Here are five key insights from the recently concluded webinar on Managing Talent for Growth & Advancement, hosted by From Day One in association with Draup. Lydia Dishman, Contributing Reporter at Fast Company, moderated the session attended by panelists Vijay Swaminathan, CEO & Co-Founder of Draup & Kristi Robinson, Head of Talent Acquisition & EVP at Citizens Bank.
1: Tech Hiring Has Picked Up Pace Since COVID-19
The general feeling is that while hiring has indeed slowed down, job roles in critical technology areas like software development are exempt from this slump.
Industries that already implemented a lot of digital transformation initiatives are able to sustain their hiring even during COVID. Banking, for example, applied a lot of digital solutions post the 2008 crisis. This has helped them survive & continue hiring even during the ongoing crisis. Similarly, the e-commerce revolution has enabled tech hiring in the retail industry to make it through somewhat unscathed.
On the other hand, in hospitality, barring companies like AirBNB, most have not embraced digital and are now floundering with low hiring trends.
2: Digital Transformation Is Playing A Key Role In Talent Acquisition
While solutions like Application Tracking Systems have already been in place for a while, AI is increasingly finding usage in the talent acquisition process.
In addition to conducting video interviews, virtual recruitment assistants are roped in to take on more recruitment responsibilities. One such virtual assistant employed at Citizens Bank answered over 60,000 questions related to recruitment from potential employees.
However, the big question is, how do we pull the biases out AI? While HR leaders have been somewhat comfortable with the role of AI so far, this niggling question has them reluctant to embrace AI fully.
3: Internal Learning Initiatives Are Transforming
Enterprises are using intelligent AI solutions like Draup for Talent to circumvent the limitations of third-party learning modules. Employing such solutions, they can formulate course frameworks & view career simulation pathways for internal reskilling. With these optimized frameworks, talent managers can ensure that employees are equipped with the right tools for their reskilling journey.
Studies show that internally re/upskilled employees stay on an average 35-40% longer in their company than outside talent.
However, internal learning is not just restricted to online modules. Several enterprises are developing in-house incubators to nurture intrapreneurial aspirations. This might involve something informal like a casual meetup or something more formal like a Shark Tank. This way, you are treated to a live demo of how people are thinking about a problem statement and coming up with a solution.
Such initiatives are shown to enhance employee job satisfaction rates.
4: New Solutions To Hire Diverse Talent
Recruiters often stick to a particular candidate persona – performance or experience-wise – when looking to hire for a job role. This kind of laser-targeted search might cause them to be blind to the small but significant pool of non-obvious candidates.
Despite working in a different job role, these candidates still have the right skills & capabilities for the target job role. Any knowledge gaps can be addressed by leveraging intelligent skills frameworks like Draup’s Reskilling Navigator. Statistically, these candidates are also from minority backgrounds. By ignoring this pool, hiring managers are missing out on a chance to hire for diversity.
Hiring for diverse talent also includes crafting the ideal job description (JD) for the talent you have in mind. Most enterprises, unknowingly, end up posting a JD that might be prejudiced. Such language might not be appealing for the larger set of potential candidates. It’s refreshing to hear that recruiters are becoming more aware of the subtleties of language to attract women and minority talent.
Augmented writing tools like Textio help recruiters from making this common but easily avoidable mistake. There is a measurable rise in the number of women applying for the same job pre & post text augmentation using tools like Textio.
5: Empathy Is The Need Of The Hour
The L&D team at a huge tech company found that the employee engagement rate with their learning modules was quite low. A recent study conducted by the University of Chicago took a stab at solving this issue. They introduced a new middleman in the form of an Empathy Coach. The Empathy Coach’s purpose is to goad and motivate engagement among learners using precise language.
Over six months, the study noted that having such an empathy-based approach to learning increased engagement over time, and it reached a point where the coach was not needed to sustain the engagement.
The onus is now on management to evangelize this empathy-led style across the enterprise practices until it’s imbibed into the company ethos.
Click here to watch the full interview and the Q&A session where Vijay & Kristi talk about:
- Measuring employee competencies
- Gamifying reskilling initiatives
- Identifying talent from non-obvious sources
- Bridging the 1MM+ talent gap in new-age technologies
