Top 10 Tips to Improve Your Talent Experience: Experts Tell All

Talent Experience Live is officially one year old! This weekly show features expert insight on today’s hottest HR topics. On June 18, we celebrated by highlighting some of the year’s most memorable moments and meaningful messages.

48 episodes. Two days worth of video.

Selecting clips to feature on this 1-year anniversary edition of TXL wasn't easy!

What you see here is like that often-used iceberg analogy: There’s a lot more beneath the surface.

Be sure to join us every Thursday at noon ET as we take on a second phenomenal year, covering what’s happening right now in recruiting, talent acquisition, talent management, and HR tech. But in the meantime, check out some of our favorites below!

AI for Recruiting 101

Kumar A., Director of Product Management, Phenom

Kumar, whose role with Phenom has him innovating with AI on a daily basis, explained three major ways to use AI-driven technology to boost recruiter productivity.

1. Sourcing: AI can help quickly surface the right-fit candidates for job roles based on data from previous hires.

“If you’re also looking at any matching and scoring technologies, all that can be automated using AI," Kumar said. "Just bringing in the best-fit candidates, even from external platforms based on a criteria, is something that AI can really help transform [for] the recruiter.”

2. Screening: “In cases where there’s high-volume applicants, just having the ability to score and rank candidates based on certain criteria becomes very important because there’s no time to really go through every applicant that’s coming through the gate.”

3. Scheduling: “Similarly, scheduling becomes a huge task for recruiters. So how can AI use chatbots from a scheduling perspective, looking at calendar integrations to optimize the best possible time for interviews with hiring teams?”

Supercharging the Talent Community

Randy Goldberg, VP of TA Strategy, MGM

Goldberg shared the key ways MGM used its Talent Community to stay in touch with with top candidates, even through quarantine restrictions that resulted in furloughs and hiring freezes.

“We all know the struggles around the candidate experience, especially when you’ve got a lot of high-volume roles that you’re trying to manage," he said. "But the Talent Community can really help with that too because on the very front end, and even if they’ve already applied, you’re staying in contact with those candidates."

“So these tools allow us to stay connected, allow an opportunity [for candidates] to reach back out to us if there’s anything they need, and obviously share whatever the latest happenings are with MGM.”

HR Tech Adoption: Cultivating Champions for Change

Anesha Patel, Sr. Director of Global Talent Acquisition, Unisys

HR technology helps add productivity and efficiency to organizations, but only when these tools actually get used. Patel discussed best practices she learned after leading her TA team through a successful launch of Phenom’s Talent Experience platform.

“Before we started our path of implementation and setting up our internal teams for a successful implementation, the first step was buy-in," she said. "I remember doing many, many demos with the Phenom team and our executives around the product; the product’s capability, how it can solve problems in attracting talent for us, how it can help increase the talent at the top of the funnel for us, and engage them with conversations.”

Reversing Remote Work Burnout

Jillian Anderson, Subject Matter Expert, Gallup

Beyond the long hours of and struggles with work-life balance, burnout among remote work employees is stemming from employees feeling unseen, experiencing unclear expectations and poor communication from managers, Gallup research shows.

Listening to employees is the best thing a manager can do to combat burnout.

“If an employee feels like their manager will listen to workplace concerns, they are 62% less likely to be burned out,” Anderson said.

“The number one thing that anyone who’s managing people can do? Ask and listen. Create a safe space for people just to share what is going through their minds, what they’re carrying, especially when oftentimes we’re in an environment where people don’t have as many support systems right around them.”

Navigating PTO during the Pandemic

Brad Goldoor, Chief People Officer, Phenom

In this episode, Goldoor discussed ways HR leaders can reduce stress for employees during the pandemic (or any other challenging time). He also touched on how Phenom manages its unlimited time-off policy.

“The philosophy and thought process behind that is to give the respect and freedom to the employee to use that time as they see fit. We want to use it as a tool," Goldoor said. "We know that people are 28% more productive when they use all that vacation time. We want that balance for everybody. And we want to help them create a strategy to use it responsibly."

“We encourage managers to coach their teams to come up with a paid time off strategy so they can actually maximize use of it and the effectiveness of the team.”

Innovative Campaigns that Fill Mission-Critical Roles

Fraser Donnell, Head of Talent Acquisition, L3Harris

Donnell shared how using highly targeted campaigns has helped get qualified candidates in the door to shorten the hiring process for hard-to-fill niche roles.

His record is four days, by the way!

“Recruiting is marketing,” Donnell said. “We’re really staying away from the generalization part and being a lot more direct and more relevant to that specific talent group. And from there, using the more specialized, one-on-one campaigns.”

Essential HR Tech Upgrades for the Great Rehire

Jeff Scott, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, BMO Financial Group

It’s more important than ever to upgrade the talent experience to meet evolving candidate expectations for an intuitive, personalized experience – think top consumer sites like Amazon, Netflix and Spotify.

“Digitization is at the absolute forefront of everything that’s going on at BMO,” Scott said. “The expectations are changing rapidly in the customer base, and that absolutely can be applied and will be applied in the talent acquisition space.”

Ways to Support Women at Work

Dr. Trish Holliday, former Assistant Commissioner and Chief Learning Officer, The State of Tennessee
Becki Feldmann, Assistant VP, Sr. Employee Experience Designer, Commerce Bank

In honor of National Women’s Month, Holliday and Feldmann teamed up to share how organizations can start thinking about better supporting women in (and out of) the workplace, starting with career sites and job descriptions.

“The way that you write job descriptions, the way that you present information on your career site, the way that you tell and share stories … the words that we use really do have the power to attract and turn off,” Feldmann said.

“Are we helping women get the right mindset to apply for jobs? Are we helping, teaching, developing women so that they have more confidence and have a personal brand?” Holliday said. “I think that word choice is so important if you want a culture of inclusion.”

What Job Candidates Really Want

Jonathan Dale, VP of Marketing, Phenom

In a tight labor market, many employers are relying on increasing wages to attract applicants. Often, that isn’t enough.

Candidates need to feel connected to your brand and values and see opportunities for career growth, according to Dale. But if the candidate experience doesn’t deliver, you risk losing the chance to truly engage talent.

Dale emphasized how critical it is to provide a seamless application experience, recommending that TA leaders go through their own application process and look for ways to make it better.

“Question: Why does it have to be so long? Can we make it shorter? Is there a different way to redesign it – and redesign it for an experience?”

“If you didn’t design that piece of the experience to be seamless, you’re never going to get to some of those other conversations, which ultimately is going to be what brings that person on board.”

Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace

Tony Prudente, Sr. Specialist, Employer Branding, Recruitment Marketing & Social, Brother

When the social justice movement reignited last summer, diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) initiatives came to the forefront for many employers.

Prudente joined us to talk about how Brother has found success in not only talking about a DEI commitment, but in putting action behind their words.

“The most important thing you can do is get your senior leaders involved," he said. "You absolutely need their support, their buy-in, and most importantly, their allyship if you’re gonna get anything off the ground at your company.”

Forward progress depends on genuinely listening to employees.

“It’s really important to hear people out and hear everybody’s authentic stories," Prudente said. “You want to showcase that this is very serious, and the best way to do that is to make public commitments that are actionable in your organization.”

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Get More Talent Experience Live!

So there you have it: a run-down of top tips from a year of Talent Experience Live. Don’t miss out – follow us on LinkedIn and be part of our weekly discussion of the hottest topics in HR and TA.

Also check out our guide to employee experience to learn more.