Interim Management

For any business to grow and succeed in the long-term, it’s important to have a good talent acquisition strategy in place. It can offer you the best way to build a strong pipeline of talent, who believe in your business, both for today and for whatever tomorrow might bring. This is particularly true for talent at the top of the organisation. The risks get higher and the talent pools get smaller the further up the corporate ladder you go, so it’s vital to have a well-thought-through strategy in place ready for when senior, hard-to-replace employees leave. If you don’t, you could find yourself without crucial skills, experience and knowledge just when you need them most.Whether you’re considering your options for creating a strategy or looking for ways to improve an existing one, here are our top tips for future-proofing your talent acquisition.1. Recruit with the aim to retain and to build a pipeline of future talentEverything you do with talent acquisition should directly link to your long-term business goals. Think about how your future talent pipeline can help you achieve those goals. What kind of talent do you think you’ll need in the next few months and years? What types of people do you want to attract to your business to create the right culture and ethos? What senior roles do you need to have a succession plan in place for now, to ensure there’s no break in leadership? How can you speak to potential candidates in a way that makes them want to work for your company? If you can answer these questions, you’re in a good place to start building a strategy which can future-proof your business.2. Own your employer brandThat brings us nicely onto employer brand. Every business has an employer brand whether they’re in control of it or not. So it’s worth taking the time to decide what your story is. Everything you do and say will affect people’s perception of your company. Talent attraction is about convincing candidates they want to work for you even if you’re not hiring for a specific role. You need to be talking about the things that matter the most to candidates – your culture, your values and the benefits of working for you – like flexible working options. You should also highlight how candidates can grow with your organisation – show them what the future could look like.Talking to customers, clients and prospective employees can provide powerful insights into your brand and how it’s perceived in the market. Use those insights to become an employer of choice.3. Streamline your recruitment processYou want to make it as simple as possible to apply, so that you don’t lose anyone on the journey. That includes everything from optimising your career site for mobile to ensuring you have robust processes in place for following up on applications easily and responding in a timely way. In addition, if you can track your applications easily, it will be simpler to create a pipeline of future talent that you can call on when recruitment peaks unexpectedly or when a senior member of the team leaves.4. Focus on data to help you deliverThe strongest talent acquisition strategies are built around data and insight. Analysis of available data can help to identify areas for improvement, enabling you to focus your efforts on key priorities. Let data do the hard work for you, so that you can identify hard-to-fill roles and see if they line up with surplus candidates in the talent pipeline. It can also help you to establish better ways to target top talent: by analysing data around your ideal candidate audience and what they want to hear or respond well to, you can target them more effectively, choosing which messages to amplify for which audiences.5. Consider different sources and mediaWhen you’re looking at how to approach candidates, step away from the traditional recruitment channels and think bigger. You could use social media to talk to a more passive audience about your culture, values and employer brand. You could look at building or improving an employee referral scheme, which could use people who are already great advocates of your business to attract new candidates. There could be niche channels that you haven’t considered – like networking events, conferences or specific online websites that candidates might be interested in. This could be especially helpful if you’re looking for interim leaders with the skills and expertise you need to fill critical shortfalls, run specific projects or cover for senior leaders when they are away from the business – they are hard to fine and you’ll have to take a broad approach to recruiting them.6. Always be ready to adaptChange is constant. From shifting platforms and media, to shifting perceptions in different generations, nothing stays the same forever. It’s good to keep an open mind and be ready to change the way you approach candidates if new data comes to light.At Veredus, we provide a different approach to talent acquisition and retention, through the use of proven executive search and selection and interim management services.Find out more and let us help you with your recruitment needs today.

Over the next five years, technology will completely transform the workplace. Organisations, their people, the nature of work and how that work is done will all be affected quite profoundly.As we transition to a hybrid workforce, in which people work seamlessly with robots and algorithms in a digitally optimised environment, organisations will need access to people with the right skills, attitudes and mindsets for success.In fact, people’s skills, vision, rationality and creative thinking – combined with a passion for learning and an ability to cope with constant change and uncertainty – will make the difference between success and failure, and recruiters will play a crucial role in making sure that people with these vital capabilities are joining organisations at the right time and in the right roles.Recruiting in the future of workOur Human to Hybrid research examines the impact of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Robotic Process Automation and how recruitment specialists will have to respond. We talked to 350 HR and recruitment professionals, 500 business leaders and 2,031 employees for our research and found that business leaders regard the shift to a hybrid workforce as the biggest strategic challenge facing them over the next five years and that the key to making the transition smoothly is to focus on three strategic levers: digital (technological capability), data (workforce insight) and people (having the right skills, culture and leadership for success).Organisations must put digital to work within their recruitment function to create the best candidate experience – seamless and personalised across the entire process – if they’re to have any chance of finding and attracting the high-quality talent they’ll need to succeed. This won’t be easy as competition for top talent intensifies – 67% of HR and recruitment professionals predict the shift to a hybrid workforce will make recruiting high-quality talent even more challenging – but the majority (70%) recognise they need to digitise recruitment to compete effectively.Focus on candidate experienceDigitisation offers a multitude of benefits to recruitment, such as speeding up the process, reaching more candidates and addressing skills shortages. But according to HR professionals, the biggest benefit is improving the candidate experience throughout the talent acquisition lifecycle – 65% expect candidate experience to become a key differentiator within business over the next five years, and 53% think digital will drive improved candidate experience.What does an improved candidate experience look like? According to our white paper The digital opportunity: Delivering better candidate experiences in the shift to a hybrid workforce, it will be fast, tailored to candidates’ individual needs and preferences, seamless and easy to use across different channels, proactive, interactive and engaging, putting candidates in control.Failing to offer such an experience could have significant consequences, and HR professionals are acutely aware that they can’t afford to fail in this. If they do, they risk losing great talent to the competition, not having the right skills in the organisation to transform it successfully, and impacting their function’s reputation within the business.36% of HR professionals believe that candidate experience will suffer if they lag behind in adopting digital platforms.Benefits of automationThere’s been a lot of talk about the role that automation is likely to play in recruitment over the coming years, as technology such as automation and AI become used more widely.Our Human to Hybrid research reveals that HR leaders think it will have the biggest, most positive role to play in engaging candidates even before positions become available, offering an easier and more scalable way to build up passive talent pools and create relationships with a broader range of potential employees.Automation represents an unmissable opportunity for HR professionals to finally achieve something they’ve talked about for many years – being able to plan for talent more effectively – but have been unable to achieve because they’ve lacked the resources and time.It’s also seen as the preferable option (over human-driven processes) for defining and specifying roles and profiles, proactively searching for candidates and shortlisting applications. It’s not the answer to all recruitment challenges, of course, and HR professionals need to balance automation with human and delivery and interaction very carefully – they can’t afford to over-digitise and end up alienating prospective recruits by using technology inappropriately or excessively.HR professionals predict that rapid digitisation of recruitment processes over the next five years will have a profound and positive effect on the way that people look for jobs and how organisations find and recruit talent. It will make it easier for them to move on from simply reacting to immediate business needs to proactively and strategically planning.The biggest impact, however, will be on their ability to offer a seamless, personalised candidate experience throughout the recruitment process that meets – and exceeds – the expectations of an increasingly demanding talent pool.To find out more about the role of digital in recruiting high-quality talent for the hybrid workforce, download The digital opportunity: Delivering better candidate experiences in the shift to a hybrid workforce.

Stephen Hoban