How TA can become agents of change within their organization | with Allyn Bailey

Sam foreign.

Welcome to show number 88 of the shortest. My name is Johnny Campbell. I'm going to be your host for the next 45 minutes or so. I'm CEO and co founder of Social Talent and you're welcome to this episode of the Shortest. If you're listening live, you're very welcome as well. We want to encourage you to ask questions. Put in your comments live on LinkedIn or YouTube. Any links that we reference, particularly in our news segment today we'll post live, but we'll also put them in the show notes for those listening on the podcasts. Podcast you say? Never heard of our podcast. We're available on Spotify, Apple, wherever you find your good podcast. You can find a list of our back shows and upcoming shows at socialtown.com forward/the shortlist let's get into it. By the way, last week for episode number 86, I didn't mention it, but I had Covid finally got me two years in, managed to managed to catch up with me and it was the Omicron variant that got me. It was all right. I felt good on Wednesday. I didn't feel so good Thursday and Friday. But I managed to get through it like most of the rest of the world out there. And it's coming for you. If it hasn't got you, got you yet. So so be careful out there. Let's get into today's topic though, how ta Talent Acquisition can become agents of change change within their organization. We used to talk about HR getting in a seat at the table. Maybe HR is being pushed aside because Talent Acquisition are taking that seat from them. But in the aftermath of the pandemic and the last year or so, with the great resignation or whatever you want to call the employment market that we saw change drastically in 2021, talent acquisition leaders have found themselves in a particularly challenging situation. You've heard of the war for talent. It rages on. There's huge pressure on talent acquisition to find strategies, adapt their function to cope with both this massive increase in attrition that most organizations have seen and this massive demand for new talent as well. That real kind of crunch with perhaps limited resources to support it. But having to change tack when already in motion to rebuild your car as it's going 100 miles an hour down a motorway is no easy feat. But this week our guest is Aline Bailey, and she's a talent futurist and founder of Transformation Tapas. Going to ask you about that name in a second, Ellen, and she's here to discuss exactly how TA can elevate themselves and become those change agents in organizations. And we're going to talk about TA development, the essential skills ta, and particularly leaders should have to partner with the business and the importance of balancing the needs for process with the capability to understand intent and adapt. And then you're very welcome to the show. I was wondering if you might perhaps do us a favor and tell us about your background. What put you in the world of ta? How did you get here? And then tell me some background on that wonderful, wonderful name transformation table.

Yeah, absolutely. So how did I get here? So my story isn't all that different from most people's in the talent space. I woke up one morning and said, I want to be in talent. No, that's not true. I was working in the experience design space, particularly working with organizations and with HR teams, to look at how do you apply basic user experience principles to the process of helping organizations be most successful. So this was before design thinking was a popular term and before we were kind of looking at kind of the terminology around system thinking and systems design. But basically that was the work I was doing, right? How do you look at people, process and systems and try and build a holistic solution that can work for organizations? And I happen to be working with an HR organization looking at employee experience. And one of the individuals who was part of that team said, hey, we think there's an issue around candidate experience. Would you be willing to come and work on this project with us? And 15 years later, here I am. So I started, I went, I started looking at candidate experience and realized that we were looking at it in too much of an isolated framework, just at how do you deal with candidates and not understanding that you had to look at candidates, hiring managers and, and recruiters and recruiting teams and all of those experiences in combination, which led me to starting to look at how do we start to fundamentally make talent acquisition work. And I maybe being an outsider and not having a particular point of view in the game, I started to do a lot of work, asking people lots of questions and talking to recruiters and hiring managers and candidates and designers, decided that I think there's a new way to do this, and was fortunate enough to work with an organization at intel at the time that was willing to take a look at this. I mean, it took about five years to convince them. As with any kind of leadership team. Right, we can talk about that, but got into the business of saying, how do we drive change and look at this differently? And from there I've been working with Lots of organizations to do that. Left Intel a little over a year ago to start working with some startups and other companies who are looking at talent and what's happening in the talent space from a transformational perspective and started Transformation Tapas. So Transformation Tapas. Here's the reason for the name one. I love to eat. So tapas is on the like plate. But you know, change often when we think about transformation we often think about as this big bang thing. Like it's all encompassing, it takes over everything and I don't think it's a banquet. I think it is more like tapas. It is little bite sized moments of change that we kind of embrace and take on, usually over little moments of conversation or dialogue and then we move on to the next thing and take a little bite of something. If we don't like it, we push it away and we're bringing on the next thing. So that's what tapas piece was all about. So that's what I've been doing and focusing in that space.

I love that Lyn and I know we first met when you were slapping in the middle of several tapas portions of transformation within intel. And I've always admired your kind of your ability to be kind of ahead of the game and the team you worked with to be fair for a large enterprise were very much ahead of the game. The issues you were looking at, the way you were trying to approach it and that's probably what I want to try and explore with you. What we might do is just jump in with some current news to start with. Elaine and I mentioned it in the introductory brief, but we're in an unusual market at the moment. Whether you like the name Great Resignation or not, a dealer at different names that are used there. I want to open with perhaps a news article that it's a local news article from Ireland and it's from Irish Job. It's only one of the job biggest job boards here up there is indeed in Ireland but I mentioned it because I think the theme is universal because they shared data for Q4 2021. So the most recent full quarter of vacancies posted and they reported a 420% jump in jobs in HR and talent acquisition. Now to be fair, that was based on the jump between 2021 and 2020 which you're going to see a big jump in. Right. But. But even there they're seeing huge jumps between 2019 Q4 and 2020 Q1 and we've never ever seen such a marked increase in opportunities. Vacancies demand for talent in the HR and recruiting space. Why is that in your opinion?

Great question. Well, I think it's twofold, right. One is just the general demand to of open positions that exist outside of TA that need to be filled. Right. And companies, you know, when, when we're in this panic situation, kind of, you had that great resignation happening, the great reshuffle, whatever you want to call it, people leaving, company leaders are sitting there going, oh my God, how am I going to fill all these roles? And organizations are doubling down on their strategies, right? When you don't have a new strategy, you double down on what you currently have and you try and eke out a win. And TA's go to strategy has been put more recruiters on it, right? Hire more, put more recruiters on it. We're going to solve the problem. So I think some of that is that, that we're seeing, right. I think the second piece to it is, is that although I'm an individual, like I said, who has now built a 15 year career loving the world of TA and I fell into it just like most people did in some way, we haven't done a great job of building a professional identity around talent acquisition and what that is. And so as this great reshuffling is happening, you're having a lot of individuals who were in the TA or training or kind of talent space who are seeing new and advanced opportunities in the business and so they're leaving these holes in these vacancies. So that's why I think that's happening in that space. So larger investment, let's just put throw more money at the problem. Which means we're going to hire more people and people who are shifting and leaving because it wasn't necessarily their home to begin with. Right. So I think it provides us this new opportunity. So what do we do? We got all these new people coming in. What are we going to do with them? Right. How do we now generate out of this new breadth of individuals coming into the ecosystem an opportunity to create something new and different and not just to kind of repeat where we've been over and over again.

Is hiring more people in the only way to fix this? I sense from your tone when you answer that question originally you felt there could be alternatives. What are the alternatives to perhaps hiring just loads more TA folks that could help solve the kind of crunch we're seeing in the market?

Well, I think we've got to look at who are we hiring, what types of roles and skills and capabilities are we bringing into our Organizations. Right. So I think there's lots of ways that we could be looking at this problem differently. What. How much of the work are we doing in TA is work that we can be pushing off and automating into systems and, and up leveling the individuals who we bring in TA to have more critical thinking skills, to be focused more on relationship and development work. Right. So having more people out there just pushing in males. Right. It may generate. If you push out 3,000 and you have a 3% uptick, the more you push out, yes, the more intake you're going to get. But is that quality? Is that valuable? We're not looking at those questions. And so I don't think just pushing more people in to go do tactics is going to solve the problem long term. Right. It's going to. Eventually we're going to bleed money. We can't keep doing that. So we've got to think about what are other approaches we can be doing. How are we finding the right people to begin with to bring them into our story? Right. And to bring them into our organization. How are we helping people assess how they fit into our teams? What are we doing around internal mobility to keep people from leaving in the first place or to fill internally? So I think that sometimes people say looking at new ways to do things is too hard when you're in the middle of a kind of a battle for your life. I'm one of those people who will tell you that if you don't do it now, all you're going to do is kind of keep treading water until eventually the wave gets too big.

But I agree, I agree with you. And I think most sane and talent acquisition professionals would agree with you. Elaine, that's not the challenge, but it is a challenge when you are essentially trying to upgrade the speed in car when you're going down a motorway and it's never gone so fast and there's never been so much traffic. Right. This is the challenge when you're seeing attrition in the organization, which drives more recruiting vacancies. Plus you see expansion in the organizations as we bounce back and different industries thrive. But you also have the same attrition typically in the TA team. So what I'm hearing from TA teams is they are literally stretched so far beyond their capacity. Working late hours, putting crazy hours in, burning out. And you are, you know, the advice to a leader is, you know, now is the time to change everything, or not everything, but now it's time to really kind of think about these things. But how do you, how do you carve out the time? How do you prioritize what to fix when you literally cannot see the wood.

From the trees, right? So I think the first thing you've got to do is one, don't let yourself get overwhelmed by the problem statement, and two, figure out how you can take. So listen, if your business is looking at you and saying, okay, fine, whatever you need to do, hire whoever you need to do, make this thing happen, right? Take those 10 recruiter roles that you have to fill, fill nine of them and leave one to the side and hire in instead. Somebody who's going to come in and help be your voice, help you start translating and thinking about what your next strategy move is, right? Cut a little bit off the side so you can keep the engine running over here and start building your new track simultaneously. The worst thing you can do, right, this is what happens to people, is to think that you've got to divert everybody immediately off to a new track. You can't do that for two reasons. One, you probably don't know what your new track is, right? And by the way, I'm going to tell you that if you think your new track is go out and see what everybody else has done who says they've changed or done some great transformation and copy and repeat. It's not necessarily going to work for you because you. Each ecosystem is individual and separate and different, so you need to kind of look at that and figure that out. So get, get some idea on what it is that you want, right, to do over here, and then you start slowly weaning yourself into it, right? You're not going to create massive change that's going to happen in a month. You're going to create little bits of iterative change that's going towards a direction and a plan. But you have to build a plan first, and you need to cut out some help to build that plan because you as a leader right now are trying to keep your, your house from burning down, right? You're dealing with hiring manager calls. You're dealing with leaders who are like, what are, you know, why can't we fill these roles? You've got recruiters who are frustrated because they've got, you know, too many roles that they're trying to fill. You maybe probably don't have the time to sit back and breathe for a second.

So let me take that, let me say that word plan, right? Because, you know, a lot of TA leaders in the last few months have been talking about strategy, and we need a new strategy and let's have our TA strategy out there. They throw this word around a lot. My experience has been in many meetings about TA strategy. When there is a strategy defined, it's. It's kind of like, oh, I. I want to be, you know, number two on the Josh person one to four metric of TA quality, which no one seems to care about, particularly the business. What is your experience and opinion with regards to TA leaders and setting strategy?

So this is where I always get myself into trouble. So. But I'm going to say it, and I'm going to be really, really out there. Okay. I think we all need to take an honest look at ourselves and realize that most TA leaders don't have a clue as to what they're doing when it comes to talent acquisition or talent strategy. And it's not their fault. Right. I'm not blaming anybody, but you either were a recruiter or a sorcerer and you worked up into your role, which means that you're really good at managing the tactics and execution of what currently happens today. So you have a mindset of kind of how that operated and worked. Or you were brought in from outside the organization to manage this group of recruiters, much like I might bring somebody in to manage a call center. Right. So most TA leaders aren't coming in with a point of view about talent acquisition to begin with. They're basing their point of view either on their experience of executing talent. Talent acquisition. Right. And that's not a strategic design framework. Right. That's about how you become more efficient. That's an efficiency plan. Or they're coming in from the outside and relying on these people, these middle managers that they're working with in the TA organization to tell them what they think they should do. Again, working on efficiency improvements and etc. It's not their fault, but they don't have. We're not walking in, in a TA leadership space as visionaries. So what do we do about that? Right.

Admit it. I. I love that. I. I used to. There's a. There's a TA leader I really, really admire. I think he's done an amazing job. And when I first got to know him, I thought he was the laziest ass out there. Because I go, this guy doesn't do any of the work. He just has leaves all these people. And after a while, when I got to know him, I was like, this guy's a genius. He has all the right people to get all the jobs done. And it really occurred to me because I was the recruiter who'd grown up and built my way up through a team. Like, like you said, you kind of, all you do is see yourself firefighting and you kind of, you commend yourself on how much volume you can take on. Oh yeah, how you do that. As opposed to being the person who can sit back and go, I don't do the volume. I make sure that I have the right processes and people in place to deliver a service or deliver whatever the outcome is. Which is, to your point, a very different animal. A strategist versus a doer. Do you need both though in a larger, more complex tat?

Absolutely. Absolutely right. And this is what this is to me is where a lot of times some of the change management experience, management work has faltered is that we haven't taken a look and said understanding the experience and what it takes to execute and to be the doer in that space and to allow that recruiter or that sourcer, that recruitment marketer, to have the tools and the ecosystem and the process support them, to be most efficient at what it is that they do prevents us from being successful. Right. Because we often come in then from a change perspective and say we're going to change everything. It's going to look like this over here. You've got all the people who are sitting here on a day to day basis trying to just again, keep the house from burning down who are looking at you like who the hell are you and what are you talking about? You have no idea what we're doing and, and so you have to figure out, you have to spend your time, know what, what makes it tick for them and how are you solving the tactical problem as well as executing to a strategy.

I love that. I'm going to bring it to our, to our second article to take that point further. Elaine. And the second article I want to bring up is an article from about a week or two ago and it was published by IFOR cp but essentially it's a summary of the Talent Acquisition boards, kind of four priorities for TA leaders in 2022. I'll give you a high level summary before I maybe ask you to jump in and give me your thoughts. One is they talk about, you know, the need to create exceptional experiences. Again, this is a group of TA leaders combined, summarizing their kind of four most important priorities. So one, creating exceptional experiences. Two, deploying technology to streamline processes. Three, ensuring and communicating EVP and for building capacity through simplification, speed and development. Are these the right priorities? Do they ring true to you? If yes, why? If no, why.

Sure. Right. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think that they're pretty kind of, you know. Yeah, but they're pretty vanilla. I mean. Okay, so you're going to do those things, but how? Right. So again, I think the key here is that you can have a strategic direction, but the way that you make it happen is by putting the. How. The flavor in it. That. That makes it. That makes it happen. Right. Okay. So you're going to create simplification, right? That was that last one. Simplify processes. Right? Okay, great. Absolutely. Things should be. And who's going to disagree with that? Right? How, which pieces? How do you get a different outcome through your simplification? What is your intent? All of those strategies are generic enough that you. Anybody can write themselves into that story, right? What's your unique point of view? What is it? What is that? How that thing that makes you as an organization ticket, that's, that's the intent, the underlying design principles of what it is that you believe in. And then you take those elements and you apply them over the top. Right. So of course you want to automate. Right. Of course you want to build up skills and capabilities. Of course you want to streamline and simplify. But in what way, how and for what purpose?

But let's talk about structure first, because there has been a kind of movement in the last few years. It was pre pandemic, maybe it's been accelerated since the pandemic pandemic where you begun to see this role of talent, a function of talent, sometimes a VP of talent emerge and distinguish itself from hr. And my experience has been that it's typically in most organizations taken the either head of TA or often the head of L and D to come in as this new head of talent role and combine a whole bunch of functions. You know, talk to me about that trend. If you see it as well, what's causing it? Is it a good trend and what can perhaps those listening take from it?

So I think it's a good trend. I think that. I think that fundamentally, if you think about talent and talent management as really the story of the people of your organization and how your people, the experience they have, from finding out about who you are, to the acquisition area, to learning and development, to internal mobility, et cetera, that's how I think, you know, by bridging that, that whole story is how we start to connect L and D to internal mobility, to filling skills gaps. Right. These are. This is a unified story. I think that the challenge here is again, who leads that organization? How does that organization partner and collaborate with the HR and business organizations, how are they connected and you know who's leading the story in this space? I think there's a lot to, there's a lot to unpack in that and some organizations are struggling with that. I've been in organizations by the way, who have tried this and stopped and tried it. This isn't a new story. Like we've been trying this for a while and haven't quite figured out kind of the process. I think it's interesting that so many, whether it's you're thinking about a talent organization or an HR organization, so many human resources and talent organizations fall underneath the finance capability inside enterprises. And I think fundamentally it's not just about the individual group and how you combine them together, but what are their reporting lines and what are the priorities those reporting lines and how do they partner together to achieve it and who's going to lead it? Right. Are you going to bring in an hr? So an hr, a great HR leader does not a great talent leader make. Right? Right. Because again HR frequently has been driven by a finance perspective. It is an operational compliance based role. It is about how do you complete tasks, how do you use people to make things happen, not necessarily about how do you create and execute a talent strategy that's going to allow you to be effective as an organization.

So you know, I like that reporting line comment. It brings to mind I remember one of my first customers when, when we set up our first recruiting agency back in the 15 years ago, myself and Vince and we worked for a financial services organization and the recruiting and HR functions reporting to the COO because it was like, well, it's like getting things done. Right. That's what the Chief Operations Officer's job was. So therefore talent on HR were part of getting things done. We had a customer then I know cognizant who, a customer of ours who I think the, the HR and talent function reports into supply chain because they see talent as part of their supply chain. So that's where the reporting line went. There again, you know, sorry, recruiting report in there, not hr. HR is separate recruiting there, you know, I, but it was interesting because both of those examples were in my experience some of the most progressive teams that I came across from a talent acquisition perspective. And I think it's no coincidence that it was related to their, their, their reporting lines and the focus that the business puts on it. You mentioned finance, which is typically do everything at the lowest cost possible back in the business, which is, which is difficult.

Right? Think about it, think about it. How did cost per hire become the metric to beat? Because we're all reporting to finance leaders who look at cost right as the value differentiator. So, you know, the reason we're battling against those conversations is a lot about kind of how these infrastructures have been set up and the history around them. And I think understanding that's important if you're going to go and, you know, work through your organization to drive change.

So if this is, you know, one of the most challenging times for talent or talent acquisition leaders that we faced in a long while, what are your recommendations for TA leaders? If you're a TA leader, listening to this and you're thinking, oh Christ, that sounds like me, you know, I, I, I'm that recruiter who's, who's, you know, moved up in my career. I struggle with these things. I'm, I'm, I just, I just, you know, said yes to 10 rec hires for recruiters and didn't, didn't keep one aside for somebody's more projects, etc. You know, what is your advice to tea leaders? How can a team leader learn from this and what could she do to think differently and what kind of skills perhaps should she be looking at focusing on herself? What is her role in this?

So I think the number one thing you can do is develop a point of view. And what I mean by that is develop your own perspective and point of view. Go out there and learn and listen to as much as you can from as many different perspectives as you can out inside and outside of the particular industry and space that you're working on. Get outside your day to day. Carve out if you could do nothing else. Right? Car. Figure out a way to do this right, Whether it's on the treadmill in the morning, right before you go into the office, or whether it's, you know, something that you do during your lunch hour. However you figure out how to do it, carve yourself out a minimum of an hour a day just to explore what's going on, to listen to different voices, to hear what people are saying, and then take a little bit of piece of that time to let your mind go in to decide do I agree or don't I agree? What's my perspective and point of view on this? Right? Don't just absorb it, but think it through and develop what your point of view is. From there, you figure out what your core perspectives, what is important to you. Right? I'll tell you, when I started, my point of view became very crystallized around this idea that transactional recruiting was going to bury us and we had to start thinking more like marketing organizations and understand how to work pipelines more effectively. Right. That was a point of view. It's still my point of view and it's what I drive kind of my strategy around. And then I'm able to look at each individual decision I make as a leader when I was inside an organization and now as I'm working with other organizations to say, is that decision helping me move towards my point of view or is it not? Right? But if you don't have a point of view, you're making decisions based on how do you solve an immediate problem, not how is it moving you forward.

I love that I've heard different points of view. The one you express, for example, take a sales and marketing or marketing approach to recruiting. Make it about the funnels. I've heard folks who say, you know, make it all about candid experience, make it all about hiring manager experience. You have people who say it's, it's, it's about quality of hire as our focus. But I think that's, you know, if you look at, we look back to strategy. You know, a strategy is about how, you know, what, what is the game you're. You're essentially in and how are you going to win? And to your point, you have to have an opinion, how are you going to win if you copy somebody else as well, you probably won't win because you're copying their exact strategy. And your point around it. You can't just say, well, it worked for them, it worked for us. You know, having that strategy is, is defining your opinion as the leader and your team on how you're going to win. What is this? What is the angle you're going to come at it from? I think that's lacking in a lot of teams and a lot of leaders. They don't have that. They haven't made that decision. As to what is my angle on this, what are we going to do on this?

That's right. That's why, that's why they're always looking for. And this is, we do this. This is part of what organizations do. Whether you're a TA organization or any organization, this is about that. Come show me your business case. And you base that business case on benchmarking what other people have done. Other people, because, you know, you're frequently having to validate. I can be successful with this strategy because these people have been right. And so I can attribute that to making this amount of Agreement that I'm going to make this change and et cetera. It puts us in a trap where then we're now looking to copy others rather than to generate something new. It is harder but more rewarding to build a business case based on. I have a perspective and a point of view. And let me help you see the logic. Right. Extrapolate the logic path to that. Rather than build a business case on this idea that says, I saw 10 people, nine were successful because they did some version of this. And so I'm going to do this and that means I'm going to be successful. And, and I think that's part of the reason why talent leaders don't get the right seat at the table is because we're always talking about what other people have done and how we can do it instead of coming in and saying, I have an idea, here's what it is, and let me walk you through the logic of how I got there. And I think that's, that's our biggest challenge. How do we get there? How do we open ourselves up to think?

You mentioned business cases. And getting business cases across the line in the organization, I think is a key, key role of a TA leader. But oftentimes you have to be data informed. You've got to get the data to build your business case. Then you have to get somebody to help you run the projects. There's been a growth recently in the role of what's called TA Ops or recruiting ops, and a lot of organizations. Can you maybe enlighten some of our listeners as to what is the role of recruiting, recruiting or TA Ops, what do they do? How are they different from the rest of their colleagues? Because I know there's still a lot of organizations out there that, you know, have teams of people that if they're not doing administrative tasks for candidates, if you're not sourcing and candidates are dealing with hiring managers, there's no role for you. But that's, that's not what. None of those things, it's my understanding is what someone in TA or recruiting ops does. So maybe you could, but you shed a light on TA Ops and how perhaps it relates to, to getting things done.

Right. So your TA Ops team really is the heartbeat of executing your strategy. So historically, TA Ops teams were built up of those individuals who were in charge of compliance reporting, analytics, usually. Right. The people who were in the background. Right. Almost like your kind of IT expert who was in the background and who is saying, okay, here's how I do a system implementation and here is how I document things appropriately for ofccp. All of those elements. The role has evolved as we started to understand there are all these things you need to execute a good strategy that are infrastructure related. It is about understanding how do you upskill your teams, how do you make sure that you have the right roles aligned? How do you make sure your business process connects to this technology solution that you've put into place? How do you build an RFP for a new technology solution? Who's doing the business analyst components of this? So a good TA OPS team has really in my mind, three major roles. We have nothing else associated with it. Right. You have somebody who is a business analyst. That means somebody who can look at how you connect your people, process and tools effectively to execute your vision or your goal. You need to have somebody who understands technology and understands how to execute and to manage your technology solution. It's not like it used to be where you put one technology solution in place and you did like an implementation of three years. You're having to go in and update these cloud solutions every week, month. Right. How do you make sure all the connections work? That's your TA OPS team should be supporting that. And then this third role, which is really about how do you help the organization absorb the information and the change that you're putting into place, whether it be the business process execution or whether it be the new system that you're putting into place and that kind of the strategy around that. You put those three together and you build a strong OPS team. It could be three people in the beginning that grows out and evolves. It could be, oh, this is my old reporting team is now going to come in here and the guy who used to be in charge of the RFP process and a couple program managers to start off the day. But essentially what they need to be doing is building the infrastructure that allows the engine to operate. So your leader has a vision, that vision has to have an infrastructure to make it work. What are the processes that need to exist? What are the tools you need to execute it and how do you need to align your people to make that work? Right. The TA OPS team is in charge of making that happen. And then your recruiters, sourcers, recruitment marketers are executing to that strategy using the infrastructure the OPS team built and the strategy the leader put in place.

I love how you spelled that out and connected it with. I want to give you a pen to draw it out now and share with our listeners. Whiteboard in the background. So I want to take that maybe one Step further and come back to one of the words I used by introduced you, which was the element of futurist. Right. And I want to ask you what, what's going to happen with the pandemic because that's probably a bridge too far. But directionally, when it comes to TA and priorities and going back to that article where we talked about yet, you know, you put your, you automate certain things, you make certain things go faster and you do the different things. Do you see any large themes emerging over the next X years in ta? You know, parts of TA that you think are going to be fully automated or almost fully automated parts that are going to become, they're going to grow roles that are going to evolve and expand in a different area generally are directionally. Elaine, what do you see happening with TA teams going forward?

Yeah, so I think the number one thing that we're going to see, and we're starting to see bits and pieces start to happen, is this evolution of how we think about internal mobility versus external hiring. How we today thinking having a TA team starting to think about how they connect the right people to the right role at the right time, irregardless of where that person sits today and figuring out what that's going to mean inside organizations. It's not as easy as it sounds. Right. But I think that's. And I think that is going to create a ripple effect that's going to change a variety of things. I think it's what's going to expand this vision of talent management over hr. Right. It's going to take things. If you do that, right. You suddenly start, have to start thinking now differently about employee communications. Where does that sit? Right. Internal versus external, right? How is the story fit together? What does it mean to build an appropriate pipeline If I'm a recruitment marketer, if I'm a source or where am I pipelining from and how do I take, how does my CRM now connect to my HCM system that allows me to look at skills capabilities across. So I think there's going to be all these little threads that it starts to pull. We're starting to see it, right. We're starting to see people again. We've been talking about internal mobility for like, you know, eons, but I think now people are starting to get more into like, well, how do you do it right? How does it look different? And I think those threads are going to start to get pulled. I also think, I'm a firm believer that this idea of the way we source today and how sourcing operates is going to change, is changing that. If you are, if you're, you know, if you built your skill set and what you're valued at in your organization by being excellent at driving a great bullion search or understanding how to source LinkedIn, you're going to be in trouble because this is start, you know, this is where automation is going to. Computers can do systems and anal and, and they're going to get smarter and better. I know they're not perfect yet, but they're going to get there and when they do, they're going to overtake that. So then what is your, what do you do? Right. How do you translate that role into one that's about being able to be the human glue that helps take technology and make it work for an organization. Help me understand, if I have an algorithm from 15 different places that has come up with this list of people, how do I understand how to translate that to a recruiter to help them make the most sense of it? Right. How do I use assessment differently? These are all new skills and capabilities that we're going to have to get through to at some point. And I think those are, you know, coming faster than we think they are. It's surprising to me with as much hr, technology has been in the environment for as long as I can remember how technology, how infantile our technology capabilities are on a day to day basis. Right. I mean I sit down with people every day who are still trying to figure out, you know, how to, how to click the right box to shut something down. Right. We've got to kind of upskill that space.

And what do you think about like, you know, this role of talent advisor that's emerged the last decade in TA teams? Do you see an increasing demand for the knowledge and support from the business, from those folks and can therefore they cope with the persistent volume of wrecks that they're, that they're carrying? Like how do you solve for that? You know, if you agree with it, that there is an increased in the amount of information that they have to provide to or work with the organization. It makes it difficult to do the transactional stuff or as much of it.

Right, right. Well, so this is exactly where we've got to start figuring out. We're in that tipping point, right? That kind of that zone of proximal development between when the technology starts taking over tasks and the transactional components and the humans start figuring out where they provide value. And it is in that talent advisor space, in that translating of the computer gave me this and this is what it means to you and how we apply this to your situation. Hiring manager, business leader, et cetera. I think, yes, that's going to grow and there's going to be more and more of that. But you'd be surprised, Johnny, for as much as people, people oriented, we think recruiters are, as they move into this talent advisor space, I think one of the biggest challenges they face is feeling comfortable having a conversation where they don't know the answer. Right. Where they're actually kind of listening in and strategizing with a leader to say let's try this or let's try that. They're used to walking in with, here's my short list of people and here's why I think they're great and let's look at those and they don't have to do much critical thinking in that. Right in that conversation. It's a new type of dialogue and conversation that we have to evolve to. And I think that means you're going to get different people. That's when we looked that first article and said we're bringing all these new TA people in. My challenge to organizations would be great. I'm glad you're bringing in all these new people. It's not that we haven't been under resourced so let's bring them in. But who are you bringing in, for what purpose and with what skills? If you're bringing them in to double down on your current this is who we have and this is who I know is really great at this and let me build 10 more people. They're just like that robot guy I have over here because I don't know how long that's going to be sustainable for you.

Let's stay on that topic of skills and maybe finish out in that because I know your career before TA was in the learning and development space and you're passionate about skills. I surveyed a couple hundred recruiters in a live event a qw and I asked them what the number one skill for 2022 would be and that group voted. Sourcing, which I definitely disagree with. I don't think that's the scale for 2022. If I was to look beyond 22, what are the skills for a team and for these nine out of 10 hires? To your point, let's build a new TA workforce. What are the most critical skills you would focus on?

Problem solving. Right. Meaning can an individual be put in a situation and be able to assess what's going on and be able to come up with a solution that may not be Prescriptive. Right. That, that level of problem solving and I think the ability to assess talent. I think there's a. There's a lot in this area around, you know, whether we're using psychometric assessments or whether we're using personality, whatever, whatever the component is. Right. At the end of the day, we've always had some level of let's interview and assess this talent to see if they're going to be a right fit. Whether it's, you know, the interview process or. Etc. I think having people who are really good at connecting with others and then being able to suss out who's a right fit and who isn't and how they connect. Right. It's that fundamental thing we say is what a recruiter does, but we spend so little time on it. Right. That, that to me is the fundamental skill. The super recruiter is going to be the one that can walk with the HR manager or with the hiring manager and solve the problem. Say, here are the options in front of you to solve this problem. I can give you multiple ones and we can pick and choose from them. And then the person who can say, these are the people in front of you. Let me help you understand which one is going to be the best fit for you. More and more leaders are going to be looking for that and that doesn't mean that they're suddenly going to be invested with more time. Like hiring managers are going to suddenly spend more time with you, but the conversation they are going to have is going to be different.

I love that I spent 13 years in operational recruiting and I think I spent a couple of weeks in my first year doing interviewing, shadowing. I wouldn't even call it training. I shadowed some interviews. I was given a list of questions and left to my own devices. And no one ever monitored my interview skills, our assessment skills, ever again. Which is crazy because that's the fundamental thing we're trying to do. And I think you're right. We've celebrated skills like being able to write a Boolean search string and source really exotic places. But we actually don't celebrate the ability to assess in a critical way whether someone is going to be a good fit for this role, this company right now. And you're right. Those advisory skills from a problem solving perspective, listening skills, perspective solutions, they're all the things that the business demands. And it's how, how fast can we get rid of the admin tasks or tasks that should be to your point. Don't buy a computer that does it better than us or is going to do it better than us fairly soon.

Right.

Is, is critical. I'm gonna, I, I can't believe we've, we've got to this point in the show already. Elaine, time flies. I know it's still your morning. You're warming up for your day. I know I'm like, the us is only getting going. You're probably just getting the coffee into you. But we're at that point in the show where I'll ask you one last question, if you don't mind, Lynn, and that's perhaps if you could impart to our listeners and viewers live today one last piece of advice. Whether it's from your own experience that you've managed to garner or it's been handed down to you from somebody else that's resonated with you. For our audience, which is predominantly TA talent leaders and their teams, what would that advice be?

Have a point of view. You have to have a point of view. And, and if you don't find one, like spend some time figuring out what's your point of view. I can give you all the reasons why I think you should have my point of view, but I, that's not, I don't live in your world. Find your point of view. The second piece to it is, I'm just going to say that was my one piece of advice. That was actually, I came to that one. I was the one I was going to share. So I'll give you two. Right. Is don't freak out. Take it in small bits and pieces. No. Great. Nobody walks into the world and says they're going to change the world overnight. Do have a point of view. And then every small decision you make should be helping you get to that piece, whether directly or indirectly. You should be able to see what that line is. And that allows you to make small iterative changes that before you know it will put you in a situation where you'll start to see fundamentals changes in what you're able to execute.

I love those two pieces, Elaine. The first reminds me of what Bill Borman used to always say to me when people would say, how do you become a thought leader? And he said, have a thought. You know, that works. And a second, I think second comes with experience, you know, which is that don't panic. But also I think you have to add in if you don't mind patience, because when you to, to, to break it into small chunks and work on a bit by bit in the face of it, being on fire does require patience. The house is on fire. But it's like, okay, what do I need to put it first? You know, don't get overwhelmed by the whole building in on fire. Say, how do I get to. How do I get to the fuel source? What's my plan to get to that? I gotta get there bit by bit and I cannot lose my cool under pressure. But have a plan and know what your actual strategy is to go get there. So you're dead right? It's a good message to lead leaders out there in TA because most of them are on fire. So busy. It's a crazy time as we start 2022. Everyone's super busy dealing with this kind of strange economy, strange labor market. But you're right. Doesn't matter how busy you are. There's no excuse. You can break it into smaller chunks and you can work through that plan.

Right? And you don't need to be overwhelmed. It's past being overwhelmed with it. Sometimes you just don't look at it and see every day as you come out of it. These are the 90 things I wasn't able to change. And they're the same things that are happening and I don't feel good about them. Instead, look at the one thing that you made a shift on that you, that you made a decision that you think is going to propel you further. Focus on, focus on those and not this idea that you haven't been able to change the world. You're not gonna. I mean, that's okay.

Love that. Celebrate. Celebrate the progress you can make. Alain, such a pleasure chatting with you. I'm so glad we caught up. Thanks for joining us this morning from your home. We'd love to have you back again to see how the future plays out over the next year or so. And if folks want to reach out to you to understand your services, how you could work with their organizations, how can they contact you?

Yeah, they can reach me at a Lynn, A L L y n@transformationtopus.com or you can just check us out at www.transformationtopist.com.

And don't forget, transformation is not a feast. It's a tapas bit by bit.

Awesome.

Thanks for joining us and thank you so much for joining us today live. For those who did join us live. And thanks to Jacob and others for the comments and for you listening on the podcast as well. We're going to be back next week with another show. Please, please do join us. You can find more about all of our list on socialsound.com the shortlist. But next week, joining me on the show will be Laurie Sylvia. Laurie was due to join us last month, and she had her own health challenges that caused her to unfortunately postpone. But trust me, it's going to be a show worth waiting for. Laurie's.

Sa.

We'll see you next week.

Sa.