Ep03: How to win the fight for talent (and it’s not what you think)

We’re in strange times – the recent pandemic has massively changed how people see their jobs.

This has not only meant much higher numbers of resignations, but candidates searching for jobs are much more demanding (and often willing to hold out for more money or greater flexibility).

In this episode, Business Psychologist (and lead consultant at Oblong), Leanne Elliott outlines a simple, three-part framework for attracting, qualifying and recruiting great people every time.

We hope this is helpful… oh, and if you are recruiting right now, stay positive – the process might take longer these days, but great people are out there.

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The Transcript

⚠️ NOTE: This is an automated transcript, so it might not always be 100% accurate!

Leanne Elliott
And then also making sure you don’t go on gut number of people I speak to. So I just had a gut feeling they weren’t right. And it’s like your gut is the most unreliable predictor of how well this person going to do in the job that you can imagine.

Al Elliott
Hello, and welcome to episode three of truth lies and workplace culture, podcast business owners who want to build high performing teams that genuinely care about the business you’ve built. I’d like to introduce our lead consultant, and my wife, Leanne Elliott.

Leanne Elliott
Hello, I’m Leanne Elliott.

Al Elliott
And I’m Al Elliott. And I do pretty much like everything else, like the washing up and the client acquisition and all that kind of thing Leanne’s the clever one. So what we’re going to be talking about today is in this episode is recruitment. Now, this is a big thorny subject. A lot of people are saying that they can’t find good people. And so you think Lian that you’ve got a great process for finding the right person for the right role every time?

Leanne Elliott
Yes. I don’t think at all I know. I know how good it is.

Al Elliott
So let’s kick off a little bit sort of taking taking back a step and go, I’ve heard about this this phrase called the fight for talent. Would you explain to me what that means and how it’s different to two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago?

Leanne Elliott
Yeah, the the fight for talent is is talked about a lot in the media and industry online, you’re gonna find lots of different things about it. And I guess there’s two kind of key streams to the fight for talent. One is skill shortages. You know, there are some industries where skills are short and work is being done at government level to increase skills in said areas such as technology is an example. The other fight for time really comes down to the competitiveness of an organisation, and also their ability to recruit, there is talent out there, and you will not have to dig too deep on LinkedIn, or even Google for organisations and business leaders who are very happy with the calibre and quantity of time that they are attracting in their recruitment drives. So is the fight for talent real? Yes, yeah, it is. But ultimately, there was a lot of work you can do on your recruitment process alone, to significantly enhance your ability to find great talent.

Al Elliott
Now, I want to, I want to touch on on Gen Zed On Millennials a bit later on in this because I feel that obviously, what my if I’m 45, now was born in 77. What does that

Leanne Elliott
mean? You’re not, you’re Gen Y,

Al Elliott
Gen Y. So there’s a lot of differences between when I was applying for jobs, and obviously people who are half my age now. But the thing I do want to kick off with is asking you about freelancers. Now, as a business owner, I have a choice of either recruiting someone to do the job or using a freelancer. Now, can you think of any reasons why using a freelance will be a better idea than recruiting someone and vice versa?

Leanne Elliott
I think it depends on the nature of the role. And that’s the the number one thing you have to really think about and assess before you even put together a job description or even dream about advertising for a pose. And it’s the nature of the role that the it’s going to help you answer that question, if the nature of the role is fairly transactional. For example, if we use something like copywriting, the role doesn’t need to go beyond that, perhaps in some circumstances, you need somebody to create copy for a blog, you don’t also need them to interact with clients or support business development or the marketing activity. So if it’s quite a simple, transactional role, then freelancers might be a good option. If you’re looking for a role that is more multifaceted, and that is more engaged with the business and its customers, then having somebody who is in inverted commas employed by the organisation may give you more control over that, that role and how it functions within the business.

Al Elliott
So taking out what you just said that then we’ve just gone through the pandemic, the C word, not that C word, the other C word COVID. As we’ve just gone through that, and so obviously, we’re all been used to not all but most we’ve been used to working from home, how has that changed the way in which employers should be thinking about recruiting?

Leanne Elliott
I think ultimately, it hasn’t. And I think this is the a lot in the media that frustrates me and particularly business, particularly larger corporate leaders who are really using this whole remote hybrid as an excuse for, for the great resignation for everything else. And I think the reality is people’s attitudes towards work have been changing for a long time. remote work is not new. We have been working remotely in some capacity since the mid 80s. Is this is not a new phenomenon. What’s new is the scale on which people are now able to work remotely or were forced to work remotely during the pandemic. What’s that that left us with is just a an acceleration in time of the evolution of the workplace. We were already on that course. I think it’s just sped it up. And now that organisations have shown that it works have made it work, that they have less of a difference when employees are saying, well, I want to work remotely long term, I probably can work, why not? So I think it’s more that organisations need to accelerate their thinking their approach to match the acceleration that that work has already gone through in terms of change during the pandemic.

Al Elliott
So you’re saying that it’s perfectly reasonable to recruit right now, which is where currently if you’re listening to this in the future, then it’s currently April 2022. It’s perfectly okay to recruit, and not even mentioned the work from home with a hybrid situation?

Leanne Elliott
In what way? So, for example, I’ve

Al Elliott
seen lots of massive increase in adverts for people who are saying, there’s a new job opening opening. And by the way, yes, you can work from home or work hybrid. Now, what happens if you’re an employee who doesn’t want that? Is that going to restrict the pool of talent by saying I want you in the office?

Leanne Elliott
I don’t think it restricts it, but it will give you it’s an equal choice for employees, that is for employees in terms of what work looks like for them? Well, all the research so far has shown us is that the vast majority, we’re talking kind of three quarters plus, would prefer some type of hybrid opportunity, whether it’s an option to work from the office for a period of time, it’s working out about 50% 40 50% in the office, and the same at home. So hybrid is a preferred option. But there is no one fit all approach for everybody. There are lots of arguments as to why hybrid working won’t work for certain people. And within that complicated arguments either way. So for example, if we talk about women in the workplace, there is evidence and a strong argument that for women in the workplace, working from home has actually been beneficial, because they’ve had more control over their work life balance, particularly if they are, they are parents, they have more flexibility in terms of childcare and their responsibilities in that respect. So on one hand, there’s an argument and an a train of thought that hybrid working or working from harm is actually going to positively impact the careers of women in the workplace. The counter argument and eat both equally valid, is that without having that presence in the office, particularly if your company is hybrid, then you have to really be relying on the quality of your managers to make sure that you’re kept within the loop that your development is kept on top of and then not your managers aren’t prioritising people that they can physically see and sit next to in the office. So there is an argument that can be detrimental for women careers, and it isn’t that kind of double, double barrier, equally, weren’t equally valid. There is no one fits all approach. Going back to what you were saying about organisations, potentially limiting their talent pools. I think the reality is that organisations need to pick a stamp. And you’ll see there’s you know, you’ve seen some big organisations like Twitter, I think is one isn’t it? So everyone can work for 100% remotely 100 At the time, if they want to other organisations have call people back to the office. I think the UK civil service was one recently that are now calling people back to the office, and others are choosing a hybrid policy. Well, I’ll dictate how much time one needs to spend in the office, whatever you decide, is going to match you with candidates who want that same experience.

Al Elliott
So tell me then, so if for our listeners who predominantly are going to be service based industries, owners, so like digital agencies, creative agencies, that kind of thing, then tell me what is a good recruitment process?

Leanne Elliott
The thing about recruitment, the great thing about recruitment, is it science, there is so much evidence, tried and tested processes and approaches that will reliably recruit great talent. And I think from from my experience, there aren’t many SMEs even large and I say SMEs, that can be anything up to kind of 500 that aren’t really thinking about recruitment in this evidence lead way. And I think as I said early in the fight for talent, the first thing you need to get right as your recruitment process making sure that you are recruiting that the for the right role, the right person in the right role every time.

Al Elliott
Okay, so let’s talk a bit more about this right person right role every single time. Now you have I’m a recruitment process will in fact we do because we developed it together. And that’s based on your clever stuff. Talk us through that process, and then we’ll go through each single step.

Leanne Elliott
Sure. So the process for recruitment really is, I guess it might be turning on its head, perhaps what feels intuitive, but the first thing you need to really understand that is the role that you’re recruiting. So not the person the role, how does that role function within your business? How does it contribute to the performance and success of your business? And what type of experience capabilities skills need, you do need to fulfil that function within the business? This is a in a word is called job analysis. And Job analysis is really just about understanding the specific tasks that needs to be done. And speaking to people you know, you can’t, it’s impossible for you to try and imagine what how this role will function as an individual, even as a leader isn’t the line manager that perished? You need to speak to people within the team? Where are we missing? Where do we need the extra effort, whereas work demands high? And how is this role going to contribute to that, once you understand the exact functionality of the role, you can then think about the type of person that you need. And that’s when we talk about competencies, the knowledge, skills and abilities that somebody needs to perform well, in that

Al Elliott
job, you’re saying that it’s almost like a collaborative process for everyone involved in this new role. And so, I mean, I think that’s pretty cool. Imagine, I haven’t had a job since about 1998. But I’d imagine if I was in a in a company, and I could see that we needed someone new, then this just almost like, this helps me to understand a, how they’re going to fit into the team be what the responsibilities are, and see almost like, I’m excited to get this new person because they’re gonna help me do my job a bit better.

Leanne Elliott
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it can be, it can be understandable to think, and quite one dimension they have, okay, well, we need a new, a new marketing of social media assistant. So let’s just put out a job for social media assistant and be done with it. If you then get your team and they say, Yes, we do need help with social media, but actually will be really useful if we also have somebody who can manage certain aspects of the client relationship, or it’s more the administrative side, rather than the content of the social media, that might potentially shift the role. And as well give you clarity of the level of person you’re recruiting, it may be that you actually just need a really great office manager, as opposed to a social media assistant. And that in itself means that you’re, by understanding the role means you’re recruiting somebody into the business, who’s going to have an impact and impact on your team, and impact on your capacity as a team and impact on your performance.

Al Elliott
It’s interesting as if you were to look at visually which you can, by the way, you can go to our blog, hq.com forward slash roadmap. And you can see that we’re talking about the first stage of this roadmap, where there are three distinct steps to recruitment. And certainly when I’ve done in the past, and I think that most people, they start off with the search, so they go, right, I need I need a new person. So I’m gonna go on to talent, jobs.com, or wicked jobs on Monster jobs, long term disability recruitment, I think I made all these up. But I’d go in there and I’d say, right and write an advert and then it’ll go What’s the job role? And I’d be like, Okay, let’s think about this. What you’re saying is that’s coming last, you start off by defining the job role. And then then you know exactly what you want. You’ve got collaborative process to get this role. After that, then you go to step two, which is?

Leanne Elliott
Yeah, I think just to you’re absolutely right, that is step one, I think that the final part of that step one is to create an attractive offer. So it’s not just about deciphering as a leader, what you can afford to pay this role or what that role is worth. And this is part of the fight for clap for talent. It’s really useful to speak to either recruiters or do your own research in the market and understand what the kind of going salary is, what is the average salary? Is there a comparative role out there that you can benchmark? What are your competitors paying them? And then in terms of benefits, like you said, is it or a market role? Is it hybrid? Is it is it pension is there is there training and development budget involved? It’s as much about crafting the offer before the roll even goes out to market because so many organisations will get into that trap of, Oh, we found a great candidate, but we can’t afford them because their expectations of a well above it. Organisations with agreed to pay that and then you’ve got kind of this discrepancy of pay within your business. It’s a minefield. So if you’ve already got kind of a benchmark idea of what that was worth to you as a business and what’s worth in the market, you’re going to be much more confident when it comes to those conversations with candidates later down the line.

Al Elliott
I think it’s funny, and I’m sure there’s a podcast there So in this somewhere, but paying people more doesn’t necessarily mean that you attract better candidates. I mean, I’ve read lots of surveys where, where the benefit that they all that the thing that they like about their job is money comes like four or 567, down them down the list. So what you’re saying is that, even if you couldn’t necessarily afford someone whose expectation is 80 to 100 grand a year, then they might accept 60, if the employer brand is good, or there’s a work from home, Ellen to it, or training development or something like that?

Leanne Elliott
Absolutely, yeah. And it’s really understanding, you know, what, what the drivers are for people or what drivers fit in with your culture. If you are a hybrid business, I know you’ve, there’s a blog on our website that you can recently about the they called Super commuters, which is an option where people will, will live four or five hours away from where they were, but they’ll travel in for periods of time stay in hotels, and then leave the cost of that because their cost of living is so much lower elsewhere, then, you know, it changes things. So if you’ve got that, that option or that flexibility, or as you say there’s other benefits, such as train development, Fast Track routes to management, potentially, further down the line equity share or you know, other benefits like this, then yes, salary isn’t the be all and end all.

Al Elliott
Brilliant? Well, I’m sure we’ll do an episode on that at some point. So we’ve got step number one, which is define the job role. Step number two is,

Leanne Elliott
so step number two is to create a process. So a third job analysis, which is step one, is going to help you identify the competencies. So what I mean by competencies is, is the knowledge the skills and abilities that somebody needs to possess or ideally possesses to perform well at that job or to do that job? Well. Once we understand those competencies, we can create a recruitment process, it’s actually going to assess these competencies, rather than just kind of generic skills, strengths and weaknesses that, you know, perhaps more traditionally have been included in job interviews, for example. What we also know about the recruiting process from a scientific perspective is that using mixed methods is more predictive of job performance. So what I mean by predictive is that it’s no mistake that there are certain recruitment methods that are popular, such as interviews, such as IQ test, psychometrics, they’re popular because business psychologists, occupational psychologists have shown evidence that candidates that perform well in those types of tasks typically perform well on the job in the future. So that task that whether it be an interview, or a job sample test, that’s the predictor of job performance. So using mixed methods, so say, interviews, a work sample test, and a psychometric is going to create a predictive value that is higher than using one method alone. So using a number of methods to assess competencies is a good idea. And typically, as a rule of thumb, if you have, if you have a set of competencies, you should be measuring them three times in three different ways.

Al Elliott
Interesting, though, I mean, I’ve seen you with your spreadsheets, your fancy spreadsheets, doing all this. And it does look pretty cool. By the way, I’m sure if you’re interested in this, and you wanna have a look at the spreadsheet, then just email us podcast at oblong hq.com. And we’ll be able to send you more information. Okay, so now, we’re on to step three, which most people think is step one, and that is the actual search. So tell us about that.

Leanne Elliott
Yeah. And I think just to just to finish up, step two, very, very briefly, it Yes. It’s about having the methods. Yes, it’s about having standardised scoring systems to make sure it’s fair and equitable for all the candidates. And then also making sure you don’t go on gut number of people, I speeches, I just had a gut feeling they weren’t right. And it’s like your gut is the most unreliable predictor of how well this person’s going to do in the job that you can imagine. Plus, it’s discriminatory, potentially, and bias. So not a good idea, have standardised scoring methods for each of your methods of recruitment. And finally, consider the candidate experience and this might sound a bit I don’t know, maybe a bit woowoo or a bit too kind of nice, and they will buy you know, you’re just trying to recruit somebody for a role. But the reality is that recruiting process your each candidate that goes through it is going to have an experience. And that experience is going to be shaped by the communication styles and the emails. are they dealing with one person throughout that entire recruiting process is a point of contact or do they have money where you provide them feedback, each stage of the recruitment process, and it’s building this relationship? One because this candidate might end up being a key person within your business. So it’s good to start building that relationship early. But more importantly, if candidates have a negative experience Since that could have a negative impact on your brand,

Al Elliott
I think it’s when you put it like that, it just it makes you think that, why would you go on your gut feeling either positively or negatively for a potential candidate, if over the next 10 years they work for you, and their average salary is gonna be 50 grand a year, this is half a million pound purchase you’re making, and you’re making it based on all the while I had a good feeling about them all, they’re wearing my lucky colour shirt and stuff like that. So this is, I like that there’s some science behind this, the nerd in me likes that.

Leanne Elliott
Absolutely. And, you know, it doesn’t have to be an expensive process, you don’t have to, you know, engage specialists all the time, it can be as simple as that, you know, using very simple evidence led techniques, for example, an interview, typical interview questions tend to be like, well, what would you do if a customer was angry, and they got in touch with you, which is hypothetical, and that is less than useless? Because we can all hypothetically talk about what we do in a, you know, imaginary scenario. So the best way to ask the question is for ask them to reflect on their previous experiences. So for example, that question would be Tell me about a time that an angry customer has contacted you, and the steps you took to resolve it? Simple rule of thumb is that one of the best predictors of future behaviour is past behaviour.

Al Elliott
So we’re coming down to the part that most people start with, which is the search. You have some thoughts on this?

Leanne Elliott
Yeah, I think this search, and this is the part of the bits that are a bit more intuitive and intuitive. You know, think about the places where your candidates are likely to be where are they likely to look at a job advert? Is it going to be on Facebook groups or tick tock even, you don’t have to always put your your jobs on the recommended job boards, as you know, will broaden your search and you’ll broaden your candidate pool in that fight for talent. Second, and engage partners. You know, recruiters are the recruiters for a reason. And they charge a lot of money for a reason because they have access to a strong pool of candidates. Think about partnering with a recruiter if that’s something that will work for the role that you’re recruiting for. And finally, I think it’s looking within your business as well. Asking your employees if they have anyone that could refer to the business. Also considering whether do I have this capability internally that could be developed. It’s it really is a case of thinking outside the box a tonne is out there that just perhaps not as easy to find as they once were.

Al Elliott
Brilliant. Brilliant. So we did promise quickly to touch on Gen Zed and millennials. So how do you see that workforce just so we can define then what is a Gen Zed? So I’m a Gen Y, because I was born in 77. So then how does it How does it go to get Gen Zed and Millennial and

Leanne Elliott
so millennial is 1980 to 1994, and Gen Z Adobe, probably about 95 to 2010. So the Gen Xers are starting to come into the the workforce now and as millennials have been around for a little while. Ultimately, you know, the workforce changes and I think what makes me smile is that every you know all up in arms, but all Millennials want different things. Yeah, well, the boomers wanted different things, you know, the world had changed fundamentally the world with technology has changed fundamentally, is not a case of, of, you know, you can moan about it, but they are we are the future. They’re our future leaders. We have a responsibility as professionals, in people and culture or as business owners to do what we can to engage and nurture and develop these people. The principles haven’t changed the context has.

Al Elliott
Interesting. Brilliant Okay, I think we’ll call that a day for the moment then. So if you’re interested in looking at this, this is the step one of our culture blueprint or culture roadmap, you can find at oblong hq.com forward slash roadmap. As ever, if you’ve got any questions, thoughts, feedback, or you might want to have Leanne on as a guest on your own podcasts, then just email podcast at our blog hq.com. All right, well, we’ll see you next time for episode three, which I think is still to be defined. Now. This is episode three, episode four, which I think we’ve yet to to agree on what we’re gonna be talking about.

Leanne Elliott
It’s very exciting to tune in and find out so you’re saying