The Pivot to Talent Advisory - a re-cap!

So yesterday we attended the ATC talent advisory conference and wasn’t it awesome! (I’m literally writing this whilst on the plane back to Sydney, on “notes” on my phone whilst it’s sitting hot in my brain!)

We looked at the DNA of a talent advisor, how to align talent to business, Employer Branding & EVP for our internal workforce, we learned about KPMG’s talent attraction transformation, we unpacked how MYOB is delivering their talent advisory services, how to structure our talent functions, we got hands on in evaluating our talent function’s maturity models, we explored how to get C suite buy in, and we even took a look into Toll’s case study on our pivot to talent advisory. (If you weren’t there – you missed a lot… like… A LOT!)

What I saw from the sessions was a deep desire to pivot to talent advisory, all of us in TA sense there is a change coming - but there seemed to be a lingering question left… how were we meant to do it?

I get it. Change is hard. It’s even harder when you want to change, but you don’t know where to start.

It’s easy to think that unless you are a TA function within a large enterprise sized organisation with a huge budget, all the tech, fully engaged stakeholders and an aligned c-suite, talent advisory seems out of reach.

What I will say at this point is to scale things right back.

After a conference, it’s easy to want to do all the things! We have the post conference energy and want to adopt everything we hear.

First and foremost, I encourage you to think of talent advisory as a state of mind, meaning, how you view yourselves as a talent function within your organisation and what that means, within the context of your organisation.

Basically, what we want to understand is how do you try and have the biggest impact on your organisation through educating, informing, and influencing your business to make optimal hiring decisions.

What talent advisory means in Toll, won’t necessarily be the same thing it means at say a KPMG.

I wanted to outline some basic things to think about as you look to starting your journey to talent advisory.

Think of this as the pre-pivot to your pivot to talent advisory!

So where to start… well I encourage you to think through the below and see what comes up for you.

1. Don’t boil the ocean. Don’t think that if you can’t do all the things you will be left behind. Pick the two or three things that you think are achievable and will have impact for your organisation based on where you are as a talent function and as an organisation where you are in your maturity model and start there first. Wherever you are in your TA journey is great. Think about what is working well and why. Do more of what is working.
2. Think about what your why is. Why do you think talent advisory will be right for your TA function? Get clear on what you think this will do for your organisation and TA team.
3. What is likely to disrupt your talent function? Write it down and analyse it. Is it technology? Is it your market? Is it your recruiter retention? When do you think this disruption is likely to happen? Know what will impact your function and plan ahead. Failing to plan, is planning to fail!
4. What data do you have access to? If you have even basic data - you can generate a strategy. Even a smaller organisation has access to something like basic attrition data. How many people are leaving your organisation? Is there a trend or pattern you can see? Is it at the same level, is it at a particular location, gender, spikes at a particular time of the year?

This data will form part of you developing a talent strategy in terms of basic workforce demand planning. What will then be your recommendations for filling those roles?

What about your previous hiring data? Do you know how you have previously filled those challenging, or high churn roles? Was it mainly internal mobility, external agencies, job boards, sourcing? This would then be your channel strategy. If you can answer those basic questions you are well on your way to moving from reactive to proactive!

5.  Adopt funnel conversion metrics instead of using basic funnel data. This will be a game changer even if this is the only thing you can do right now!!! Information is power. You can’t influence what you don’t know. Think through:
   1.  What roles are challenging for your organisation to fill? Why are they challenging? Is it talent supply, demand or brand?
   2.  What are your conversion metrics telling you? Are you getting applicants at the top of the funnel, but they aren’t converting to interview, offer and then hire? Or are you struggling to get talent into the top of the funnel? If so, do you think your attraction strategy needs revising? What can you do to attract more talent.
   3.  If you are losing talent at the time of offer, is your comp relative to the market too low? Can you make a recommendation internally to review it? What data do you have to craft a business case for your HR or C&B team? I’d look at your candidate anecdotal feedback here plus any decline reasons.
   4.  Are you taking too long to make offers to candidates and losing them out to other competitors? Can you make a recommendation to reduce your hiring process to make it faster. Can you consider assessments or some type of automation here to support your hiring process? (Please reach out to me if aren’t sure of how to translate your funnel metrics to conversion metrics or if you aren’t sure how to present your talent strategies - I have a template and training for that!!)

A very wise TA leader once said to me (thanks David Bell) what’s the one thing your hiring manager needs to change to successfully make a hire? This is where your talent advisory mindset starts to really kick in. This is where you begin to influence your organisation. Your data should give you this answer. Give counsel. Advise.

6.  Get to know your team. You have untapped potential sitting within your team. Get to know them and figure out who are the “mentors” in certain traits, competencies, and skills that a talent advisor would ideally possess within your organisation.

What are they passionate about? Leverage it and help up-skill others in your team. Everyone in your team has their “thing”. You just need to find out what they are.

7. Know your organisations talent flow - how does it make money, and what makes it hire people? If you can understand what drives your organisation commercially, you can then understand what drives your talent movements. (This is why Nicola told us to engage our c-suite customers!) What are your growth drivers? What makes your organisation revenue? What are your strategic objectives? (Think here about how this ties to talent. E.g. revenue and growth = hiring in product, sales, or business development type skills.) is your organisation focussed on ebit, gross margin, cash flow, seasonality? What keeps your c-suite up at night? You need to know.
8. What parts of your TA function already have the greatest impact? Do you know? If not – ask your customers? Once you know - do more of it and do less of what doesn’t make a difference (e.g. look for opportunities to automate or augment). This will free your team up to do more of what makes an impact. Always view customer feedback as a gift – this will help you align your function to customer outcomes.
9.  Talent is talent - think about all facets of talent within your organisation. How do you acquire it, how do you “grow” it, how do you internally develop it, how do you mobilise it to other parts of the organisation, how do you retain and reward it and lastly, how does your talent exit your organisation. That’s your entire employee lifecycle and talent advisory has a role to play in each part.

Change your thinking that talent only comes in externally and that’s all TA does. That’s just acquiring talent. That’s reactive, order taking, job filling. We can do far more than that. Where does all your talent come from and where should it come from?

10.  Think about what skills your organisation recruits. You may start with just the top 5 or so, but look at your most frequently filled roles, and then look at what skills they require. Remember - we recruit for a particular skill to perform a specific task or outcome for the organisation.
11.  Evaluate your tech stack. What tech do you currently have? Think about your ATS, HRIS, assessments, sourcing tools, etc. This all forms your tech stack. By evaluating it and understanding what part each plays in your hiring process and what data can be accessed by each, this will help you understand if there are gaps, and what the strengths, opportunities, threats, and weaknesses are to your talent function, and you can plan accordingly to be future fit.

Now Im not saying here that if all you have is a basic ATS and some basic HR people data you are behind – because you’re not, but leverage what you have, then look at if you have the opportunity to potentially review in the future, based on what you need your tech stack to do. Infrastructure that enables Talent Advisory is the name of the game here.

12. Lastly - leverage your community. We have an amazing depth of thinking and capability within our TA community. Network with people that have done this before. Ask questions, learn from them, and stay connected. We have all done something for the first time once. None of us started as experts!

I hope some of this has helped potentially frame some of your thinking about talent advisory, what it means for you, and how you can start applying the things that are achievable for your talent function without feeling overwhelmed, or unsure of where to even start!

Please feel free to connect with me if you want to brainstorm this further and what this could mean for your talent functions! Im a pretty open book, and love helping where I can within the talent community.

(Ps for those still following…. I finished writing this flying somewhere in the middle between Sydney and Melbourne. Thanks for keeping me entertained during my flight! You’ve done me a solid!)

I also want to shout out the following organisations if you are still stuck and need some extra support – these guys have it in spades! Use your network!

TCS Insights: Helping you discover your talent acquisition team’s strengths and development areas through insights and analysis, so that you can optimise and create the workforce for the future. https://tcsinsights.com/about/

The Human Collaborative: The Human Collaborative works with businesses to align talent requirements to the business requirements and strategy.  We are expert advisors in Talent Advisory and Talent Operations, and the talent elements which optimise your business.  www.thehumancollaborative.com.au

TQ Solutions: TQ helps businesses re-imagine their approach to joiners, movers and leavers. We can provide you with the advice and solutions you need to optimise your business’ talent and operational performance. https://tqsolutions.com.au

The Talent Sourcing Collective: www.thetalentsourcingcollective.com (shameless plug!) The expert solution for talent sourcing training, including facilitator led workshops, online certified sourcing courses, talent team capability development and talent strategy coaching.

 As always - I'd love to here your thoughts on this and if this is helpful!

J. xx