5 Key Learnings From The NPA Conference in Salt Lake City May 2024

Today, I want to share several key takeaways from the recent May NPA Conference in Salt Lake City, which Sharon attended earlier in May.

You can listen to the podcast recording here.

Candidate/Applicant Attraction

The first area is around candidates or applicant attraction.

Now, there was a presentation by Steven Smith, the founder of ApplicantPro. His company processes millions of applications every week. They work with over 1,000 companies, and the data they have access to is phenomenal.

Several things about candidate and applicant attraction hit home here from this particular session. The first thing is that the challenge around candidate attraction is real.

Yes, it is sector-dependent, and the data shows two times fewer candidates in the market applying for roles today than pre-Covid, which is staggering.

There are several reasons for that. Yes, there are people in their early 50s who have retired early. Interestingly, there seems to be some indication that some of those individuals are returning to the marketplace, whether for full or part-time roles.

The whole experience of the pandemic and remote working got candidates to realize they could work effectively from home, and they didn't need to travel for several hours to an office before they started work and back again at the end of the day.

They're not as willing to put themselves into the marketplace and look for the next role if what they've got is satisfying them, and they can fulfil their desire to work from home.

While many employers have a massive desire to get people back into the office five days a week, that preference harms many companies when it comes to attracting the talent they are looking for.

In addition, if we look at some broader societal changes, women are spending more time launching their careers, making significant progress, and delaying their decision to start a family.

If we go back 25 years, and I'm going to quote some US data here, the average age at which a woman would start a family was 22; today, it's 31.

The reality is that it is impacting the population growth.

Steve highlighted that our population and demographics are changing, which will affect the candidates available in the marketplace to fill jobs today and in the coming years.

In combination with other research, there was a prediction that the current marketplace lacking candidates isn't going to be a short-term issue, that if we look over the next 10, 20, 30, potentially up to 40 years, that there is going to be a significant impact on the volume of candidates in the market. Of course, that then has a knock-on effect in terms of, as recruitment and search companies, what can we do to place ourselves in the best possible position to attract the candidates in the market?

Candidate attraction and candidate marketing are vital in the short and long term.

Even as the market changes and we're looking for more clients, we need to have strategies in place to build new business and attract clients. We also need to consistently build talent pools and consider all the different methods to attract and nurture talent.

The reality is that we will continue to face a very competitive market. Regarding candidate attraction, think about the candidate's journey right from this point when someone decides to look for a new opportunity in a new organization.

·???????? What is it that triggers them to make that decision?

·???????? Then, what's the journey they must go on as they explore organizations, the right role for them, and the right culture?

·???????? What will be the right schedule for when they want to work?

·???????? Are they willing to be more flexible, or are they, "This is what I'm looking for completely, fully remote working"?

People make all those decisions at an early stage, and then they embark on a journey. You can create useful content to help people through all the stages of that recruitment journey, from onboarding to building their careers within a new organization.

You can nurture these relationships over time so that when a candidate decides it's time for them to move, you are front of mind because you've been encouraging them.

Of course, we can look at a whole variety of basic marketing principles for keeping in contact with that person on that journey using a variety of channels available today, from messaging to phones, email, video, and content.

There are so many opportunities to have touchpoints with these individuals.

Steven's presentation revealed something about which he was passionate: He encouraged companies to stop posting job descriptions as ads.

This is something we talk about with our Superfast Circle clients. Last year, we had a guest speaker, the amazing Cheryl Wing, an award-winning rec2rec with over 20 years of experience. She was talking about how to write compelling job ads. It is a skill, and probably, as recruitment and talent acquisition, individuals need to get better at it as candidates' proprieties change.

As I've mentioned job ads, I want to add a couple of suggestions Steven mentioned by looking at all the data he does.

To reiterate, I'm sure many of us realize that the job title in your ad is key. He was a huge advocate of ensuring you research the right job title. Use six words maximum in that title to encourage people to click on the ad.?

Avoid clickbait strategies, ensure your ad has quality content, and answer the questions that the person reading the ad will have in mind.

·???????? What is going to be part of this role?

·???????? Where will I work?

·???????? How will I work? That's more about hybrid being in the office, et cetera.

·???????? What is the salary?

·???????? What are the benefits?

·???????? Why should I work for that organization?

This is about the individual's impact within the role and the organization.

The final point was to write multiple ads, a minimum of three, where you can rotate those ads to maintain rankings on the job boards you use.

Sourcing

My second key takeaway was about sourcing.

I was blown away by this particular session by a guy called Mike "Batman" Cohen. There's a story about why he calls himself Batman; he fell in love with Batman in his late teens!

Mike specializes in sourcing and is an expert speaker on this topic. What I loved about his session was he mentioned so many different pieces of software you could use.

There were two things I took away from his presentation.

One was about productivity and how using different sourcing tools and technological pieces can make you much more productive.

The second part, again, sticking with productivity, is how some very simple tools can make some mundane, frustrating tasks so much easier and also enhance your clients' and candidates' experience of your service.

Let me give you an example.

Mike referred to a piece of software as Honeit. Some of you may be using it already.

Honeit can do many things; one function is the ability to record interviews with your candidates.

"Zoom and MS Teams do that, and Otter.ai does too. What's special about Honeit, Sharon?"

What is different is that you can take that recording, and the software will extract sections from that candidate interview.

You can then send snippets from that interview directly to your client via the platform.

These are short audio recording snippets, say 30-90 seconds, which you can share with multiple stakeholders participating in the interview process.

If you can share a candidate's answer to a question, that is their version, not yours, as the recruitment individual is editing that and passing it on.

Some of you will be using video software that does this. If you're not, then Honeit allows your client to have a different experience.

This is only one tiny element of what Honeit can do, but it certainly opened people's eyes in his session.

Mike's always on the lookout for software, and I know there is so much available that it can be difficult to keep track, never mind thinking about getting ahead of the game.

One piece of software that he talked about was something called Betterleap . This software is an alternative to SeekOut, and, dare I even say this, it was on his slide, LinkedIn Recruiter.

Betterleap is an AI-sourcing software for candidates. From his brief demo, it certainly looked like something worth checking out. I won't go into detail about that because this is auditory. You're much better looking at that from a visual perspective, but it would be something that, if I were in your shoes, I would be looking at as well.

The other piece of software that caught my eye was Exact Buyer. What I loved about this software was that it allows you to find out what jobs are available in what organizations.

From a BD perspective, this sounds like a great opportunity.

I know other pieces of software can do that, but what I like about Mike Cohen is he's out there all the time recruiting, just like you, day to day, and he's testing all these different pieces of kit individually and then how they work with the other piece of software that he uses.

As a coach, consultant, and trainer, I like to examine the complex and consider how we can simplify everything.

Two pieces of software seemed logical from a productivity point of view. to use.

Now, the first one is something called Highlight This . Again, you might have got your version of this. You might have heard of Highlight This yet didn't know what it did.

Highlight: This is a free Chrome extension. You can use it to create a list of words and assign colours to those words you want your computer to highlight while scanning documents.

I imagine you are looking and filtering through many CVs and Resumes if you have lists of keywords you want to highlight when you're running through all those CVs to filter out individuals, even when you've shortlisted people. You're still looking for certain nuances or skills or, if it's tech, a certain coding language that tech people use.

Then, of course, the other one, and I know some people use this software, is one called Textexpander and then one called Text Blaze which Mike recommended. He has used both, and his reason for recommending Text Blaze was more about accuracy.

Text Blaze, again, is a Chrome extension. You can take common phrases and sentences or even short paragraphs that you might use repeatedly in emails and communication. You can assign an abbreviation so that when you are typing out a follow-up email for a client or a candidate, you know the phrases you use; then, you can type in that abbreviation and up pops the whole sentence or that short paragraph.

Again, when you think about batching out follow-up emails, etc., how amazing is that simple software?

While I realize that we're doing audio here, as I say, we're not doing visual. I can't demonstrate any of those pieces of software; check out the names, go and look, and if you are not using a tool that could help you do what some of these pieces of software do, then it might be something you want to consider.

How Can I Stand Out

Now, my third big takeaway concerns a topic we often discuss, and I'm repeatedly asked, "How can I stand out, Sharon?"

As we all know, and I've mentioned previously, it is an incredibly competitive market.

This topic of conversation was handled by a speaker, Stephen David Patterson, who talked about cold calling.

Now, the reality is, and bear with me here, cold calling is one of the most underutilized strategies. So many people do not want to cold call. They believe cold calling doesn't work, and so they avoid it. Yet, if you get good at it, you don't have to be a master but be good at it; boy, can you make a massive difference, and you will stand out.

Now, the reality is that many people are put off by cold calling. Let's think about it. Stephen talked about how our lovely mums and dads bring us up, and we're taught not to talk to strangers. "Just don't talk to strangers. Don't engage in conversations. You don't grill people that you don't know by asking them lots and lots of questions.

That's almost rude," I can hear my mum saying.

Now, if you think about that and people say, "I don't like scripts, I don't want to use a script. I sound scripted if I use a script, and it's so obvious."

Now, on the script, let's think about it and be honest.

Maybe not all of us, but many of us can get lost on holiday at weekends, down a good old Netflix binge, or perhaps it's Apple or Prime that you love watching.

We can get engrossed in a fantastic series, whatever that is for us.

The reality is that those actors we're engrossed by and love watching use scripts! Now, watching them on our favourite program, we wouldn't know they're scripted.

They don't sound scripted, do they? How amazing that it all started with a script, and they learned the lines.

They learn how to use intonation in it. They understand the body language. They know how to act those lines.

A cold call will generally be on the phone; we only use auditory. How we learn to use our body language, voice, and tonality will make a massive difference to the kind of conversation we have on whether that script comes across as like I'm reading from a script or whether it comes across as a conversation.

Practice always makes perfect.

If we can develop a script that works for us, we learn that script; we know what kind of tonality to use, what questions to ask, where to push back, and where to ask different types of questions. The more we rehearse and practice, the better we will get, the more confident we will be, and the more we'll be able to handle whatever comes up from the other side of that phone.

Cold calling is worth investing time, energy, and resources in building your cold calling muscle and helping your teams build that muscle.

I won't go into much more detail because we got into scripts, specific questions, and how to handle objections. Hopefully, I will give you some insight and inspiration to explore how you could upskill your team from a cold-calling perspective. It works and will help you stand out.

The Power of Networking

My fourth key takeaway was about the power of networking. This was my first international conference since pre-pandemic, and most of the audience had been together multiple times.

People in this network have been part of the NPA Worldwide Network for 10, 15, 20, and 30 years. Over time, amazing relationships have been built, including professional relationships and individuals within the NPA.

What was key was that even though there were people who have been there many times and there were new members, there was a strong sense of making this networking opportunity work for you.

·???????? Who are the people that you want to get connected to?

·???????? Who knows those individuals?

·???????? Who can make those introductions?

People were being incredibly planned and proactive about that, which I found inspiring.

I'd gone knowing what my outcome for that event was, the people that I wanted to have conversations with, I'd been talking to on LinkedIn with, people that I'd had calls with, so lots of different people that I wanted to meet for a whole variety of reasons. I

It made me think about how many times, perhaps in years gone by, I would turn up at a networking event, and it's not necessarily, in the past, been my most comfortable thing to do.

I've worked on it over time, but I didn't know who was in the room, what businesses would be turning up, or who the main contact point in that organization might be.

Networking can be much more organized today, but certainly, if you're going to a networking event, check out who the people are attending and who you want to speak to. If you don't know them, we can check people out, and hopefully, they'll have a good picture on LinkedIn so we can have a sense of who we're looking for.

If we don't know that, find somebody who knows them and get some introductions. Make networking work for you.?

Collaboration

That does link in quite nicely to my last point, which is point 5. It's about collaboration because the other thing that struck me about this network, now a key philosophy of the NPA Worldwide Network, as is with The TEAM Network in the UK, is this idea of partnering and sharing jobs.

We will have clients who say to us, "I am struggling to find the right kind of candidate for this role."

Imagine the power of having strong relationships with other companies where you could say, "I'm struggling with this role; I could do with some extra help," and you have a partner who has a network that can support you, and they can put their candidates forward for your role, and you agree on a split fee.

For some people listening and certain sizes of businesses, that might not be a strategy you want to pursue. I understand that. Small companies, solos, micros, and small SME organizations value having an additional income stream of whatever size results from partnering with other organizations.

Listening to a series of success stories of people who collaborated across US states and internationally was fantastic. That was from America into the UK, Mexico into America, and Korea into Australia.

There were many different examples of recruitment and talent and search companies being able to come together to deliver an enhanced service to somebody's client and how the client valued that.

Some of the people I met were in a position where they didn't have to say no to the level of roles they were working on because they always knew that they could partner with someone to meet the needs of their clients.

This whole idea of collaboration went to a completely new level for me. What was fascinating was when I came home, and that first week I was back, one of our clients reached out and said, "Sharon, we have a client. Our client has a sister company in the US that needs help. I can't help them directly. Do we have anybody in Superfast Circle based in the US who could help?"

We've made that introduction. How amazing it was that it happened, and how coincidental it was with what I had just experienced. I just found that inspiring. If anybody wants to email me about that and wants more details about either the NPA Worldwide Network or The TEAM organisation, please email me or message me on LinkedIn. I am happy to make some introductions there.

There you have my five big key takeaways.

I hope that's given you some food for thought. Hopefully, you'll be checking out different pieces of software that can help you in multiple ways.

I probably will do a similar thing because I'm heading off shortly to the team conference in the UK. Before that, I'm heading out to Marbella for another NPA conference.

Lots more learning will be happening over the next month. I'll be sharing more insights.

Until then, bye for now.

Thanks?

Sharon

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