Global Learning Resources
type: channel
description: Architects of Talent Strategies and Solutions
date: 2023-10-18T14:30:26Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: How To Be a Distinctive Recruiter
items: Navigating the Maze of Internal Mobility: Challenges and Opportunities
items: Use AI to Improve Your Selection Process
items: Is It The End of Recruiting As We Knew It?
items: Implementing AI Takes Time and Good Structure
items: Seven Reasons To Not Be A Corporate Recruiter
items: The Transformation of Recruiting
items: Where is Our Profession Going?
items: Why Do We Resist Automation?
items: Eliminate Wasteful Recruiting

How To Be a Distinctive Recruiter
type: item
creator: Kevin Wheeler
date: 2023-10-18T14:30:26Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: 4 Tips on Thriving in an AI World I have been reading a book about the well-known and not-so-well-known American generals from our many wars. The book rates these generals on their effectiveness, skill, teamwork, and ability to deal with constantly changing conditions. What distinguished the great generals from the ordinary or poor ones was […]
encoded: 4 Tips on Thriving in an AI World I have been reading a book about the well-known and not-so-well-known American generals from our many wars. The book rates these generals on their effectiveness, skill, teamwork, and ability to deal with constantly changing conditions. What distinguished the great generals from the ordinary or poor ones was partially their communication skills and their use of intelligence to anticipate enemy action. But perhaps most of all, it was their originality – their willingness to improvise and buck conventions when necessary. The great generals were examples of what Jeff Bezos, the outgoing CEO and founder of Amazon, in a final letter to employees, says, “We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable. We are all taught to ‘be yourself.’ What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.” Everything from marketing to sourcing and assessment has been augmented or automated. Over the next few months, even more will be augmented. Your current skills will be less and less valuable as Ai becomes proficient – and it will. You will find naysayers and those who refuse to use the new tools. You will face hurdles and limitations from your legal department and many HR leaders. But the demand for candidates will not decrease. Both hiring managers and candidates will expect better service, faster responses, and more thoughtful and honest answers. This will require good communication and influence skills and the ability to provide a human touch. You will also face some big questions. Questions that require thoughtful discourse and open discussion. Should you tell candidates you are using AI? What level of transparency is ethical? Should there be rules or laws governing what can and cannot be posted? Do candidates care whether or not they are interviewed in person or by a …

Navigating the Maze of Internal Mobility: Challenges and Opportunities
type: item
creator: Kevin Wheeler
date: 2023-10-11T14:30:08Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: Internal mobility within organizations has become a buzzword in recent years. Recruiters have been tasked, in many organizations, with improving the number of people hired internally rather than reaching to outside candidates. However, they are often hampered in achieving this for various reasons that are not within their control. There are still far more people […]
encoded: Internal mobility within organizations has become a buzzword in recent years. Recruiters have been tasked, in many organizations, with improving the number of people hired internally rather than reaching to outside candidates. However, they are often hampered in achieving this for various reasons that are not within their control. There are still far more people hired externally than move internally. The Reality of Internal Mobility Internal mobility encompasses various forms, including promotions, lateral moves, cross-functional assignments, and transfers to different geographic locations within the same organization. Organizations would actively encourage and facilitate internal mobility in a perfect world, allowing employees to grow, diversify their skills, and contribute more effectively to the company’s success. Some of the older companies- IBM, General Electric, P&G, for example – have a culture where transferring internally is common. But this is rare. Turnover has been high for some time, and people often give reasons for leaving as a lack of opportunity, lack of skills development, and barriers to movement. Let’s explore some reasons behind this imbalance and examine potential solutions. Reasons for Limited Internal Mobility Lack of Awareness: Employees might not be aware of internal job opportunities due to inadequate communication or a lack of visibility into available roles. HR Policies and Bureaucracy: HR policies often require a certain amount of time in a job before a person is eligible to transfer. This inhibits many from moving and makes moving externally more attractive. Organizational silos and bureaucratic hurdles can also make it challenging for employees to explore opportunities outside their immediate departments or teams. For example, they must notify their manager of their intent to interview for another job. Inertia and Comfort: Individuals may resist change and feel comfortable in their current roles. They might fear the challenges associa…

Use AI to Improve Your Selection Process
type: item
creator: Kevin Wheeler
date: 2023-10-04T14:30:47Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: Make a Chatbot Your Most Useful Assistant When we talk about candidate assessment, we are trying to answer critical questions. These questions are often hard to answer, and the answers are open to interpretation. These are probably some of the things you are seeking answers to. Do they have the skills, knowledge, and experience to […]
encoded: Make a Chatbot Your Most Useful Assistant When we talk about candidate assessment, we are trying to answer critical questions. These questions are often hard to answer, and the answers are open to interpretation. These are probably some of the things you are seeking answers to. Do they have the skills, knowledge, and experience to do the job? Do they bring diversity of ethnicity, gender, or thought? Are they honest? Will they fit the hiring manager’s and the company’s culture? We rely primarily on resumes and interviews to determine the answers. We study behavioral and structured interviewing and even add observation, at times, through assessment centers. However, the data suggests that even well-done interviews and observations are only accurate a quarter of the time. People who are hired often fail. Early turnover is almost always high. Interviewing is open to all the foibles we humans have. We like people like us; when we like people, we find competencies where others don’t. We infer and interpret what we hear before we have collected anywhere near enough data. We can be influenced by flattery, humor, clothing, and physical appearance. In short, our human needs for friendship and to be liked often overshadow our objectivity. So, how do recruiters become better at objectively screening candidates? Here are five ways to improve your selection prowess: Know what you are looking for. You should have a clear set of competencies defined for every job you are interviewing people for. Without these competencies, you cannot know who you are looking for. Spend time with the hiring manager to define the skills needed to get the job done. I like to ask managers to identify the one or two absolutely needed skills – no more. Verify those skills, if possible, by talking to those already working in those roles. Work with a hiring manager to reduce the requirements to the minimum and the most objective ones. Let candidates select themselves in or out of the process. Provide all p…

Is It The End of Recruiting As We Knew It?
type: item
creator: admin
date: 2023-09-27T14:30:14Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: Ai Promises to Change Everything, But Maybe That’s Good Every day, new announcements about AI and its growth surprise and frighten. A few days ago, ChatGPT4 announced that it could now speak in five languages and answer questions about photos you present to it. For example, you could show it a picture of a machine, […]
encoded: Ai Promises to Change Everything, But Maybe That’s Good Every day, new announcements about AI and its growth surprise and frighten. A few days ago, ChatGPT4 announced that it could now speak in five languages and answer questions about photos you present to it. For example, you could show it a picture of a machine, and it would identify it and perhaps even diagnose if something is wrong. This capability is available to anyone subscribing to the $20 monthly premium for ChatGPT4. But beyond this news is AI’s overall progress in understanding written and spoken language. The image below shows that AI can now exceed humans’ reading comprehension and language understanding. This is possible because of increased computing power and the enormous investments made by firms like Microsoft and Google. The amount of computation used to train AI systems has increased exponentially as the cost of computing has fallen yearly while its capability grows. A Brief History of AI The journey to get to this point is long. Many thought we would never achieve what we now have, while others thought we would advance quickly to the Singularity. Singularity, popularized by Ray Kurzweil, is the time when computers will be indistinguishable from people or will have replaced us in intelligence. This NYT article is an excellent introduction to where we are on that journey. Getting to chatGPT has been spotty, and only recently, with increased computing power and the breakthrough in neural networks, have we advanced. This chart overviews the development timeline with a long gap when nothing much changed between the 1990s and 2020. AI and Recruiting What does this mean for recruiting? Is it the end of recruiting as we knew it? Probably. The skills that got us to where we are are becoming less and less relevant. Many of those skills can be and have been co-opted by emerging AI-based tools. Leading organizations use these tools to find, screen, assess, and engage candidates without the candidates’ awar…

Implementing AI Takes Time and Good Structure
type: item
creator: admin
date: 2023-09-20T14:30:24Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: Why Fast is Not Alway Good All corporate functions receive shocks from the market, the economy, the pandemic, and new technologies. New technologies, especially, create a buzz and come with great promise but little maturity. AI and Chatbots are good recent examples. Why are some recruitment functions able to use these technologies well? And why […]
encoded: Why Fast is Not Alway Good All corporate functions receive shocks from the market, the economy, the pandemic, and new technologies. New technologies, especially, create a buzz and come with great promise but little maturity. AI and Chatbots are good recent examples. Why are some recruitment functions able to use these technologies well? And why do many other functions falter and fail to incorporate them successfully? If we think about change as a multilevel process, with some levels changing faster than others, we can pose answers to these questions. Recruiting and other functions comprise separate components or layers that operate differently and have different speeds of change. Each layer is also, to a degree, independent of the other layers, but each layer impacts the other, and they all influence each other. For example, the demand for talent influences sourcing, sourcing influences the recruiter’s ability to present a candidate, and the technology they use can slow or speed up that process. A recruiter’s influence, persuasion skills, and ability to assess a candidate also impact speed and quality. Fast layers (technology implementations) initiate change; slower layers (structure and culture) remember and absorb the shock. Fast is fleeting, but get things moving; slow lasts longer and puts the changes into action. Fast is usually smaller and is moderated by slower and bigger layers beneath it, which gives consistency and strength. We pay the most attention to the fast, but the lower and slower layers have the sustaining power. Without the lower layers, there is rapid but unsustainable change. In these cases, the function cannot absorb the shock and falls apart. Look at a typical recruitment function comprising at least five layers. Layer #1: Demand for Talent The first is the demand for talent. It is the direct response to market drivers and powerfully influences all the other layers. The second layer, which responds to the demand for talent, is often technology…

Seven Reasons To Not Be A Corporate Recruiter
type: item
creator: admin
date: 2023-09-13T14:30:21Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: Many contract recruiters wish they had taken that internal recruiting position offered 2 or 3 years ago. As in every slowdown, being an internal employee is viewed with envy. It seems logical that as layoffs and cutbacks significantly reduce the number of contract recruiters, the interest in being a regular employee rises. The lure of […]
encoded: Many contract recruiters wish they had taken that internal recruiting position offered 2 or 3 years ago. As in every slowdown, being an internal employee is viewed with envy. It seems logical that as layoffs and cutbacks significantly reduce the number of contract recruiters, the interest in being a regular employee rises. The lure of a steady paycheck, benefits, and the sense (although false) of security score high. But I am not sure that a contract recruiter should want to be an employee. Organizations realize that they overhired during the pandemic and have more employees than they need – and often in the wrong jobs. Why should any organization spend salary, development, and retention dollars on employees who do not generate new products or revenue? Does an internal recruiter add enough more value than a contracted recruiter to justify the cost? Hundreds of companies have replaced their recruiting team partly or entirely with contractors and RPOs and have had success. Unfortunately, most recruiters are convinced their organization could hire the best people without them as employees, but I think they are wrong. Organizations are automating as many services as possible and outsourcing many non-core functions. This puts the independent professional in a good position. Outsourcing firms and corporations are looking for people willing to work on fixed contracts with performance clauses. Recruiters are in a good place. They can perform with little internal support other than IT. Here are seven reasons that being a contract recruiter is better than being an internal employee. Reason #1: Job Security There is no job security working as an employee. I think anyone in a job that does not generate revenue, invent new products or services, or strategically interact with customers is in jeopardy of being laid off at some point. There is no better security than the security you create for yourself. If you build the networks and skills to weather the downtimes, you will find e…

The Transformation of Recruiting
type: item
creator: admin
date: 2023-09-06T14:30:14Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: How Automation and AI Have Changed Everything Smaller organizations and many startups are leading the way in automating and outsourcing non-core functions. Core functions are those that generate revenue (sales), invent new products or services (R&D), or deeply touch customers (customer care and support). Non-core functions are everything else. Internal recruiting functions are not core. […]
encoded: How Automation and AI Have Changed Everything Smaller organizations and many startups are leading the way in automating and outsourcing non-core functions. Core functions are those that generate revenue (sales), invent new products or services (R&D), or deeply touch customers (customer care and support). Non-core functions are everything else. Internal recruiting functions are not core. For as long as people have lived together, there has been a tendency to centralize and create hierarchy. We have seen the growth of many huge, centralized systems, including government, corporations, schools, utilities, health care, and so on. Most of us currently work or have worked in one of these organizations, and most of the recruiting practices we use have evolved and been shaped by the needs of these organizations. In a world where work was primarily physical, and it was not easy to communicate quickly, centralization and formal structures brought efficiency and speed. Hierarchical organizations allowed the consolidation of people, machinery, and money, which made mass production possible and lowered prices. Societies moved from tutoring a small number of elite children to creating formally organized and regulated schools designed to educate the masses. Even in the creative world, formal organization became necessary for a while. Movie companies could muster the capital and the equipment to produce complex and expensive movies and distribute them to physical movie theaters. Actors were hired by one production company and signed up for life. Advertising, public relations, and media firms were also large and hierarchical. But this has changed mainly because of two factors: the growing capability of automated tools and a change in worker’s attitudes. Decentralization and Recruiting The power of artificial intelligence and the complexity and capability of automated tools have accelerated the movement toward decentralized, distributed systems, particularly when it comes to breaking…

Where is Our Profession Going?
type: item
creator: admin
date: 2023-08-30T14:30:22Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: Langdon was tired – really tired of his profession. He had been a recruiter for more than a decade. He had enjoyed it for the first few years. He felt he was helping his organization find the best people and helping people find jobs where they could excel. But lately, he had been having doubts. […]
encoded: Langdon was tired – really tired of his profession. He had been a recruiter for more than a decade. He had enjoyed it for the first few years. He felt he was helping his organization find the best people and helping people find jobs where they could excel. But lately, he had been having doubts. His company didn’t seem to know what kind of people it wanted, and when a hiring manager did describe what she wanted, Langdon had more and more difficulty finding the right person. According to the hiring managers, even the people he hired who had the “right” skills were not successful. Many of these hires were also frustrated because the job they found themselves in wasn’t what they were hired to do. Langdon is not alone. Recruiting and work are at a turning point. Thousands of recruiters have been laid off, and there is fear that AI will replace many of them permanently. No one seems to know what skills recruiters will need to be successful. There is concern that hiring managers do not understand that the skills they seek either don’t exist or exist in more than one person. There is a lot of talk about internal mobility, but the reality is that not much movement is happening. Workloads are heavy, and budgets and headcounts are not expanding. Work is changing as well. More people are working remotely, even though CEOs encourage workers to return to the office. Hybrid work is common. Some firms are shortening the work week while others offer more work to part-timers and contract workers. This has changed who recruiters are looking for and complicated sourcing. Over the next few years, recruiters will have to not only deal with these challenges but also with these. #1. Who are we? We are confused about who we are and what we should do. The demands hiring managers are making on us are either not enough for our skills and experience or way too much. There are many paradoxes we are living with. One manager says, “Just recruit – post jobs and bring in candidates. I’ll decide.” An…

Why Do We Resist Automation?
type: item
creator: admin
date: 2023-08-23T14:30:09Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: Is automation the inevitable future of recruitment? Will artificial intelligence replace the recruiter? These questions are asked frequently, and the opinions on both sides bounce around the Internet almost daily without resolution. Recruiters are more resistant to automation than most other workers, perhaps because they work primarily with people, not processes and machines. They are […]
encoded: Is automation the inevitable future of recruitment? Will artificial intelligence replace the recruiter? These questions are asked frequently, and the opinions on both sides bounce around the Internet almost daily without resolution. Recruiters are more resistant to automation than most other workers, perhaps because they work primarily with people, not processes and machines. They are too close to the problem and invested too much in maintaining their current state to be useful critics or innovators. And, like everyone else, they are fearful of losing their jobs. Their arguments are basically of two types. They argue that automating many recruiting functions, such as sourcing, assessment, and engagement, is impossible. They are too complex and involve understanding the nuances of a hiring manager and the corporate culture. Automated tools cannot do these with quality. They also argue that recruiting is personal, and candidates expect a face-to-face encounter. On top of that, algorithms are biased and cannot be trusted to make objective decisions. There is truth in these arguments, but they do not fully account for the benefits these tools can provide them or the continuous progress developers make in improving these tools. Users of a product or those who provide a service often can describe a problem, but rarely do they come up with the best solution or the solution that would benefit them the most. Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Even though recruiters complain about having too many requisitions to fill, the talent shortage, fickle hiring managers, and legal hurdles, they still do not appreciate that automation, and A.I. could free them to do more useful work. This is not unusual. For example, tellers and many bankers thought ATMs were just a nice addition to their services. They never considered that they would replace bank tellers and automate most banking, freeing people to become loan officers …

Eliminate Wasteful Recruiting
type: item
creator: admin
date: 2023-08-16T14:30:12Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: Simplify and Speed Up Your Process Recruiting is a wasteful process – filled with inefficiencies and administrivia. Using lean manufacturing concepts, waste is defined as any non-value-added process. Value-add means improving or moving a process to the next step with maximum speed and quality. In recruiting, most processes are labor-intensive and time-consuming and lead to […]
encoded: Simplify and Speed Up Your Process Recruiting is a wasteful process – filled with inefficiencies and administrivia. Using lean manufacturing concepts, waste is defined as any non-value-added process. Value-add means improving or moving a process to the next step with maximum speed and quality. In recruiting, most processes are labor-intensive and time-consuming and lead to slowing the process rather than quickly moving a candidate along. We may feel that by moving slowly, we are being more careful in selecting candidates or more thorough in screening them, but there is no data to support those claims. Improving our current process requires three steps: 1. The hunt for waste and its elimination. Find all the steps that interfere with or slow the process of qualifying a candidate, helping the candidate get to know and understand the job, and making a hiring yes or no decision. We need to ask some tough questions: Where are the bottlenecks? Why do we do this step at all? What value does it add? 2. Understanding and eliminating variability in the recruiting process. One of the core requirements for a lean process is consistency. To provide a consistent and seamless experience, the recruiter needs to know what causes variations and provide ways to reduce the variability or channel it to productive ends. Questions: Why did we take five days to hire one role and only two days to hire another? What is causing slowdowns? 2. Using technology to add efficiencies and consistency. Are we using the tools we have effectively? Is one recruiter using a tool and another is not? Why? Let’s look at each of these in greater detail. Waste Elimination As we have just pointed out, recruiting is a wasteful process as it is commonly practiced. There are many non-value-added activities, including everything that has to do with handling data, scheduling and report writing, and much of the candidate and the hiring manager interface. Take a typical recruiting day. A recruiter may start her day b…