innovative
Consistent investment in your employees’ growth and development will also help keep their thinking fresh and future-focused, thereby resulting in an overall culture of innovation at your organisation. Plus, top talent will also be more inclined to join an organisation with the perk of a strong learning and development programme, as well as the opportunity to grow in a new role.

Improving Employer Brand
Organisations with effective development programmes can also leverage them as a selling point to attract prospective candidates. Additionally, current employees will be more likely to leave positive reviews on employer review sites and spread the word within their networks that your organisation truly cares about employee career growth.

Saving Money
As skills gaps close and retention is improved, your organisation will also save money on sourcing and recruiting external candidates. Plus, a culture of innovation and employee satisfaction will keep your employer brand strong, as well, which has a significant effect on candidate attraction spend.

How to Create an Effective Learning & Development Programme

Before you jump in to implementing a robust learning and development programme, it’s important to start by planning. Below is an overview of the key items to consider:

Establish Goals
The first step in planning for a learning and development programme is to establish the goals of the programme. This step is crucial because you’ll refer back to these goals as you make decisions along the way. In particular, ask yourself:

  • What are the overall business goals that our organisation is trying to achieve?
  • How will the learning and development programme align with our overall organisational goals?
  • What are the necessary steps needed to achieve these goals?

Identify Competencies
Competencies are a particular set of abilities, skills, and knowledge that affect an organisation’s success and set it apart from competitors. Some examples of business competencies include:

  • Business acumen
  • Strategic agility
  • Market knowledge
  • Communication
  • Decision-making
  • Change leadership
  • Driving results
  • Collaboration and influence

After determining the key competencies your organisation wants to foster in alignment with your goals, you’ll be able to better curate learning tracks to help instill these competencies into your employees.

Determine Strategy
There are a variety of types of learning and development programmmes, so choose the one that makes the most sense for your organisation. Your selection will depend on whether you want to teach the same skills to a large group of people at once, help employees improve on-the-job performance, or open training to everyone on their own schedule. Common types include:

  • Classroom/workshop style
  • Instructor-led training (ILT)
  • In-house/outsourced learning sessions
  • Interactive
  • On-the-job
  • Skills-based
  • Online

Incorporate Mentorship

A formal mentoring and coaching component can also complement your learning and development programme. Specifically, pairing compatible employees with one another encourages teams to build relationships and learn from each other. To that end, it’s important to match mentees with mentors whose areas of expertise match the former’s desired area of growth to ensure that the relationship is mutually beneficial. As a result, less-experienced employees can be challenged and learn, while more seasoned employees can grow from the experience as a leader and mentor.

Encourage Engagement
In order to ensure the longevity of your learning and development programme, it’s essential to foster strong engagement. In particular, encourage managers to suggest training for employees and create a recognition system for employees who participate in trainings. Employees can also share completion certificates and comments about different trainings internally on platforms like Slack and Yammer. This strong sense of engagement will then encourage others to participate and, ultimately, lead to long-term success with your programme.

Measure Results
Finally, despite the fact that it’s often overlooked, it’s extremely important to establish a way to measure the effectiveness of the learning and development programme once it has gained some traction. First, determine whether those initial goals are being worked toward and met. If they’re not, identify gaps where you may need to adjust strategy by considering the following questions:

  • Is employee productivity improving?
  • Are managers noticing improved employee engagement and satisfaction?
  • Are there any reductions in turnover time?
  • Are employees feeling more successful?
  • Has your employer brand presence improved externally?
  • Are you able to quantify results based on your overall goals?

Real Examples of How to Invest in Your People

The thought of creating a learning and development programme from scratch may seem daunting, but it can be helpful to know that many organisations have found success through unique approaches to investing in their people. Here are some of the organisations leading the way in this important commitment to developing people:

Yelp
Yelp’s transparent, supportive culture pushes its people to excel. The user-review company invests in: career development opportunities for its employees; constant constructive feedback; goal-focused, one-on-one sit-downs; team meetings; and thank you shout-outs for a job well done. All of these strategies reinforce each employee’s achievements, ambitions and unique strengths.

Dun & Bradstreet
Dun & Bradstreet – a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics – supports top-down learning, in which team members are welcome to jump on their managers’ calls. This enables them to learn about taking on more responsibility and also encourages them to pursue their own learning – whether by attending conferences or taking courses online.

WEX Inc.
At WEX, every day is an opportunity for employees to ask if there is a better way – and to act on promising ideas. Through mentorship, conferences and tuition reimbursement, there’s always room to keep climbing the ladder at this financial technology company.

Amazon
Amazon committed $700 million to retrain 100,000 workers by 2025, thereby allowing employees of the online retailer and technology giant to move into more highly skilled jobs within the company or find new careers outside of Amazon. In addition, Amazon’s Machine Learning University initiative helps workers who already have a background in technology and coding to gain skills in machine learning.

Verizon Communications Inc.
After closing most of its retail stores during the pandemic, Verizon retrained 20,000 employees to handle new jobs, which ranged from sales to customer service. This year, the American multinational telecommunications conglomerate plans to teach 100,000 employees new skills to prepare them for the demands of 5G, the next-generation wireless standard. Additionally, Verizon is partnering with Generation USA to help train 500,000 workers throughout the next decade for jobs of the future in communities across the country.

Levi Strauss & Co.
This year, Levi’s launched its Machine Learning Bootcamp, an immersive training in coding, machine learning and agile ways of working that are uniquely designed for employees of the American clothing company. Participants will master an in-demand skillset and focus on learning full-time for two months – all paid for and encouraged by leadership.

Walmart
Walmart partners with Guild Education to offer employees a way to earn a high school or college degree for $1 per day. Employees of the American multinational retail corporation also get personalised coaching support from day one all the way through graduation.

PeopleScout
At PeopleScout, we invest in our people through two programmes. First, our Global Mentorship Programme supports and enriches the professional development of PeopleScout employees. Similarly, our engagement with LinkedIn Learning also allows employees to explore professional interests and develop skills both professionally and personally. And, finally, our global ideation platform encourages employees to submit their innovative ideas for improving our business – giving them direct opportunities to work with leadership to develop ideas into tangible solutions.

Developing the Next Generation of Talent

As a talent leader, you understand the importance of a total talent mix, which means leveraging both internal and external recruitment strategies. And, with higher turnover forecasted as we move out of the pandemic, there’s no better time than now to start investing in your existing workforce. Plus, by constantly reskilling and upskilling your current team through a strong learning and development programme, you’ll not only attract top talent externally, but you’ll also have loyal and dedicated employees who believe in your business and are prepared for the future of work – whatever challenges it may bring.

Employer Brand – Helping the Right Talent Choose You

Posted on by akessler

Employer Brand – Helping the Right Talent Choose You

Engaging and retaining your best performers has become increasingly difficult due to the normalisation of shorter tenures. Now more than ever, a strong employer brand is critical to attracting top candidates, keeping your employees engaged, and retaining your talent for the long term.

In this ebook, Employer Brand – Helping the Right Talent Choose You, we explore how organisations can build and maintain a strong employer brand to combat talent risk. You’ll learn:

  • What goes into a cohesive employer brand and how it can help attract top talent
  • How your organisation should be managing and caring for your employer brand
  • How your employer brand can impact cost-per-hire, recruiter efficiency, and employee advocacy
  • How to measure success from your employer brand efforts

 

Progress in Action: Moving Toward a Globally Diverse and Inclusive Workplace

Posted on by akessler

Progress in Action: Moving Toward a Globally Diverse and Inclusive Workplace

Improving organisational diversity is a honourable pursuit for employers across all industries and should be a consistent point of focus for forward-thinking talent teams. Building productive teams from a pool of qualified job seekers irrespective of nationality, gender-identity, ethnicity, religious background and sexual orientation is essential to creating a workplace that reflects the communities that it serves.

So, how can you help your organisation better connect with, source, engage and recruit a more diverse and inclusive workforce? In this ebook, we examine how your organisation can update your DE&I programme with modern diversity strategies.

In this ebook you will learn:

  • How to accurately measure your DE&I programme’s progress and goals

  • How to source candidates from underrepresented groups

  • Real-world DE&I success stories and more

Recruitment Marketing: How to Stand Apart in the Battle for Great Talent

Posted on by akessler

Recruitment Marketing: How to Stand Apart in the Battle for Great Talent

In today’s candidate-driven talent market, job seekers are more discerning and judicious in selecting a potential employer. To gain their trust and inspire them to choose you over your competitors, you need to ensure that your recruitment and marketing efforts are aligned.

What’s more, the recruitment marketing ecosystem is evolving at an accelerated pace. Tactics that worked in years past may no longer move the needle with candidates. So, how can employers better attract, engage, entice and hire top talent? In this ebook, Recruitment Marketing: How to Stand Apart in the Battle for Great Talent, we explore how employers can build a world-class recruitment marketing program.

In this ebook you will learn:

  • Establishing your brand narrative as a north star
  • Building authenticity and trust with your employees’ voice
  • Connect to talent with data-driven insights
  • Differentiating your brand through human experience
  • And more!

Candidate Assessment: Bringing in Better with Passion, Purpose and Mindset

Posted on by akessler

Candidate Assessment: Bringing in Better with Passion, Purpose and Mindset

Most employers are still using legacy assessment processes that are ineffective in today’s competitive recruitment landscape. With the cost of one bad hire reaching as high as $50,000, it’s imperative that organisations ensure they’ve assessed candidates’ current skills, future potential and cultural fit.

So, how can you adjust your assessment process to bring in talent that will support their business now and into the future? In this book, Candidate Assessment: Bringing in Better with Passion, Purpose and Mindset, we explore how employers can rethink their assessments to hire talent that will thrive.

In this ebook you will learn:

  • Why assessing only for knowledge and skills puts you at risk
  • How investing in technology helped one retailer modernise their assessments and improve the candidate experience
  • How to customise your assessments to find the right passion, purpose and mindset

Is Your Global Talent Acquisition Strategy Fit for the New World of Work?

Posted on by akessler

In an unprecedented development, the number of open positions now exceeds the number of people looking for work in many parts of the world. In the U.S., job openings numbered at over 11 million in February 2022—five million more vacancies than available workers. It’s a similar situation in the UK, with vacancies outnumbering unemployed people for the first time ever. In the face of these labour shortages, it’s imperative for employers to tap into new talent pools to fill their vacancies and remain competitive.

As employees seek greater workplace flexibility and opportunities to work from home are in greater demand, organisations can now access a new talent pool. Geographic borders are blurred, and many organisations are expanding their recruitment reach by engaging with globally dispersed talent. Enterprises still using a siloed, regional approach to talent acquisition will struggle to reach their recruitment goals in today’s talent landscape. A global talent acquisition strategy will not only help you to compete locally but also win to top talent on a global scale.

Embracing Global Workforce Planning as a Talent Acquisition Strategy

In the U.S., 60% of employees say they enjoy working remotely. In fact, between January 2020 and March 2022, U.S. job postings for remote work went up 319%, with searches exceeding that 458%. Meanwhile, in the UK, remote job postings have increased by 329%, whilst the number of searches has skyrocketed by 790%. So clearly, candidates seeking remote work outweigh the remote opportunities offered.

Some enterprises have been embracing a borderless workforce for many years. Yet, many are still resisting remote employees even though it offers them a number of opportunities, including expanding access to talent, boosting diversity, and increasing brand presence in new markets.

By embracing a location-flexible approach to your workforce planning, you give yourself a greater chance of winning the competition for talent. For example, before the rise of remote work, you may have been looking for 30 roles in your offices in France and Belgium. But now, if you think about it as simply 30 French-speaking roles, you can widen your search area (i.e., French ex-pats living in the UK) and access new remote talent you didn’t consider before. In today’s ultra-competitive talent landscape, dropping geographic limits means reduced time-to-fill, cost-to-fill and ultimately, productivity loss from positions remaining open.

Plus, it can also eliminate the need to open a legal entity in new countries to remain compliant. In our French-speakers example, rather than going through the effort and expense to open an office in France or Belgium to gain French language skills, you could look for French speakers in the countries where you’re already established.

Where Talent Acquisition Strategies Fall Short

Traditionally, companies recruiting in numerous countries or continents have multiple talent acquisition teams, each focused on particular geographies. Even if an organisation is leveraging recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), this typically means using multiple vendors to achieve global coverage. For example, they may use one RPO provider in North America and a different one in Europe.

Whether through different regional talent acquisition teams or regional RPO providers, these disparate teams can lead to disjointed processes, candidate experiences and technology systems—and a lack of visibility into your recruitment program across countries or regions. As the pandemic recovery accelerates and talent continues to become more decentralised, a siloed recruitment model won’t keep up with the future of work and an increasingly geographically disparate workforce that is unattached to traditional offices.

How a Talent Acquisition Program Benefits from the Global RPO Model

According to Everest Group, a growing number of multi-national companies are embracing a global recruitment process outsourcing model, in which one RPO partner takes responsibility for fulfilling positions—or augments your in-house teams—in any country where the company has multiple openings. This helps organisations to gain better insight and control, obtain the best talent at the global level and achieve efficiencies that come from standardisation and centralisation.

Often organisations are unprepared for global recruitment. In fact, 30% of business leaders say their organisation’s top management team lack knowledge of hiring for international markets. Global RPO partners can help you create a recruitment process that is consistent but can still be flexed to account for the cultures and candidate expectations in each market. Leading RPO providers offer global delivery centres that help you expand your geographic reach and hours. Plus, some even offer proprietary technology to support virtual interviews for remote candidates.

A single global RPO partner can boost your talent acquisition strategy by:

  • Giving you more agility and allowing you to scale up or down as your hiring needs and market conditions fluctuate.
  • Expanding your hiring capacity through on- and offshore recruitment teams
  • Providing a wide variety of language capabilities
  • Helping you navigate compliance issues and cultural nuances in all countries where you’re hiring

Consolidating under a single RPO partner gives you more control over your global talent acquisition outcomes by eliminating the need for multiple relationships, raising the quality of your hires while saving time and money. The economies of scale gained through a global RPO model can help you achieve your recruitment goals in all your locations. Plus, with work-from-home models becoming more popular, a global talent acquisition program provides an opportunity for organisations to expand across borders to access new skilled talent to accelerate recovery and growth.

To learn more about how global RPO can help your organisation tap into new talent, check out our ebook, The Definitive Guide to RPO.

Employee Retention: Looking After Existing Staff Might Be An Ace Up the Sleeve

Posted on by mbinshahid

By David Macfarlane, Talent Solutions Director

In today’s highly competitive talent market, companies are employing a range of different activities to attract the best talent. Despite this, the number of unfilled vacancies remains tremendously high.

This further emphasises the need for focusing on looking after and retaining existing employees. The advantages of nurturing and retaining talent already within an organisation include a thriving and harmonious organisation and a reduction in the demands of onboarding and training new starters.

“Focusing on retention is a sensible approach to combatting the expensive competition for talent,” Writes David Macfarlane, talent solutions director at PeopleScout. “Current market conditions place power disproportionately in the hands of candidates. But deciding to move is still a gamble. For employers, a fresh look at retention could be the ace up the sleeve they’ve been searching for.” Read David’s full article in The Herald to see what can be learned from those who are managing this successfully.

Win the ‘War for Talent’ by Shifting Your Recruitment Strategy to a Candidate-First Model

Posted on by mbinshahid

By Robert Peasnell, Deputy Managing Director

We’re all aware of the recruitment challenges facing NHS Trusts across the UK with 40,000 registered nursing vacancies across the NHS in England alone. This is compounded by a sharp rise in people leaving the profession. According to the Nursing & Midwifery Council, 14,000 people left the register last year—up 27% on previous year. 

And whilst sharper marketing and investment in building a more distinctive employer brand will certainly help increase the pipeline of quality healthcare job candidates, Trusts can look closer to home for some quick wins.

Optimising Your Healthcare Recruitment Strategy

Talking to HR leaders in Trusts across the UK, it’s clear that for many, recruitment is still a linear, administrative model, designed to move applicants through a process.

Compare that to a more commercial model where recruitment business partners work closely with stakeholders to understand current and future needs. These recruiters provide an agile, high-touch approach, which keeps candidates engaged throughout the process.

At PeopleScout we are working with one Trust to understand where high impact interventions can be made which improve candidate experience and ensure a higher number of permanent hires. This has been carefully balanced against a reduction in spend to ensure zero additional cost.

Healthcare Candidate Experience Diagnostic

My final piece of advice? ‘Mystery shop’ your own recruitment process through the eyes of a candidate by applying for a job. I guarantee it’ll be an illuminating experience.

Learn more about our free Candidate Experience Diagnostic today!

Bring in Better Talent by Assessing for Passion, Purpose & Mindset

Posted on by nfuqua

The application process has changed dramatically throughout the years. Yet, some aspects seem eternal—like the fact that employers often start with lots of people at the top of their recruitment funnel and need to make sure they get the right people to the bottom.

But, the world is changing, and the pace of change is accelerating; candidates expect a simple, efficient recruitment process, and employers need workers who are digitally fluent and can adapt easily to change. Reskilling is also becoming even more important.

Plus, there’s also a strong focus on fairness, transparency and equality—with blind reviews of applications, diverse interview panels, and selection processes centred on the need to demonstrate competencies and alignment with the role.

Therefore, in order to adapt to today’s ever-changing landscape, it’s vital for employers to focus on a candidate’s potential to grow and adapt to future needs, as well as the skills and qualities they have today. To that end, throughout this article, we’ll share four steps for building a better assessment process—because not only is assessment the key to a more productive workforce, but it’s also essential to a workforce that’s more resilient and able to stand the test of time.

Step One: Shift from Experience to Potential

In a bid to prepare for the unknown, employers need to shift their focus away from candidates who have prior experience in a role and toward those who have potential. That’s because the employees who can demonstrate flexibility and resilience will be the ones who are best able to ride the wave of uncertainty.

Specifically, McKinsey & Company predicts that higher cognitive skills—such as creativity, critical thinking, decision-making and complex information processing—will be the most in-demand traits in the future. In fact, the need for these skills is predicted to grow by 19% in the United States and by 14% in Europe by 2030—up from already sizable demands. Furthermore, the same research also predicts the fastest rise ever in the need for advanced IT and programming skills, which could grow by as much as 90% by 2030.

As such, organisations that want to be at the forefront of innovation need to start thinking creatively about how they can tap into the vital perspectives of diverse minds. To lead a sector, outrun the competition, and truly innovate, employers need to stop looking for people who fit and start looking for people who add. Likewise, bias—conscious or unconscious—needs to be removed from the process. Besides, although they might seem like they come with a higher risk factor, people who do things very differently can create exceptional outcomes. So, instead of always asking, “Who can do the job?”, employers should be asking, “Who can take us further?”

Step Two: Reap the Rewards of Great vs. Good

Transforming candidate assessment and selection is an investment, but the business case has never been more important. Plus, many of the current processes and tools are subjective and don’t focus on differentiating between good and great hires. With this in mind, are organisations and hiring managers equipped with the tools they need to make the right decisions?


Additionally, better performance predictions will lead to better outcomes, and investing in the right tools can deliver multi-millions in cost benefits. In essence, an employer with a more agile and adaptable workforce is in a far better place to achieve competitive advantage—as well as the kind of employee satisfaction that attracts more high-achieving, agile candidates. In this way, quality hires have a substantial influence on business performance.

However, despite rigorous testing, chemistry sessions and multiple interviews, it can still be quite difficult for employers to understand whether an individual would actually be effective in a role—thereby making bad hires surprisingly common.

Nearly three out of four employers (74%) say they’ve hired the wrong person for a job. CareerBuilder Survey 23% of workers regret switching jobs. Go Banking Rates The average cost of a bad hire is around 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. 41% of companies estimated that bad hires cost them at least $25,000. And, for 25% of companies surveyed, that cost was at least $50,000. The American Management Association says that, for some roles, the cost of a bad hire could be as much as 10 times an employee’s annual salary.

Conversely, getting great people—the people who go above and beyond the role criteria—is really good news because it has a profound effect on quality of output, which is truly beneficial to the business. What’s more, while great employees are valuable in and of themselves, they also drive wider team performance, inspire others and make it easier to recruit other great people.

Of more than 600,000 researchers, entertainers, politicians and athletes, high performers were 400% more productive than average ones. And, in highly complex occupations—such as software development—high performers were found to be an astounding 800% more productive. Report by McKinsey High potential (HIPO) employees bring 91% more value to the organization than non-HIPOs and give 21% more effort than their peers. Gartner research

Step Three: Build Better by Thinking Bigger

So, if we’re going to build a better and fairer candidate assessment process, we need to find a way to:

  1. Measure potential, rather than experience, because we don’t know what the future looks like.
  2. Identify the behaviours that are required to separate those who will actually be successful from those who present well during an interview.
  3. Distinguish between good candidates who meet the criteria and great candidates who will take an organisation further.
  4. Give candidates a clear and authentic picture of the organisation and the role so that they can self-select out of the process if the opportunity isn’t right for them.
  5. Include candidates who might have non-traditional experiences or career paths and assess them equally.
  6. Assess candidates fairly and without subjectivity or bias.

Finally, employers need to be able to identify and select candidates who are motivated and energised to be productive at work. And, the way that we do all of these things is by assessing for passion, purpose and mindset.

Assessing Passion, Purpose & Mindset

Traditional assessment processes assess for capability, behaviour and results. These terms are defined as:

Capability: A candidate’s core intellectual ability and capacity. Behavior:A candidate’s past behavior and personality-based behavioral preferences, which work relatively well to predict performance. Results:What a candidate has already achieved in terms of the knowledge, skills and experience that are required to deliver in a role.

Then, when these aspects are combined with new measurements that focus on purpose, passion and mindset, we can better predict the success of candidates and determine the candidates who are more engaged and likely to be a better hire for employers.

Let’s dig into those new descriptors and what they mean.

Purpose

Purpose is a candidate’s alignment with and willingness to contribute to the vision and values of an organisation. For example, one study reported by McKinsey found that, out of 100 variables, employees reported that seeing purpose and value in their work was their most motivating factor—even more so than compensation. Notably, this is especially important for younger workers.

Clearly, ensuring that applicants understand the organisation’s purpose and consider how aligned they are with that throughout the assessment process engenders a sense of belonging and partnership that underlies both great performance and job satisfaction.

In this way, assessment tools can be built around the organisation’s vision and values so applicants have a chance to form an appreciation of them from their earliest contact with the organisation. Then, if they don’t share the same values, they can choose another path. However, applicants who see an affinity with their own values will begin to feel the engagement and inspiration that will drive job success and satisfaction—even before they’re hired.

Passion

Passion is a candidate’s enthusiasm, enjoyment and commitment to mastering the requirements of a role. When an employee is passionate about a role, they’re engaged. Even so, most employers don’t have a method to effectively understand what a candidate is passionate about.

For this reason, during the assessment stage, employers need to find ways to reveal an applicant’s natural passions—which are often in the form of strengths—and find out if these are aligned with the role requirements. Then, they’ll be able to determine whether the candidate is likely to be a high performer who will want to commit the effort needed to succeed in all aspects of the job. Interviews, assessment centre exercises, and immersive online assessments are excellent vehicles for exploring and observing applicants’ innate strengths in relation to the role. Similarly, self-evaluation tools can also be used to help applicants consider their own strengths and whether the role will offer sufficient opportunity to use and demonstrate them.

Mindset

Mindset is a candidate’s belief about themselves and their basic qualities, although these beliefs are rarely measured by employers. The two types are defined as:

Fixed mindset: The belief that one’s talents are innate gifts and not malleable.

Growth mindset: The belief that one’s talents can be developed through education and effort.

It’s thought that people with a growth mindset achieve greater success because they’re focused on learning and believe that they can get better and develop new skills. It’s worth noting here that organisations can have a growth mindset, too. For instance, organisations with a growth mindset are more likely to fill vacancies internally, whereas organisations with a fixed mindset automatically advertise in the external market.

When assessing mindset, we’re looking to understand a candidate’s strengths and attitudes in relation to learning, feedback, resilience and adaptability. Of course, there are many ways to do that; just keep in mind that it’s less about what candidates may have done in the past and more about how they approach their work and develop and broaden their competence. 

Step Four: Think Outside the Checkbox

By focusing purely on the capability, behaviour and results of candidates as they’re presented in front of the recruitment team, today’s more traditional interview and assessment process can be challenging for both candidates and employers. That’s because, while these measures can predict the future success of certain candidates in specific roles, change is now constant—which means that better, more well-rounded assessments are a must.

For instance, a more blended assessment during the pre-screening allows employers to shortlist candidates based on several different attributes at the same time. The candidate can then forego multiple stages by demonstrating different attributes at the same time. This way, employers can get a clear picture of the different strengths and weaknesses of the entire group of candidates in order to make informed decisions about which candidates are best to bring forward to the interview stage.

The talent landscape and the world around us renders current assessment processes ineffective. As such, employers need to embrace a new approach that both ensures that candidates are assessed appropriately and also empowers them to make good decisions.

To that end, passion, purpose, and mindset can have as much influence on performance as a candidate’s core intellect, achievements and behaviours. And, by building these factors into the assessment of a potential employee, employers can select from a diverse pool of candidates based on each individual’s potential, as well as their current performance.

Unfortunately, most employers aren’t assessing for all of these factors, so they’re missing out on a comprehensive look at candidates. In the end, the question your organisation needs to consider is this: In a rapidly changing world, what is the cost of maintaining the status quo?

To learn more about how to build the specific assessments to fit your needs, download our ebook.

The Future of Diversity Recruiting: Re-evaluating Traditional Methods & Questioning Accepted Wisdom

Posted on by nfuqua

Diversity recruiting is a hot topic right now. As your organisation continues on its journey toward becoming more diverse, equitable and inclusive, it’s important to ensure that you’re relying on the most up-to-date strategies and understanding of candidates’ needs and behaviours. And, while there are many assumptions and diversity recruiting strategies that have become part of accepted wisdom throughout the years, are they still true? Are they still the most effective methods for interacting with candidates? 

In my role as PeopleScout director of employer brand and communication strategy, I deliver actionable insights and consultancy to clients; in essence, I help employers understand, articulate, and measure what makes their organisations unique places to work and then help them better understand and engage audiences from underrepresented groups. As such, I’m very outcome-focused. I don’t want to generate insights for the sake of insights; I want to challenge employers and support them in their journeys. For me, that means constantly interrogating what we think we know, what we just accept to be true and how effective our strategies are and how to manage diversity better.

So, in this article, I’ll examine the traditional wisdom around diversity in recruiting. Specifically, we’ll look at how our understanding of candidates from underrepresented backgrounds has evolved, share updated recruitment methods, and reflect on how factors like intersectionality and social mobility can be part of an effective recruitment process. 

Rethinking Limited Media Targeting & Focusing on Employer Branding 

Traditionally, when employers have wanted to recruit candidates from underrepresented groups, they’ve relied on limited media targeting. For example, if an organisation was looking to attract more women, talent leaders would post open jobs on job boards targeting female candidates. And, while this is one strategy to bring in more diverse candidates, it does have its limits. For one, it doesn’t take into account what we know about candidate behaviour. 

Rather, by tracking engagement metrics and actually speaking with candidates, we know that just because a person consumes a certain type of media in their everyday life, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a person will use that specialised media in their job search. Take me, for example: I’m Black and I’m female and I’m absolutely proud to be both of those things. But, neither of those has ever formed the basis of my job search. Instead, if I were looking for a new role as a communications consultant, I’d look at platforms offering roles related to my profession. Then, I’d research potential employers to ensure that they were welcoming and inclusive.  

So, instead of focusing on targeting niche, identity-related media and job boards, employers should focus on targeting the right professional or work-related channels with the right messaging. This means going beyond just talking about the responsibilities of the role in the job posting to also focusing on diversity, equality and inclusion (DE&I) within the organisation as a whole. When candidates from underrepresented groups are searching for jobs, the right job title might be enough to get them to click on a posting—but whether they actually apply is influenced by what they read and hear about how an organisation treats its people. Likewise, whether they continue in a recruitment process depends on how they’re treated throughout the candidate journey.  

Diversity Recruiting Strategies for an Inclusive Recruitment Process 

diversity recruiting

But, what does this look like in practice? Well, if talent leaders at an organisation have analysed the data and decided that they want to focus on certain demographics, the right campaign can be pretty effective if they make interventions at the right point in the hiring process. Below, I’ll outline some examples using the common goal of attracting more women. 

Language in Job Postings 

To ensure an inclusive process, employers should pay close attention to the language used in job postings. For instance, accepted wisdom suggests that women can sometimes be put off by words like “excellent,” “strong,” “driven” or “competitive.” So, to generate optimum engagement, one obvious intervention would be to find alternatives to use in job postings.  

However, it’s not that simple. In my work, I’ve spoken with many senior female professionals who say they expect to see words like that in job advertisements aimed at their level. Therefore, for employers, this means that language does matter—but your solution cannot be a one-size-fits-all. Instead, the language you choose for a job posting should feel inclusive, but should also reflect the job type and career level of candidates.  

Job Criteria 

Many talent leaders are familiar with the research that shows how women are less likely to apply for roles where they don’t meet 100% of the criteria, whereas men will apply if they meet just some of the requirements. Interestingly, anecdotal feedback from women shows that this isn’t because women don’t feel as though they can’t do the job; rather, they just don’t want to waste their time or energy on an application that they believe would be automatically rejected.   

So, to build a more inclusive job posting, employers should list only the essential criteria. Additionally, talent leaders should recognise that, as the list of criteria on a job posting gets longer, the applicant pool for that job will likely become less diverse.  

Representation 

You’ve heard the phrase “representation matters.” In popular media today—whether it’s movies, television or literature—you can see it in action. Similarly, employers must employ the same principles in their recruitment process, as well.  

If we stick with the example of attracting more women, that means employers should ensure that any recruitment communications include voices and stories from women at all levels of the organisation. Likewise, employers should also be transparent about their diversity recruitment data and any plans in place to shift the dial around female representation. Then, when female candidates encounter more female voices throughout the process, they’ll realise that not only are they welcome at the organisation, but they’ll also have the opportunity to thrive and progress. The same principle can be applied to any demographic group. 

What is Intersectionality?  

Thus far in this article, we’ve discussed diversity in simple, binary terms. But, if you’ve been paying attention to the DE&I space, you’ve likely heard the word “intersectionality.” Intersectionality is about recognising the connections between social categories—including factors like race and ethnicity; gender identity; neurodiversity; and social class—and how an individual can be a combination of those things and potentially suffer compounded discrimination and disadvantage because of it.  

As a talent leader, you must approach DE&I from an intersectional perspective. Unfortunately, there can be multiple potential failure points in a candidate’s journey due to the intersectional nature of the people applying for roles. So far, I’ve used women as an example. But, the perceptions and experiences of Black women will be different from white women, Latina women or Asian women. Going even further, consider whether your female candidate is also from a socially disadvantaged background. Or, is she neurodiverse? All of these will influence how she interacts with your organisation and whether she sees a potential career with you. And from your side as the employer, these combined factors also increase the risk of her falling victim to multiple adverse impacts in your recruitment process. So on the basis that no person is just one demographic, it’s critical that your organisation considers intersectionality and ensures your processes are audited to eliminated as many chances as possible for bias to creep in.

For me, employer brands and diversity recruitment marketing campaigns that factor in intersectionality are far more likely to be inclusive. They’ll be the ones showcasing employees across a range of demographics so that candidates can see a variety of different types of people flourishing at an organisation. They’re also putting in the work to make any necessary adjustments in the candidate journey, so that everybody has an equal opportunity to do well. That includes training for recruiters, hiring managers and other decision-makers, too.  

The Role of Social Mobility in Diversity Recruiting

Another factor that often gets lost in discussions of diversity, equality and inclusion is the role of social mobility. Social mobility is the link between a person’s occupation or income and the occupation or income of their parents. The stronger the link between a child and a parent, the lower the level of social mobility; the weaker the link, the higher the level of social mobility. For example, if an individual works on a production line at a factory and that’s also what their parents did, then that’s a low level of social mobility. If, on the other hand, the same individual secured a white-collar, managerial role, then their social mobility is high because of their earning potential.  

In diversity recruiting initiatives, social mobility can play into DE&I programs in a number of ways, but, most importantly, it plays a critical role in helping individuals achieve better outcomes. Plus, it also contributes to organisational success because it adds an additional layer of diversity within critical teams.  

There are several ways that employers can engage with social mobility; one is through schools and outreach activities, where you can introduce students in disadvantaged areas to careers that they may not have otherwise heard about. You can also use apprenticeships as a strategy to get early-career talent into roles that might not otherwise be accessible to them, while also allowing them to continue their education. Additionally, those employers that are able to make any of their roles fully remote can engage workers from disadvantaged areas and who may not have access to strong career opportunities within easy commuting distance. 

Making the Change 

For many employers, the strategies I’ve outlined will present a marked change from their standard way of doing business—and that’s okay. It’s important to recognise that change won’t happen overnight. When it comes to engaging with potential candidates from underrepresented groups, it’s about building an inclusive employer brand that appeals to multiple demographics and fosters a sense of potential belonging in an organisation. Diversity recruiting also very much about building a brand that focuses equally on messaging, human stories and the candidate journey—and making sure that the different parts of the process truly support bringing in individuals from all walks of life who are the best people to fill your roles.