How to embed a culture of hiring

I’ve always been a firm believer that hiring is one of the most important cogs in any organization. Every function, every process, every success and every shortcoming can be traced back to people. Hiring is strategic and if it’s properly embedded into the DNA of a company, you enable more opportunity for growth, innovation and performance.?

I recently hosted our online leadership event, SocialTalent Live: Building a Hiring Culture , which dealt directly with this topic. Speaking with senior TA leaders from a range of global organizations, I was inspired by their keen insights on, not only why a company-wide focus on hiring is advantageous, but also how they each go about operationalizing this approach. Here are a few of my favourite takes.??

First step, define hiring culture

Every speaker had their own unique slant on a similar trend. Aimée Meher-Homji , the VP of Global Talent Acquisition at Adidas, described hiring culture in the ‘everyone is a recruiter’ vein, but powerfully added that “everyone is a diversity recruiter,” which seems a lot more apt, and I would absolutely agree with this. Michaela Schütt , the Global VP, Head of Global Talent Acquisition, at Siemens, drove home the important role that hiring managers play in this ecosystem – they have to live a hiring culture every day and actively support TA and HR in selecting the right talent for an organization. But it was Kelly Jones , the VP Global Head of Talent Solutions at Cisco, who, I believe, encapsulated the definition perfectly. Take a look:

Building a hiring culture does require a fanatical fandom! I love this, because it gets at how all-encompassing and intentional hiring needs to be in order for it to seep into company consciousness.

Improving engagement to grow referrals? ?

Candidate referrals are goldust and form an integral role in a thriving culture of hiring. As Michaela put it: “all employees can be a big source of talent through their personal networks, they can tell the real story about their work and the company.” This is so true. There is no better advocate for a role than a current employee. But Aimée caveated this with an important point around EVP and engagement. Simply put, if you don’t have happy employees, they’re not going to refer anyone else. Content and engaged staff are much more likely to speak positively and authentically about your organization and can be a huge factor in enticing great talent to join. I also loved a point Aimée brought up specifically in terms of hiring manager referrals – Track. These. Numbers. It is a great indication of how high a priority recruiting talent is within your organization.

Building partnerships

My friend, and Founder of Recruiting Toolbox, John Vlastelica made a very important distinction when leading the discussion about operationalizing hiring cultures – it’s about being in a partnership. And I think this point is one of the most crucial when talking about embedding this mindset into an organization. It’s not about making hiring managers do all the work or forcing leaders into more active roles, it instead should be framed as a “help me help you” situation. Taryn Sheldrake , the SVP Global Head of HR Strategy and Talent Acquisition at PTC, exemplified this when she spoke of using data and industry knowledge to build a narrative around hiring as a business objective. You have to be intentional and show how better hiring directly links to the goals and mission of an organization.?

Advocating for a culture of hiring also means educating on how people outside of TA and HR can be huge differentiators for success. Kelly Jones used the example of outreach to illustrate this, saying that a message from a leader or hiring manager will always get more traction with talent than the same message from a recruiter. Forging alignment and building partnerships forms the foundation of any culture of hiring. I loved the emphasis put on this because hiring is a team sport and if you want to drive for success, so many individuals have vital roles to play.?

These are just a few of countless insights we received during SocialTalent Live: Building a Hiring Culture. But what does a hiring culture mean to you and your organization? And what do you think are the key elements needed to make it a reality?

If you want to experience the full event, just click this link here , and you can dive straight in! And don’t forget to join us on November 18th for the next SocialTalent Live where we’ll be discussing how to scale hiring during The Great Resignation. Sign-up here now so you don’t miss out! How to embed a culture of hiring