Alex Evans: So yeah, there are four of us. We are all men. This isn't about diversity, but we do have diverse views on where next for talent tech and data as you're or settling in. Welcome to you all, my name's Alex Evans. I'm the managing director of Talent Partners. It is my pleasure and my privilege to host this panel on the future of talent tech to offer a few predictions on.

Alex Evans: On the, some of the problems that it needs to solve for the staffing and talent solutions industry this year. I have three amazing secrets with some of those predictions as well. You can see on your screen Joshua Pines, VP of International Alliances is a Bullhorn. Who's going to help to set the scene for us very shortly on the how and why the adoption of AI and automation is evolving.

Alex Evans: And why integration is the key for any tech solutions. So if last year was all about adoption and it was very accelerated it's very much about integration this year.

Alex Evans: Adam Dale the CRO of Source Breaker. He'll be talking about how to get faster ROI from TalentTech and also how we hope that with some new recruiter challenges this year as well, I've been talking about candidate experience, employee experience and the whole candidate journey, particularly when a lot of them aren't going to be necessarily changing where they work, just who they work for.

Alex Evans: The same living room, different day. And then Ryan McCabe, CEO of Odro. He's gonna be talking about the role of video technology in all of that. But particularly again, how that relates to enhancing employee and personal brands. So again, particularly consultants who are kind of building their personal brands in the market and attracting talent rather than going out and.

Alex Evans: All the time. So, you may not know much about Talent Partners. So I will give you the story of our business. So we are an insights as a service business. We run a lot of events, but we produce a lot of insight from those events as well. We deliver our content really across four key audiences and it's really the full talent ecosystem.

Alex Evans: So half our audience is corporate HR. So Heads of Talent acquisition heads of HR for generally very large employers. We also work with the HR and talent tech community as well. So, we're not helping them to find investment. We're also helping them to refine their proposition for the markets.

Alex Evans: We have a big audience around RPO and MSP, so our talent solutions audience that's why we gained insight from a program of dinners and conferences and workshops and again, a massive chunk of our audiences, the staffing community as well. We run lots of events that they can, so they can learn from each other, but we have an awards program that runs right across all of those as well.

Alex Evans: So this gives us an enormous amount of insight into what all of them are doing well, really, whether it's a talent acquisition team that's trying some new solutions or new approaches to workforce planning or or how they're keeping their talent, or whether it's staffing companies looking to move into new areas of service delivery and really finding out what employers want from them.

Alex Evans: Particularly after two years of a transformed market. We benchmark the industries as well, particularly the vendors but also our employees as well again, to provide that insight into what they're doing well and what they should be doing better. Well, so in over the last 12 months we had the biggest launch for us has been our Talent Solutions Pannellist.

Alex Evans: And this is really kind of benchmarking some of the top players in the market to, to see, you know, again, where they're delivering a lot more value to their clients and also how their client demands are changing. Look out for the first report for that over the next few weeks as well. It's also a way of talent solutions providers showcasing to our own, in-house now global in-house community of over 83,000 HR leaders worldwide about who they should be working with and why.

Alex Evans: It's completely dependent. We have a, an incredible advisory board that helps to kind of, oversee that and compare and benchmark those companies with heads of TA from lots of GSK, Lego, Microsoft, Bank of America, et cetera, practicing, but a few and and yeah, it's all, I'll share some of the insights from our reports in a couple of minutes.

Alex Evans: We launched our 0.6 program for staffing companies about three years ago now it's called 0.6 because in the UK I think there's just under 40,000 staffing companies, but really 0.6% of them had a turnover of about 50 million. So 0.6 is really helping those companies above 50 million.

Alex Evans: To protect their growth and maintain their growth, and certainly to keep up with their talent and make better strategic decisions. And those below the 50 million, but looking up, they're going to get there realistically fairly soon, how to get there quicker, how to learn from their peers and how to make better decisions.

Alex Evans: Really. So our members learn from each other in live or virtual sessions like this. We also provide access to some of our in-house conferences as well. So the heads of TA or Chief People Officers from our staffing members can actually attend some of those conference events to find out exactly what their peers are doing.

Alex Evans: But also obviously what employers are looking for their partners. We package up intelligence from our benchmarking. We raise their profile through our talent international platform, which now I think has over 100,000 distribution worldwide. And we help them shout about their successes through RTO or program.

Alex Evans: I do love a start. I'm going to be happy to share these slides at the end of this. Cause there's a lot of numbers in here. But I really just wanted to kind of set the scene before we talk to our tech experts with just a few statistics around where the market is in, particularly for staffing as well.

Alex Evans: So again, I mean, in the UK tracking the, you know, the growth in the candidate led market for some time, but in October 21 you know, 1.3 million vacancies were posted a record since ons was capturing that data and loads of stats around the talent shortage really in the market LinkedIn highlighted that there was 6.8 times.

Alex Evans: More recruits were always being advertised on LinkedIn last year, then the year before, again, after a furlough and redundancy in kind of 2020, that's maybe not surprising. But what's interesting is that the industry is really looking for experienced recruitment talent rather than looking outside the industry as well.

Alex Evans: And we'll be talking a bit about upskilling and training talent to bring more variety in there. So to kind of attract that talent certainly salaries have increased quite a lot. I think in July, in the UK last year, we went out to 8.8% a rising salary, but I think by the end of the year, or certainly Q3 average growth was 4.2% compared to 2.8% in Europe.

Alex Evans: And in terms of how they, you know, how companies generally not just staffing the industry is attracting and keeping its talent. Again, a couple of other interesting stats from LinkedIn, a 343% growth in interventions of flexibility in job posts. People really want to go back to the office full time.

Alex Evans: And they've definitely got used to having that better work-life balance and 140%, 147% increase. Sorry. In the mention of wellbeing. In job ads as well. So really addressing mental health, physical wellbeing. And again, that, that kind of work-life balance for those looking for a job as well.

Alex Evans: And again, being flexible are really losing out on a lot of talent at the moment. The role of tech, the role of talent tech has been, as you know, really come to the fore over the last couple of years as well. You know, PWC highlighted that 74% of companies surveyed plan to increase their HR tech spending, even though they spend quite a lot already.

Alex Evans: But they also pointed out that over 80% think they're going to struggle with the adoption of eight Patek, believing that pension in the sense he was supposed to be more effective than leadership and communication. Adam will definitely have something to say about that in terms of how he's seeing adoption being accelerated within some of the recruitment companies.

Alex Evans: Harvey Nash in there, their digital leadership Survey. So. Found that over 80% of this really does so that new life priorities are impacting retention of talent. So actually keeping that talent, you really do need to be more flexible and 30% have completely redesigned the employment offer for a hybrid working as well, because it's such a basic demand.

Alex Evans: Joshua Bersin, I don't know how many of you know, Joshua Bersin in-person associates. I think it's owned by Deloitte now. He's an analyst and observer of the role of HR tech in the market. And he did. I think it's a 10 minute YouTube post just before Christmas, but he said we are not automating away.

Alex Evans: The recruiting function, quite the opposite, recruiters have shown the value they bring in understanding cultural effects, adjacent candidates, skills, pay, finding jobs, back hiring managers. They are the tip of the spear. Of all these HR practices. So it's really recognized that the role of recruiters and RPOs over the last couple of years has been to really understand the depth of the market that everyone's competing in.

Alex Evans: And and it's, and there was way more nuance, but certainly a wider range of services that they are delivering to their client. Another, a barrage of numbers for you. But again, this is from some of our own research and some broad research. So the research, sorry the world employment Confederation highlighted the, you know, where the real growth was in staffing and RPO group at 25% into 2020 MSP up 13%, but only 1% of traditional agency recruitment growth in that time, again, a huge hiring freeze in 2020 to 2021.

Alex Evans: But it's really interesting to see greater demand for those services. Our own recruitment talents, which ranks the top 500 staffing firms in the UK by turnover, NFI and PBT. We valued 536.8 billion last year down from 40.8 billion the year before. So not necessarily as large a drop in revenues, as people may have expected after COVID hits.

Alex Evans: The global RPO revenue forecast by 2027 is set to be 20.8 billion. Again, it is surprising that a lot of staffing companies are starting to look at talent solutions for new areas of growth. And the global HR tech market is predicted to get to 35.68 billion by 2028. It's currently around 24 billion as well.

Alex Evans: And again, lots of different trends in the market driving that growth and again the accelerated adoption it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon. So final a few observations from our talent solutions powerless report, which is coming out a few weeks you know, that, that kind of 15, you know, top providers in the market.

Alex Evans: All highlighted these top three areas of focus for them and for their clients, a sincere local 4% believe that assessment and deployment of technology will be something that the employers really want from their RPO partners. They really want advice on how to end up on choosing those solutions that how best to deploy and certainly, you know, how to implement it properly.

Alex Evans: 76.1% looking at screening and assessment, that's a massive area of focus and certainly a huge area of impact for HR tech and 74.5%, you know, who want help with their employer brand and their candidate attraction strategies as well. I think DNI was number five. Out of that, I think that was in the top three, a couple of years ago.

Alex Evans: So again, it's really interesting to see that the employer brand has kind of stayed in the top three, really the last couple of years as well. And again our lovely experts will be explaining a bit more about where technology is having a role in that as well. So yeah, as I say, I'm very happy to share the slides and tell you a bit more about what we do as a business.

Alex Evans: Just email me alex@talintpartners.com. And without further ado, I'll pass you to our first experts. Joshua Pines from Bullhorn over to you, Joshua.

Joshua Pines: Thank you very much, Alex, let's get this up. Hopefully you can see what I see. So as mentioned, my name is Joshua Pines. I'm the Vice President of International Alliances at Bullhorn among the alliances. My team manages a Hydro and Sourcebreaker. So, to the earlier point about the importance of integration and of building a platform and a marketplace to support that you can see it on display right here with the great leaders and companies represented on this call.

Joshua Pines: I'm really excited to share some of the trends that we've seen. We've been doing a lot of research in the last six to eight months on the impact of the pandemic, the impact of how our industry is evolving, where it's heading and what we like to call the consumerization of staffing. In a good way, I promise.

Joshua Pines: So first by way of introduction, if you're not familiar with Bullhorn, we're a technology company dedicated to the staffing industry. We put all of our efforts towards building technology that helps put the world to work. I personally joined Bullhorn as a result of its acquisition of Shomrei Hadath Synagogue, mid July of last year, running workforce management for the staffing industry and thrilled to be part of the Team.

Joshua Pines: At the heart of what we do and why we do what we do is enabling our clients to create an incredible customer experience. In this case, it's really important to remember this throughout the rest of the presentation and conversation overall refers to all customers, hiring managers, procurement talent, site managers, even internal customers because one of the changes that we're seeing in this industry is thinking about everything through that consumer lens.

Joshua Pines: And so it's really important. So what do we see happening in the market? It's cliche to say the world has changed, but I think those of you who are on the other side of this screen know that from your day-to-day. Change in certainty has become business as usual, again, a cliche, but an accurate one. And that's impacted and changed the industry in a number of ways.

Joshua Pines: And actually the pandemic has accelerated some trends that we've been seeing and really there's no going back. This is the new normal we keep talking about getting back to a new normal. What does it mean for our industry? Well, the cool thing is that there's challenges, but also opportunities as a result agencies are rethinking how they do everything they do day in and day out, but through a digital lens and through that consumerized lenses as well, We've also all heard about the labor market, having a major talent shortage.

Joshua Pines: Well, what's behind it, you know, trends like the great resignation, or as I like to say, the great migration, most people are just moving to a better job. On the back of the pandemic, it's a kind of perfect talent storm. And in fact, our grid research report identified talent attraction from all of the staffing agencies that we interviewed as the top challenge for the year ahead.

Joshua Pines: I think you can probably empathize with that. But another factor finally that we see impacting are the generational changes both literally. So the introduction of generation Z into the workforce, but also the impact of other things on other generations within the workforce has changed the expectations from talent.

Joshua Pines: They want the flexibility to interact and work on their own terms and they expect a high touch, high tech experience in everything they do. This is the final piece of what I'm calling the consumerization of Staffing. So let's dig a little bit further into that. And we did a lot of research talking to talent out there, temporary, contingent, permitted, et cetera.

Joshua Pines: The grid survey showed that their expectations have shifted quite dramatically. 90% of workers wish the process of finding jobs through staffing forms were more streamlined. 90%, almost half have given up, oh, sorry. About half have given up on an application because it took too long. I'm sure you've seen that in your own seat and 93%.

Joshua Pines: I mean, we could practically say all say the experience with online platforms is easier. That's pretty serious scary stuff. If you're in the seat that you're in and you're thinking, how do I compete with, you know, the leading online workforce platform? But there is good news, despite it all, despite all that stuff, we just saw talent actually still wants to work with staffing agencies.

Joshua Pines: I shouldn't say it like that's a surprise. We know that we bring a lot of value to the space and the quote that was brought up from Joshua person earlier is spot on. It's the integration of the technology and our human touch is where we can bring the best to the table. And this is an opportunity for fast moving firms and those ready and willing to digitally transform to meet the demands of the talent and the workforce.

Joshua Pines: All right. So let's talk about digital transformation. You hear it a lot. It's a buzz word, isn't it? Well, actually the numbers show there's a lot more to it than just a buzz word because in order to get where they want and what I just talked about and getting to those talent agencies are realizing they need to transform their operations.

Joshua Pines: And we've seen an amazing acceleration of those plans during the course of the pandemic. In fact, digital transformation planning, and you can see it right here is up 236% in the last year. Less than two years. So if you haven't started, what are you waiting for and whether you're already started or you're just taking off, let's think about some of the important considerations you have to take into account from our experience.

Joshua Pines: There are three key steps in digital transformation. We've already mentioned the value of integration, where the cool thing is it cuts across all of this. So digitization finding that single source of truth automation, which I'm going to dig into a little bit further and what we're calling empowerment are key, right?

Joshua Pines: So that single source of truth on which you can build everything. That's the foundation that allows you to then automate. Automating is the next key step. And then digitalization and automation combined can help set the table to be able to empower candidates and clients through self-service. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit more.

Joshua Pines: So really what's next. As the consumerization of the staffing industry marches forward, you have to think about what can be built on that foundation of the single source of truth. We see from our client base, tens of thousands of staffing agencies across the globe, that the leading agencies are going to start to leverage the kinds of best practices we see in consumer marketing and what we've all become accustomed to talking about annoying spam.

Joshua Pines: And I'm not talking about dodgy links to Nigerian princes. I'm talking about the kind of things that gets you, the information you need when you need it on the tools you are interested in connecting with it on. So that means you're engaging that talent, whether they're new candidates, existing workers in your database, or even workers already on a current project, through multiple channels, the channels they choose, the tools they choose to access, access to the channels.

Joshua Pines: It also means leveraging. Automation to minimize the manual input for these key processes is now on the table it's available. And the adoption is remarkable. We saw two and a half X adoption of automation from 2020, just through the first three quarters of 2021. So I'll say that again from 181 million automations through our platform in 2022, just through the first three quarters of 2021, over 400 million.

Joshua Pines: And we believe that's going to continue at that rapid pace moving forward. So if you're skeptical about automation, don't be, and finally that means we should be empowering talent and end clients by the way, but let's focus on talent because I'm going to hand off to Ryan and Adam and the value and the impact on talent is going to be key, but enabling them through self-service tools, things like video interviewing, by the way, as you'll hear from Ryan could be a great way to do that.

Joshua Pines: But that is that empowerment that comes through the ability of focusing on what's important, combining that human touch with the technology and the automation to enable and remove those busy, the busy work and the manual tasks that are slowing you down and allowing you to focus on bringing the best thing to the table, to your talent, to your clients, into your colleagues.

Joshua Pines: I'll thank you so much. I can take some questions. And of course, happy to take questions throughout the day in the chat and following up. And again, thanks so much and thanks to, to, to the rest of the panel to Jan and Candidate.ly. And thanks again for joining. 

Alex Evans: Thank you. Thanks for that, Joshua. I've got to say, I mean, I love all the different ways of describing the great leaving of a business.

Alex Evans: You know, LinkedIn is a great reshuffle. There's great resignation. Joshua Bersin actually I think produced some research just before Christmas, actually about the desk-less workforce actually, which is an enormous proportion of the workforce. That's that that, you really seeing the great resignation, it's the kind of gig workers, the most dissatisfied, you know, whereas, you again, you know, we hosted a dinner for some of our 0.6, you know, staffing CEOs before Christmas and again, and they were all saying that, yes, the growth is going to continue into this year, but maybe not necessarily the same levels of profitability into this year.

Alex Evans: Yeah, invest in technology the right way, but a lot of people are waiting for, you know, the impacts of furlough you know, ending in September to kind of show if there's any impact or redundancies, you know, people getting bonuses in January or December and January in financial services and those kinds of things.

Alex Evans: Are you actually seeing a great resignation where, you know, where are you seeing it at Bullhorn as well? Do you think it's a. 

Joshua Pines: So actually, interestingly enough, what we're seeing a lot of the great resignation, and again, I like to call it the great migration is recruiters, recruiting consultants, moving from one agency to another, where there's a better life work-life balance, for lack of a better word.

Joshua Pines: These days, there is not right, but where there's a better experience and where they feel they're being taken care of and thought about better. And that's really key. And I think that there's a really important thing to take incidentally, Alex, what we call that it's random was the dynamic workforce, because things are changing where you work when you work, how you work, what you use to access your work.

Joshua Pines: And that's really key. I think that, back to the great migration point, there are certain industries, there are certain job types that are certainly more prevalent. And we have seen that again, the vast majority of our clients are working in, you know, long-term contingent placement.

Joshua Pines: So those are people for whom this idea has probably dawned on them longer, long before the. Right. They want to work in 13 week contracts as travel nurses, or they want to work on six month contracts as IT administrators, so that they have the flexibility at the end of that six months to go to a different client and maybe not work for a while.

Joshua Pines: And I think that is becoming a lot closer to normal. You know, we saw over the previous two decades before the pandemic, like a huge shift away from lifetime employment, right? I think if you graduated university in the 70s and 80s, you likely went in. If you're going to the corporate world with an expectation of a 30 to 40 year career at a single company, very quickly, those people graduated in the late 80s into the 90s, saw a big shift away from that into a series of four to six year jobs became much more common than a typical white collar position.

Joshua Pines: But as we entered the 21st century, that's all changed quite dramatically to be much more flexible, much more of an expectation, you know, the gold Rolex at the end of the 30 years, probably isn't worth being unhappy for 2019. 

Alex Evans: No, I don't think. And you know, your point about your generational changes.

Alex Evans: I mean, I remember all the kind of millennial bashing that was happening, you know, kind of five years ago. Cause you know, cause of resentful generation Xs who came out of university with no debt, you know, Moaning about people doing two years halls of duty who have got 40,000 pounds worth of student debt that they kind of want to pay off, you know, pretty quickly and kind of get on the property ladder at some point as well.

Alex Evans: So, yeah, I think, I mean, we'll pick up I definitely wanna pick up a bit on the consumerization of staffing and I think the, you know, the consumer experience, I think that's something that, that is, you know, again, I think technology often is a problem looking for a solution, but actually there's lots of problems that needs to be solved, but that actually the user experience is a biggie.

Alex Evans: And again definitely wanna get into kind of channel partners. Leo, I saw your question. I definitely want to pick up on some of the wellbeing elements as well, and certainly monitoring of wellbeing particularly for people who are in and out of the office. But to keep the time I'm going to pass to Adam, but thank you very much for that, Joshua and we'll catch up after this as well. 

Joshua Pines: Thanks so much. 

Adam Dale: Thanks Alex. Just work out. Everyone sees the slides. There we go. Brilliant. Well, thanks for having me today. I'm going to focus around actually maximizing the return on investment. People are getting from technology. So we talk a lot about choosing the right technology. What is the right technology for your business?

Adam Dale: And I think there isn't, you know, as Joshua had a pretty much agency out there that isn't looking to add to that tech stack this year in terms of automation, video just making the whole experience for both that their internal staff and their external clients a lot better Oh, here we go. 

Adam Dale: Click. Cool. 

Adam Dale: So I think one of the things to start with is really looking at how you are selecting the right tech? Because I think one of the things that people look at is actually they've bought a piece of technology because they thought it was solving a problem and then it doesn't solve the problem.

Adam Dale: They thought it was solved. So therefore they don't get the returns that they were expecting. It's almost a bit of a paradigm from that. So I think a couple of tips to leave you all with today is really looking at the key business challenge. So, you know, are you doing digitalization for the sake of it, or actually, are you trying to solve a a business challenge.

Adam Dale: Looking at the, what is the long-term business strategy for the next 24 to 36 months within your particular staffing agencies? That growth is that geographic expansion. What are you trying to look at I'd be looking at how quickly you need the beast of technology to make an impact?

Adam Dale: You know, again, are you looking for something really long term or you're looking for something to solve an issue that you have in your business within the next couple of months? The integration piece has already been mentioned, but, you know, I think that's really key is what is the compatibility with the current tech stack because, you know, you can bring in anything that solves a problem.

Adam Dale: And it might be on a standalone, an amazing piece of technology, but if it doesn't talk to any of your other tech then you don't have that single source of truth. Joshua talked about, and then it doesn't work in the holistic process. And I think that's one of the key things to really think about with tag is ultimately recruitment.

Adam Dale: At its core is a process game. And the more streamlined you can make that process more repeatable, you can make your processes better. So having people going outside into different systems all the time is just going to completely break that down. And then I think the key one for here is you know, do you have the internal resources available to actually implement that technology?

Adam Dale: So really making sure you've asked these questions before you go and make the tech purchase. So looking into actually you've made the tech purchase and now you're looking to adopt it. Today's agenda, I'm going to split into four key areas. So first one is looking at the, what we call the pre-implementation phase.

Adam Dale: So that is you've signed the contract. You've bought the piece of technology, but you haven't started the training or the onboarding. So what happens in that gap between seconds is then you're actually getting to that training and onboard. Third is then actually, how do you deliver long-term value for that?

Adam Dale: Because I think a lot of people obsess around getting technology up and running. What is that immediate impact that it's having, but forget that actually, you know, you've invested in this tech stack for 3, 4, 5 years, and that's, what's going to be part of your main business plan. So don't forget about it.

Adam Dale: And actually, how do you track it? Long-term and then look at some red flags to consider when you're looking through it. So looking at it from a positive and negative stem employee. 

Adam Dale: So. Click too many times. 

Adam Dale: So looking at the pre-implementation phase. So as I said, this is really for me, the part that you need to focus on.

Adam Dale: I think a lot of decision-makers and you know, C suite within agencies, where do you think that the time that they've signed the contract and selected the vendor, their job is done. Whereas actually I think that when we really start, you know, selecting the vendor, going through the contract phase, that's the easy bit.

Adam Dale: Now we've got to actually really get into the meat of making sure that there's tech adoption really fluff. 

Adam Dale: So first one, it really is the planning. So making sure you've got enough time set aside to make sure that you can actually plan exactly how this is going to work for your business. And you're not just throwing it at the, either the consultants or people internally.

Adam Dale: The second one. So we call it a success strategy call here at Source Breaker, be called different things with different vendors, but really make sure the key thing for this. It makes sure the communication is with the supplier that you have. So our success strategy is called and the Source Breaker is with the actual training manager or the Customer Success Manager.

Adam Dale: Who's going to run the training for them to understand the business, pains them, to start talking in your language. So really speak to that vendor and make sure before they hit the training room, do they fully understand your business? The reason you've bought the technology and do they talk the language that your recruiters are gonna utilize?

Adam Dale: Third one, I think one of the, one of the key ones around any adoption selling the dream to the users. So a lot of people have it in their heads. The reason why you bought it, it really fits this key business challenge that we're really trying to solve right now. But then they don't communicate that to the rest of the business.

Adam Dale: And they sit in the training room thinking like, okay, we've got this tech. It looks really cool, but they don't understand why. So within all of your communication, really understand the why of what you're doing, because ultimately you're going to be buying it to solve a problem that recruiters on the ground have.

Adam Dale: So you're thinking right now, you know, people are talking about candidate availability. They can't find enough candidates or the struggling to engage with available candidates. So really sell back to those key problems that they're seeing on the ground. And actually look at that across the different levels.

Adam Dale: So if you're talking to your Directors. Yeah, you want to be talking about the data that the piece of technology provides and how it's going to give them the ability to manage their teams. If you're talking to the actual recruiter, you want to talk to them about how it's going to yet enable them to do their job quicker, do their job more efficiently.

Adam Dale: It's going to help them own more commission, really putting it into the language and that is the why for that particular individual. Making sure you allocate enough resources to it. So I would look at the cost of the technology as in the pounds or the dollars or the euros as only a fraction of what actually that piece of technology costs you to implement.

Adam Dale: You've got to think of all the people's hours, they, all the planning, all the operations side of that, and actually making sure that you've look at that holistically and know, have you got enough resources? And then the final bit is actually defining ROI really early. So what is it that is going to make this a success and how are you going to judge that?

Adam Dale: And I think there's two ways of looking at this or multiple ways of looking at this, but two key ones. If one person gets obsessed with the amount of revenue. That it's going to drive in the business. And if it is a revenue generating tool, you definitely want a pound or a dollar amount against that piece of technology that you can track.

Adam Dale: And you can know whether this is successful, but actually it goes deeper to that depending on what the business need was. So we worked with a business on an island and their key business challenge was all around retention of their staff. So they wanted to know with their great resignation, the great migration that they were going to keep hold of all of their top pillars.

Adam Dale: And they're, you know, they're really productive stack. So their key business challenge was making sure that their tech stack and everything that they do was as frictionless as possible. So that when somebody looked at going to another agency, they would have no rivaled tech stacks that they could go and use.

Adam Dale: So actually return on investment for them from a Source Breaker implementation or of a new tech was actually around the satisfaction of the user. And did the user love using it? Did they go back to it every day? Did they get the results that they were wanting for? Was it easy to use? So it completely flipped actually what the return on investment was.

Adam Dale: And that then bore out in terms of actually, you know, what they were tracking so far, starting with that phase. Then when we get into the actual training and onboarding key thing here is commitment. So make sure that actually, if the supplier says you need three hours of training sessions on this piece of technology, they're not doing it for the good of their heart.

Adam Dale: If I could get away with training people on Source Breaker for five minutes and letting them loose on it and never having to run a training session again, then I would do that completely as a co-founder of the business. That would be the best thing. If I'm telling you that we need three hours of training sessions across six weeks, the reason is that what makes you successful?

Adam Dale: So don't try and get away from the process of the business. Make sure that you actually really commit to this tech implementation, because if you're going to just step at this point, then you know, you're not really going to drive it through for the adoption. Making sure you have a senior leader, you know, I always say in the room, it could be on the zoom.

Adam Dale: However, you're going to do the training or somebody basically who can sell back the reason for particular features. So if there's a training person is actually rolling out a particular feature that solves that key business challenge. At that point, you want the senior leader to jump in and say, right guys, this is because last week we were talking about, we couldn't find enough candidates.

Adam Dale: So therefore this piece of tech that we're just being seen right there is solving that problem that you had last week, really making it relatable for people. Splitting the launch or the training into different parts. People could only take in information for so long as a diligent and you know, concentrated as most recruiters are.

Adam Dale: I suggest you want everybody into short and sweet little bits so that they can digest that information adding competitions. So, you know, your staff, you know, people are in, in recruitment a lot of the time because of that thrill because of that boss, because of the level of competition that they can have within that role.

Adam Dale: So we really feed into that and make sure that you have competitions throughout the training process, to who uses it the most in the first week, who logs in the most in the first month, things like that. And really make it bespoke. So there's a key difference here to being bespoke and going away from the process.

Adam Dale: I want to wear it to pull this out. So if the supplier is saying, this is our process, don't rip that up and try and do your own process, but bespoke their process to fit your business. And what I mean by this is a lot around the language. So if you call a joblead. Make sure that the trainer knows that so that when they're training and they're pulling up a job, they can call it the language that you do.

Adam Dale: If you call it a CV, send, make sure that they're using that language within the training so that they can actually really make it feel part of your business and not just a recorded webinar that could be sent to, you know, hundreds and hundreds of business 

Adam Dale: moving on from the training and onboarding and looking at delivering long-term value.

Adam Dale: So it might seem silly because we had defined ROI on the first slide, but actually really defining success is probably different to ROI. So ROI is generally how you test it's working, you know, is it a good being a good investment success might actually change over time. And I think that the key to this long-term value is how you bought a piece of technology.

Adam Dale: Four years ago, your business probably looked very different right now. So actually what success from that piece of technology will be very different and that really rolls into what is new. So, you know, Joshua and Ryan on the call as well, like our products move at a rate of knots, you know, there isn't a three-month period that there's not new features, new updates coming out on all of these pieces of technology.

Adam Dale: So make sure you really keep up to date with what your suppliers offer, because you might have a challenge that's actually solved by one of your core providers. You just don't know about it. And build that tech into your meeting. So the key now is really stitching it into the fabric of your business.

Adam Dale: So we have some amazing clients. The actually within their all hands meeting have steps around their use of pieces of technology. So they have Source Breaker up there, but they also have other platforms, you know, who was actually done the most usage of the tech that you're giving them and really put that front and center as a KPI to be celebrated.

Adam Dale: And then looking at who is responsible. So I said to make sure that there's a senior leader involved right at the start, but actually who is going to be responsible. Long-term great. If that can still be one of the senior leadership team cause that's ultimately the best buy-in you're going to get, but sometimes you may need to pass it on to somebody within the business.

Adam Dale: And depending on the scale, this can be, you go into an ops function in smaller businesses. What we see works really nicely is actually think of that senior recruiter. Who is looking for more experience, who's looking for more responsibility. You can actually give a piece of technology to them as a champion, and they can then start to learn how to, you know, really drive something within the business.

Adam Dale: That's not core to that. Day-to-day jobs. I'm finally looking at, we call it an EBR enterprise business review, but keep that communication channel open with the supplier. So you constantly know how it's going, what you can be improving and you know, what is the next thing that you should be looking at?

Adam Dale: And so there are some sort of key steps and action points. And my lovely formatting in the PDF has one. I've got a bit of an excuse. So apologies for that. One marketing are gonna give me a slap on the wrist but just some red flags to consider. So as I said before, moving away from the supplier's methodology, we have a methodology for a reason, it's because it works and we've run thousands of implementations with that working.

Adam Dale: So make sure you don't move away from it too much, make sure you allocate enough time and really think about how this is going to affect your business. Get people's attention. So the old school in the training room used to be people playing on their phones, trying to take phone calls with zoom.

Adam Dale: That's even harder because you don't know if they're just sat, you know, with their hands underneath here, tapping away on their phone. So that senior leader in the room is even more important because they're not going to be, you know, not accountable for actually paying attention. And ultimately if you're getting them off their desk and into a training room or zoom at for that half an hour, like if they're not listening, they may as well not be there.

Adam Dale: So if they're there. Make sure you have all the logins and the credentials or the data like different platforms will have, but you know, don't go to this training or don't go to this implementation, you know, without the information that you need. It just puts everything on the back foot and keeps involved in the process, keep involved with evolutions of the tech.

Adam Dale: And actually think about when a new user joins your business, what is their experience with technology? So again, this goes into the long term values point, but we always think about technology and how we trained it and how we brought it into our business on day one. But if you hire a recruiter six months later, how did they experience your tech stack?

Adam Dale: You know, how do they do it? So, you know, what training do you have internally? Is it how you do that? And then ultimately track activity and track with time. If you want to get ROI from a technology, you need to measure it. And there's so many people who are like, you know, we're not sure if we're getting the ROI from this, but they're actually not tracking anything to do it.

Adam Dale: So there's a few key points. For me we do actually run a whole webinar series. That's now on demand around this. So it's three different webinars Audra and Bullhorn, and actually featured on webinar three for delivering long-term value. So I'd give that one a lesson and there's a QR code for those speedily.

Adam Dale: I will let you go on your phone now and scan it if anyone wants to give it a watch. 

Alex Evans: Brilliant. Thank you very much for that, Adam. And actually just going back to the kind of pre. Pre-implementation is actually the kind of selection of technology as well. And again, I'm actually referring back to what Joshua was saying about digital transformation.

Alex Evans: It was really interesting in 2020 when we were convening some of our discussions with recruitment leaders, like in Pelham, for example, who has the choice, right? The beginning of lockdown, cer delay that significant tech transformation and just kind of, you know, firefight or focus on where the market's going to be or understanding that it was going to be a lot of disruption and they probably would be forgiven for, you know, for, you know, for driving a big technology transformation.

Alex Evans: Like they chose that option, you know, and obviously they emerged a lot stronger from you know, from from two lockdowns as well. I think what was really important with that apart from, you know, making the bold decision and thinking long term was the role of the leader in communicating the why.

Alex Evans: Really clearly and keeping that going. I think, you know, again, Nicholas McQueen from a NHS professionals you know, did really well in maintaining the comfort, know, the the communication around what they were doing differently, why they were doing it differently, you know, how it played into the challenges of everyone in her team and what the market was requiring as well.

Alex Evans: And then just a final thought from, you know, an expert that we've had in quite a few of our sessions or chat called Phil Lewis from corporate punk who says get all stakeholders involved in that decision actually involved in that decision, you know, frontline, you know, middle management leaders and don't ever agree to disagree.

Alex Evans: You've got to keep going until everyone is on the same page as awkward as that might be, because one, everyone is on that same page that's why you're clear on getting the solution in the first place and the value. Does it fit the business? So there's, you know, there's definitely a cultural element to attack transformation that people don't always consider, but it's a biggie to make it work.

Alex Evans: But I'm gonna pick up on some of that with you again Adam in a kind of panel Q/A afterwards. But over to you, Ryan to talk a bit about the video employer brand.

Ryan McCabe: They talk about an off act to follow my son for me. I mean, I've taken more notes than I have in my own sleep and I wasn't making them highlights.

Ryan McCabe: So my views on this no, look just there, well done to Adam and Joshua. I thought that was real value in both of those presentations. So thanks very much for that for me. Look, I've been asked to talk around employer brand and candidate attraction. The easiest way for me to frame that conversation is through what we call the incredible connections frameworks, or that says how we frame the hiring process and specifically speak to how what part values or plays on that.

Ryan McCabe: Was just to go through kind of very briefly how we look at this. So we look at the framework and in three separate stages, the attraction stage, or how we get candidates to enter the top of that hiring funnel, the assessment stage in terms of how we choose whether or not these candidates fit our business.

Ryan McCabe: And then finally the aftercare process, how we ensure the candidates stay with Steve of the business after they've been placed and just sort of out of transparency. Audra walks with over 800 recruitment brands. Well over 10,000 users now, and their photos, what am I about to show you as an aggregation of all of the best use cases of video from our client's businesses?

Ryan McCabe: So this was not actually designed that but encourage buyers and as a whole, this was here's our technology. This is how we think it should be implemented. And actually over the last five years, our clients have shorters new ways to make big impacts and eh and the businesses. One thing I didn't check is that you can all see.

Ryan McCabe: Well, so my screen, I'm looking for nods from Alex, and I'm going to probably thank you so very, quickly. I wouldn't spend too much time on that. I'm conscious of time for everyone else, but that says, let's look up permanent recruitment. For example, this is a standard process that we have, that we would run through on a permanent recruitment assignment.

Ryan McCabe: So all the way through, from the business development process on how you actually introduce yourself to a client or candidate for the very first time, all the way through the most common stages through to an offer. And then finally, there's some aftercare here about the start dates and follow-up and testimonials.

Ryan McCabe: And when people look at, you know, what role will video play in the hiring process and 2022 and beyond all we can do is look back the way and say what have our customers been doing for the last, you know, five years. And then. Has just got busier and busier. So now that is everywhere. That video plays a part in the hiring process.

Ryan McCabe: So that's just for complete clarity. This is the benefit of using video each stage. And this has been driven by recruiters and staffing firms all over the world. Now, obviously we don't have time, to go through every single one of these. And I wouldn't be, I've been asked specifically to focus on the attraction stage.

Ryan McCabe: I am actually running our webinars here. I'm running a session. I think it's 5:30 Central time, 3:30, UK team to go through that. And we'll detail what I've got about more time, but for now I just wanted to focus on this attraction piece. The question that was posed to me by Alex was. How does employer brand and candidate attraction look with the video in 2022.

Ryan McCabe: And I just wanted to show you some highlights of Fosterville and then just drill down into a couple of, and a couple of key points. So we're very focused on videos as is clear but some of the ways to use video and that attraction process on the Slide. So, video messaging to candidates as a great way to stand though.

Ryan McCabe: And that inbox right now candidates are so short, which means that. Recruiters are finding it quite difficult to scale a personalized approach. And we feel like we have the success behind there's no over the last few years, and especially over the last 12 months that it is possible to scale a personalized approach.

Ryan McCabe: And that's what we focus on with video messaging and the business development process. The briefing call is something that has a completely underutilized step in the hiring process with recruiters speaking to hiring managers. And that's one of the ones I'm going to touch on in the next five, 10 minutes.

Ryan McCabe: Using video on your job advertisements as a very simple way to get more traction and increase that sort of candidate loyalty and connection with your brand. This whole framework is built on creating an incredible connection. That's what we stand for. Right now we have 16 different opportunities throughout the hiring process for our staffing firm to create an incredible connection with the candidate.

Ryan McCabe: And every, almost every conversation we have with staffing firms, which is hundreds every week, we find that as at least half of these, usually 80% plus opportunities that they're leaving on the table, where they could create an incredible connection with a candidate and keeps the candidate attraction, the candidate engagement and the placement rate at the end of the process.

Ryan McCabe: Very quickly we can show you how to increase your response rates with federal and proactive search. And finally, this is one really quick. Had a massive impact on one of our enterprise clients for internal no show rates. A very, I hadn't been there for the part, the video complete and the hiring process as when we have an inordinately high no show rate.

Ryan McCabe: For an internal recruiter interview. What we found was it's usually just through fostering no connection with the brand or the recruiter that the dilemma is probably a lack of information about what's, you know, what's involved in that interview. And also what's involved after that interview are about, am I stepping into a 12 week process here, or is that a two week process?

Ryan McCabe: So we had that interview drop-off problem. We simply implemented a personal recruiter video, which is personal from the recruiter, not personalized to the candidate. One video recorded per year by the recruiter and is sent 24 hours before every interview that candidate will attend. The value is really simple and it's really easy to automate through Bullhorn, Herefish, all that sort of stuff.

Ryan McCabe: All you would do is see you know, for example I'm going to meet you tomorrow. My name is Ryan. This is what it's going to consist of, relax or shock and tie required. Don't whatever the backbones, I just need to chat to you about X, Y, and Z. For any reason, you can't make the interview. Please let me know.

Ryan McCabe: And we can rearrange. And the no show rate for these talent interviews plummeted, it was a rezoning success, and it's no rule though, to all 300 of our clients. So that's the sort of thing that seems to be ahead and benefit of what part video please. But at the end of the day, it's all about Keith and that connection which again is where your employer brand begins.

Ryan McCabe: So the one thing people don't realize about employer brands is that, you know, the conversation nowhere should, you know, should be to create an employer brand. You already have one , do you want to improve? Because people see things about your business. People feel something about your business when the income to them online, the choices, do we think it's a worthwhile investment to improve it?

Ryan McCabe: And are we happy as an employer, brand delivering results. And if it's not, you need to look at where to start now. The easiest, the first thing people do is they go to the marketing department and they see, we need a better employer brand. And that is the best place to start. But in terms of what to put across in that instance, you should not start with your brand guidelines.

Ryan McCabe: It should start with your people. They should start with who currently works there. Who's the hiring manager for the possession? Who's already doing this job well for your business and put those people front and center of your employer, brand your, all your business. As a group of people. That's what we need to get across to people who want to come and join your business.

Ryan McCabe: This is where the friendships are going to be. They're going to start from, this is the people who are going to be spending most of our waking hours with. So we need to again, use this content internally to clear an incredible connection with potential candidates as early in the process as possible.

Ryan McCabe: One thing I personally learned at my own growth as a business was to amplify your values early on, not just your skills that are required experience that's required to provide your values through content. So for example, if authenticity transparency is an important part or. You know, the people that you're looking to hire, then you should see that as early in the process as possible to see if wasting everyone's time and they know what they're getting into.

Ryan McCabe: Let me talk about the briefing call really quickly. One of the things, everyone gets a shock when I put teams and zoom up. When I'm a video interview provider we integrate with zoom and with teams, and I can explain why, but regardless of whether you are currently an Audra user or not, you will be able to take something from this particular part of the talk and implement it straight to me right now.

Ryan McCabe: What happens when a recruiter goes and moves the occasions? I should say, when a recruiter wins a role, they have a discussion with the hiring manager. They take a brief and they go away and work on that. But now it's already a half hour, 40 minute call with the hiring manager and the majority of the team and today's world.

Ryan McCabe: It's no one team. So what we can do as we can have an introductory chat with the client and introduce the business, talk about some of the early ideas you have and then get into the brief. What we thoughtfully recommend as part of the briefing call is to record the brief. And the reason that you record the conversation with the client as they say. F I give this to someone else in the business for additional support.

Ryan McCabe: I do not want any breakdown in communication. I don't want anything to be lost in translation. I want them to hear us from the source out of the things on the other hand. I've messed up when I've written them bone, that is actually really important. I don't want to waste that time. So we record my element of the call.

Ryan McCabe: I then suggest that you stop the recording and go through the next steps after the client, but a very simple way to get huge value from this call is actually to record an interview with the hiring manager. What's it late to what's. Why are you using us as a staffing firm? What is it that's really important to you and this person?

Ryan McCabe: And also, why did you work there? What do you enjoy about working at this business? Now, if you're talking about candidate attraction, being a problem, if you have a video, which is a two way conversation between you and the person that candidate is going to be walking for that as short, powerful, and the early stages, it's also a really good leverage point to get into the conversation with the candidate.

Ryan McCabe: You don't need to blast that out to everyone. If you're looking to protect that relationship potentially, and I can tangent model what you can see to the candidate as look, I have a seven or eight minute conversation recorded with the client. I'd love to send you, do you mind if I send you over later to the auto model and at least get that buy-in from the candidate, whether it's a, yes or no.

Ryan McCabe: That I know it's a low touch, low commitment way of judging whether or not a candidate would be interested in the right and right opportunities. So that's another really high value, low effort kind of thing you can do on a briefing call. And the final part of that briefing call was to get questions from the client that would be valuable to them, to know the answers as early as possible.

Ryan McCabe: So if you ask the client, what is the first, give me three questions that you need to know the answer to first stage interview. And I can recall these questions being answered by the candidate. So you can come to your decision on the most important stuff quicker that the benefit to the staffing farmers, that anyone entered experience and through our data, we can prove that over 80% of people who make it through candidates or who make it through that stage are then deemed as suitable to be pleased because what happens as we get rid of all the ways to take Natalie, you're providing much more impactful value to the client and it can speed up that pain to hire.

Ryan McCabe: And this is the rule video plays at the briefing call. There is so much more to unpack that can be given through the whole process from the employer brand through the candidate attraction. And actually, if you just take a step back and look at it holistically I'm not going to go through some of that stuff.

Ryan McCabe: That's just some kind of, some really impactful, quick ones. I'm just checking time. And I don't think they have a team for that. 

Alex Evans: You can send the slides. 

Ryan McCabe: I'm happy to send this Slide. But just on this one, in particular, this is the kind of the back end of the framework. This is exactly what you have to do to get the benefits from the first step.

Ryan McCabe: But again, everything I've spoken about here is simply on the briefing call and there's another 16 ways that video can improve the hiring process in 2022. So. Again, I'm conscious of time. So I don't want to run on what we do for our clients as we actually about like what Adam said, it's so important that you create a bespoken vitamin for clients to implement something like this.

Ryan McCabe: So we don't see this as the framework we walk with them and understand what problem are you trying to solve? Exactly what Adam said, what problem are you trying to solve? We allow them their terminology we'll learn their timescales, the way their business works, who speaks to who. And then we clear our bespoke framework and we see this is how we're going to implement video across the business.

Ryan McCabe: And some of them may even, you know, use other suppliers that meet the bottom line as we need to consult with everyone to see what this is, the way that we do it. And that is the way it's going to solve your problem. So. Look, I'm more than happy for anyone on this call. If you would like to see a bespoke Framework, you can get in touch details on the QR codes from Adam as an absolute master stroke.

Ryan McCabe: And I'm absolutely disgusted at myself. I've not got one of them on my last slide. I've written it down. Like that's good for my next presentation. Thanks very much, happy to answer any questions. And I'll hope that people are very early and see, and to the role that video can play at the candida attraction process.

Alex Evans: I am old school, Ryan. I put my email in, I think it's still working. It's all fine. I think I'm going to sort of round up, I'm mostly very conscious of time as well. I think picking up on the human touch point that Joshua made, I think, you know, video is part really of the overall communication issue.

Alex Evans: The, actually the reason, you know, I mean, dropouts, you know, the rate of dropout has risen enormously over the last couple of years as well. You know, there's been a lot of people window shopping roles, but not necessarily, they don't have to and they can look now it's much easier for them to look as well.

Alex Evans: But I think the dropout rate is definitely proportional to the lack of engagement or lack of regular communication you know, with, you know, with consultants as well. So I think that's a really fundamental point and actually having a human face, looking someone in the eye you know, knowing that you're gonna, you know, you're gonna ignore that, that that meeting you have planned in is a lot harder to do as well.

Alex Evans: I'm going to, I'm going to kind of round up with some predictions just to get really prediction from each each of our panel to kind of leave people with I'm going to kick off with my one, just because one of our speakers there'll be, we'll coming up on our our 0.6 predictions event on the 4th of March.

Alex Evans: And again, you'll see some of these speakers at that as well. These were the group head of talent acquisition for NatWest group who basically said that, you know, one of the challenges I suppose, for the staffing industry is the internal mobility and retention of staff is probably the, one of the biggest focuses for.

Alex Evans: Over the next year, certainly over the next few months, in the course of this year as well. And it's interesting to see that a lot of staffing and RPO companies are focusing a lot on inclusion as a service as well. So it's not just about putting talent into that business, but it's also taking more of a role in that talent staying in that business as well.

Alex Evans: So it's not necessarily just about diverse pipelines. It's actually about how that's, how it stays in the business as well. So I predict the inclusion as a service will definitely be more of a focus, but internal mobility is definitely a focus for employees as well. I'm going to ask you, I'll start with you, Ryan actually, and we'll go, I'll go round.

Alex Evans: But yeah your prediction for the year. 

Ryan McCabe: So I feel like. People are really excited to get into automation and the kind of the automation is too much. And then on the other side of that spectrum, the understand the benefit of personalization, but the sort of the time involved versus the potential return is actually quite scary for them.

Ryan McCabe: And I feel like this is the year we are together as suppliers. We actually find our way at the perfect optimum between scaling that, you know, automating personalization from behind the scenes, what we are working on, what I can see your partners working on. I feel, wait, this is the year that we can automate and scale personalization.

Alex Evans: Well, I definitely like scaling personalization, I think. And it comes into that kind of consumerization as well that, you know, it needs to be a slick delivery Adam, you next? 

Adam Dale: So I think one of the big challenges for a lot of people is staffing levels within their own businesses. So I think they're going to look at technology to solve that both in, how can you do.

Adam Dale: Less with more obviously more with less.

Adam Dale: So how can you actually use your automation and technology to make people more specialists and look at that different process? But I think the big thing for me is looking at technology as the bit that keeps your retention within your business. I think there are companies that are going to have the highest retention of the ones that have the slickest process and the best tech stack.

Alex Evans: Yeah. And I actually think, you know, you spend less time doing what you shouldn't and more time doing what you should, so that less is more, still works out. I think that was fine.

Alex Evans: Joshua, a final thought from you on your prediction. 

Joshua Pines: Yeah, I'm reminded of a couple of great historical politicians talking about a chicken in every pot. Herbert Hoover, Henry the fourth. And I think it's about a mobile gateway, a mobile, an entree to employment in everybody's pocket and we all own it.

Joshua Pines: And we have it to be able to get on a car whenever we want at a click of a button to rent a house. And the other side of the world is I click the button. And I'd love to see, and I feel like we finally got all the dots lined up. Or staffing agencies for thinking staffing agencies, to be able to put that tool in all of their talents, pockets and talent is the keyword here.

Joshua Pines: Not just candidates, even existing employees on their databases to be able to make it happen for them. And it's driven by the automation that I'm just talking about. And Ryan. But it also includes that human touch so that they get the right stuff available to them and that they can then connect with the right people to help them make sense at all.

Alex Evans: I think it's a great thing to end on. And I think, yeah, I think the human touch is actually becoming a clearer part of the value proposition for staffing enabled by the kind of underlying foundation of technology, which is, you know, giving them time to, to be more human. So, thank you very much to our panel.

Alex Evans: Thank you, everyone that's joined us. I hope you enjoyed that. That was a tour through a lot of stuff. So I hope you found it all as engaging and interesting as I did enjoy it, World Staffing Summit and the rest of it, it's been great so far. I've been kind of dropping in and out as well. So we're lucky.

Alex Evans: Thanks again for inviting us. And yeah, have a good day. See you next one.