This Week, In Recruiting - Issue 37

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Open Kitchen: Talent Acquisition Should Reintegrate with HR

Have you heard that 'TA should not be part of HR"?

It is an old argument by now that whilst we are both people orientated functions, the work of recruiting is nevertheless different enough from the work of HR to merit formal delineation on the org chart. This should happen in part because of substance (there are real differences in the work), efficacy (easier to get things done with direct line to C-level) and status (who doesn't want an equal position at 'top table'?)

Whilst the positioning of TA as separate from HR made sense for most of the past decade, I suspect that this moment is really contained in this period between recovery of the great depression and the advent of Covid-19 (2009-2019) and that the moment may well have past.

3 Reasons Why....

1. Rise of Internal Mobility a.k.a Talent Marketplace

Image: Talent Marketplace Platforms Explode Into View , Josh Bersin, 2020

It took global economic deep freeze in the middle of last year for us to realise that we were all pretty terrible at Internal Mobility. We didn't know what our people could do, whether they wanted to do it or how we could connect those people-to-opportunity in an efficient way. Most of us would not even feature in the Bersin framework above, as internal mobility is usually entirely left to the individual employee to initiate, discover, apply and convert.

Covid-19 changed the zeitgeist; suddenly the imperative to redeploy staff rather than push them out into an uncertain economic environment, uncovered blind spots in our workforce analytics which we now can no longer un-see. The rise of viable technological solutions i/e Talent Marketplace Platforms like eightfold.ai and Gloat , is concurrent to aggressive product development from core ATS providers to expand functionality beyond external applicant tracking to include internal mobility as mandatory features. We are also seeing pioneering employers like Schneider Electric , Salesforce and Unilever seemingly making Internal Mobility work.

So who is in charge of Internal Mobility? Not Talent Acquisition. We have traditionally been measured by external hires (check your KPI's and let me know if internal hires 'count'). As companies actually get better at IM the relative requirement for external hiring will decrease. The implication for us - a function measured by external hires - should be clear.

2. Diversification of Employment Types

Image: Workforce Ecosystems MITSloan / Deloitte 2021

The focus on FTE is something TA shares in common with HR. Talent acquisition metrics are usually for FTE hires, whilst HR concerns are almost always with people on the payroll - FTE population. Everyone else who might be adding labour and value to the organisation exists outside of our systems, processes - even our thinking. They (or 'it') is owned by line or departmental managers in the business. And yet, as organisations begin to learn that greater 'organisational agility' can only come through a radical diversification of employment types, then the traditional workforce population is going to decrease relative to all the other types of people who interface with the organisation. In plain language, we will be hiring relatively less FTE in future and departments whose concerns are purely FTE, will also shrink.

Who is in charge of handling contractors, gig workers on a platform, alumni part timers moonlighting with us a side gig? A question currently unanswered, but given the resource distribution between the two functions, HR is likely to be in a better position than TA to answer it.

3. Distinction Between Company vs Market Becoming Blurred

Are you old enough to remember when intra-company collaboration was a fireable offence? I am. In the early noughties the only organisations you work with would be those you were selling to or those that were selling to you - client/server relationships all locked down into a legal contract of engagement. It took the developer community to show us an alternative path with open source - open collaboration with loose organisational structure with project delivery as the orientating principle. Key contributors might work for different employers (they almost always did) but it didn't matter because there was a parallel organisation of structure which people switched to when working project.

Intra company collaboration - or more accurately, collaborations between individuals who happen work for different companies - will increasingly become a pervasive phenomenon outside of tech. In such a scenario, where does the 'Market' stop and the 'Company' begin? Neither a great units of analysis to describe what is going on here. In open source collaborations the companies people work for become invisible, if not irrelevant.

Who is in charge of initiating these collaborative conversations, organising their intra company projects, creating community wide value? Not today's TA. Not today's HR either.

People Operations Is the Only Future

If you read Bersin again, you will see that he is an optimist, pointing to a future of 'Human Centred Recruitment '. I have no reason to doubt his assessment, other than perhaps warn that 'recruitment' needs to expand scope beyond acquisition of full time employees to work permanently in our companies. We both - TA and HR - need to abandon the old dividing lines and form a combined People Operations function which facilitates work related human interactions regardless of contractual relationships.

I'm not sure how far this message is going or even if it is going to be popular, but we are seeing 'People Operations' increasingly being used to described a broader function to caters for the needs of this moment. So TA needs to stop rowing away from HR, it's yesterday's battle and one which no longer matters.

Anyways, enough of the kitchen, onto the lounge ??

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What's in the News?

Recruitment & Employers Confederation report decline in confidence in UK economy

With Omicron now inevitably in the UK, it is probably the case that we are going to see a decline in hiring and growth for the remainder of the year. Plans for 2022 anyone? It's just round the corner.

UK based referral marketplace Intrro secure €1.9million investment

Like the way they don't position as anti-recruiter, as it is clear by now that it is recruiters who will always be the biggest users of recruitment tech. Have a read of the press release here

Inbeta close seed round funding one month after launch

Very rare to see recruitment technology innovation in exec search, perhaps the segment most resilient to tech disruption. Looks like there is an angle to make search more objective, more data driven and more diverse with this play - one to keep an eye on - read the PR here

If you are a recruitment service provider or technology business and have any news to share,?comment below,?this is your application to get into next week's addition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it

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What's On Offer?

100% discount on Brainfood Jobs on the standard tier for employers who are hiring recruiters. All you have to do? Complete the What Do Recruiters Want survey

Complete the survey here , share a screenshot of the complete screen in comment below and I will DM you a custom code so you can claim your prize!

If you are a recruitment service provider or recruitment technology vendor have any?exclusive?offer for the community,?comment below?with your offer in order to be included in next week's edition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it.

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What's Going On?

Founders Focus - Ep13 - Up close and personal with Dean Sadler & Dan Kirkland, Co-founders of Tribepad , Dec 1, 12pm GMT

What makes great engineers into great HR tech leaders? Deep technical work vs efficient business acumen can be seen as polarising types of work, yet co-founders Dean Sadler and Dan Kirkland at Tribepad seem to have done it. It's Ep13 of Founder's Focus, so time to get up close and personal with Dean and Dan. Register here

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep136 - Employer Branding for Controversial Brands , 3 Dec, 2pm, GMT

Have you ever hired for a company that was in the news for bad reasons? What about doing TA for a company where candidates tend to have prejudgement over? How we recruiters and employer brand professionals develop the strategy and tactics to effectively recruit for controversial brands. With Sam Newell , Founder (Alvarium Talent) and Katrina Fox , Founder (Peters-Fox) and friends. Don't miss this one folks - register here

Recruiter Nation Live , Dec 7, 12pm ET, Online

I’m excited to host, “Outrageous Ideas for Finding Talent in Tricky Market”, at this year’s Recruiter Nation Live—Amplify, presented by?Jobvite. I’ll be chatting with panelists about some of the most innovative ideas they’ve put into action to attract top talent. Some smart folks talking about the most outrageous recruiting techniques they've tried in order to get a competitive advantage. With Kristen Dubose , VP of Talent Acquisition (Title Max), Michael Wright , Group Head of Talent Acquisition (GroupM), Tony Suzda , Director of Talent Acquisition (Dent Wizard) and Samantha Flint , Director of Talent Acquisition (Total Wines & More). Join us and the rest of the Recruiter Nation Live event, here

If you have an event, webinar or podcast going on next week and want it featured on next week's newsletter,?comment below?with the link and event details. Don't forget to @ mention me so that I see it

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Who's Hiring?

Talent Acquisition Lead , Zinc, London, UK

Senior Recruiter , SellerX, London, UK

Talent Acquisition Manager , Orbital Witness, London, UK

Senior Talent Acquisition Manager (m/f/x) , Futurepath, Berlin, Germany

Senior Tech Recruiter , Digiterre Ltd, London, UK

Senior Technical Recruiter , VanMoof, Taipei, Taiwan

Senior Tech Recruiter (m/f/d) , Friendsurance, Berlin, Germany

People Ops Manager , Salesroom, London, UK

(Senior) Talent Acquisition Specialist (Freelance) , EVBox, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Talent Acquisition Specialist , EVBox, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Recruitment Marketing Coordinator , Change State, Remote USA

Talent Research & Sourcing Specialist , Netlify, Remote USA

Senior Sales Recruiter , Netlify, Remote USA

Senior Talent Sourcer , Rasa Technologies Inc, Remote USA

Recruiter , Single.Earth, Remote EU

Recruiter , eAgronom, Remote EU

Recruiter , Cielo Talent, Wroclaw, Poland

Recruitment Advisor , (Romanian Speaker), Cielo Talent, Remote EU

Recruitment Advisor , (German Speaker), Cielo Talent, Remote EU

If you want to get your job featured, post jobs on the Brainfood Jobs Job Board?here

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Who's Story?

Simon McSorley , Founder, Crew Talent Advisory

Brainfood Tribune is the series where we ask community members to tell us their personal stories, via 20 Questions, A Letter To My 13 Year Old Self and The Best I Ever Worked With.

Simon McSorley is a recruitment business owner who consistently makes positive contributions to the community. I asked Simon 20 Questions - here are his candid answers.

If you are interested in featuring in the Brainfood Tribune, comment below and let me know.

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Who's Moving?

Mark Frein joins Oyster as Chief People Officer, after spending time with Lamda School, Invision and Return Path in similar leadership positions in HR. The race is on to the HR back office for the remote world and Oyster is one of the few who might be the one. Fantastic hire and a no brainer move.

Jim Berrisford joins job marketing platform, VONQ as Sales Director for UK & Ireland, after 3 years with Irish HR tech firm Rezoomo. Serious hire by VONQ has they retool not only their technology but also their commercial operations. Congrats Jim - look forward to seeing what you get up to!

Chrissy Thornhill joins MetLift as Head of Global Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing, after spending 6 years in EB leadership roles at Salesforce. We've been talking about the birth of EB only becoming a separate function from TA following the massive increase of online job ads brought about by one-click multi-posting - great to see some build fruitful careers in this vital space!

Pavi Iyer joins Liven as Talent Acquisition Manager, after the fulfilment of interim contracts with CyberCX and Catapult. Covid-19 has changed many things about our world, and how we pay for food is one of them. Fascinating to observe innovation in this space, including single-click payment and app based rather than retail based loyalty schemes.

Anil Aphale ?joins Talentia Software as Solution Sales Consultant, after spending time in interim roles with both Bryq and PredictiveHire. There might not be a more burgeoning sector than European HR tech atm - need for sales people in this sector might be as competitive as hiring recruiters for everyone else.

Finally, a slate of promotions to celebrate: Andrea Marston moves up to Senior Director, Global Talent Acquisition at VMWare, Ilya Mikhalev , moves up to Talent Acquisition Lead at Smartly.io and Simon Wright who moves up to Global Head of Talent Advisory at PeopleScout - congratulations all!

If you have made a senior exec appointment to your business,?and feel the wider community needs to know about it,?comment below?with the details and see it featured in next weeks issue.?Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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What Are You Doing?

Laura Johnson formally launches Strivin , a dynamic, mobile first career coaching platform. To celebrate, there is a massively generous offer of 100 lifetime members , for the first 100 who sign up. Not sure if there are any spots left on this, but go again and claim in any case - you never know!

Daniel Plesa and Andrei Curtui ?launch HelpMeHire - a talent intelligence product focused on helping employers calculate the cost (time and labour) of any particular hire. As employers expand their scope to cover more territories and different types of employee, talent intelligence and recruitment insight of this type is going to be mandatory. Check it out here

Finally, it is final few days of Movember, the mental health awareness month particularly for men's health. Adam Gordon has been the only one who has claimed this segment for use, and he has managed to increase his fundraising to 10x target as a result! Help him get over the edge with a last minute donation here .

If you are doing something new,?comment below?with what it is and share a link to where you want people to go. Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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End Notes

It's super cold in London right now, so much so that I've decided hibernation might actually be the smartest move I can make. Granted it's only -1 C but in the era of mild winters, it's been unusual to experience temperatures like this - and I've obviously got soft in my old age.

Anyways, we're onto the final month of the year. Hope you've been enjoying this Monday newsletters - let me know if there is anything you want to see more or less of in this newsletter

Hung

Hung Lee is the curator of?Recruiting Brainfood , and now This Week In Recruiting. Subscribe to both if you are into recruiting or HR or just interested in world of work.