How will AI impact recruitment?
AI (artificial intelligence) is disrupting industries from medicine, transportation and software, to consumer goods. HR hasn’t been exempt, and AI is poised to transform the recruiter role by automating and streamlining low-value, time-consuming tasks. AI for recruiting is the application of artificial intelligence such as learning or problem-solving exhibited by machines to the recruitment function. AI uses techniques such […]
Five ways to combat prejudice in your recruitment process
Speak to 500 HR managers about discrimination in the recruitment process and what do you get? Almost half of recruiters who admit their own hiring process may be prejudiced, three quarters who have witnessed bias or discrimination amongst others first-hand, and 25% who say it’s a regular thing. We all make judgments. We all have […]
Why you need to adopt a more strategic approach to talent acquisition
As UK business continues its transformation into an increasingly digitally led environment, a whole new set of skills and expertise will be vital across all industries. This has meant that in recent years the job market has been tougher than ever. And while the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) reveal employment […]
How to close the engineering skills gap
Companies need to show more imagination when it comes to attracting new talent, says Matthew Aldridge, director of igus UK, the leading manufacturer of energy chains and polymer bearings. The engineering and manufacturing sector has long suffered from crippling skill shortages, and the problem appears to be getting worse. Statistics from trade body Engineering UK […]
Case study: Want to find the right people in a skills shortage? Think outside the box
Haven’t you heard? There’s a digital skills shortage out there – so you better start stockpiling developers and IT engineers quickly. We are constantly bombarded by claims to the lack of skilled developers and IT engineers, putting a significant strain on our economy. A report from the Department for Business Innovation & Skills in early […]
Why it’s time to scale your social calendar for talent acquisition
The Plainspeak Analyst is Katherine Jones, Partner and Director of Talent Research at Mercer, the world’s largest human resources consulting firm. Her job is to design and deliver insight research and services to Mercer’s global clients. She was previously VP, Human Capital Management Technology Research at Bersin by Deloitte. She has a PhD in Curriculum […]
Artificial intelligence: pre-screening candidates’ lives, not just CVs
At its most basic level, artificial intelligence (AI) will provide HR with the ability to automate many aspects of the recruitment process in a much faster and more efficient way compared with traditional processes. Manual searches for candidates will be a thing of the past; instead, recruiters will enter key terms, desirable aspects and job […]
Ensuring your data is readable and actionable in talent acquisition
Forrester reports 74% of firms say they want to be “data-driven,” but only 29% are actually successful at connecting analytics to action. Actionable insights appear to be the missing link for companies that want to drive business outcomes from their data. In recruiting, when you’re using aggregated data sets to make decisions, you need to make […]
Data-scraping social media for personality assessment: will this benefit HR?
Michal Kosinski, one of the leaders in personality assessment using social network activity linguistic analysis, has been making a series of interesting claims about the effectiveness of his approach. He has said that “with a mere ten ‘likes’ as input, his model could appraise a person’s character better than an average co-worker. With seventy, it […]
Employ disabled people: it makes sound business sense
Considering there are over 13 million disabled people and people with long-term health conditions in the UK, it makes good business sense for small and medium-sized businesses to not only tap into this consumer market – which has a spending power of over £80 billion – but also to recruit from this group, as the […]
Why workplace diversity is everyone’s business
Last month a report by Aldermore found that 26% of SMEs have no plans to make workforce diversity a priority for their organisation in the next 12 months, while a further 22% said it was a low priority for them. This is a disappointing statistic, but it also shows the importance of persuading all businesses […]
What more can we do to promote women in tech?
Despite hiring people from all over the globe, Norway is where the company I work for, Auka, is based and was founded. Norway is one of the most progressive countries in the world in terms of gender equality. In a recent World Economic Forum report about the global gender gap, Norway was ranked a close […]
Talent management: why your approach can destroy employee mojo
Attempts by organisations to create ‘meaningfulness of work’ in a bid for greater discretionary effort, are often not effective and viewed cynically by employees. But finding meaning in one’s work, we believe, is a fundamental foundation for overall engagement and needs consideration as part of our talent management processes. In a recent paper by Bailey […]
How to cultivate a winning mindset in your new joiners
In HR and Talent Acquisition circles, we place great emphasis on quality of hire, but recruiting people with the right skillset and experience is only part of the equation. With increasing pressure and expectations for new joiners to ‘hit the ground running’, we want our new joiners to slot in quickly, navigate easily and direct […]
A new wave of AI and what it means for recruitment
As many recruiters will tell you, finding the right person for a job can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack; it’s not uncommon for employers to receive hundreds of applications for an opening, only to find that most of the resumes don’t lead to a potential hire. The statistics are quite dismal: […]
The energised employee we all want to hire
The Plainspeak Analyst is Katherine Jones, Partner and Director of Talent Research at Mercer, the world’s largest human resources consulting firm. Her job is to design and deliver insight research and services to Mercer’s global clients. She was previously VP, Human Capital Management Technology Research at Bersin by Deloitte. She has a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Cornell […]
Social media screening: what information can you use?
Social media has revolutionised the way we engage with each other and exchange information. The figures speak for themselves. According to We Are Social, there are 38 million active social media users in the UK – that’s over half the total population – while 84% of UK millennials take part in social media activities every […]
“There has never been a better time than today for candidates to find a job in which they can truly be themselves.”
David Bernard is the CEO of AssessFirst, a technology platform that offers predictive recruitment solutions for organisations. The information they gather helps organisations understand candidate potential and how their way of working impacts performance and engagement. Jamie Lawrence, Editor, HRZone: How are companies using recruitment agencies differently? What is their role in the modern recruitment environment […]
“Going into opening our new location in Dublin, we knew we were entering a war for talent.”
Cathy Donnelly is HR Director at Liberty IT. She was previously UK & Ireland HR Manager at Ikea and before that Head of HR at Botanic Inns. In 2015, Liberty IT opened a new office in Dublin (with an established one in Belfast) and Cathy talked to us about how they smoothed the process and […]
Onboarding senior leadership – making the right first impression to ensure success
Corporate governance, investor relations, reputation….ultimately success lies with the behaviours, attitudes and expectations of the board and senior management teams. But what happens when a new leader joins the team: how do you help them to provide leadership which will strengthen the organisation? In this article we take a look at the importance of […]
