Category: Talent Acquisition Strategy

Hiring Solutions for Healthcare Providers with Krista Sullivan de Torres

Posted on by jpatel

As organizations around the globe confront talent scarcity challenges, even the most seasoned talent leaders find themselves in uncharted territory. This profile shares insights from PeopleScout Global Leader of Solutions Design, Krista Sullivan de Torres. Krista is a seasoned professional with more than a decade of human resources and talent acquisition experience. While Krista’s professional experience spans many industries, she has a passion for and deep expertise in healthcare recruitment. Her experience includes launching RPO programs for healthcare startup organizations, managing RPO operations for managed care, population health, behavioral health, and healthcare system clients. Krista’s specialties include global talent acquisition team design, talent acquisition operations, analytics and reporting, recruiting, sourcing and retention. Krista holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

Krista shared her insights about hiring solutions for healthcare providers from her home office in Florida. 

Ebook

How RPO Can Solve The Top Challenges In Healthcare Talent Acquisition

Access Ebook

What are some of the hiring challenges facing the healthcare industry right now? 

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, there were already many challenges around healthcare hiring. We all hear about the shortage of nurses, but there’s also a shortage of clinicians across the board. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, we’ve seen an increased number of patients, so these shortages have become even more acute — particularly in the areas that have been hit hardest with the disease. In addition, some challenges arise when clinicians who have COVID-19 risk factors, or live with someone who does, are now unable or unwilling to work in order to protect themselves and their families — causing a large strain in hiring for these specialized roles.  

Hiring for a healthcare role, clinical or nonclinical, is much more difficult than hiring in many of the other essential industries right now. How and why is that? 

Regardless of whether we’re hiring for a role that is clinical or nonclinical, there are a lot of additional requirements for working in healthcare than there are in most other fields. If a candidate is going to be working directly with patients, particularly those that are most vulnerable, an extremely thorough background check is necessary to protect the safety of patients. So, rather than a traditional pre-hire online form and standard background check, healthcare candidates will undergo additional criminal history checks, fingerprinting and more. These critical checks tend to slow down the hiring process and can add a layer of complexity when we’re looking at the available workforce. 

Another factor affecting hiring is that a lot of people are a little afraid to work in the healthcare industry right now. As I mentioned earlier, people may be cautious about taking a job in healthcare in order to protect themselves or high-risk family members against COVID-19. In addition to there being a challenge in the number of candidates available to start, we are faced with the challenge of selecting the right people for the job and ensuring we have a pool of candidates who are excited and available to work during this unusual time.  

Lastly, a major factor we consider in the healthcare industry — particularly in a clinical setting — is ensuring healthcare workers are extremely customer-focused. We look for people who are very focused on the patient and the patient’s family. We’re facing challenges in the spike in the number of people who are severely ill, so ensuring we have workers who are correctly educating and caring for patients is of the utmost importance.  

What sort of hiring solution for healthcare providers are available right now? 

A lot of healthcare organizations are really trying to get creative during this critical hiring time due to the healthcare talent shortage. They’re looking to potentially bring back previously retired workers, flexing up hours for part-time associates and bringing in traveling nurses or clinicians to support them where their internal teams are at capacity. Many organizations are also interested in implementing a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solution to quickly get short-term support in locations that are particularly hard-hit.  

How do these RPO solutions work in practice? What are some of their benefits? 

That’s a great question. One of the many benefits of healthcare RPO is that we’re able to ramp up very quickly to meet client needs. For example, a client came to PeopleScout when they needed to rapidly scale up hiring to support their hospitals. We spoke with the client, came up with a solution and worked through the contracting phase all within three days. It helps that PeopleScout has a large team of clinical and nonclinical healthcare recruiters who are trained to know the industry and can identify high-quality candidates to get the pipeline filled quickly. 

When it comes to on-demand recruitment support, the beauty lies in rapid engagement and disengagement. Once immediate hiring needs are fulfilled, an RPO provider can pull recruiters back in-house and assign them to a new project. This is a great benefit for clients — they don’t need to deal with the stress of layoffs and furloughs because they’re able to engage and disengage experienced recruiters as needed.  

The most important thing right now is to keep everyone safe and healthy. What is the best kind of solution for that? 

One important way to keep people safe while still meeting critical talent needs is to use a virtual hiring solution for healthcare providers. PeopleScout has a bit of an advantage here because we were a virtually based culture even prior to the COVID-19 crisis, so many of our recruiters were already working from home. Our virtual solution allows us to conduct digital interviews — on-demand or live — so we can continue to safely service our clients without interruption. We’ve been able to effectively maintain — and in some cases exceed — productivity while also minimizing the risk for our clients, candidates and internal teams. 

Are there any final thoughts on hiring solutions healthcare providers you’d like to leave us with? 

We’re all going through a really challenging time right now and trying to support one another. We’re all in this together and PeopleScout is here to support our clients, candidates, teams and prospects in any way we can. 

Kent County Council: A Social Media Campaign Promoting a Career in Care

Posted on by edyson
Kent County Council: A Social Media Campaign Promoting a Career in Care

Social Media Recruitment Campaign

Kent County Council: A Social Media Campaign Promoting a Career in Care

PeopleScout developed a social media campaign for Kent County Council (KCC) to attract more home social care and healthcare workers.

2 week campaign
51,000 impressions
1,000 click-throughs
75,000 views on YouTube

Support workers make a genuine difference to real lives and Kent County Council (KCC) was finding it hard to attract the right people to fill their vacancies. They approached PeopleScout to develop a campaign to reach an audience that may not realize they had the skills and attributes to become care workers and show them they could have a meaningful career, just by “being you.”

Scope & Scale

Kent County Council, along with over 1,400 partner organizations, are committed to providing essential care and support, working with some of the most vulnerable members of the community. Their need to recruit was based on the requirement to alleviate pressure on nursing homes and hospitals by providing care in the clients’ own homes, therefore freeing up valuable beds elsewhere.

It was also important to demonstrate to the wider Kent population that KCC was taking positive and supportive action in what was a high profile and often criticized area for all local authorities.

Situation

With job openings that aren’t clearly defined by specific skills or experience, it’s often challenging to convince potential recruits that a role is right for them. With “unskilled” (in terms of qualifications) positions such as these, the lure of other opportunities, including retail, is often more appealing and the lack of visibility or explanation of support roles, alongside a misunderstanding of what is entailed, compounds this issue. In addition to this, there was a lack of clarity about the genuine career potential that these jobs could offer potential candidates. KCC aimed to raise the profile of the work they do in an area that is both sensitive and one that touches most people at some stage in their lives.

Solution

To fully understand why existing support workers do what they do, we ran a focus group to investigate the motivators and to hear real-life stories. Our creative team then set to work to produce a personal and appropriate creative identity; one that would put empathy and natural caring skills needed for these roles at the very heart of the campaign. We concluded the best way to communicate this was through video, showing everyday situations where people made a difference, doing everyday things and how this translated into a care workers’ job.

This was driven by the central campaign message of “You’d be surprised how qualified you are to be a support worker – just by being you’.” With a small promotion budget and to ensure that the power of the video’s visuals were maximized, we used social media to push the video out to the target audience using geographic and behavioral targeting methods.

Results

The social media campaign ran for just over two weeks and in that time delivered over 51,000 impressions, converting to over 1,000 click-throughs – an impressive rate of 2.1%. Equally impressive, YouTube delivered almost 172,000 impressions and over 75,000 views.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Kent County Council
  • INDUSTRY: Government & Public Sector
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT KCC: Kent County Council is a county council that governs the county of Kent in England including 1.6 million residents. Amongst its many services, the council provides health and social care for adults and children.
Let’s Connect

Sainsbury’s: Getting More Vans on the Road

Posted on by edyson
Sainsbury's: Getting More Vans on the Road

Recruitment Media Campaign

Sainsbury’s: Getting More Vans on the Road

Grocery retailer Sainsbury’s turned to PeopleScout to hire drivers to support their growing online business.

6,200 annual hires
5 weeks to fill most roles
analytics informed approach resulted in reduced marketing spend
analytics informed approach resulted in reduced marketing spend

With online grocery shopping becoming increasingly popular, Sainsbury’s looked to PeopleScout to maximize the number of delivery slots that they could offer to customers. In a saturated marketplace, it wasn’t enough just to target existing drivers, we also needed to find those with transferable skills and encourage them to apply. The resulting strategy enabled Sainsbury’s to go to market with a number of highly targeted and locations-specific attraction campaigns.

Situation

Before engaging with PeopleScout, the client struggled to meet its hiring goals. Approximately two-thirds of candidates dropped out of the hiring process between the first two steps of the screening process. Many candidates couldn’t complete screening during traditional recruiting hours.  

In response to these challenges, PeopleScout provides a highly scalable delivery team to meet the client’s fluctuating hiring needs and address regional and cultural preferences during the screening process. PeopleScout’s centralized recruitment support ensures compliance and streamlines the process through innovative technology solutions. Positions in scope include 6,200 annual hires for warehouse and truck driver positions.

Sainsbury’s business strategy is to respond to the changing needs of their customers, enabling them to shop whenever and wherever they want. Seven days a week, Sainsbury’s delivers fresh food, groceries, general merchandise and clothing from suppliers around the world, via 33 distribution centers, to their store and online customers, meeting their requirements for flexible, convenient shopping.

Drivers are a vital part of this strategy, ensuring that Sainsbury’s can make deliveries to millions of customers at a time that suits them.

The online grocery department is a fast-growing business for Sainsbury’s. When we started this project, one in five employees worked in the department, but with changing consumer habits, this was soon to become one in three.

Despite being one of the company’s largest employee populations, it experienced high turnover in line with the challenging driver recruitment market. Some locations, for example, inner-city areas and affluent suburban locations, found it particularly hard to recruit.

The level of attrition made it hard for the department to grow, and driver availability became the limiting factor when it came to processing orders. It was vital for the business to hire more drivers immediately, but also have a robust strategy for the future too.

Solution

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

  • Marketing Intelligence & Market Analysis
  • Persona Development
  • Process Design
  • Creative Development
  • Integrated Media Campaign

AT A GLANCE

  • COMPANY: Sainsbury’s
  • INDUSTRY: Retail
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
  • ANNUAL HIRES: 6,200 annual hires for warehouse and truck driver positions
  • LOCATIONS: 33 distribution centers
  • ABOUT SAINSBURY’S: Sainsbury’s is a British supermarket and the second largest grocery chain in the United Kingdom. Since opening their first store in 1869, Sainsbury’s in focused on providing great value food and convenient shopping, whether in-store or online—as well as through their other brands Argos, Habitat, Tu, Nectar and Sainsbury’s Bank.
Contact Sales

Our first step was to leverage interviews and focus groups to understand the recruitment proposition for drivers at Sainsbury’s.

In addition to interviews, we utilized market mapping techniques to understand the labor force, reporting on salary benchmarks, competitor activity, and the socio-demographics of hard-to-fill locations.

Using the data collected from interviews and focus groups, we developed distinct driver personas, each with its own messaging framework and channel strategy. We used these to develop highly targeted comms for each group, responding to their motivations and behaviors.

Secondary messaging included: flexible shifts where we knew there was a high student population and non-monetary benefits such as child-care vouchers in areas that had a high density of families.

Results

The campaign was so successful that the majority of roles were filled within the first five weeks of the 12-week campaign, meaning that Sainsbury’s could cut back on their marketing spend. More impressively, seven locations needed to pause their recruitment due to high application numbers including two of the locations that were identified as hard-to-fill areas.

After speaking to hiring managers, existing employees, and those working for competitor organizations, we found that the majority of people eligible to be a Sainsbury’s delivery driver didn’t realize that they already had the skills to do the job. In fact, the role required skills like good customer service, time management, and self-motivation which we found to crossover with a number of different sectors.

This led us to design a creative route that focused on the core messaging of “All you need is a license” and “Where will your license take you?” educating the audience around the training and development new joiners received. This sat in contrast to another creative route which we used in locations that had high competitor activity. There we led with the messaging around the fact that Sainsbury’s offered guaranteed hours where other organizations did not.

Before the campaign, Sainsbury’s was engaging with candidates across multiple channels with different communications, which meant they ended up talking to the same audience in different ways, about different things. By taking this insight-driven segmented approach, Sainsbury’s could instead talk confidently about the things that mattered to candidates, using the channels that they were most likely to respond to.

“The success of the campaign so far has been unprecedented and as such after five weeks we are already in a place where most of our stores in the trial have filled all driver hours required. In total, we have received over 2,000 applications. We’ve extended 131 offers, and 106 have been accepted so far.”

Client Testimonial

Tips for Leading Through Crisis

Posted on by jpatel

Leaders have great responsibility – to inspire and motivate teams to work toward a common purpose in good times and bad. In times of uncertainty, the importance of good leadership is elevated to an even higher level. 

As organizations across the globe face the unprecedented challenges brought about by the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19), our leadership team at PeopleScout is starting first and foremost by leading with compassion and empathy. While each of us is experiencing the COVID-19 crisis differently, we are all in this together as it relates to the uncertainty and fear we face. 

ebook

Five Tips for Leading Teams Through Crisis

Download Ebook

Lead by Putting People First  

Now, more than ever, people must come first. Effective leaders focus on what their teams need to be successful. Right now, needs have shifted in dramatic ways, as has the definition of success. As leaders, we need to empathize with those needs and quickly adjust how we respond.   

In the case of COVID-19 or a similar public health crisis, it is important to be intentional about putting people first in two main ways: 

  1. Provide leadership that safeguards people. Because COVID-19 threatens the basic human need for safety, this is the most obvious and immediate need and it requires decisive leadership. Quick action is necessary to keep employees and clients safe and to keep business running during an extreme crisis. Even when we don’t yet have all the facts or understand the long-term outcome, we must make the best decisions possible to safeguard our people given what is known about the situation.  
  2. Lead with empathy. As a leader addressing a rapidly unfolding crisis, this can certainly be difficult to remember to do deliberately. But by endeavoring to understand the variety of ways people are experiencing a crisis – both directly and indirectly – one can more effectively communicate and lead.  

These are unprecedented times, with people facing tremendous fear. Fear for their health and the health of their loved ones. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the economic impact. Fear because their job – in the case of first and second responders – puts them at elevated risk.  

This fear is magnified by the new stresses that we are all facing in different ways in day-to-day life. To be effective, you must seek to understand the variety of unique fears and stresses being experienced and provide the necessary leadership to best meet people where they are.  

Aspire to the Philosophy of Servant Leadership 

Through servant leadership, the good of the team and understanding the experience of the team is always central. Grounding yourself on those tenets can be helpful when facing any crisis – especially one of this magnitude. 

As we consider leadership through crisis, there are several servant leadership principals that I find highly applicable, such as: 

  • Seeking to understand by listening 
  • Being aware of people’s feelings 
  • Striving to empathize  

In our organization, we have some incredibly talented leaders. Some of the best decisions I make are because I listen to those who may have a different viewpoint, instead of believing my way is always right. 

As we face this unprecedented situation, where uncertainty reigns, it is our responsibility as leaders to lead by example and with integrity, humility and an unwavering commitment to treating people the right way. This is essential, because during crisis it is easy to allow emotions and the need for rapid decision making to distract from the necessity of putting people first.  

Communicating During Crisis 

Access to information for employees is critical during a crisis, and even if you think you’re communicating enough, you probably aren’t.  

In times of uncertainty and instability, the quality of the message is paramount. Employees will be hyper-focused on every message you share and need to know you are being transparent and authentic. They need to trust you are telling them what you know, as well as what you don’t know, and that you are sharing honest information on the decisions being made and the actions being taken.  

Sometimes we are afraid to be transparent, which can cause us to lose the trust of our people.  Balance can be difficult during crisis, so we must stay focused on being honest, but optimistic.  We need to believe we will get through this, without minimizing the pain in the journey. 

It is also important for leaders to be visible. Given the scale of the crisis, it is easy to go into bunker mode as you and the crisis team home in on the response and the most pressing concerns. While that focus is critical to business stability and keeping people safe, it is also important that leaders are visible to their teams and the broader organization. 

The lack of visibility of key leaders and any perceived silence on topics that are creating stress in the business breeds rumors and anxiety. So, it is critical to get out there and avoid the tendency towards introverted leadership that naturally arises in times of crisis.  

Team Leadership During Crisis 

As a leader, you must be highly engaged in the response, but you must also empower your teams to make decisions quickly by making it clear that you support them and that they won’t be second guessed. A few select leaders will not have the capacity or expertise to manage all aspects of the crisis response, so it’s important to give your teams the ability to make decisions independently.  

As we’ve seen with the pace of the COVID-19 crisis, the situation is evolving quickly, so it’s essential to create a crisis management function that can keep up. Cross-functional teams should be created with members from across the organization to address the evolving situation from a variety of perspectives.  

As we manage through COVID-19, our crisis leadership team is meeting regularly to ensure we are acting quickly and responsibly. That team isn’t dependent on me; they will meet and take action even if I’m not available, and they know I trust their judgement and respect their decisions. That said, I make a concerted effort to be present because it allows me to be informed and provide input in real-time.  

Personal Leadership During Crisis 

From a personal leadership style, leaders must balance optimism with realistic thinking and act based on a realistic assessment of how the crisis will unfold.  

Care must be taken not to give in to doomsday thinking – which is easy to do in this cycle of bad news and scary headlines. Conversely, it is important for leaders not to take an overly optimistic stance. My goal through COVID-19 and other crisis situations is to provide informed optimism – to avoid eroding trust and future back peddling.  

Self-management is also critical during a prolonged crisis. If you don’t maintain your health, balance and perspective you can’t be level–headed and exercise good judgement. Although it would be easy to skip in favor of one more call or email, I prioritize taking a break for my 7 p.m. walks with my 8-pound JackChi dog to relax and process the events of the day. 

Another important trait to focus on is resilience. The resilience you demonstrate and your daily intent to be your best self through crisis will motivate others to do the same – to believe in your leadership and to stay engaged even when things are difficult. It is our role as leaders to provide level-headed, calm leadership that enables employees to have confidence that we are taking the most thoughtful approach possible given the situation. This will allow them to be their best selves through adversity. 

Looking Beyond the Crisis 

While this can be difficult – especially in the case of a public health crisis that threatens employee safety – you must look for and examine the long-term opportunities that are created by the change. 

The world will change permanently as a result of COVID-19, and those who harness innovative, long-term thinking through the crisis will find new ways to operate and will create solutions to meet new client needs. This sort of thinking will allow you to identify opportunities to optimize how you operate, communicate, manage and deliver services, and create ways to be more responsive, scalable and flexible.  

It will be through effective leadership that these opportunities will be identified and acted upon, rather than allowing the crisis at hand to blind you from them. Even in a terrible situation like this, I do believe we will find silver linings. As a leader, intentionally looking for those silver linings helps to maintain balanced and informed optimism and good long-term decision making. 

COVID-19 Series: Hiring Solutions for Healthcare Providers

Posted on by nfuqua

As organizations around the globe confront the challenges presented by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, even the most seasoned talent leaders find themselves in uncharted territory. We’re creating a series with our experts here at PeopleScout about the issues that are most pressing during this uncertain time.

We are focused on the safety of our employees and clients, friends, families and loved ones. However, it is important for many organizations to keep their talent acquisition functions moving – whether to provide essential services or to serve our communities by providing jobs. Many organizations are also now adapting to a newly virtual workforce.

In that spirit, this podcast shares insights from PeopleScout Global Leader of Solutions Design, Krista Sullivan de Torres about hiring solutions for healthcare providers.

Krista is a seasoned professional with more than a decade of human resources and talent acquisition experience. While Krista’s professional experience spans many industries, she has a passion for and deep expertise in healthcare. Her experience includes launching RPO programs for healthcare startup organizations, managing RPO operations for managed care, population health, behavioral health, and healthcare system clients. Krista’s specialties include global talent acquisition team design, talent acquisition operations, analytics and reporting, recruiting, sourcing and retention. Krista holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Talking Talent: Stretch Your HR Thinking

Posted on by nfuqua

David Fairhurst is well known as an innovative HR leader and entertaining speaker. He was formerly Global Chief People Officer for McDonald’s, one of the largest employers in the world, with 2 million employees covering over 120 countries. He has held HR leadership positions at many of the top global organizations including Heinz, GSK and Tesco.  David is the founder of Orgshakers, helping businesses shape their organizations to achieve short-term performance as well as long-term organizational health.

In this podcast, David speaks with Robert Peasnell, Deputy Managing Director of PeopleScout UK about the future of HR and how you can stretch your thinking to create successful HR strategies.

Listen to find out:

  • How to navigate change and create organizational readiness.
  • The importance of being brave in employer brand and EVP innovation
  • Understanding the cultural context of HR in other countries
  • How HR messaging can change organizational behavior
  • The need to use tech to disrupt the market and win the best talent
  • How to make an impact in communities
  • The likely fundamental shifts after lockdown

Best Practices for Using Virtual Talent Solutions with Carter McHugh

Posted on by jpatel

As organizations around the globe confront the challenges presented by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, even the most seasoned talent leaders find themselves in uncharted territory. We’re creating a mini-series with our experts here at PeopleScout about the issues that are most pressing during this uncertain time.  

This profile shares insights from PeopleScout Vice President of Technology Carter McHugh. Carter brings more than 22 years of experience in building world-class software solutions for businesses and consumers. In his role at PeopleScout, his passion is creating a culture of technology excellence at a global scale and delighting customers with innovative software solutions that improve their people and business processes. Prior to joining PeopleScout, Carter held various executive technology roles at CSG International, a leading provider of enterprise revenue management and customer engagement solutions for the telecommunication industry. 

Carter shared his insights on best practices for using virtual talent solutions from his home office in Chicago.  

How does cloud computing enable virtual hiring solutions? What would they look like if we didn’t have this type of technology? 

Great companies have been investing heavily in modernizing their technology infrastructure by enlisting the help of major cloud computing platforms like Amazon with their AWS offering, Microsoft with their Azure offering and Google with their Google cloud platform. These companies are experts in providing secure, always on, and really most importantly, managed infrastructure and platform services. Through automation, these services seamlessly support elastic demand — meaning they can rapidly scale up when they’re required to due to extra usage, and they can also scale back down when they’re not as heavily utilized.  

In just a matter of weeks, the world has shifted rapidly to fully digitalizing their work requirements, resulting in increased network bandwidth, processing and data storage requirements. Without these managed computing services, companies would be understaffed and would lack both the data center equipment and the automated operations necessary to handle such a rapid increase brought on by virtual talent solutions. 

Here at PeopleScout, our proprietary tool, Affinix™ talent technology, and the technology partners we use are all designed to take advantage of these cloud computing services. So, we’ve been able to respond very quickly and ensure that our clients can manage this sudden shift away from traditional, face-to-face interviewing into digital interviewing and virtual hiring throughout their talent acquisition process. 

These services aren’t limitless. When we experience outages, what’s happening and why? 

I think almost everyone can recall times when they’ve sat down to stream their favorite show or movie and it’s getting interrupted, or they’re seeing a little circle spinning. A lot of that is due to high network congestion or just an overload of too many people trying to access the service at once. As good as these cloud competing platforms are in their ability to provide this highly available, scalable virtual infrastructure and these great application services — it isn’t totally magic.  

Somewhere there still exists physical computers, networks, digital storage and in a lot of cases, people who are still running and working very hard to make all of this possible. So, when too many of these resources are requested all at the same time, they all still have to compete for that same available physical resource. Things have to wait their turn to get processed, so that’s when you see the service degradation and the digital disruptions. Sometimes that can result in a lot of end user frustration, and companies work very hard to avoid this. But again, it’s not easy to avoid in a situation like we’re facing today with such a rapid shift into the fully digital experience we’re witnessing right now. 

As organizations rely more heavily on these services for their talent acquisition solutions, what are some best practices to avoid outages? 

Right now, we’re all staying home and practicing social distancing to help flatten the curve to mitigate overwhelming our critical medical equipment and personnel during the COVID-19 crisis. A similar pattern applies to peak digital technology load used during the workday.  

For example, think about when you use a high definition video for a live interview, especially with multiple participants. Imagine you have a hiring manager and several members of a team and they’re all connecting on their webcams with a candidate and trying to complete a live interview. Many organizations across the world are all doing this during the peak business hours between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., and all of this combined can really overwhelm those services. 

Some good ways to work around this are for talent acquisition teams to: 

  • Reduce or shift live interview schedules with candidates. Most digital interviewing technology, in addition to having live interview capabilities, offer on-demand interview capabilities. This allows hiring managers to pre-record themselves asking interview questions and make them available via a link to an applicant, who can then choose a time and place of their convenience to record their answers. This can ease the burden of having to do everything live, and candidates can complete an interview without the risk of real-time disruption due to service degradation or unavailability. 
  • Use text or voice only interviews. This can be especially useful for initial screening interviews. Once you’ve narrowed down your candidate slate to just a few finalists, you can conduct interviews with live video to help reduce the peak usage load for some of these technologies.  

It’s also important for companies and teams to ensure that the digital technologies they’re using employ best practices, including data security and consent. When you’re using these tools with your team and candidates, make sure you’re getting their informed consent to participate in the interviews and recordings using the technology. 

Right now, we’re dealing with a relatively short-term crisis, but we could see some permanent changes to the way people get hired and do work. What changes do you anticipate going forward? 

With any new technology that’s introduced, there are always people who are early adopters and those who are more hesitant. What’s unique in this crisis is that companies that may have been slower to embrace some of the new virtual talent solutions and talent acquisition technologies now have no choice but to adopt these very rapidly — which can really push them out of their comfort zone. They may have felt that using a video technology wouldn’t allow them to deeply connect with their applicant, or maybe they feared embarrassment or looking bad if the technology failed during an interview. Those were all certainly legitimate concerns, but ones that were very rapidly removed in this crisis. 

And as companies have been forced to embrace these new technologies, they’re becoming more comfortable with this new normal. They’ll soon start to realize that they may have been trying to get many candidates to interview in-person who may not have been a good fit, and a video interview may have saved time and resources. They’ll also see that the younger generation of folks who are comfortable with technology may actually be seeking out and really appreciate the ability to interact with technology enabled companies and talent acquisition teams that allow them to set their own interview schedules. 

I really believe that once this crisis passes, we’ll definitely see permanent changes to many talent acquisition teams’ processes and they’ll be looking to keep the technologies that they’ve been using. They’ll probably be increasing the use of these technologies, really designing their processes and their candidate engagement more so around virtual solutions. 

What other types of tools do you see becoming essential for virtual talent solutions? 

The hiring process is definitely two way — candidates are just as interested in if the role, company, people and culture are a good fit for them as the hiring manager is trying to figure out if the candidate is a good fit for the job. Onsite team interviews and guided facilities tours have traditionally been a really important part the final interview stages so the candidate and hiring manager can get really sold on whether this is the right place for them and if this is the right candidate for the team.  

Seeing the actual what, where and how teams and companies work has always been critical for candidates to picture themselves in a role and make the final decision on whether to accept or decline an offer. With the potential for increasing remote work as teams are more distributed than ever across the globe, some forward-thinking companies are looking ahead with digital onboarding tools. These are tools that bring together team videos, leadership interviews, daily work instructions, examples of people in the role doing the work, and in some cases using augmented or virtual reality scenarios that can create a simulated work environment for a candidate. 

All of these things go a tremendously long way in engaging the best candidates with a modern, consumer-like experience that they’re so used to. This also has the benefit of streamlining these talent acquisition processes, so it benefits both sides. It ensures the candidates and hiring managers all have the best information to make what is really one of the most important decisions of their lives. 

Are there any final thoughts on virtual talent solutions you’d like to leave us with? 

We are truly living in some extraordinary times right now, and I’ve seen how companies all over the globe are reacting quickly and responding to the changes COVID-19 has brought to the workforce. It’s impressive to see the capabilities companies have implemented to enable their workforce, help their employees and continue to find the best talent they can to run their businesses in these truly unprecedented times. 

To learn more about ways employers can respond to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, visit our Resource Center. 

Is No the Right Answer to Increasing Business Demands on Talent Acquisition?

Posted on by akessler

By Rachel Harris, Head of Marketing EMEA & APAC

I recently read a blog from Ken Brotherston. It’s a strong and passionate argument concerning the pressure and level of strain that HR and talent acquisition (TA) leaders are currently facing. He argues that talent leaders are stretched to the breaking point and suggests they start saying ‘no’ to the demands of the business if they don’t see more investment.

The pandemic resulted in many business challenges, and yet, across the board, we know that the need for solutions appear in the HR inbox—re-skilling, upskilling and internal mobility for employee retention; creating remote-first flexible working models and onboarding strategies; assessing and deploying an technology solutions and driving better DE&I results—all whilst hiring against the most acute talent shortages any of us have ever seen.

Over the past two years, HR and TA leaders have made huge efforts to do what they could to support employees and candidates with limited resources in a turbulent business environment. As we move into a post-pandemic reality, it’s time for TA to create proactive strategies rather than continuing to take reactive measures. As Brotherston states, “continuing to operate at a ‘code red’ level…is simply not sustainable”.

Can HR and TA Leaders Afford to Say No?

It is an exceptional time, but I’d argue that saying ‘no’ or ‘not right now’ isn’t feasible. When competitors are storming ahead with changes—when they are hiring the best talent—saying no to what must be done is a slippery slope. The answer must be, ‘yes, of course—with this much extra resource’.  

TA leaders must demand more investment from the business to augment their ability to hire if they want to remain competitive in this candidate-led market.

Making the Business Case for More Talent Acquisition Investment

Making a profound business case for investment in talent solutions is an art in persuasion, and those with this skill are likely to find the current environment much easier to navigate.

But you don’t need to be Dale Carnegie to gain traction within your organisation. Here are three steps to building your business case.

  1. Gain Buy-in by Engaging Internal Stakeholders
    Recruiting impacts your entire organisation. The C-suite, procurement and hiring managers will all have different pain points and points of view on how your talent acquisition efforts are meeting expectation or falling short. By understanding each stakeholder’s current challenges and desired future outcomes, you can address these issues through your business case.
  2. Assess Your Current Recruitment Landscape
    You must know where you’re starting in order to improve it. Get to the bottom of your current in-house recruitment teams, third-party agencies, attraction channels, costs, recruitment process, performance metrics, etc. With this in mind, you’ll gain a better understanding of your gaps and the opportunities that investing in a talent solution can create.
  3. Show the ROI of Investment
    How you go about putting your business case on paper will depend on your organization requirements. It should contain a description of the investment options you’re putting forward, the benefits and drawbacks for each, associate costs, risks and opportunities as well as any assumptions you’ve made whilst preparing you document.

Want more information about how to secure investment for TA? Check out our guide to Building a Business Case for RPO (includes a free template!).

Building a Modern Business Continuity Plan

Posted on by jpatel

With the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19), many companies have had to put their business continuity plans to the test — shedding light into areas where their plans may not have been as complete or effective as expected. Without a solid and tested business continuity plan in place, organizations may find themselves confused — which can lead to delayed response time and in some cases, a negative impact to the services or products a business provides. 

In this article, I’ll outline the importance of having a business continuity plan, tips for creating a thorough plan and who should be involved in the planning process. 

On-Demand Webinar

The Waffle House Index: How a Structured Approach to Contingent Labor Can Ensure Business Continuity During a Crisis

Access Webinar

The Importance of Having a Business Continuity Plan 

Before I highlight its purpose, let’s start with the basic definition of a business continuity plan. It can be defined as: 

A step-by-step business strategy built to be executed at a time when there is a disruption in services to protect people and assets and have the ability to resume operations in an expedient and controlled fashion. In addition, it identifies requirements and an execution strategy related to business operations and people.  

It’s important to have a thorough and complete plan because it’s the only way to ensure organizations are effectively prepared for a business interruption. A solid plan enables organizations to continue critical business processes to minimize the impacts to customers and employees. 

As an example, our business continuity plans at PeopleScout allow us to continue service delivery to clients in any type of adverse condition and lower the overall cost of disruption from incidents, all while ensuring we are meeting our contractual obligations. When it comes to our clients, we always make sure we have a current, tested business continuity plan in place to effectively support their business in any situation.  

Creating a Thorough and Complete Plan 

What should the business continuity plan look like? 

First, it’s important to note that “thorough and complete” does not necessarily mean “complicated” or “difficult to understand.” Also, the technology used to capture the details of the plan is less important than the accessibility of the details that are included along with the plan itself. 

An effective business continuity plan should clearly define: 

  • What to do 
  • How to do it 
  • Who will do it 
  • When to do it 

In addition, a business continuity plan should be easy to use and be detailed enough for any team member to successfully execute. When putting your plan together, take these components into consideration: 

  • Identification of the planning team 
  • Defined processes 
  • Employee list/call list to reach out to 
  • Vital records associated with the process 
  • Telecom needs 
  • Work area recovery strategies 
  • Applications (software, equipment, supplies) 

What steps should an organization take when building the plan? 

While certain events cannot be planned for, the optimum scenario is to build the business continuity plan when there isn’t an event or disaster happening. Attempting to develop real-time responses during a crisis situation is much more difficult than following a plan that was already created.  

When building your plan, it is important to evaluate, identify and ask questions. 

  • Evaluate your organization. Understand the unique needs based on location, technology that’s used, number of employees, processes that are completed, etc.   
  • Identify the key participants to be included in the planning effort. This should include a combination of leaders and subject matter experts.  
  • Ask questions! It’s in the answers to those questions that you will truly understand what is needed to build an effective plan. 

After you do those three things, the basic methodology that a company should use to finalize their plan includes: 

Strategic Planning Phase: This is the phase that prepares us for the incident. It includes risk analysis (what could go wrong?), business impact analysis (what are the maximum acceptable downtimes?), requirements analysis (what do we need to recover?) and recovery options (how will we recover?).  

Tactical Planning Phase: This phase tells us how to respond to the incident. The organization should ensure effective documentation of how to engage the recovery option when the time comes. Lay the groundwork for what you would need to do in the event you need to execute your plan. 

Consider these tips for building a thorough and complete business continuity plan: 

  • Always look for opportunities to improve your plan. The plan should be a living, breathing document that is reviewed on a regular cadence. 
  • Consider hypothetical situations and plan accordingly. If you change how you do things today, consider how it impacts your business continuity strategies. Do they also need to change? 
  • Ask yourself: Is your plan detailed enough to allow junior-level team members to execute the plan at time of incident if your planning team is compromised? 
  • Lead tabletop exercises to discover other opportunities to improve your program and plans. Does everyone on your team know what is expected of them during a business interruption incident?  

For more information on tabletop exercises and who should be involved in them, listen to this article’s accompanying podcast.  

Advice for Developing Your First Business Continuity Plan 

When you think about developing a business continuity plan, especially for the first time, it’s very easy to get paralyzed when you’re starting with a blank sheet of paper. One thing to remember is that the primary objective is planning — this is what creates the ability to recover.  

So, physically writing the plan or documenting specific instructions is the secondary objective. Look at your plan and ask: 

  • Does it clearly state what to do? 
  • Does it indicate how to do it? 
  • Does it reflect who does it? 
  • Does it identify when to do it? 

If the answer to those four questions is yes, and you verify that to be true through the process of testing, then you’re sure to have a plan that should serve you well in the event of an incident and ensure you are prepared for any event that may occur.  

To learn more about ways employers can respond to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, visit our Resource Center. 

Hiring Solutions for Essential Employers with Jessie McGowan

Posted on by jpatel

As organizations around the globe confront the challenges presented by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, even the most seasoned talent leaders find themselves in uncharted territory. We’re creating a mini-series with our experts here at PeopleScout about the issues that are most pressing during this uncertain time. 

This profile shares insights from PeopleScout Leader of Business Development in North America, Jessie McGowan. Jessie spends the majority of her time sharing our solution offerings with prospective clients, where she calls upon her years of experience leading a diverse portfolio of RPO client partners. 

Jessie shared her insights about hiring solutions for essential employers from her home in Charleston. 

A lot of people are feeling overwhelmed right now. What are you hearing from talent acquisition and HR leaders? In what ways and industries do those teams need support right now? 

There is a lot going on in all industries as we react to what’s happening in the world today with COVID-19. Mission critical industries like grocery, healthcare, logistics and other supply chain roles that hire drivers or selectors, manufacturing — specifically medical device — are seeing tremendous increases in their needs to find and hire qualified talent. And, unless they’re working with an RPO provider like PeopleScout that’s built to flex, they’re not going to have the adequate talent acquisition staff to meet the demands of the business.   

What are some easy ways essential employers can find that support? 

PeopleScout has a few offerings. One is Recruiter On-Demand (ROD) — where we provide a qualified recruiter to work as an extension of an organization’s team on an hourly basis. ROD can also be leveraged as a project approach, where an organization can have a provider support a certain function of their hiring process or a certain number of hires for a period of time. For instance, if you received 500,000 applications last week, how are you going to get through them? Unless you’ve already built a highly efficient automated process, a partner like PeopleScout can help improve that process for organizations. 

What do these solutions look like in practice? How are they implemented? 

Recruiter On-Demand can be deployed within about 24 hours. We have qualified recruiters with a wide range of domain experience like frontline or retail hiring, healthcare, manufacturing, drivers and IT. First, we assign the right fit recruiter and quote an hourly rate. Then, the organization provides our recruiter access to their applicant tracking system or system of record and an email address so that PeopleScout can become invisible to the candidate throughout the process.  

Our Recruiter On-Demand solution is simple and straight forward, and we work hard to keep it moving and efficient. Once we’ve landed on the business terms, we assign an engagement leader who will schedule what we call a “kickoff” with the client to document the process and discuss expectations. We’ve been doing this a long time, so we’ve built the process with the intention of keeping it really easy for talent acquisition leaders, and we’re able to launch it very quickly in a seamless manner. 

How do we use the solution in a way that keeps everyone, including employees and candidates, safe? 

That’s a great and timely question. Most of our recruiters worked from home even before the COVID-19 outbreak, so virtual work is part of the PeopleScout DNA. As a matter of fact, some of our most complex, high volume recruiting solutions are 98% virtual, where a very small subset of team members might sit together in a delivery center in Chicago, Charlotte or Toronto, for example.  

At PeopleScout, we have a lot of experience in building world-class virtual solutions that are designed to provide an exceptional candidate experience and deliver efficiency. We are able to advise talent leaders on utilization of digital interviewing tools such as texting or prerecorded voice or video. We also have our own proprietary tool, Affinix™ talent technology or we can advise a leader on what might be best for them and available in the market. We’re flexible and focused on getting talent acquisition leaders what they need to be able to deliver to their business and stakeholders, and we have a lot of experience, especially building a no-contact, virtual solution. We can source, qualify, schedule talent, offer positions, and even onboard new hires all virtually, over the phone or by utilizing technology. 

Can you talk a bit more about what a virtual solution looks like in practice? 

Our virtual interview management solution is designed to complement your existing hiring process and it can be set up in a matter of days. It would include process steps such as: 

  • Phone screening: includes on-demand and live options 
  • Video interviewing: includes on-demand and live options 
  • Scheduling tools: enables candidates to self-schedule available interview slots or be scheduled via recruiters’ assistance  
  • Results-based automated interview progression: allows you to define the criteria that determines whether to automatically advance candidates 
  • Feedback-driven advancement: creates settings based on recruiter rating and scoring criteria 

Interview notifications and updates can be pushed out to the candidate, so they understand at any given moment where they are in the interview process. And, hiring leaders can also see the progression of a candidate throughout the process. So, while at PeopleScout we’ve been supporting an essentially 100% virtual recruitment process for years now, we can appreciate that this is a new approach for many essential employers, and we can walk them through what to consider as they implement a virtual hiring solution. 

A lot of us are feeling a lot of stress and anxiety right now. What recommendations do you have for someone who is leading a talent acquisition team that feels like they’re in crisis? 

Sometimes it’s hard to see what the right plan might be when you’re dealing with the type of stress and anxiety that surrounds us these days. That’s where we can help. PeopleScout is highly consultative — by asking a few key questions, we can help a talent acquisition leader identify the right levers to pull to drive the result that they need. We’re happy to walk a potential partner through a quick diagnostic to see if we’re a fit and if we can be helpful. Sometimes, even if we’re not the right fit, just having the conversation can be helpful in getting down to the root of what talent leaders really need right now. And we’re happy to share our knowledge and be helpful, especially during these tough times. 

Are there any final thoughts you’d like to leave essential employers with today? 

The hope is that this is temporary. And that very quickly we’ll go back to solving more familiar talent acquisition challenges, like how to find more great people. But, at this time we’re poised to be flexible, and creative, to help solve the new problems we’re all dealing with today.