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In Talent Acquisition, the focus is almost always on the candidate/recruiter relationship. But before we even get there, there is another relationship which needs tending to – the recruiter and hiring manager relationship.
Like a clownfish and an anemone, recruiters and hiring managers need each other, but (to be brutally honest) it’s often the hiring managers who don’t understand this. They’re busy leaders with their own team or department and BAU demands. But if they want to continue operating at capacity with a strong team then they need the best talent which demands a little time investment and accountability on their part.
At the In-House Recruiter Conference 2024, Tom Hacquoil from Pinpoint articulated this perennial issue for recruiters:
“When we speak to hiring managers they’ll describe recruitments processes as this black box, this mystical creature that they don’t really understand&#8230; If they don’t understand what you’re doing they don’t understand the value you bring to the business and they’re not going to proactively collaborate with you.”
Research shows only 12% of talent acquisition leaders say other functions around the business have ‘a lot’ of visibility into what they do.  This great unknown is what Hacquoil calls the ‘black box’. He argues that without that visibility, recruiters can’t expect accountability from hiring managers – and we agree.  The onus is on recruiters to communicate exactly what the Talent Attraction team does, and what expectations there are for the hiring manager.
So, let’s open the black box.
The kick-off meeting
When the request for a new hire comes through, set up a meeting with the hiring manager to:
<ul>
<li>Explain the role of the recruiter and the hiring manager.</li>
<li>Have the hiring manager detail the technical skills required for the job.</li>
<li>Have the hiring manager identify examples of the kind of person they’re looking for – this might be existing colleagues or people from LinkedIn.</li>
<li>Agree on a scorecard so the recruiter and the hiring manager are working from the same rubric.</li>
<li>Agree on a timeline which you are both accountable to</li>
</ul>
Make it easy for them
This one is a simple best practice step. Make sure that candidate information is easy for the hiring manager to access, that it’s all in one place and doesn’t require a complex ecosystem of logins to access. It’s also important that they can easily compare candidates’ documents.
Accountability
You don’t need us to tell you it’s a competitive market out there. As recruiters, you know the imperative to act quickly – but does the hiring manager? They must understand that prompt responses to candidates is crucial for catching the best talent. With good communication and the collaborative relationship you now have, this shouldn’t be a problem, but reiterate and reiterate the gravity of it. If a pattern of interview cancellations is emerging, it might be time to check in and remind them of the important role they must play. Hiring should be a priority as it has significant bearing on the hiring manager’s team’s future success.
Hiring the best person from the job demands close collaboration between recruiter and hiring manager – neither can be successful without the investment of the other. The slippage, the gap in understanding of each other’s positions, remains a perennial problem. Communicate clearly, don’t assume, and be aligned on what you’re looking for and how to get there.

Three steps to avoid death by recruitment black box

It’s December, meaning that Christmas advertising is in full swing, with companies throwing everything and the kitchen sink to secure advert of the season. One early contender has fallen short with Coca-Cola trying something new with their traditional “<a class="sQblqlFexUxuzoQcuBaSystiTiPgKBvIDB " href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RSTupbfGog" target="_self" rel="noopener" data-test-app-aware-link="">Holidays Are Coming</a>” ad.
They decided to use artificial intelligence.
We all know how it plays out; Santa sagely sending out the Coca-Cola delivery trucks through pine forests with snow falling from the sky. Only this time, some details weren’t quite up to scratch for many viewers. Reindeer and polar bears are coated in a slightly uncanny sheen, the delivery lorries boxier and without texture than in years gone by. All of this carried the asterisked disclaimer “Created by the Real Magic AI” which many commenters thought looked <a class="sQblqlFexUxuzoQcuBaSystiTiPgKBvIDB " href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14086023/coca-cola-backlash-replacing-santa-ai-holidays-coming-christmas-advert.html" target="_self" rel="noopener" data-test-app-aware-link="">“soulless as hell.”</a>
However, Coca-Cola stuck by their guns with Pratik Thaker, the company’s global head of AI, saying “If I want to go very realistic, maybe it’s difficult, but if I want to go hyper-realistic and fantastical, A.I. is actually a much better tool.”
In many ways, consumers are still enjoying the nostalgia of the original, because fundamentally the message hasn&#8217;t changed.  Brands like Coca-Cola have made it clear they can see a future of AI-produced campaigns especially when they’ve become so adept in utilising it as evidence from <a class="sQblqlFexUxuzoQcuBaSystiTiPgKBvIDB " href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGa1imApfdg" target="_self" rel="noopener" data-test-app-aware-link="">their previous work</a>.
In terms of internal comms, however you end up using AI, you need to clearly communicate the alignment with your goals and values. Coca-Cola achieved exactly what they intended to with their advert and the criticism that was left was much broader talking points surrounding artificial intelligence. With your own communications, you need to demonstrate to your audience why this activity speaks to your core values.
Connection with your peopled doesn’t have to be lost just because you’ve used automation. Imagine if you used ChatGPT to create a script for you from the POV of your leader for future company updates. It may make things more efficient and personalised but loses the resonance with your people. That connection to your workforce is incredibly value to your culture and output.
Staying true to those signifiers of your company values shows that you respect and understand your audience’s point-of-view, even when trying new strategies to do so.

Coca-Cola’s experience shows how AI can work for and against you

If you ask any young person about pensions, they’ll either cry or laugh in your face. With the current economic landscape, retirement feels like an alien concept. Issues like the cost-of-living crisis and housing concerns are more top of mind for many young people. With the projected state pension age of 68 for those currently in their 20s, it’s hard to blame them for not wanting to ignore the future.
This isn’t just new world cynicism either. According to research from <a href="https:/www.royallondon.com/about-us/media/media-centre/press-releases/press-releases-2022/august/young-adults-think-theyll-be-shortchanged-by-state-pension">Royal London</a>, around a third of young people in employment believe that state pensions won’t exist by the time they retire while half believe it will be less generous by the time they do. Among savers, ‘milestone planning’ was the top reported savings priority for young people, with half of 18 to 25-year-olds (51%) saying they are saving to buy a property, get married, or similar life events.
With other more pressing future planning taking priority, young people can be completely paralysed in their decision-making, with a People Management survey from 2022 finding that more than a fifth of working 18–24-year-olds were not aware of how much their pension was worth. Almost a quarter (24%) didn’t know how much they would need for a comfortable retirement. The overall attitude appears to be “we won’t get to retire so why bother trying.”
What stands pension comms out from other types of internal communications is that they need to address issues that might arise up to forty years into the future. More than this, they need to make these future-facing issues relevant to everyday habit.
Through tools like Aviva’s <a class="pTSsSJsLzRLkMbyTaIxqYJTfuyzbqtZqJVgQ " href="https://www.aviva.co.uk/investments/savings-accounts/compound-interest-calculator/" target="_self" rel="noopener" data-test-app-aware-link="">compound interest calculator</a>, even monthly savings can have long-term benefits. Something as small as saving the same amount as a few coffees a week can double your contributions over 30 years. This understanding of pensions isn’t entirely new but your pension comms need to connect the dots as much as possible to stoke action.
For example, those relying solely on state pension should know that the current rate of around £9,600 is only enough to afford the essential needs, below the ‘minimum level’ of retirement income of £10,900 a year. Mapping out your pension in terms of the day-to-day of your retirement creates a clearer connection to your actions now to what you’ll do in your 60’s.
Pragmatic and direct comms foster a sense of self-sufficiency that will be vital for long-term financial planning. These traits can endure through all kinds of circumstances because individuals can see their own impact. For younger people thinking about their pensions, they’ll often find that time is on their side when they start developing positive saving habits.
External factors will always cast doubt in young peoples’ minds, particularly with pension plans, but solutions to these problems never came from assuming that you were too far gone to be helped. Positive transparent communications aid decision making whilst simultaneously demonstrating how organisations can support their people.

When will this matter?: Fighting burnout in pensions comms

Artificial intelligence has already established itself as a mainstay for several industries. Predictions from a few months go are being realised in real time, from <a href="https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/stories/2023/12/19/google-gemini-lukewarm-reception">alterations to search engines </a>to brainstorming <a href="https://variety.com/2024/tv/global/itv-ai-create-wggb-writers-criticize-1236184545/">TV show ideas</a>. Recruitment has embedded AI quicker than most, with 80% of recruiting technology vendors expected to build it into product offerings by 2027. We’re far beyond getting left behind  – we want to know which leaps and bounds can we achieve before the year is out.
Opinion on AI isn’t entirely homogenous as Capterra discovered in the 2024 Job Seeker AI Survey. Around 38% of job seekers say they are likely to turn down a job offer if it relies “too much” on AI. Unsurprisingly, top talent prefer new opportunities with a human face. But it begs the question: with AI on track to be a non-negotiable in future outreach, how can employer brand practitioners maintain their people focus?
Now this doesn’t mean throwing the baby out with the bath water. 62% of job seekers still believed they had a better chance of being hired if AI is used in hiring processes. Frankly, if organisations want to maintain a competitive edge they need to utilise the latest technology.
It’s important for organisations to be strategic in their application of AI. Companies need to not let the panic of falling behind cloud their judgement in how they use this technology. Be honest in your strategy, and consider:
<ul>
<li>Will this function still make sense over the course of five years?</li>
<li>Does it solve an existing problem in efficiency?</li>
<li>How will it stay relevant as the software evolves?</li>
</ul>
An AI strategy in recruitment is as much about bringing life to an organisation&#8217;s culture and values and enhancing human relationships as it is about integrating new technology. Taking a nuanced, strategic approach to the technology will help you future-proof your processes and truly leverage the possibilities AI has to offer.

AI In Recruitment: Will Your Strategy Go The Distance?

For communicators, the challenges that come with constant change can seem dense and overwhelming. But even when the technology gets more complicated, the most effective strategies were still the simplest ones. 
As the first snow of the season began to fall, team 106 attended Simply Expo 2024, hosted at etc. venues on Bishopsgate. It was such a joy to come together with a range of different communicators and share what we’ve learned in the past year to carve out solutions for the future. This time, we had two days of sessions, workshops, and roundtables to get into, covering everything from transformation case studies to crisis comms. After helping ourselves to a delicious breakfast spread, we were shown to the Main Stage, where hosts Emma James and Marc Wright began introduced themselves and what we had to look forward to.
Day 1
The right AI models for clear communications 
Our first session was from Priya Lakhani, CEO of Century Tech, and focussed on understanding AI models to communicate clearly. As a regular commentator on AI for the BBC, this was an exciting and insightful way to kick things off. Priya took us through a comprehensive and clear-sighted look at the state of the AI sector, covering everything from Kristen Fraser deepfakes to AI-generated political avatars in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/generative-ai-faces-major-test-indonesia-holds-largest-election-since-boom-2024-02-08/">Indonesia’s election</a>.
All of these were cited to point towards where we were headed and Priya showed us that the future will be multimodal. Even with simple tasks, such as calendar scheduling or even coffee orders, the AI agents act on its own logistics and knowledge. She defined the two different types of AI for us; Narrow AI, which is built for specific tasks, and General AI that can learn and adapt to new situations.
Before any of us could get worried about dystopias on the horizon, Priya clarified that General AI does not exist today in the full scope. In fact, those conversations held us back from its practical application and Priya stressed how much your own investigation can help to remove those fears. Developing a culture of innovation, where productivity ideas can be identified within departments in a targeted and specific way, would lead to maximum impact and would naturally bring artificial intelligence into your arsenal.
New foundations for a house builder
The next session came from the Bellway Group, one of the UK’s largest house builders, and was a return to multifaceted communication transformation. Paul Lawler, Bellway’s Head of Communications, began by telling us his belief that everyone at every level is a communicator within an organisation because everyone has the capability of talking about what the company should be doing within its mission.
Before he joined there was no existing comms, which presented the crux of the transformation they undertook. They were reliant on emails as a main comms channel, but had an inefficient email design, no IT support, and limited comms specifics. The solution was in the launch of a new intranet and an in-house app that instigated two-way communication structure with feedback and analytics to alter future messaging.
Pathway, their new desktop intranet, was a great tool for on-site colleagues who didn’t have access to normal systems, with a digital signage and multiple engagement touch points. This proved to be a huge success as they saw 84% engagement rate across devices with 80% monthly active users since launching in May of this year. Fundamentally, it showed how effective product development and delivery is a long over-looked aspect of communications.
Roundtable Sessions 1 
After a quick coffee and cake break, it was time for our first roundtables titled Inside out advocacy: turning your team into passionate brand ambassadors. Hosted by Peter Durkin from Blink, our discussion looked to practical levers for more alignment and sincere brand advocacy. Ultimately, the most effective rule of thumb was making sure you understand what is relevant to your people so they can communicate on their own terms within their personal brand.
The second roundtable was about Bringing dispersed teams together: Strategies for creating connections across boundaries. This was hosted by Samantha Andrews from Workvivo who’s philosophy was that there’s simply so much more we can do when we’re aligned. The trick was in unifying across remote working challenges, especially with global companies, and it was good to hear other communicators trying to nail this problem. A major tip was in habitualising comms to build them into the localised working environments.
Leaning into stakeholders for a global mining business 
The next session came from Glencore’s Des Bravington and covered how to increase digital adoption. Glencore has 150,000 employees in 35 countries with 60 commodities, meaning a scaled-up operation. To handle this, they worked with The Core, their platform for all employee comms to ensure a single source of truth, which also allowed for cross-commodity comms and knowledge sharing. An interesting aspect of their strategy was their collaboration with managerial and c-suite stakeholders alongside union heads, who they saw as important stakeholders whose position couldn’t be ignored.
This scope of vision allowed them to easily embed localised need into their employee app, in some cases including bus schedule information in Peru, the main form of transportation to their mining facilities. Accessibility was the name of the game, making sure that simple, intuitive technology gives people the tools they need to innovate their day-to-days.
Building trust with leaders without getting fired
After that, Kevin Johnson, Transformation Lead at AWE, brought a presentation on how to build real trust with your executive teams. His model was based on Blanchard’s four components of trust, namely leaders’ ability, believability, connectedness, and dependability in their roles. At its core, it was about creating collaborative relationships with leaders and ensuring a two-way support system to foster more effective solution building. It was also a great exploration of what Kevin described as “Icarus moments”, where you fly too close to the sun and break trust with your employers and how to win it back.
Accessing your seven-year-old brain for data science and analytics 
The penultimate talk of day one was from Nigel Williams at the HMRC on understanding people with data science and analytics. Nigel wanted us to unlock our inner seven-year-old intuition in data analysis. This was a rule of thumb that returned their operations to the most basic but effective improvements they could make leading to their methodologies such as trying to save colleagues six minutes every day.
Although simple, it came from their efforts to return focus to values over the noise of online tool usage, session data, and surveys. This pushed them to not settle for the easy answers in their data results and being willing to ask uncomfortable questions about their engagement.
Inclusive organisations in a digitised age 
The final talk came from Kameka McLean from Walkers Crisps on how to be an inclusive organisation in a digitized age. Kameka started with a video on how diversity can be far more nuanced than people expect. Her talk then covered how she increased diversity at her company by 6%. Her strategy proved how much these needles are moved by ground floor analysis of existing structures. Seeing it as a systems-based problem was the most direct and strategic way to reach diversity goals that improved the overall work output of organisations.
Day 2
Finding a common goal with Cisco 
Day Two started bright and early with a session from Britt Hall from Cisco, discussing a cultural transformation they undertook to drive their 85,000 employees towards a common goal. This story began with a transformational deficit, showing that across industries the effort to change was up whilst the desire to change for companies was down. Cisco wasn’t immune to the influence of the markets, with consistent employee reduction targets year-on-year. They wanted to take a step back and figure out how to embed clearer employee paths to promotion and improvement to refocus their workforce on their own journeys.
This led to a hyper-focus on a more reactive comms model, with clear talent outcomes put in place, including:
<ul>
<li>Business-driven movement offerings</li>
<li>Leaders and talent magnets and movers</li>
<li>Proactive internal recruitment and movement</li>
<li>Better employee experience, and</li>
<li>Feedback loops to continuously monitor and improve</li>
</ul>
With a decentred comms structure, there were challenges in reaching all their people and learned to navigate this complex ecosystem of stakeholders. This gave them the ability to work better with the existing strata and give more aligned reasoning for the why of each person’s progression. This gave them a good state of mind to work with stakeholders and understand the longevity of their business plan rather than rely on short-term gains. In the process, they brought attentiveness to their existing workforce and reframed what working for Cisco meant.
Moto Hospitality’s actionable insight and implementation 
The next session, Emma James pulled double duty in showing us how to promote 6000 voices at Moto Hospitality. Storytelling was at the heart of her strategy, which proved to work given how employee satisfaction had steadily increased over the last five years. This was thanks to a concerted effort to stay up to date with their frontline staffs’ day-to-day with local action planning, including wellbeing, R&amp;R, work environments, site focus, and key demographic group sessions.
Their surveys contained more qualitative data than their polling system, allowing them to really understand the people who worked for them and centre them in their storytelling. From this, they developed a colleague life cycle to know where the opportunities were to make a difference in their working days. It was a straightforward, no-nonsense approach that showed how valuable the reality of your organisation should be for effective comms and branding.
Roundtable Sessions 2 
Day two’s roundtable was about overcoming change fatigue, led by Gemma O’Hara and Sharn Kleiss from Gallagher. In our discussion, the differentiation between change management and change communications was important to make to ensure clarity in where the company is headed. With change messaging, we broke it down into three core components: what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what details individuals need to know. Despite how fatigued we may all be, understanding that there’s opportunity in every change is the first step to crafting a more tactile and flexible workforce, creating a more robust attitude to face the future of your business.
Five ways to leverage AI today to help accelerate engagement
After lunch, Ben Elder of Simpplr took us through five different ways to leverage AI to accelerate engagement. Ben made sure to stress how integral intent was in the use of this technology, specifically with the amount on the market that’s built to improve the recruitment process. The five ways were:
<ul>
<li>Chatbots</li>
<li>Insights for people managers</li>
<li>Recommendations</li>
<li>Content creation</li>
<li>Search capabilities</li>
</ul>
The execution of these strategies was where the most insight came, specifically in evaluating business priorities to more effectively utilise these techniques. Interestingly, this served as a good tool to navigate climate concerns as the “see a need, fill a need” attitude saved you from wasteful habits with your resources.
Crisis communications exercise 
Before our final panel, Drew McMillan from Deloitte took us through the most empathic and intriguing session of the two days with his breakdown of crisis communications. As someone who had worked for a variety of businesses that regularly handled nuanced and difficult communications, he reframed how comms should operate when it really matters.
Drew took us through an exercise where hypothetically a terrorist attack happened in the city where we were working and we needed to handle the communication to all our people. This included different levels of escalation, including finding out that some of our people had been injured and how best to work with HR to keep the wider workforce looped in.
It was a complete dissection of best practice and finding where we could bring unity and clarity to reduce panic and fear. Consistently, a reliance on the core facts was what the comms hinged on to nip any conjecture or doubt in the bud. Ultimately, it was about ensuring trust in corporate strategy and governance and recognising how to show your duty of care to your people in extreme circumstances.
Final panel: Preparing the change for AI transformation 
For the final session of the day, Patrick Hulbert chaired a panel featuring Ian Ragsdale (Visa), Dana Poole (Shell), Matthew Hayward (DPRG), and Ben Warren (Gallagher) about how we can prepare for the onslaught of changes that AI is bringing in in the next few years. It was a real thrill to see so many affecting and intelligent speakers come together on this topic and seemed invigorated by the prospect of futuristic internal comms.
The first question was about how to get people to use these technologies, and Ben felt strongly that education and comprehension was above all else to instigate the change companies wanted to see. Matthew added that demystifying AI, especially because it’s such a hotly debated technology, brings a lot to allay people’s fears, specifically in how companies will work with regulators.
The next question was about where AI had improved insights for clients. In response, Dana stressed a hard and honest look at what these technologies will be doing to many workplaces and not muddying the waters. To this point, Ian, who said himself he was new to AI, pointed to simple communications in step-by-step guidance with clients to ensure the value of what you can offer. Both Visa and Gallagher were practicing with safe space for experimentation with AI before moving them across the business when good praxis was developed.
Ultimately, it was a positive look at how workforces can build on their existing AI utilisation to reinvent their working habits for greater efficiency. Giving your people the freedom to experiment and fail would generate new opportunities to further your company output in previously unseen ways.
Final thoughts 
Communication challenges will always rise as the landscape is set to change so frequently. Over the last few days, we’ve seen how adapting to complex new structures doesn’t undo the impact of direct, concise strategy and operating habits. When these rhythms are utilised effectively, we can get closer to every day habits serve the company mission to its fullest potential.

Simple solutions for complex tech: Simply Expo 2024 Write-Up

You’re a recruiter, you do this day in, day out. You know what a good candidate experience looks like, you know what needs to happen to catch the best talent, you know what a fair hiring process looks like.
Your hiring manager doesn’t.
Your hiring manager has one hundred other things on their mind; they are trying to deliver on their existing demands, lead their team or department and the hiring process is just another thing on top. But if we communicate well and collaborate, we can not only ensure they have the best opportunity to find the perfect candidate, but we can also uphold a fair hiring process and best represent the organisation.
We all have unconscious biases, and as recruiters we know both the importance of being cognizant and the strategies to mitigate the risk of slipping into them. Not only is it ethically critical, there are also legal implications. Get your hiring manager alongside you in the cockpit, help them recognise their biases and understand the importance of best practice in equitable hiring.
Equitable hiring practice is everyone’s responsibility
Recruiters are trained to spot blind-spots, to reflect on biases and use fair processes. It’s crucial that in the very first meeting with the hiring manager, a conversation is had around fair hiring.
Some hiring managers might have preferences based on previous colleague experience or they might have leads gained through their network. Give them the space to discuss their initial ideas – some of them will be helpful! – and then work with them to gently highlight potentially problematic preconceptions and strategies for broadening the net.
Create the scorecard in collaboration, bringing together their technical expertise and your recruitment best practice. If you and your hiring manager are working from the same criteria you’ll have the best chance to fairly judge a candidate and have constructive conversations around suitability.
The interview is critical. Go through the interview questions with hiring manager before the interview to ensure the questions are appropriate (and legal!). When you’re reviewing candidates together, help the hiring manager focus on the relevant skills, strengths and weaknesses and avoid drifting towards biases.
Get hiring managers engaged with the employer brand
Employer branding is not just for potential talent. The hiring manager doesn’t need to be able to quote the full narrative, but they do need to know and get the primary messaging. It’s a powerful tool to help them and you describe the organisation in a consistent way and connect the dots between the wider company culture, expectations and aspirations, and the job role and team.
As a recruiter, you are also charged with protecting the employer brand, and without an engaged hiring manager there is reputational risk. Slow responses, cancelled or rescheduled interviews, ghosting – a poor candidate experience can cause problems down the line, especially in a tight specialised market where word spreads fast.
Ultimately, it’s in the hiring manager’s best interest to be engaged if they want a high performing team with the best candidate. Fair hiring practices benefit everyone, and without that education from the recruiter and collaboration across the process not only do they risk poor talent outcomes, they also risk unfair processes and reputational damage.

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