Firstly, many thanks to the In-House Recruitment Network for last week’s fruitful event, In-house Recruitment LIVE! In between catching up with old friends and meeting new faces, we were fortunate enough to attend some of the superb speaker presentations.

Here are our key takeaways from the day!

Sophie Theen, Head of HR and Talent at 11:FS

Topic: Importance of Understanding Diversity in Attracting Tech Talent

Sophie delivered a passionate presentation and really brought the issues surrounding diversity to the forefront. Something she stated almost instantly: you cannot expect to see results from a diversity programme for at least three years. As we know, achieving an authentically diverse workforce takes time. It’s been hot on the agenda for a long while already, and only a handful of companies have managed to fully accomplish this.

Second takeaway: diversity is not a numbers game. We need to educate our leaders, our teams, our colleagues, and dissuade them from this tick box mentality. It goes beyond your ethnicity, your gender, your age – it’s about your values, your background, your story. And that is why we need to see a shift from hiring for ‘cultural fit’ to hiring for inclusion and acceptance. Business leaders must encourage their teams to get acquainted with one another. She proceeded to explain how you must tackle this from a top down perspective. If your panel of hiring managers does not represent diversity, how can you expect their choices to be different?

Josh Willows, Customer Success Manager at Broadbean Technology

Topic: Social Recruiting: The Challenges and the Opportunities

The rising importance of and interest in social recruiting and employee referral was evident at In-House Recruitment LIVE as the sessions covering these topics experienced an overspill of attendees.

Did you know that 32% of companies surveyed (explore research by SocialReferral here) admitted to prohibiting employees from posting business activity on social media? In an age driven by reviews and opinions of others, this is a vital missed opportunity for employer brand initiatives. Employers aspiring to convey an authentic brand voice to supercharge recruitment, need to understand that employees are an essential part of their brand armoury.

The Embrace. Engage. Employ study also found that a number of businesses are finding it difficult to motivate and incentivise their workforce to promote employer brand. Have you considered mixing up your incentives? An internal Broadbean survey identified 10 different referral motivators.

By constructing an effective employee referral programme – one that is built based on employee feedback – and entrusting your employees to have a voice on behalf of your business, you could open yourself up to some phenomenal results. To delve deeper into this matter, please take a look at Vodafone’s story, using this link.

Kevin Green, Chair at Good Recruitment Campaign

Topic: Future recruitment trends: the formula to help you attract and retain talent in times of change

Kevin’s wealth of industry experience places him in the perfect position to share his projections for the future of recruitment. Transparently, he discussed the challenges the UK market is currently facing: labour, skills and talent shortages, delving into great detail and confirming that these issues are expected to worsen.

Aggravating this trend further are four fundamental factors: the ageing UK population in conjunction with the birth decline, AI, bots and machine learning, Brexit, and the increase in flexible resource. In fact, 5.8 million people have chosen to opt out of the corporate sector and become contractors, with intentions to earn more and enjoy a better work-life balance.

So, what is the solution?

Perhaps not a solution per se, but definitely a form of damage control: attract the right people and retain them. It sounds obvious, but Kevin continued to reveal that a shocking 80% of businesses aren’t measuring candidate experience.

His remedy deepened: hire the right people, get brilliant frontline managers – give feedback, and be interested in your staff. ‘Right people’ is a somewhat ambiguous statement, but he proceeded to explain what hiring managers should look for when looking to fill a management role. Of course, somebody skilled, but also a person who is strategic, who has the ability to thrive in environmental changes, and finally – a person who can inspire and motivate others.

Those managerial assets should help to drive loyalty from employees and aid retention rates.

See Kevin’s presentation deck by clicking below.

Ewa Grace, Resourcing Manager & Rob Davies, Senior Advisor at Grant Thornton 

Topic: The journey to building a future fit resourcing strategy 

In July 2015, Grant Thornton made the decision to move away from an RPO model to a fully in-house resourcing offering. Following this, the business saw some outstanding results.

Ewa and Rob took to the #InHouseLIVE stage to share the progress and results of this movement, informing their audience of ways in which Grant Thornton has since developed a future fit resourcing strategy.

An interesting decision – Grant Thornton removed questions about work experience and extra-curricular activity from the application process. This move was made with the objective to focus on the future. The business wanted to avoid dwelling in the past, and to ensure that those who may not have had as many opportunities previously were not penalised because of this and stayed in the process. In hand, this approach also complemented their diversity efforts.

The pair continued to share some fantastic insight, and eluded back to the theme of thinking of the future. Ewa explained how Grant Thornton now looks beyond skills and experience, and has outlined a measurement of ‘potential’ to be the leading consideration when hiring.

The business has made great strides with its recruitment strategy, and proudly landed the number one spot in the Social Mobility Index last year.

Unfortunately, we were unable to get to all of the sessions of the day, but a theme certainly emerged. In order to see results, businesses need to work with their employees. Although unemployment is at its lowest since 1975, there is a talent shortage so now is the time to prepare for the future.

Empower your employees (embrace diversity, listen, trust and include your employees), make smart hires and consequently witness your workforce become your greatest recruitment channel.