Successful High Volume Hiring with Jennie Shephard

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Welcome everybody to this week's the Shortlist. It is now Wednesday 26th of August. The summer is ending for most of us in the Northern Hemisphere. Our kids are going back to school, which for some of us is a moment of sadness, but probably most of us a moment of relief after six months of a poor attempt at perhaps homeschooling a crazy summer and just dying to get back to a slight bit of normality or whatever this future normal looks like. Well, I'm delighted you've chosen to join us, whether it's live on LinkedIn or YouTube today, or as a re recording on those same channels on our podcast. Don't forget the Shortlist is a weekly show available live on LinkedIn and YouTube, but also as a podcast and all your favorite podcast channels. And you can find a list of all our previous shows with links to them and our future shows with our lineup@SocialTown.com the shortlist. So this week we're going to be talking about the workplace concerns of high volume hiring we've seen over the last couple of months around the world. A lot of organizations, particularly in retail, manufacturing, services and other utility areas, send a lot of workers back back to work. That has also seen a rise in the number of COVID 19 cases in many of those cities and countries and regions, which is kind of natural, I guess you could argue. On the day that we're about to launch the second big wave of people interacting en masse in schools, we want to talk about what we've learned in the first wave which was reopening workplaces, particularly those where you have a lot of high volume activity retail utilities, people out in the fields working with customers and the challenges of high volume hiring. And joining me today on the show to share her experience around this and other challenges that are beyond even the pandemic is the VP of talent and a good friend of mine, Jenny Shepard with Sunrun, who many of you may or may not know over in the U.S. i hope you know who Sunrun is. If you're not in the US you may not have come across Sunrun, but you should have. And Jenny is someone who's worked as a talent and talent acquisition professional across several massive multinational companies over the last few years that I've known her and is currently working for a very exciting company doing something really, really interesting. And Jenny joined the business last year. Well, not expecting all the crises that were about to hit the world coming in this year. I think the organization has responded really positively to a number of these situations. But to Talk about those talent issues is Jenny, Jenny, maybe you can tell us a little bit your role in your team and I hope that cough is not Covid and the organization as well. Share with our audience live here a little bit more about who sunrun is and therefore why it has challenges around high volume hiring.

Well, thank you Johnny and thank you so much for making the commentary concerning back to school. So I'm a very happy mother because my daughter goes back to school today. So I'm utterly delighted with that as well. In terms of the role that I'm currently doing, I head up talent acquisition and the background and pre hiring teams here at Sun Run. I'm based in the United States in California and the organization that I work for is very much focused on renewable energy and very much around solar. So ultimately our strap line is that we should be able to have a planet run by the sun. That very much is our sort of strat plan. And as part of that our main focus is concerning around providing solar energy to our customers, which is predominantly our retail organization but also our home environment as well. So our customer base is very much people's homes and we're in a current environmental challenges across the globe in terms of fires, as you probably are aware that California, north of California and very near to where I'm living, you know, we're suffering with wildfires and then other parts is around power as well, power shortages, whether or not that's hurricanes or adverse weather components to that as well. So from a TA perspective, predominantly we are hiring two very clear and distinct job families. The first one very much is focusing on operations. So that's construction engineers, electricians, journeymen, crews, those folks that do a really compelling and important job on people's roofs as they're installing solar panels, but also batteries as well. And then we have our sales team that go out and sell the overall products and services through solar panels and through batteries, batteries and so forth to our external marketplace and to our customer base. And those are a mixture really of folks that do field sales but also that work in a retail environment. And you're likely to see some of those folks in organizations like Home Depot or Costco and so forth. So that gives you a very quick overview in terms of my role and a little bit around some run.

And so for those of you listening live, if you have any questions for Jenny, we'd really encourage you to jump in on the chat if you in LinkedIn or on YouTube and we're going to try to address those questions and comments live as we go on. So don't forget to ask those questions around. You know, if you're working in a similar area as Jenny, trying to manage talent in that kind of an environment, are just intrigued as to the challenges of an organization like sunrun and Jenny's role. We'd love to hear you on the chat. But before we get into those questions and before we get into a little bit more about Jennie's role and what she's seen, I want to try and jump into some of this week's breaking news around talent that we want to try and I guess look at this week. So the first up I'm going to hand over to Niall to give us that news jingle. So in the news this week, the first article we want to take, Jenny, is from the LA Times and it talks about low wage workers facing retaliation for demanding COVID 19 safety measures at work. And this is an interesting article. I think it's, it goes way, way beyond LA or the US or anywhere. And it is, you know, according to the article and they've got several examples to talk about. They talk about how workers who are more frontline, whether they be in retail, restaurants, healthcare professions, etc are basically living in fear for retaliation for trying to make their workplace safer. And it's reminding us that these frontline workers are arguably at most risk of, of getting the virus and are putting themselves on the line daily. And yet, you know, whilst we'd expect their employer to respect that and build the safest work environment for them, many, many organizations aren't quite doing that. And that happens sometimes, I guess. But the real problem here is that when certain workers are trying to raise those issues that they're not just being ignored, but many of them are seeing a retaliation from their employer, perhaps reducing their hours, giving them the worst job to do in the restaurant or in the care home or whatever it might be. What are your thoughts on this, Jenny? Obviously you're not going to be supporting them. Who would? Are you seeing this? Are you anecdotally hearing this from other companies out in the market in the us?

So I think the main dialogue and discussion with my peers when we look at the specific skill sets that we're hiring, as I mentioned, obviously from a construction and from an engineering perspective and then ultimately in a retail environment, actually it isn't necessarily around the salary range, it's around setting the employees up from a safety perspective and making sure that it coheres with your overall organization's values. And for us, our values are incredibly important to us in Terms of being human centric and human centric really from that means that we want to make sure that all our employees, regardless of what roles that they're doing, have the appropriate PPE or the appropriate protection and safety protocols in order to keep themselves and their well being. And I think one of the areas that we've seen shift with the COVID environment is the movement towards more virtual interviewing and selection. And historically what I've seen with my peers as well, there's always been a less resistance around and more concern around doing face to face interviews in person. And with COVID coming on, especially with retail hiring and within sort of the blue collar workers, is actually that flipping now towards utilising technology to be able to do the screening and that through that nervousness. And there's always an element of having to build capability with your hiring managers and comfort and some of that isn't necessarily around the technical pieces, it's making sure that hiring manager feels comfortable to be their true self when they're in the interview, when they're managing the candidate through a zoom or through a different type of technology platform, and sometimes again when they're having to do interviews via the cell as well. Okay. So I think for me looking at that particular article, it's less of a concern I'm seeing concerning low wages. It's more around organizations having to pivot and change to protect both candidates and also employees as they go through that attract and lifecycle and then make sure it's authentic when they come into the organisation as well. And certainly I'm seeing, you know, I'm seeing interesting behavior from a candidate as well. And when I talk to my peers as well, it's really levelling with them as well that actually now the candidate isn't necessarily always asking the question about an hourly wage. So for some of the schools, job families that we hire for, sometimes they shift and they shift from like one organization to another for a couple of dollars an hour. Right. Or that they're seeing that there is retention bonuses or sign on bonuses and the normal things you would see in that particular life cycle of talent that you're looking to attract. But what we're actually seeing now is candidates are asking very much thoughtful questions. They're asking questions around safety, what are you doing for me, how are you supporting me as I come into the organisation? And also not just the formal benefits that are on offer around health care and PTO and so forth, but actually what is the organisation doing to help navigate through this new normal. So an example is if suddenly, you know, I catch COVID or suddenly a family member catches it, or the schools don't reopen or, you know, my mother's residential care home is shut down, so I have to go and look at my, you know, my elderly relatives. Those more human centric questions are coming through the candidates and that is going to be a differential in terms of whether or not they go to A or B, I think.

Yeah, it's a really interesting point actually come up. Yesterday here in Ireland, the government published guidelines on, on for children and when they return to school this week, under what conditions should you, should you send them to school or not? And they had very, very clear for the first time criteria as to, you know, you can do a triage. If they have this, don't send them. They do have this, you can send them. And you know, it occurred to me and many of the listeners in the radio show that I was hearing this from, that we're going to face a winter where there's going to be a lot more people who have to take time off because they have to take care of, of a child at home who has to, who maybe might not be terribly sick, but has symptoms that now require them to be at home and be home until maybe 48 hours after their symptoms persist. It does. You know, I think it points very valid that these are brand new concerns that people never had before to the degree they will have them this year. And they there's an opportunity for an organization to show how they are dealing with this in a better way to the next organization. So rather, in the light of, you know, perhaps some of these bad negative stories coming out there, that it is an opportunity to stand out and say this is what we're doing and how we can allay your concerns about personal time off or whatever it might be. There isn't real differentiating opportunity here.

Absolutely. And I think that's why I made the comment earlier around the candidate behavior is that they're asking different questions to where they were prior to the COVID environment. So it's a lot more around that human centric component. I think the other piece also, which I know a lot of my peers were also having to work through, was lack of application flow at the top of the funnel. And what I mean by that is with what we hear in the media and what perceptions you might have around unemployment globally, there's still a shortage of talent pools and that makes it really difficult when you're having to educate and support hiring managers that are buying talent in a ramp environment because regardless of COVID there are organizations that are still hiring quite considerably. Right. Whether or not it's the big organisations like in Amazon or it's a smaller organization, there's still pockets of real high hiring going on. And ultimately then you're having to face with that pretext of X amount of million unemployed and why wouldn't they want to apply for your role with also the skill sets that you're hiring? Okay. And actually there still is a war for talent in some of the job families we're hiring. We have a very good example where we're still struggling to hire really good qualified electricians. And especially in some of the markets where we operate where there's very high cost of living. Right. That skill set and that that pool is very, very small because obviously they have to be certified. There's certain qualification components to it. But suddenly it's not going to open a big floodgate of electricians because they're actually working and they're working on construction programs, investment programs and so forth from there. So there's all of that component that very much sits into that area as well.

Yeah, I think there is a. This concept of the war for talent ended at the beginning of this pandemic is kind of mental for some people, even if they're not hiring. The war for talent has moved to a war of retaining talent, a war of developing talent, upskilling them or getting them used to a different culture as well. I'm going to ask Nod maybe to take our second article that we're going to have a look at related to this story. So this is from Fortune, and again, they're talking about why empowering frontline workers is a key element to a safe reopening. And in this article there's a lot of talk about some great examples of how culturally, when you have an organization that's built around how do we empower people to solve their own problems that the staff who can best solve them and best come up with those solutions are the people who are at the front line and they give examples, for example, you know of in the healthcare sector of nurses in hospitals early in the pandemic, who made the decision or the innovation to move the monitors and machines outside of the room so that they could be adjusted without having to step foot in the room, which reduced the need, for example, to put yourself at harm's way way or the creation in many hospitals a brand new role of a runner whose job was just get the supplies around the hospital really quickly. At the peak of the Pandemic and these examples, other being how the unions in the U.S. in retail, the unionized retailers came up with a code of conduct that kind of very early on said that employees and customers had to wear masks and other non unionized retailers adopted the same procedures, again driven by staff suggestions. So this was kind of looking at the whole idea of empower your frontline staff to come up with their own solutions. I'm wondering, Jenny, how you're seeing this play out because the challenge for you in particular as an organization isn't just restricted to the pandemic. Right now you have staff on the east and west coast of the United States. On the west coast they're facing the challenges of the wildfires in California that are burning again. Unfortunately this summer we creating really poor air quality and the east coast you've got, you know, hurricanes about to hit the shore and perhaps cause crazy damage. Again, an environment where you have your facilities outdoors. You have, as you said, of those two big families of staff, half of them are outdoors on roofs trying to install and maintain equipment. How do you, how do you think about this from a talent perspective in terms of the whole role of empowering those frontline workers to come up with the solutions themselves? How does that play out in your business?

So what I mentioned, obviously we have high volume hiring in both construction and sales. I think we must also not forget those that are in office environments as well. So for what's predominantly known in the United States as gna, which is really all of those support functions and so forth, it HR and so forth, a lot of organisations have delayed return to the office environment. So what you probably will see is many organisations are pushing out the decision making to 2021. So for us, for example, we're not opening any of our offices and not reviewing that situation until January. You know, I'm based in Silicon Valley. Many of my organizations that I see near to Silicon Valley hotspot, none of those are opening really until the January period or even longer. So coming back to the frontline component, whether or not that's in a retail or a sales environment, what we're also seeing is allowing it to be very sensible dialogue and discussion with both the leadership team, but also from the voice of the employee around, what do they need in order to be able to feel comfortable and protected if they're working in OPS or a construction environment or in a store environment as well. So it goes a little bit beyond just the ppe, but it's also what else can we do to help that individual through that process as well. And really hearing from that voice of the customer that is our employees, what do they need as well. And some of it could be basic things like, you know, we want additional cooling fans or we want additional components to help making sure that you're having that connection and that interface with your employees around what needing for them. Because again, each ecosystem is slightly different when you're having to deal with heat and you're on a roof and it could be 110 right. We want to make sure that they are protected in the right way which may be a different scenario when you're in other parts. And as we head into the fall and winter period, you know, areas around cold weather and snow and all of that component has to be taken into consideration. So making sure that you have that ability to flex in order to make sure ultimately your responsibility is with the employee setting them up. Because again that leads back into the differential story when you're attracting or attracting talent into an organisation as well. Those are the key questions that they're asking. I think the other piece also is making sure that you have community practices or that you have, you know, a programmatic component in your organisation where you're allowing your employees, especially if they're working early hours in the morning or on shift patterns, the ability to access information. I think even in the COVID environment there's always innovation and innovation is, you know, how we making sure that people have got access to bite sized information or videos or anything so that they can access information whether or not it is I need to know something around for financial well being or safety or mental health or whatever can I get as an employee just to help me which is important for me. So it's a personalization of choices and programs that that employee will need and making sure that you constantly have that pulse of the employee population as well.

I'd love to hear from our audience, if anyone, examples of what they're doing in their organisations, what they're seeing good or bad around these, the safety concerns of employees, whether they're in an office or whether they're out in the field as to how they're being addressed or what you've done in your company. I know Jenny, you mentioned the office piece and it's, it's so valid. I remember back in, I think it was May, early May, we informed our staff that we wouldn't be making available an office space until January and it felt like such an extreme thing to do and I actually second guessed myself to go. Really, should we? That sounds so Far away. I hadn't heard other people doing it yet, but as we approach September, it seems January. I'm not even sure, you know, we'll be in a position to reopen offices. And I think, you know, you guys have done a very sensible thing. I think other organizations have followed suit where we kind of look and go. We got to write off the next few months because it's just not going to be safe. And surveying and getting the feedback of your teams is really important. What are your needs? What do you want to do? Don't second guess, don't assume. Don't assume that what office workers want will be what your frontline staff out in the field will want and vice versa. They have different needs. If you're stuck and wondering what to do, ask those individuals. They, they'll have plenty of examples and feedback they can give you. I think the more you survey, the more you communicate to your point around making sure the information is available, it's accessible at any time, whether it be any day, any time. Again, considering different schedules and different types of work, work environments, that's all really important. I think we're all having to get used to this way of working where you have to allow for the 247 access of information because people might not be live together at the same time. And realizing that you have to listen probably harder than we've ever listened before to our teams.

Yeah. And I think that's also a balancing act of how do you also make sure that work and home doesn't mesh together. That's such an easy statement, but in reality that's really hard. And you're having to make sure that just because you've got access through technology and through a variety of different platforms that you also need to make sure that folks feel comfortable and have that permission that they can downscale as well. I think that's. There's a. No, I haven't got a vacuum. Unfortunately, it's the outside. I've just read a note saying it's a bit of noise. If you'd bear with me, I'll just see if I can shut the window. Unfortunately, I've got some gardeners outside.

Just bear with me while you're doing that. Jenny. I might read a column from Kelly Bryant who's listening live and Kelly saying being in the medical field has been pretty difficult since we have field sales case managers and candidates that need to interact with our customers in the hospitals. And she'd love to hear from others who may be having those same challenges and what they are doing. So it's again, in her example, the medical field. How do you basically mix the field sales, case managers and candidates who do have to interact with customers in the hospital? That's quite a, quite an extreme example of it. I'd love to hear from any others who maybe can share some insight in terms of how they're dealing with such challenges. So for your team, Jenny, you know, what is the situation around? Because I know it's one of the examples that was given in one of the articles was talking about new laws that are beginning to come in to protect individuals who have to go into the home. Homeworkers, I'm assuming the articles referencing perhaps to cleaners or individuals inside the home. Have you guys had to consider that around, you know, your field workers who were going on top of someone's roof, et cetera? I assume you probably might have to enter their home at some point to connect something or whatever. I know I had an example of somebody, I had an EV charger installed in my home a couple of months ago here. And I had to basically interact with the electrician that came out and he informed me he had to be, you know, the room had to be separated from him, close the door, no one could enter. That was where he'd work from and connect up all the stuff and you know, he'd all his PPE and so on and so forth and which is a different interaction to I'd normally interact. Can I assume that Sunrons had to take the same steps to kind of those challenges?

Yeah, and there's very strict legislation and certain adherence to different set of permits as well. Again, depending on whether or not you're working in, you know, somebody's home in fitting a new battery or whether or not you're on a roof. So those safety protocols have always been put in place, I think where the added wrapper and layer on top of that is very much around making sure that you have that social distancing. Okay. So whether or not you're in a van with a crew, you might not separate, you might not travel together, you might be separated because you need to have that six foot social distancing and so forth. So it's making sure that your employees are comfortable and adhere to those local protocols and making sure again that people wear masks, that there is social distancing, that those individuals have the appropriate hand sanitisers and all of those normal things to protect them. And I think the other piece also is that balancing act of making sure that your employees feel comfortable, that if they feel or suspect that they may have some of the symptoms related to Covid, that they feel comfortable that they can share that with their organisation and ultimately take the appropriate protocols as well. And I think that's really important that people feel comfortable that they can declare that as well. And again that comes back into the. That whole sort of attract piece as well is you're seeing some dialogue and conversations and my peers are definitely seeing this as well is do I feel that I'm joining an organization that puts my safety first, right? So therefore if the unknown happens and I get these symptoms which could be either Covid or coded related, you know, that I feel protected by the organisation that I can put my hand up and say look, I want to talk to somebody. And that's where again your employee programs your ability to be able to reach whether or not it's your HR team or an external organisation to have those conversations, it's removing that element of fear I think is absolutely key. And we're certainly seeing that through, you know, the candidate behaviour as well are asking those much more profound questions than the normal set of questions you would get from candidate.

Can I ask you something about an innovation that sunrun spoke about or you know, midway through the, the pandemic? There have been, you know, stories in the press around obviously your, your, your channel to market was through retail stores that may have been closed and you know, it was documented back in March, April that that presented a potential challenge to the organization in terms of capturing revenue. But as an organization you seem to have innovated very quickly around trying to change the way that you have, you acquire customers. Can you tell us a little bit about what drove that innovation? What was the innovation and the kind of net results of that and how it's maybe changed the way for the better how the organization thinks about how it acquires customers.

So I think the first one is it's how an organization adapts to whatever that new normal is and there's no playbook and there is no set of protocols that you would need to follow in terms of being able to. So it was very much around what is working in terms of either lead generation or field sales type work that you can utilise technology to do that and then how do you set your employees up to be successful to utilise that? So it could be things like you're having to train a set of employees around utilising technology because they may have been out in the field or they might be standing in a store environment and maybe not as technically savvy so how do you make sure that you're really ensuring that your employees have the appropriate skill sets and the right training in order to better use that to help them and then making sure that they can practice and make sure that they can use that as part of that learning development. So we really pivoted more into utilising technology and virtual selling than necessarily would have done in a, in a reach out environment. And I think what's happening, what's pivoted and changed now because we're still in this new normal, is that our employees that we hire in the retail stores, they also have a blended role now where they can also do an element of remote working as well. And there's flexibility around that and that's for the moment, whatever that moment in time looks like. But again, we're making it really clear to our candidates that we're hiring there is that blend role. So some of the part of the time you'll be in a retail store environment and others part of the time you'll be doing virtual selling or you'll be following up as part of the normal protocols from that moving forward. And actually we found a lot of our candidates have been really open to that as well, having that blend. Because again, I think it's clearly coming back to that earlier comment around application flow is ironically, you're seeing more people now searching for remote or homeworking environments. Okay. And I think that also then puts a challenge when you're doing high volume hiring in terms of how do you compete with that? Because you still need people to work in a store, you still need people to work in a construction or an engineering environment as well. And you can certainly see that application numbers are dropping down. I think the other piece also is that balancing act between manual buying hourly workers and you're also in the process of managing, especially when we were very much in the height of COVID when a lot of economic stimulus packages were put in across the globe. Whether or not it is like here in the United States when there was a stimulus package for unemployment as well. So making sure that folks felt comfortable and had a financial lifeline, the challenge is some of those payments almost were the same as what an individual might have as pay wage. So therefore what you were seeing, and my peers were certainly validating that as well, was a slight reluctance to come back to work because the pay and stimulation check helped them. And as I think we've come out of that much higher stimulation checks into a much more of a lower number, you're starting to see the application numbers increase. So I think it's always that sort of nuance. You're having to work, work through human behaviour. And how do you get through that fear of wanting to come back to work? Okay. And then the ultimate protocols around just the work life balance. So whether or not that is remote working or whether or not that's having to look at family or friends or whatever, how do we feel comfortable? So I think that fear element, that emotional intelligence I think is a key component organisations are having to work through.

And what is the reality that you're seeing on those top of funnel stats? Jenny, you know you mentioned obviously let's say your two main families but also the office workers, if you give that a third kind of category of workers generally. Did you see all of the application volumes go down and then they're rising again or is it more nuanced than that?

Yeah, I would certainly say in the height of the summer, sort of July period, we saw limited application for some of the key roles that we were hiring. And I think some of that is ultimately we were having to pivot and change our storytelling externally. So again that earlier statement around understanding the candidate behaviour that actually the set of questions that the candidate was wanting was pivoted and changed so that safety protocol came clear. I think the second piece also was candidates want were changing their behavior of what they were searching, whether or not that was through, you know, a job board, whether or not that was through job board aggregate and so forth. So what we ended up having to do is pivot more towards direct sourcing. Okay. And like most of your TA functions and recruiters, you do a blend model, you advertise, you will, you use passive candidates, you will data mine your CRM system, you do the normal things that you would expect as part of that toolkit, but we certainly see or a limited drop for a period of time. It's much better now through the apply flow because I think people are also understanding what the new normal is. So during the periods of April, May and June, organisations were trying to figure out well, what does this mean and how long is this going to go on? And candidate behaviour was well, okay, I'll wait for like four or five weeks. But now we're heading into the end of 2020 and people are also talking about 2021. So therefore it's how the candidate pool then is having to shift through that as well. So I think it makes it more complicated. You're having to tell the story in a different way from an attract perspective and you're Also having to shift your ecosystem as well as in the tools that you're providing your recruiters and hiring managers to be able to navigate in that new normal. And that's why I made that earlier statement around you know, how to, how to interview through technology. How do you make sure you still got that personal connection? Because it's not just the technical skill sets and competencies you're evaluating, it's that cultural fit. And then how do you really be able to make that cultural through technology as well?

I think it's something that a lot of organizations maybe were slow with or still being slow. Is changing the messaging, changing the understanding that the reason why someone might take a job or move jobs today is maybe fundamentally different to the way it was in January, February. Their values are different, they look for different things from an organization and maybe your organization has them, but you're just not highlighting them because your messaging is six months old. And six months ago, whatever you were highlighting was the right thing to highlight, but it just needs to be different now. And that's not just in your kind of forward, outward facing assets like your website, career, site, it's in how you deal with them. The conversations you have through the process, your onboarding, your offers, all the things you're highlighting through the different processes maybe just need to be different. To your point, focusing on ppe, how you can give better pto, the more human touch that the business has become a lot more important. Maybe it was more about career progression, opportunity, salary six months ago, let's say for somebody, yes, whilst they're important, maybe they just switch priorities for other things that weren't an issue back then, but are now? What do you see as we go into the end of the year, Jenny? What do you see as the next challenge or the challenge you'll be facing for the next six months with regard to, let's say particularly high volume hiring.

I think it's continuing to keep that high touch interface with the candidates and I think that's always very difficult when organizations globally are having to look at their cost base and having to look at how do we navigate and still remain profitable in this very difficult environment in Covid. And how do we make sure that we're comfortable with that. So I think there's always a natural tension on any TA function to continue to manage costs, but also make sure that you're maintaining that high touch interface with the candidate as well. Because ultimately the differential when a candidate is going to ship to you. Right. So I think that that's definitely in A challenge. And that's not an unusual request because any talent acquisition has always been asked to look at return on investment and metrics and data and all of the good stuff that that sits in a TA function. As you're looking at how you acquire and build and buy your overall talent, I think what's also done, I think it's also brought to the top of organizations dialogue and discussions around how do we also borrow and build our talent internally as well. So going back and looking at your referral programs or your career internal mobility strategies, I think we're starting to see some shift there as well. So that if we can't track the talent as we always have, through either behaviour or through the nuances of the landscape we're navigating, that makes you then have to focus internally as well. Well, right. So what does that really mean around retaining your employee base and making sure they've got opportunities and mobility as well? And then also how do you borrow talent as well? Because you might need a different set of skill sets in this new normal than you would have done before. Right. So I'm sure many organizations, and I know certainly my peers here in sort of Silicon Valley, are having to buy resources that they wouldn't have necessarily have had to buy at the beginning of the year or it wasn't mapped in their workforce planning or their demand planning. And some of that is more investment in technology or IT skill sets because actually there's a lot of that moving forward from that. So I think those types of nuances are becoming more important. And as we know, buying talent is a mixture between science and art as well. And I'm certainly seeing that the dial move more towards that human connection component and that is absolutely key to success. When you're buying talent into an organisation, regardless of the job families that have articulated, you've got to make sure that it resonates well with your construction and ops and your retail sales environments as well, as well as your traditional sort of office based employees through gna.

I think it's a really excellent point around the fact that the pandemic for many of us has required us to have a higher touch talent acquisition process for many people as they go as their kids go back to school this week or next week, as they go back into the office and start September. For many organizations on a calendar fiscal year, this is budget time and they'll be asked to present the case for 2021. And no doubt in many organizations you're going to be under pressure and your talent acquisition team to show a reduction, we'll be doing less hiring, our hiring is going to be easier. So therefore we want a reduction. I think it's really important if this is the reality for others, to show how much more we have to basically get involved, how much of a higher touch is required when you have such uncertainty in the market, when you have individuals whose values have changed and they want to perhaps have their hand held more through the process. And also that maybe it's just got more complex, it isn't just a straightforward acquisition. Maybe there is a. Do we retrain, reskill, cross skill? Do we basically drive more initiatives such as internal mobility? They require effort and they require collaboration across teams, which is going to take time away. It's difficult to achieve any of that if you're cutting back your team, cutting back your budget, no matter what the pressure is. So I think probably now is definitely the time to start thinking about what does our team need to look like next year, deliver on the business challenges and is it even possible to do that with a reduced budget? Because maybe it's, maybe it's not and maybe that's what, you know, TA has to be brave and push back on the business to say we're serious about talent. We need to basically double down on the harder parts, the more personal touch parts.

It might also mean that you actually end up having to pivot skill sets within your own particular team as well. So that means you might end up finding that actually you might need to acquire skill sets that have much more of a programmatic or a marketing or a communication style. Because actually you need those to be able to provide all of those toolkits through that remote working environment and remote dialogue with candidates in a different way. So actually what I'm seeing is very much recruiters now are having to become much more eloquent marketers, right. And they've also have got to continue to increase capability around telling the story at the top, top of the funnel with a hiring manager, right. And making sure that they've got that real insights and that data. And that's tough, right, because it's not a product that follows nicely through the end to end process. You know, you have candidate fallout, you have behaviors, you have all of those of kinds components. And it's making sure that actually the recruiter can tell that story. And what's the reasonings why something goes wrong? Right? It could be, is somebody declining an offer because of COVID Or actually when you one picket further, it's not Covid, it's actually they've got impact in terms of, you know, caring for a sick relative or there's childcare issues or whatever. That particular personal component stops them coming and joining the organisation. So for me it's not just the cost savings component and the value capture. Exactly. You're going to have to continue to invest in your recruiters to be able to wear those many hats as well. And as we know TA folks wear many, many hats. They have to be experts right across a different level of component as that. So I'm seeing certainly a lot more around how do we make sure we are more recruiters for those components as well.

You think about the high touch element of the recruiter role, a TA role, Jenny. It probably underscores the need to make everything else in the process that can be automated as efficient as possible. Many teams aren't sitting here on a tech stack that already automates everything else. You know, you may have to increase the amount of, of high touch relationships but if you don't have the basics in place because you just didn't invest in them before now, it's going to be even harder with, you know, antiquated CRM or ATS system, poor flow, bad reporting in your systems. You know, you haven't moved your team to be talent advisors in the first place. Saying that we need to invest in storytelling is a challenge that I've spoken to recruiters about. They say I want to do this but I have no time. And they are in a team that requires them to still do so much admin. They're just never going to get to that part. And they do get it, they conceptually understand it. You can give them training but they'll say I have no time for training. I'm still basically feeling all manual applications, all this manual work schedule, all my diary by myself, you know, across these different hiring managers and locations. It's a nightmare. You know, I'd like to get to that stuff. It's not possible. So I think it will be an interesting time for people to kind of know the companies who say, well, this is the time to accelerate the investment in our TA team to, to, to allow us to have the high touch to really compete for team talent that will help us grow next year and the year after and the year after. I think they'll be the winners, the ones that just cut back to the bone because they're trying to retain short term profits and I think they'll really suffer when the market grows again and they really will feel the acute pain of those talented shortages at the top of the funnel like you mentioned.

Absolutely. And it comes back to the candidate behavior will eventually be a customer and a candidate will also be an employee. So that whole networking component on how they've interfaced with an organisation becomes very, very key and that is the differential because as I said at the beginning the candidate behaviour has shift from purely just questions around comp and traditional benefits and the normal behaviours you'd expect to actually did you make me feel safe and did I get from you that that organisation cares for what I want to do? Because even if they deselect or decide not to join you, they tell their friends, they tell their family and actually it's not just around going to X organisation for comp, it's actually they made me feel that I was safe in this environment which is unknown for everybody and I think that will be the winner that if you come across in a very authentic and transparent way that's going to be the differential factor in terms of people joining any organization.

I will take that tip to answer Vinay Krishna's question which is how do I recruit recruit folks in India with latest technology tech stacks like aws, you know, the talent gets competitive offers how to attract accounts to our company. I think if you're listening be listening to Jenny's advice for the last 30, 40 minutes. It's not to focus on salary, not to focus on some of the things you may have focused on six months ago. It's to think about the, the new or the next normal that we're in at the moment, how people are insecure, fearful and see how is your company offering something that can alleviate those concerns. Concerns. That's different, that's unique, that's employee focused. I think it's the storytelling around that and that focus of Nay Krishna that might help you Jenny. I'm going to move to our we were at time. I can't believe we're at time already.

Wow.

I want to move maybe to, to our last question of you today and thanks to all of our listeners who've been tuning in. I wanted to see you know what is your advice for, for either the, the, the, the new normal as we enter into it, the next normal, as I should say, or just generally for talented professionals listening today, what is the advice you would give them or the best advice you've ever received that you think you'd like to pass on today.

So I think it's really around resilience and agility. Right. That there's no playbook in the environment that we're in at the moment. And it's very, very key for you to have a very open mind. So I always love the word that we're learning, unlearning and relearning. And I think that's absolutely and I think that's what makes every talent professional stay, whether or not that's in talent management or talent acquisition is that there isn't one set playbook. It's how do you really bring your teams through. But also you show from a leadership capability, the ability to adapt and be practical about it and test it. And I think I'm also going to throw in there as well is that that human centric component, making sure that you're in touch with your team, making sure that you know you can have also have some fun as well is so, so important because that's absolutely key for any success.

100%. Jenny, thank you so much for joining us this week on the show. Really appreciate your insights. We'll talk on the after show, but really, really appreciate your time and giving those insights. Jenny. We'll be back next week, same time. That's our early September show, the last and the second season of the Shortlist where we'll have a surprise guest. And I'm looking forward to our first show, hopefully back in a world where our kids go to school, where it's a little bit back to what will hopefully be the next normal. That's gonna be same time next Wednesday, 4pm UK Irish time, which is of course 11am on the east coast of the US that's I think 8am on the west coast of the US depending on where you're tuning in. But don't forget you can find out all our upcoming shows and a list of our upcoming speakers on socialtalent.com the shortlist, where you'll also find recordings of all of our previous shows and you'll find links on how to subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, Apple and all other formats. Really hope you enjoyed today's show and learned a lot from Jenny's insights on high volume hiring. We'll be back next week. Thanks for joining me, Johnny Campbell live here on LinkedIn and YouTube. And don't forget to tune in next week.