My top takeaways from this morning at #RECLive2022

Apart from Neil Carberry having rather impressive black eyes due to an ill-timed rugby injury, there were a few key themes that emerged for me during this morning's RECLive2022 sessions.

1.??????Homogeny to Representation

Inclusion has to be top of everyone’s agenda.

The recruitment industry as a whole needs to become more diverse, and ensure they design and implement inclusive hiring processes for themselves as well as their clients. Some of this will be driven by client demand, but the smart recruiters are ahead of the curve here. They know they need to be diverse in order to show their clients they do more than just talk the talk on EDI matters.

The smart recruiters have an opportunity to educate their clients and work in partnership with them to deliver increased inclusivity for them and, as a result, improved outcomes – from profitability to culture to talent attraction and retention to innovation.

There was some great discussion in the breakout sessions about how recruiters and clients can improve. Real inclusivity is all about authenticity, culture and education. It’s not about PR events or logos, it’s about meaningful conversations and genuinely valuing and respecting everyone.

Recruitment is a team sport – it’s not good enough for just the recruiter, or just some of the organisation to ‘get’ EDI – everyone needs to become part of a culture of inclusion - and that may include a programme of education and engagement. (That doesn't mean a compulsory diversity training session once a year!)

2.??????Master/Servant to Relationship of Equals

Gone are the days when recruiters (agency or in-house) could post an ad and then just pick the best application. Gone are the days when the employers held all the cards. In a talent short market, the balance of power shifted to the candidate and the employee. Employers need to be having conversations as equals, not as master/servant.

Even when (as it undoubtedly will) the market shifts, expectations have changed. The top talent will always be in high demand, and will always have the power to ‘vote with their feet’. Key to where they go will be how they are treated.

This master/servant idea also applies to the client/recruiter relationship. Recruiters need to get better at evidencing and communicating how they add value, and have sensible conversations around fees. For too long, margins have been eroded to levels that jeopardise the ability to do the important stuff – like promoting inclusion, delivering exceptional candidate experience, and investing time in becoming trusted business partners for their clients.

In a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous), the idea of fixing fees and/or pay rates for more than a year is clearly preposterous (11% increase in cost of living ring any bells?!) and yet it happens far too frequently with PSLs and Frameworks.

If clients are asking for exceptional – recruiters need to stand firm and charge fees that allow them to deliver it. You can’t deliver champagne recruitment on a lemonade budget.

3.??????Transactional to Transformational

In the same way that leadership has moved from transactional to transformational over recent years, recruitment is following this path.

In a world where the tech can do the transactional stuff, recruiters[i] can add real value ?in the bits that AI can’t do (no matter what the tech suppliers tell you!) – engaging with candidates and clients with emotional intelligence, digging deeper than the surface data provided on CVs and application forms, thinking about how you can make roles more accessible and considering ‘left field’ applicants who don’t fit the brief, using judgement to identify transferable skills and high potential individuals, going beyond the ‘AI’ - that relies on looking backwards at historical data to predict the future - to working ?with clients to envision something radically different and forging innovative ways of realising that future together.

Tech is great, and can enhance efficiency massively and save hundreds if not thousands of working hours, but it can also alienate talent when over-used. Tell candidates they will be interviewed by machine, and a large number of them will tell you very clearly (using some quite fruity language in some cases!) what they think of that. Or they will just vote with their feet and apply somewhere else.?

And don’t forget the Data Protection Act 2018 gives individuals the right to object to automated decision making – so you'd better have a back up plan that involves humans!

The trick is using the best tech to automate the transactional stuff to free up your time for the best part of recruitment - talking to people, listening to them, empathising with them, finding creative solutions to the challenges the ever-changing world of work throws at us, empowering organisations to achieve their objectives and transforming the lives of the candidates we work with.

Recruitment is the most important profession in the world.

And I love it!

I know I'm not recruiting directly any more, but by providing training and business consultancy to recruitment businesses I get to enjoy it vicariously, and see my clients delivering some truly exceptional outcomes for their clients and candidates.

[i] By 'recruiters', I mean those who are providing a full recruitment consultancy service, not those who are resourcing and submitting candidates (for example, filling jobs through MSP supply chain contracts). That's a very different business model