TALiNT International US issue 1

A BURNING PLATFORM

Q&A with Bruce Morton, TIARA keynote speaker and workforce strategist

GIFT OF THE GAB

TALiNT Partners launches its Global Advisory Board

TIARA WINNERS

TA and Talent Tech Star Award Winners Profiled

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From the Editor

As I opened the door to 2023 with trepidation –I mean, who knows what could be lurking there considering the events of the last three years? –I decided not to take part in the ‘new year, new me’ movement. Phrases like ‘Let’s start as we mean to go on’; ‘Let’s hit the ground running’ and ‘Now that we’ve all had a chance to recover’ have littered my social media feeds and all make me feel like things inevitably will go downhill, quickly. I don’t want to begin the year thinking I’ll be burnt out in a few months.

The last few months of 2022 were stressful to say the least, as costs skyrocketed, Big Tech announced massive redundancies and companies across the globe announced hiring freezes and cost cuts. I have no doubt that this year is going to be tough, but also, that’s old news.

Let’s talk about new news! Organizations are still hiring despite economic uncertainty, and that tells me that there will be growth this year – and not only to our gas bills. The government and employers have major growth plans in place for 2023, and this could keep candidates in the talent scarce market’s driving seat.

On the other side of that coin, I predict less churn during the year as employees hang on to the roles they have because of the turbulent market. Exit The Great Resignation!

Enter The Great Retention! And this creates a fantastic opportunity for employers to become creative when it comes to updating retention schemes. Whilst LinkedIn data for the UK has

revealed that the number one thing candidates are after is a higher salary, there are so many innovative methods that employers can use to keep their existing talent. For example, greater flexibility, internal mobility, company culture, and maybe the odd free lunch on a Tuesday would be cool, too.

Speaking of LinkedIn, did you know that it has been given a 1.5 star rating on TrustPilot? I don’t know about you, but the older I get the more time I spend reading online reviews. Need a new chest of drawers? Read 100 reviews on Amazon. Need a new hair stylist? Read 50 reviews on the community Facebook page. Why should it be any different when it comes to the tools we use to do our jobs well? For the first lead feature of the year from our team, please read our article, ‘What’s the Point of LinkedIn?’, on page 10.

As usual, we’ve curated content packed with the industry’s most pertinent insights and trends and packaged it beautifully for you in our magazine. We grew tremendously last year and this year we’re going to work tirelessly to make something that’s really good, really great!

About TALiNT Partners

TALiNT Partners brings together a global network of leading employers and solution providers to make better talent and technology decisions by providing intelligence, insight and peer-to-peer networking that drives quality, innovation and improves inclusion across the talent ecosystem.

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Design: annabelle@talintpartners.com

Layout and design: New Media Design Agency www.newmediadesign.co.za

Skills gap gets worse, demand evolving

According to US publishing house John Wiley and Sons, the skills gap in the US appears to be getting worse, not better.

Its “Closing the Skills Gap” report found that 69% of US human resources professionals surveyed said their organization has a skills gap. That is up from 55% in a similar survey in 2021.

Lingering effects of the Great Resignation may exacerbate the skills gap, as more than 40% of respondents said it takes more time than before to find suitable job candidates.

A nearly equal percentage said they must offer higher pay and additional benefits.

Wiley’s report also suggested alternate credentials are gaining on the college degree as a way to validate job skills. While 81% of respondents believe earning a bachelor’s degree positions an individual for success, 62% place less value on whether applicants graduated from college, with most saying they would interview non-graduates who have five years of relevant work experience, certificates from colleges or universities, and digital badges or micro-credentials.

Utah posts lowest jobless rate among

all states

According to the US Bureau of Statistics, Utah had the lowest jobless rate among all US states in December at 2.2%. The next lowest rates were in North Dakota and South Dakota at 2.3% each.

In addition, Alaska and Pennsylvania posted their lowest job rates since 1976 at 4.3% and 3.9%, respectively.

Nevada, at 5.2%, had the highest unemployment rate among all states in December.

The state with the largest year-overyear decrease in its jobless rate was New Mexico, down two percentage points.

The next largest decreases occurred in California and New Jersey, down 1.7% each.

Meanwhile, the largest year-over-year unemployment rate increase occurred in Oklahoma, up 0.6 of a percentage point.

TALiNT Scene

The year 2022 saw TALiNT Partners host 100 events which included the biggest one yet – the Talent and TIARAs in the US at the end of the year. If you did not see your fabulous face in the pages of TALiNT Scene in 2022, be sure to attend our host of informative and insightful dinners, roundtable discussions and conferences here. You’re guaranteed to be seated next to fellow industry leaders and colleagues who will share both insights and challenges faced in the market. It’s a great time to network, eat delicious food and gain a bird’s eye view of the talent ecosystem.

30 November to 1 December

Atlanta, USA

Talent and TIARAs Conference and Awards. TALiNT Partners flew across The Pond to Atlanta to host our first two-day event and conference: Talent and TIARAs! TALiNT Partners brought together the cream of the Talent Acquisition community to share what we have learned from the complex and varied talent challenges of 2022 and look forward to what’s ahead in 2023.

To finish the two-day extravaganza with a flourish, we crowned our TIARA Talent Acquisition and Talent Tech Stars champions in a gala celebration dinner!

We’re already planning this year’s Talent and TIARAs in June. Watch this space!

Recruitment Leaders Christmas

Dinner and Debate. Back to the Marylebone (a new favorite it seems!) in partnership with iCIMS to debate the highs and lows of recruitment in 2022 and what leaders should be prioritizing for resilience and success in 2023. The

7 December London

8 December

TA Leaders Dinner: Talent planning for an uncertain 2023. In the opulent setting of the Marylebone Hotel in central London, TALiNT Partners and Eightfold.ai looked at the challenges of preparing for the unexpected in workforce planning, gap analysis and critical skills retention to meet organizational priorities in an uncertain and potentially volatile market next year. We also pulled crackers and wore Christmas hats.

dreaded ‘R’ word came up too (‘Recession’ in case anyone hasn’t been reading the news) and how it will impact the industry in 2023 and which sectors will be most resilient. This event was the 100th event hosted by TALiNT Partners in 2022. We can’t wait for the next 100!

London

It’s 2023, what’s the point of LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has been an almost unalloyed success since it first crept into our consciousness, in most cases in and around 2005-6, and has become a truly indispensable tool for anyone in the professional recruitment world – be it an employer, a candidate or a recruiting firm. And unlike many other social media platforms it has remained pretty much scandal and controversy free. Sure, there have been the occasional gripes around the introduction of new features and the withdrawal of old ones, and, as with all software services, pricing, but in the scheme of things, it has broadly stayed true to its mission.

It’s takeover by Microsoft in 2018 led many in the industry to question its future direction, but, again by and large, it has stayed on course and has evolved as the broader world of talent has evolved.

But, in recent years, and the last twelve months especially, it’s not just been us and our colleagues here at TALiNT Towers who

Debbie Walton Editor TALiNT Partners

Ken Brotherston Chief Executive TALiNT Partners

have detected an increasing blurring of the lines between LinkedIn and other purely social networks.

Without having to look too hard, we found lots of recent posts ranging from the banal – I like hip-hop, it’s my ruby anniversary, my first blind date, I ran a marathon – to the tragic and heart-breaking – losing a child, suicide, tales of abuse and so on.

Some of them are narcissistic beyond belief. ‘Have you missed me?’ or ‘I’m back!’. We can assure you no one noticed you went away.

Sometimes the more personal stories will try and make a relevant point, ‘why am I telling you this...?’, but most don’t. And whilst you would have to be incredibly hard-hearted not to empathize with many of the personal posts, there is still a question – why is this on LinkedIn?

The strength of LinkedIn has always been its focus: ‘I need to hire someone/I need to

find a new job and/or get better at the one I have.’ The danger now is that focus becomes lost in a tide of irrelevant content.

In order to triangulate our hypothesis, late last year, we decided to do some research of our own. Research began with a quick Google search: ‘What is the point of LinkedIn?’. TrustPilot reviews came out on top with reviewers giving LinkedIn one and half stars… a poor rating, indeed.

Following that, we approached a number of trusted, senior contacts across the talent ecosystem – employers, large staffing firms and outsourcing providers and asked them for their views.

Here’s what we found.

WHAT ARE THE CURRENT PROS AND CONS OF LINKEDIN?

Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn continues to be the go-to destination for candidate identification and market mapping and remains the pre-eminent tool for doing so. But leaders also see the value in helping them to build their own brand and network.

Likewise, the cons were pretty much as we expected with the ‘noise’ of increasingly irrelevant content being seen as the biggest issue by some margin.

Alison Westwood

Head of Talent Acquisition at Zenith Vehicles

Matt Pycock

Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Kerridge Commercial Systems

Pros:

• Strong reach for finding candidates and market mapping

• Real-time information for finding people with certain skills and at certain companies

• Allows for personalization when reaching out to individuals

• Keeps personal brand relevant in the market

• Can be used to identify people across a wide range of geographies.

Cons:

• Increasingly becoming a general social media platform with less business-related content

• May not have as strong of an ROI as it used to be

• Candidates may be spammed and senior personnel may be withdrawing from or increasing privacy on the platform

• Noise on the platform makes it difficult to cut through and reach the desired audience

• Does not provide insight into the caliber of candidates

• Information on the platform cannot always be trusted

• May give people a license to create their own reality and portray themselves in a falsely positive light

• Constant approaches by salespeople can be annoying and intrusive.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

LinkedIn Recruiter is seen as pretty much essential for recruitment activities. It was noted though that this tool is a generalized global tool and considering TA teams are now looking across borders, LinkedIn’s reach can be hard to beat.

LinkedIn Insights was also said to be useful but not seen as essential, with other tools increasingly being used as part of an overall approach. Interestingly enough, Matt Pycock, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Kerridge Commercial Systems, said that there are other solutions coming on to the market that are cheaper and cover more data points so those new developments could be ones to watch out for.

CAN BUSINESSES DO WITHOUT IT?

The responses here were fascinating: for reach and visibility in professional recruitment LinkedIn is still essential. Interestingly, there was a view that a lot of users still don’t know how to get the most from the platform.

Alison Westwood, Head of Talent Acquisition at Zenith Vehicles, believes that she could possibly do without it in business but was unsure if there’s anywhere else to go that has the same mass of data to mine.

James Gordanifar, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Early Careers at WTW, said that since they don’t pay for it, they feel they do get value from it. ‘I have to wade through all the nonsense to get to the value, but it is on there if you look for it. I also think it is good value because I have had relevant approaches about jobs and networking opportunities. It’s just that 90% of it is useless nonsense,’ he said.

Matt Pycock commented further that while he could probably do without LinkedIn, he’d possibly be missing out on some of the useful content, that it would be hard not to be present on this channel anymore.

This comment poses an interesting scenario. What was TA life like before LinkedIn? And if you’re not on LinkedIn, do you even exist? What, if anything, is its alternative?

THE MONEY TRAIL

When the respondents to our survey were asked if they see LinkedIn as good value or not, we received a mixed bag of responses, but the majority of answers leant towards stating that it’s overpriced for what you get. One of our contributors went so far as to say that the price goes up every year with little to demand the increase in terms of new functionality.

Some said that the online training made available is incredible but that it came with a hefty price tag. As with every investment an organization makes, if there’s no ROI, it’s best to bin it.

One head of HR in the broadcasting industry said exactly that. ‘I did try LinkedIn for training online as it has a huge level of material but pulled away from it as people didn’t make best use of it versus cost.’

One respondent stated that while LinkedIn outperforms other job platforms and forms a massive percentage of TA spend, that it is not good value for money at all. He said that it is starting to lose its attraction, in particular for certain groups such as development/programming roles, graduates and early careers roles, as well as low-level positions.

Ashley Ryall, Founder and Principal at Untap Social said that many users haven’t caught on to the fact that LinkedIn has become a news platform! ‘Over the last two years, they’ve brought editors, journalists and content experts onto their payroll. The biggest value LinkedIn offers is its ability to help us become good thought

leaders. With LinkedIn news stories and trends, they expect to gain momentum, we can position ourselves with unique points-of-view about topics that matter and facilitate relevant, important dialogue with our audiences. And that’s just with the free version.’

CHANGES

Our commentators suggest a need for LinkedIn to focus on creating a more professional and curated platform. This includes removing unnecessary content, better integration with social media and increasing visibility in schools and colleges to educate young professionals on the benefits of building a personal brand on the platform.

Additionally, there is a call for stricter protocols around what is allowed to be shared, a way to validate content and a simplification of the platform to cut down on noise and overstimulation. There is also a suggestion for the support team to advise clients on how to make the most of the platform and for license holders to have more transparency on what training their teams have undergone.

Adam Hawkins, Head of Search and Staffing, EMEA & LATAM, LinkedIn said, that they recognize that there has been an increase in social chatter on the platform as the pandemic was a catalyst for people sharing more personal experiences as work and home lives increasingly blurred. But he believes there is a shift away from the personal posts to more knowledge sharing and encourages users to take part in these useful conversations.

Ashley Ryall

Found and Principal at Untap Social

Over the last two years, they’ve brought editors, journalists, and content experts onto their payroll. The biggest value LinkedIn offers is its ability to help us become good thought leaders.

CONCLUSION

LinkedIn is still very much a well-respected, incredibly useful (borderline essential!) tool for employers and recruiters alike but seems in danger of losing its way a little bit. The vast majority of the niggles its customers have are not dissimilar to those of many other global software providers (too expensive, functionality isn’t exactly what I want, etc., etc.) but what is clearly troubling many is frankly the increasing levels of social media-type noise. And here’s the thing, LinkedIn isn’t a social service, it’s a commercial enterprise with a pretty clear focus and generally the people generating the noise are not paying customers. A right to free speech doesn’t mean a right to free posting!

It’s not for us to say whether this can be solved by tweaking the algorithm or by

introducing clearer guidelines or even a code of conduct. Yes, a simple Google search will tell you in order to clean up the noise on your feed you should clear out your contacts list, follow different pages and people and so on. But it appears that an awful lot of people would like it to do something.

At the end of it all, LinkedIn does own the highest market share. What are the alternatives? Going back in time to the old school rolodex won’t cut the mustard. But it does feel as if this means we’re all in a relationship with LinkedIn because there’s just no one else to date.

As the breakthrough of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, game changers can come seemingly out of nowhere. LinkedIn has a tonne of goodwill and customer loyalty, don’t blow it.

The gift of the GAB

So, in response to those needs, TALiNT Partners has put in place a Global Advisory Board (GAB) to create an exclusive group of senior leaders who, alongside our TALiNT Partners leadership team, share market insights, influence talent strategy and act as a sounding board to test ideas and share these with our members.

The Board is led by Declan Slattery, Chair of our Global Advisory Board, and he recently laid out its purpose and goals. ‘Our Board

will also enable members to leverage the meeting agendas and content to help shape deployment of their own strategies whilst having direct access to TALiNT Partners’ senior executive team and thought leadership experts.

At TALiNT Partners we have always been progressive and continue to evolve what we do to meet the needs of our members. Therefore, as the market leader in bringing together a global network of

It’s fair to say that talent acquisition (TA) leaders across the world would call out the constantly evolving world of work as well as the agility needed to build the right strategies as top of the list of importance when looking into the next 12 months. And so often those challenges and designing solutions to meet them is something they face alone.

Declan Slattery Head of Employer Program and Chair of Global Advisory Board, TALiNT Partners

Caroline Smith, Senior Vice President, Director of Talent Acquisition at Citizens Bank said:

‘I felt the meeting was so insightful. It was so helpful to work, listen and share with such a diverse and open group of individuals who are all sharing the same challenges as me even though I’m across the Atlantic in the US. I’m really looking forward to what else I can learn and contribute to on future boards.’

leading employers and solution providers to make better talent strategy and technology decisions, we are eager to grow and share our ability to provide market intelligence, insight and peer-topeer networking that drives quality, innovation and improves inclusion across the talent ecosystem.’

Declan went on to say, ‘We launched our first board meeting in December, with members from the UK and USA

representing industries that include consumer electronics, retail and investment banking, pharmaceuticals, luxury goods, software development and global communications. The depth of conversation was incredible with some big key themes emerging especially around ways of working, market uncertainty, internal mobility and DE&I which perhaps not surprisingly, resonated across all our board members, both in the UK and USA.’

Glen Wilson, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Qontigo

‘There are so many sides to a TA leader’s role and being part of the GAB provides a unique space to not only test my own thinking and strategy but to also understand how other leaders are approaching the same global challenges. I’m also really looking forward to helping TALiNT Partners shape their proposition, which I know will bring benefits to the wider TA community.”

Our Advisory Board will run right through 2023 and each meeting’s agenda will be developed in consultation with the board members and will typically include:

• Facilitated discussion on strategic trends and industry issues.

• Keynote on the most relevant topics to be covered during the meeting.

• Networking platform for member peer interaction.

• Early insight into future TALiNT Partners’ strategic initiatives and specific member use cases of interest to the group.

Our Global Advisory Board is a unique and rich reservoir of critical insights for TA leaders that we will no doubt continue to share, but there’s also the opportunity for TA leaders to become involved and be at the forefront of strategic thinking by joining our Talent Leaders Membership Program. And you can find out more about how that works by contacting declan@talintpartners.com.

Todd Harrison, Head of Talent Acquisition & Diversity, Sony Europe said:

‘Being a member of the board is really valuable to me. Not only does it provide a dynamic forum to explore shared challenges and solutions, it’s fantastic to see how TALiNT Partners use it to ensure they are focused on the most impactful current day events and topics for their leadership community.’

A burning platform

TI spoke to Head of Strategy at Allegis Global Solutions and Talent and TIARA keynote speaker, Bruce Morton about gig opportunities and consumerizing data.

TI: Your book ‘Redesigning the way work works’ was published before the pandemic. Much has changed since then, but what, other than hybrid working practices, has changed the most in workforce strategies?

BM: The importance of deeply understanding the workforce and how work gets done has risen up the C-suite agenda and the impending recession will only expedite that as organizations look to get more done with the same amount / less people. This is driving the need for much better visibility across the entire employed and extended workforce.

TI: What’s been the biggest game changer in TA in the last year?

BM: In 2022 we saw organizations either investigating or implementing the concept of internal gig opportunities for their existing staff and starting to double down on internal talent mobility strategies.

TI: Which tech tools can companies absolutely not do without in the current market?

BM: True CRM capability for both the existing workforce and candidates along with modern search and match tech. Any tech that helps consumerize the way companies can access data to make talent analytics / intelligence decisions.

TI: What is the future of the contingent workforce in the current economic climate?

BM: We are in a really unique situation right now with record unemployment numbers and recession defining GDP. Right now, we are seeing a slow-down in hiring and obviously the headline grabbing tech giant layoffs, but the contingent numbers are holding fairly level, with small drop offs, but not as significant as in the perm space. This may be due to the fact that companies now rely more

Bruce Morton, Head of Strategy at Allegis Global Solutions

and more on contractors and consultants, and they need to reduce their fixed costs. I also think a lot of the layoffs are more of a rightsizing after some aggressive hiring during COVID-19 for those companies that rapidly grew the last two years.

TI: What can businesses do to stave off the effects of the recession?

BM: Companies need to first, understand how they are getting work done, get into a project mind-set and deconstruct work into tasks, look for opportunities to automate, open up the work for existing employees to get involved with by taking a holistic, harmonized approach to getting work done.

TI: Other than talent shortages, what challenges do you think TA teams will face this year?

BM: In recessionary times, TA functions/ teams can be the first to be reduced, TA

should get proactive and suggest taking the opportunity of ‘quiet hiring times’ and bring forward ideas to conduct strategic work, such as revamping the employer brand, create true internal talent strategies etc.

TI: Pandemic. Recession. Dare I ask what you think is next! Truth is we never know what is on the horizon and agility is key. How do organizations remain agile when some are very process-orientated?

BM: Well, there is always a recession coming so the real question is when, how long and what shape will it be. My personal view is it will be more of a rolling recession that won’t cut too deep but will drag along for the most of 2023. When it comes to organizations needing to be more agile, they need to create a burning platform to present to the board around the need for change due to the very real talent shortage, increased pay pressures

etc, and build a business case to overcome the challenges. The starting point is to understand where you are starting from. I would strongly recommend conducting a workforce maturity assessment to create a strategic roadmap to start the journey.

TI: What were your key take aways from the Talent and TIARAs awards and conference in December?

BM: TA wants to have a seat at the strategy table but in many cases is still seen as a transactional function. This seemed to be a common challenge amongst the attendees and the events and networks that TALiNT Partners are creating are a great forum for a collective voice to make a difference.

TI: You won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the TIARA Talent Solutions Awards. What did this award mean to you and why?

BM: I was humbled and honored to be recognized at the event and gave me great pleasure to know that the small legacy I’ve created over the last 40 plus years has all been worth it!

TI: What major trends do you predict we’ll see this year?

BM: Companies will start to embrace the concepts we call the Universal Workforce Model mentioned earlier.

A slow year for RPO, MSP will remain relatively flat and there will be a growth in organizations bringing in managed service firms to manage their services (SOW) spend.

Look out for ChatGPT disrupting our industry and we’ll see some traction in the Metaverse by year end!

Any tech that helps consumerize the way companies can access data to make talent analytics / intelligence decisions.”

The best in talent and tech

Ken Brotherston Chief Executive TALiNT Partners

On November 30 and December 1, the TALiNT Partners team headed to Atlanta to round off the year in style. Over two days we welcomed an amazing group of HR and TA leaders from across the nation to learn, share, network and celebrate. Supported by a fantastic range of keynote speakers and panelists, as well as an array of industry leaders from across the talent solutions and talent technology sectors, the first day of our conference was designed to cover the spectrum of strategic issues facing HR and Talent Leaders including:

• Horizon scanning: what are the key economic and market challenges affecting the talent agenda?

• Demand planning: how can organizations plan better in such an uncertain and unpredictable environment?

• Executive buy-in: when corporate resources are under strain, how do you get the support from C-suite to deliver against your targets?

• Total Talent: what are the key trends in internal mobility, hiring for skills and improving DE&I?

• Updating your EVP: in a post-pandemic world, flexible-first world, your EVP needs a re-fresh.

All with a view to determine what key trends will have the greated effect in 2023, and more importantly, how the challenges can be overcome, and opportunities taken advantage of.

Key insights from Aaron Mitchel, ex CHRO at Netflix Animation, Kiy Watts, VP People and Culture, Atlanta Hawks and Stephen Mulvenna, Talent Strategy Director, Coca Cola were shared, along with lively roundtable discussions ensured the day was informative and stimulating.

The first day was wrapped up with a networking reception dinner and a captivating speech from Bruce Morton, Head of Strategy at Allegis Global Solutions

who discussed the concept of the ‘Universal Workforce model’ as a way of solving some key talent challenges.

Day two was designed for a deeper dive into the key operational challenges and included:

• Candidate experience and EVP: what’s compelling in the new economy

• Onboarding: where talent acquisition meets talent acquisition. How to get it right every time

• DE&I: moving the dial, building buy in, delivering measurable results

• TA Team training: building long term capability

• Tech trends: how to assess and build the right tech stack

Again, this was a wide-ranging set of discussions, with our debate on moving the dial in DE&I was a particular highlight.

THE TIARAS

Our conference was topped off with a highlight of our year ¬– our first combined TIARA Talent Acquisition and Talent Tech Star Awards.

Once our conference guests had had the opportunity to freshen up, it was time for them to get dressed up to celebrate the best in the business with us.

Our TIARA Talent Acquisition Awards served up some wonderful examples of creativity, as well as dedication to providing the best capability in enabling employers to attract and engage the people they need. We had a wide range of winners across these categories:

• Candidate Experience

• Onboarding

• Early Careers

• Employer Brand

• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Award

• Innovation

• Ta Team Excellence

• Best Use of Technology Award

Spectrum emerged as the winner in the final Overall Achievement category based on their ability to use technology in an innovative and effective way with a clear, measurable impact and supported with great testimonials.

Our TIARA Talent Tech Star Awards turned the spotlight on the incredible range of tech business powering improvements in talent acquisition in areas such as:

• Workforce Solutions

• Recruitment Marketing

• Contractor Solutions

• DE&I

• Candidate Experience

• Talent Tech Innovation

Our overall Champion of Champions Award which was awarded to Eightfol.ai. Judges praised Eightfold for a genuinely innovative solution that is championing the move to skills-led recruitment at scale and proving its success as the model for its own business as the Best Talent Tech Company to Work For.

Overall, an exhausting but exhilarating couple of days were a wonderful way to wrap up another full-on, fast-paced year in the world of talent by helping the challenges of 2022 and how we will learn from them to make 2023 as rewarding and successful as possible.

The TIARAs in the USA

It was pleasure to finally be able to bring the awards in person to the largest and most important labor market in the world, the USA.

Of course, the talent agenda has always been important for every organization, but it has never been so important and arguably, it is the most important endeavor for corporate leadership.

2022 has continued the pace set in 2021 with acute and chronic talent shortages set against an even more uncertain economic backdrop, which is expected to continue well into 2023.

With structural talent shortages across many sectors, a move to hiring for skills

rather than experience, a race to design effective remote and hybrid working practices and an ongoing focus on driving the DE&I agenda, recruiting teams and talent technology providers have not had to look far for challenges this year. Both have responded with huge amounts of dedication and more than a little panache.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and the agility, flexibility and innovation shown by our awards finalists has been exceptional and often, inspiring.

I am truly delighted with the range of organizations who entered our awards in 2022; from large market-leaders to fastmoving scale ups demonstrating that biggest does not always mean best, they

The TIARA Awards are the only truly global program which recognize and celebrate the contribution made by all of the participants in the talent ecosystem: staffing firms, RPO/MSP providers, talent tech businesses and, of course the talent acquisition and resourcing teams of employers.

all demonstrate an amazing range of examples of how to help their employers or customers find and keep the people they need.

I am also delighted that the TIARA Talent Acquisition and Talent Tech Star Awards go from strength to strength in being recognized for the powerful endorsement they provide to the winners and highly commended entries.

The rigor and independence of our process would not be possible without our judges, who bring an enormous amount of industry insight and credibility.

The 2022 judging panel brought together expert perspectives from senior HR and

Ken Brotherston Chief Executive at TALiNT Partners

Talent Acquisition Leaders from a wide range of world-leading organizations, and experienced technology investors and advisers and I would like to extend my thanks to our esteemed panel of judges, for their time and commitment in choosing the 2022 winners and in providing the feedback that will help both winners and finalists improve their solutions and grow their businesses.

Diversity, equity and inclusion continue to be at the heart of our judging process and discussions.

It is also interesting to note the rapid rise of the importance of ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) considerations as a factor in choosing a winner.

HEADLINE SPONSOR

TALiNT Partners are grateful to our sponsors...

The Workforce Solution of the Year

This Award recognizes any workforce solution that best enables improvement in talent acquisition, management or development for employers and / or recruitment companies.

The iCIMS Talent Cloud is world’s most dynamic, comprehensive talent platform that empowers organizations to attract, engage, hire and advance the right talent. It provides a unique, unmatched combination of authentic, engaging experiences, automation-at-scale, and proven business value through a single, unified platform. iCIMS is the industry’s largest talent acquisition provider, with more than 2.7 million global platform users, used in more than 200 countries and territories. The company is continuously innovating and developing solutions that empower its community of nearly 6,000 customers around the globe to transform their business.

In 2022, iCIMS released more than 500 enhancements across its talent acquisition platform, and launched five new solutions – iCIMS Opportunity Marketplace, iCIMS Marketing Automation, iCIMS Advanced Analytics, iCIMS Insights+ and Insights

Advisor, and Job Advertising – to empower organizations to overcome their biggest workforce challenges and build winning teams worldwide. Last year, iCIMS acquired two organizations to strengthen its capabilities, Candidate.ID, transforming candidate engagement with next-gen, behavior-based marketing automation, and SkillSurvey, delivering digital reference checking and skills verification at scale. With more than 20 years of innovation, iCIMS’ end-to-end platform remains focused on helping customers overcome their biggest talent challenges, making the hiring experience seamless and building strong workforces.

Judges’ Comments: Judges praised iCIMS for their innovative solution which personalizes experience to reconnect talent quickly and efficiently, enabling organizations to attract, engage and advance the right people.

Highly Commended:

The Contractor Solution of the Year WINNER

WorkLLama is an AI-driven software that helps companies in their talent acquisition and management efforts. It is a one-stop solution for all talent-related needs, including talent marketing, candidate relationship management, applicant tracking system, on-demand staffing and direct sourcing tools. The platform includes full-time applicants, contractors, freelancers, independent consultants and more. It’s search engine optimized career sites are built with no-code editors and leverage the principles of eCommerce. It also includes referral management that creates multi-level marketing and crowdsourced recruiting, an AI-driven conversational chatbot, dynamic talent pooling capabilities, integrated omnichannel communications and internal talent marketplaces with MS-Teams integration. It helps companies leverage their own brand to create powerful candidate experiences and enables companies to maintain active communication with former employees, silver medalists, alumni, and passive candidates. It takes a holistic, mobile-first approach that

FINALISTS

enables it to be involved in every aspect of a talent’s journey, from job discovery, postplacement engagement, redeployment, and participation in the talent community.

This translates to greater efficiencies, lower cost to retain talent, and a scalable, repeatable process that can be used across industries and geographies.

Overall, its holistic approach to talent marketing, talent relationship management, applicant tracking, post-placement engagement, and redeployment on a single native platform makes it a valuable tool for companies looking to improve their talent acquisition and management efforts.

Judges’ Comments: Judges praised WorkLLama for their focussed engagement with contractors and their omnichannel chatbot which is a critical enablement of technology which they demonstrated very impressive conversion completion rates.

This Award recognizes any contractor solution that best enables the attraction, assessment, management or development of contingent workers.

The Candidate Experience Solution of the Year

This Award recognizes a solution that has best enabled employers and / or recruitment companies to improve any or all aspects of the candidate journey.

Ph.Creative listens to its customers and builds a platform that offers them complete content manageability. The company has developed grading tools that help customers create better content, and has used its own APIs, to enable customers to measure the quality of the content within their CMS, highlighting issues related to sentiment, readability, and gender bias.

Since the launch of its Careers Site platform “HappyDance” two years ago, Ph.Creative has seen significant growth, doubling its client base and on track to quadruple this year. The company has also experienced growth within its Careers Site division, Ph.Digital, while maintaining a steady profit of 15% year-on-year.

The team prioritizes digital excellence by holding “Ferrari Fridays” where they collaborate on efficiencies and new

features and training to upskill. They blend the best elements of digital expertise and experience-driven design to nurture applicants through a unique candidate journey.

Ph.Creative goes above and beyond for its customers. They assign a dedicated Project Manager and Digital Delivery Consultant to guide the customer through the implementation process and offer advice and answer any technical questions to ensure that they are in complete control when the Careers Site goes live.

Judges’ Comments: Judges praised HappyDance for their innovative solution which enables their customers to manage their own career site content, resulting in an impressive close rate, as well as being process driven with a great culture.

Highly Commended:

WINNER

The Recruitment Marketing Solution of the Year

This Award recognizes a marketing solution that has best enabled employers and / or recruitment companies to achieve a successful talent acquisition campaign.

PandoLogic is an AI-enabled recruitment technology company revolutionizing the way employers approach talent acquisition. PandoLogic streamlines the recruitment process by optimizing job advertising performance and budgets based on campaign goals. By improving the efficiency of job advertising campaigns, maximizing results, and reducing the resources and requirements put on hiring teams, PandoLogic disrupts talent acquisition for employers of all sizes.

PandoLogic’s programmatic recruitment platform, pandoIQ, leverages AI-backed algorithms and machine learning to continuously review and optimize performance throughout a job advertising campaign to ensure employers are meeting their recruitment goals. pandoIQ helps

FINALISTS

employers reduce recruitment bias and create more diverse talent pools by reaching and engaging a wider candidate pool at the top of the funnel.

TIARA’S Talent Tech Star Award Winner for the Recruitment Marketing Solution of the year, utilizes innovative, best-in-class AI-enabled technology to drive better outcomes for people, society, and the economy, empowering employers to recruit intelligently and hire quickly.

Judges’ Comments: Judges praised PandoLogic for their pandoIQ platform which continuously reviews and optimizes performance, as well as their excellent business strategy and exceptional growth.

Highly Commended:

The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Solution of the Year

This Award recognizes a solution that has best enabled employers and / or recruitment companies to improve diversity, equity &inclusion in the talent acquisition process.

It is with great pride that we celebrate the achievements of Joonko, a revolutionary platform that has made a significant impact on the diversity and inclusion efforts of companies across various industries.

By leveraging Joonko, businesses have seen a 25% increase in the number of underrepresented candidates in their hiring funnel, leading to the successful hire of one in six candidates sourced through the platform.

Joonko’s platform is designed to identify and match highly qualified underrepresented candidates with skill-relevant job opportunities from participating companies.

A staggering 97% of candidates on Joonko identify as underrepresented in the workforce, with 68% identifying as women or non-binary, 32% as Black, and 21% as Latinx. Furthermore, Joonko’s platform is able to connect companies with top-tier talent, with 64% of candidates being middle

or senior management and 53% being in STEM fields.

This innovative platform has seen remarkable growth in recent years, with 500% growth in sales for two consecutive years. Joonko has over 150,000 applicants in the system and is experiencing a steady monthly growth rate of 7-9%.

Joonko is a true trailblazer in the field of diversity and inclusion, and we celebrate its outstanding achievements in bringing underrepresented talent to the forefront and providing companies with the opportunity to build a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

Judges’ Comments: Judges praised Joonko for their deep learning models which identify and engage marginalized communities which helps employers attract underrepresented candidates, enabling Joonko to support organizations with an inclusive hiring strategy.

WINNER

This Award recognizes employers of choice in talent tech who can demonstrate excellence in the attraction, induction, development, and retention of their own talent.

Eightfold.ai is a company that is using its own product, which is designed for large enterprises, for its small and growing business. This means that every employee has access to a “CareerHub” which is a portal that is powered by AI and allows every employee an equal chance to build their careers. The Career Hub is used by employees to seek mentors based on their interests, find internal job opportunities based on their skills, plan their careers, and list the skills they have and want to acquire. This is empowering every employee, regardless of their geographical location, department, or connections, to innovate and be judged on their capabilities and potential.

The AI allows the customers to know the skills and potential of every employee, contingent worker, past job applicants,

alumni, and referrals, which helps them provide the right career opportunities and transform their businesses. Companies such as a medical device company and a technology industry customer have used the Eightfold platform to increase their hiring of women and to redeploy employees during a reorganization. Bayer and Chevron have also used the platform to find candidates that they would not have found through traditional hiring methods. The State of Indiana has said that the platform has the capability to be a gamechanger for employers in the state.

Judges’ Comments: Judges praised Eightfold for the use of their Career Hub, which is driven by their own AI, to enable their employees to manage and plan their own career development including mentoring, training and internal transfers.

The Talent Tech Innovation Award (1 -74

employees)

This Award recognizes an HR or Recruitment technology solution that has transformed or substantially improved talent acquisition, management or development for employers and/or recruitment companies.

Plum is a talent assessment platform that uses psychometric data to make more objective talent decisions across the employee life cycle. Its Talent Profile measures personality, social intelligence, and problem-solving ability to reveal people’s talents, providing organizations with objective data to make better talent decisions. The assessment is 4 times more accurate than a resume at predicting future job success and helps organizations promote diversity, equity, and inclusion by identifying people based on their unbiased potential. The platform is scalable, using a single assessment to power multiple talent decisions, with an automated behavioral job analysis. Users find the results highly accurate and the user experience is streamlined.

Plum matches candidates and employees to roles based on their likelihood of success

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in those roles, and offers a professional development guide to help onboard new hires. The support strategies are tailored to the customers’ needs, and the Plum team acts as trusted advisors throughout the partnership to ensure desired ROI is achieved.

Overall, Plum’s assessment is a valuable tool for any organization looking to improve their talent management process, leading to an increase in retention rate and a reduction in time reading resumes.

Judges’ Comments: Judges praised Plum for their innovative assessment tool which is strongly angled towards DE&I and focussed on untapped potential allowing people to be considered for opportunities based on their true potential.

WINNER

The Talent Tech Innovation Award (75+ employees)

This Award recognizes an HR or Recruitment technology solution that has transformed or substantially improved talent acquisition, management or development for employers and / or recruitment companies.

Talroo is a company that places a strong emphasis on fostering a culture of excellence through its core values of integrity, impact, customer-first, passion to win, and teamwork. This focus on culture has led to continuous growth for Talroo, and as of September 2022, the company now has 202 employees, a significant increase from 114 at the end of the previous year.

Talroo’s key differentiator is its AI-driven technology, which ensures that every client has a unique experience. The company uses a profile-driven programmatic approach for job advertising, which builds profiles based on candidates’ customized job search results, creating a search and match feedback loop to continuously increase the quality of the matches. This approach has resulted in Talroo delivering 1.4 million job applications in the past twelve months.

Highly Commended:

Furthermore, Talroo’s Target CPA technology allows cost-per-click bidding to work in clients’ favor, ensuring they only pay for the quality of applicants they receive. In addition to its technology, Talroo offers a tailored approach that best fits its clients’ company needs.

The company works to build interpersonal relationships with every client, and its Talroo Insights, which are part of the Talroo Ad Platform, provide clients with visibility into real, hard numbers and other data, allowing them to constantly alter their approach for attracting applicants.

Judges’ Comments: Judges praised Talroo for being truly innovative in taking a candidate centric programmatic approach tojob advertising which builds a profile to ensure the candidate sees jobs that align with their qualifications and interests.

The Champion of Champions Award

Judges Award - This award is debated and voted for by our panel of judges from the winners in each category and recognizes a company whose solution exemplifies innovation, while also delivering particularly far-reaching value and impact.

Mirroring their success in July 2022 at the TIARA Talent Tech Star Awards where Eightfold took home the Best Talent Tech Company to Work For as well as winning the Champion of Champions, Eightfold.ai has deservedly been crowned the Champion of Champions in the US.

Having won the Best Talent Tech Company to Work For, judges felt that Eightfold demonstrated true innovation while addressing a crucially important challenge, in many ways a paradigm shift in the way companies around the world attract and retain talent, and does so with cutting-edge innovation, client service and leadership.

Eightfold demonstrated the value and impact of their solutions to a respected panel of judges – making a TIARA Talent Tech Star Award a powerful endorsement.

Judges’ Comments: Judges praised Eightfold for a genuinely innovative solution that is championing the move to skills-led recruitment at scale and proving its success as the model for its own business as the Best Talent Tech Company to Work For.

Eightfold is a worthy Champion of Champions for 2022.

The Relode Early Careers Pioneer Award

This Award recognizes outstanding commitment to Early Careers employment and achievement in the development of young employees.

Jason’s Deli is dedicated to promoting early career development and inclusivity through various partnerships and initiatives. The company works closely with organizations such as Bridges From School to Work, Opportunity for Youth, and Hire Opportunity Coalition to offer employment opportunities to youth and young adults nationwide.

Additionally, the company partners with YearUp, a tuition-free job training program, to provide continuing education opportunities to its employees.

One of the company’s key initiatives is the High School Recruiting Kit, which helps deli operators establish relationships with local high schools and creates a robust pipeline of young talent. The company has also implemented a quick application process, which allows candidates to apply in less than a minute, and utilizes social media

trends to reach a wider market than with traditional recruiting tactics.

The company places a strong emphasis on diversity and inclusivity, creating a series of diversity videos, and partnering with Hugs Cafe, a non-profit organization that provides training and employment for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Through these partnerships and initiatives, Jason’s Deli is committed to fostering a culture of openness and inclusivity and providing opportunities for all to shape the future of its workforce.

Judges’ Comments: A great entry, judges highlighted the clear strategy and focus on the wider community of young people. There was a high level of innovation whilst also simplifying career paths to support ongoing progression.

Highly Commended:

Highly Commended:

The Magnit Employer Brand Award

WINNER

This Award recognizes the best development of an employer brand, effectively communicating the organizational values and employee value proposition as well as having a positive impact on candidate perception and attraction.

In 2021, VCA successfully rolled out a brand refresh. The team had begun work on an employee value proposition (EVP) with an external partner in 2020, but the project was put on hold when it was realized that a more comprehensive brand refresh was needed. The company had grown quickly through acquisition, and its brand was not connected to a clear purpose and values.

To ensure alignment and make quick decisions, a steering committee was established, consisting of stakeholders from the Senior Leadership Team reporting directly to the President. The team worked with Ph.Creative to conduct 360-degree research, including internal, external, and leadership perspectives, and focused on six key talent personas. Additionally, an indepth competitor analysis was conducted to gain insight into the external perception of the company.

The team presented the strategy to all key stakeholder groups and are planning a

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3-part recorded training series to embed the EVP internally. To activate the EVP, the team has equipped Talent Acquisition with email, LinkedIn InMail, and social media shareable templates, built a new Phenom career website, and launched iCIMS Video Studio to bring the EVP to life through its Associates.

Overall, VCA’s extensive research, internal embedding, and enablement of the right tools and materials resulted in a standout employer brand that is authentic, but also aspirational. The company’s approach to building its employer brand, which included understanding the competitor landscape and market view, proved to be a key differentiator.

Judges’ Comments: Judges loved how VCA Animal Hospitals used some amazing research from their consumer marketing work combined with 360-degree talent research to create an innovative and differentiated employer brand.

Highly Commended:

The AMS Best Use of Technology Award

This Award recognizes the most effective and impactful use of technology within talent acquisition either through implementing a unique, new tech solution or using existing tech in an innovative way.

Spectrum, a leading broadband connectivity company, has created Fit Finder, an innovative tool to help job seekers discover the right entry-level jobs for them. Fit Finder is an inventory that asks individuals about their personality, work preferences, and styles, then recommends entry-level jobs that closely align with those inputs, providing links to currently posted entry-level jobs at Spectrum. This unique partnership between the Talent Attraction team, the Selection & Assessment team, and Modern Hire, the leader in delivering ethical selection science, data-driven insights and superior hiring experiences. Fit Finder was launched in April 2021 and quickly became the most visited related content module on its career site. In its first nine months, Fit Finder had 38,625 page views and 16,511 visits, resulting in a 14% apply click rate,

driving thousands of applicants to Spectrum’s highest volume jobs. Additionally, there were 601 job alert sign ups directly from Fit Finder, making it Spectrum’s third largest source of job alerts. Not only does Fit Finder provide valuable insights to job seekers, it also improves the diversity of applicant pools and engagement in the hiring process, resulting in an improvement in diversity. Fit Finder is a breakthrough achievement in providing job seekers with valuable insights to aid in their job search while also fostering positive impressions of Spectrum as an employer.

Judges’ Comments: The judges were blown away with Spectrum’s ‘Fit finder’. They’ve done something innovative, unique and new and shown great testimonials from their actual users and wider audience.

We offer world-class staffing solutions to enterprise organizations, managed service providers (MSPs), and system integrators including Contingent & Direct Hire staffing, Direct Sourcing, and Diversity & Inclusion consulting, while continuing the work and education of allyship for workplace belonging in the USA, Canada, and India.

SUSTAINABLE

Committed to decarbonization and creating a sustainable service delivery to clients

Proud part of the LGBTE and SDVOB communities providing equal, inclusive, and diverse opportunities

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consulting

Establishing a DE&I strategy for your organization is critical to winning talent and increasing retention. Having an inclusive workforce provides diversity of thought and keeps your company innovative for the market. We create custom DE&I recruitment and retention strategies by utilizing project management and six sigma methodologies along with Organizational Psychology and Human Resources expertise to support our clients as they grow their inclusive workforce.

The Omni Inclusive Moving The Dial in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Award

This Award recognizes the commercial and cultural impact of policies and initiatives to promote greater diversity, equity and inclusion driven by the TA function.

Anaplan made a commitment to building a strong base of diverse, early-in-career talent. The company’s emerging talent function within its Talent Acquisition team created an emerging talent program that focuses on building diverse and inclusive teams.

This strategy not only reduces the company’s dependency on external talent to support business continuity, but also creates efficiencies, increases knowledge retention, and enriches the company’s culture.

Anaplan’s engineering talent is vital to its ability to innovate and serve its customers. Recognizing an untapped pool of engineering talent with four-year degrees but without professional experience, the company designed its associates engineering program, called the Rise Program. The program was designed to attract talent for long-term roles, rather than time-bound internships.

The team’s commitment to inclusive hiring resulted in a diverse pool of candidates and associates.

All associates who received an offer accepted verbally. By providing elevated support, mentorship, and accelerated training, the associates build their foundational engineering skills and flourish in their roles.

The company’s Rise Program is a shining example of how investing in emerging talent can lead to a thriving workforce and a successful business.

Judges’ Comments: The judges were impressed with how Anaplan recognized their own DE&I gap and reached out to external partners. Their Rise program was a great example of building capability and mentorship. The diversity shone through in their answers with fantastic metrics to back it all up.

The JoinedUp TA Team Excellence Award

This Award recognizes exceptional performance, delivery or transformation of a TA team to meet the needs of their organization’s talent strategy.

UST, a leading provider of digital solutions, is facing the challenge of talent scarcity as a major obstacle to growth in the digital transformation industry. The company has committed to transforming its innovation and talent supply chain strategy by establishing the Open Talent Ecosystem Center of Excellence (OTE COE) in 2021. Working with Open Assembly, an open talent consultancy in partnership with Harvard University, UST aims to find new ways of accessing the talent it needs to serve its clients and achieve its growth goals. The OTE COE engages with the 35,000-person global organization through several engagement models, including one-on-one advisory and coaching, advanced work design, education and training activities, and best practices integration into standard operating procedures.

The OTE COE also builds on an ecosystem of partners that have already disrupted the

business landscape to provide greater speed, precision, and access to highly specialized, just-in-time freelance talent.

Additionally, as UST scaled its open talent program, two unexpected innovations emerged, including a solution to access talent internally and a virtual desktop interface (VDI) that can offer back upstream to talent marketplaces that need a secure remote work solution for their clients. UST is confident that with the help of its partners and the OTE COE, it can overcome the challenges of talent scarcity and lead the way in digital transformation.

Judges’ Comments: The judges praised UST for clearly articulating what the problem was and how they tackled it. They approached their challenges from a different angle and embraced the cultural shift. UST also recognized a gap in the market and packaged it up as a revenue stream which shows true innovation.

H a r n e s s t h e p o w e r o f A I w i t h a c o m p l e t e

s u i t e o f A T S , C R M , a n d d i r e c t s o u r c i n g

t o o l s t o c r e a t e a c o m m u n i t y o f h i g h l y

e n g a g e d t a l e n t f o r a l l h i r i n g n e e d s .

The WorkLLama Candidate Experience Award

This Award recognizes employers who show clear evidence of delivering a consistently good experience at every stage of the candidate journey.

Spectrum, a leading broadband connectivity company with 96k+ employees across multiple lines of business, has implemented Fit Finder, an innovative inventory tool that helps candidates discover jobs that align with their personality, work preferences, and styles.

Developed in partnership with Modern Hire, a leader in selection science and data-driven insights, Fit Finder was launched on the external career site in April 2021 and quickly became the most visited content module.

In its first nine months, Fit Finder had 38,625 page views, 16,511 visits, and a 14% apply click rate, driving thousands of applicants to Spectrum’s high-volume jobs.

Additionally, an internal version of Fit Finder was launched for existing employees in September 2021, making it Spectrum’s third largest source of job alerts.

This breakthrough use of technology provides valuable insights to job seekers and directs them to active requisitions, delivering value to both the job seekers and the organization.

Judges’ Comments: The judges were really impressed with Spectrum’s ‘Fit finder’. It enabled candidates to easily find where they fit. What they have created has a direct impact on their candidate experience, and even if the candidate doesn’t get the job, it’s a great touchpoint.

Highly Commended:

The Sevenstep Excellence in Onboarding Award

This Award recognizes creativity, exceptional performance and outstanding delivery of a high-quality onboarding experience for new employees.

Proofed, a provider of professional proofreading and editing services, faced two main challenges early on: inconsistencies in proofreading and editing talent, and a core operations team that lacked the advanced understanding of the editing process. Recognizing the need to strengthen its training resources to balance inequalities in its editing talent, the company embarked on a multi-year challenge to build an airtight professional development pathway to nurture its fresh proofreader talent into tomorrow’s project managers.

The first step was the creation of Knowadays, a training platform that offers two comprehensive courses - Becoming a Proofreader and Becoming an Editor - that teach students everything they need to know to become great proofreaders and editors. Today, 100% of Proofed’s proofreaders and editors have been trained through these courses.

The second step was laying out a concrete talent pipeline to fill key roles in the editor

support and service delivery teams. Where progression opportunities for proofreaders were once capped at becoming an editor, now editors can be promoted to reviewers, editor support specialists, and service delivery specialists. To date, 50% of the core team has progressed through this pipeline, and this is reflected right the way up to the leadership team.

The company’s career development pipeline is constantly filled with young, ambitious talent, and it is central to this initiative that anyone should have access to this pathway, regardless of background, gender, age, nationality, or physical ability. To become a proofreader at Proofed, you need no particular professional background or education status. You don’t even have to interview.

Judges’ Comments: The judges felt that the concept and company was very impressive. Proofed gave a detailed description of what their challenge was and the diversity of leadership was impressive.

PH CREATIVE AD

The Ph.Creative Best Innovation Award

This Award recognizes innovation in recruitment, enabling successful recruitment to meet the talent needs of the organization as well as retain key employees.

UST’s Talent Acquisition team is at the forefront of the company’s and its clients’ growth. The team is responsible for sourcing top talent for clients and finding the right people to support internal delivery of digital technology solutions and services. To keep up with the high demand for talent, UST explored the potential of “open talent” as a strategic initiative, leading to the creation of the Open Talent Ecosystem Center of Excellence (OTE COE).

The OTE COE curates and manages an ecosystem of partners and talent marketplaces, tapping into the booming freelance economy. This approach has proven to deliver greater value, speed, performance, and resilience compared to traditional sourcing models. The OTE COE team also collaborates with Harvard University and innovation leaders from GE, Deloitte, NASA, and more to refine its program, while two unexpected

Highly Commended:

innovations emerged. The OTE COE engages with UST’s 35,000-person global organization through several engagement models including one-on-one advisory and coaching, advanced work design, education and training activities, best practices integration into standard operating procedures, change champions accelerator program, continuous collaboration and best practices sharing and celebration.

UST’s innovative approach to talent sourcing has been a revenue source in its own right, and the company continues to transform its innovation and talent supply chain strategy.

Judges’ Comments: The judges felt that UST showed a brilliant example of strategic innovation by both solving their own TA challenge in a challenging market sector, whilst also creating a new revenue stream for the business.

The Overall Achievement in TA Award WINNER

As clear winners in the Candidate Experience Award and Best of Use of Technology categories at this year’s TIARA Talent Acquisition Awards, the judges felt that Spectrum showed innovation, a commitment to growth and DE&I and were crowned the over winners of 2022’s Awards.

Judges’ Comments: In an incredibly close run-off, the overall winner was chosen based on their ability to use technology in an innovative and effective way with a clear, measurable impact and supported with great testimonials.

Talent and skills vs. inflation and the economy The biggest conundrum for CEOs

Ken Brotherston

Partners CEO

Despite the seemingly unending diet of gloom from the media, I still believe that 2023 will not be as bad as many seem to think. I’m not alone in this view, economic commentators from far more august publications than this one seem to have a similar opinion.

However, one challenge that is certain to continue for 2023 is the tension between the economic agenda and the talent agenda. Research from The Times CEO Summit and Deloitte summarized the concerns as: return to the office, skills, inflation and political instability (local and global)

So, in the short term, how this is likely to manifest itself for HR and TA leaders is the challenge of ‘doing more with less’. The talent agenda isn’t going to be less of a priority any

time soon but the pressure on budgets will make this another challenging year. Those who took the opportunity to invest immediately post pandemic, whether in better technology or better people, will be better placed to deal with whatever lies ahead. As will those organizations who embraced opportunities to design new, more dynamic and flexible ways of working and aligned this with a post-pandemic employer brand refresh.

Nevertheless, the ‘less with more’ mantra will be a challenge for everyone. The staffing sector will generally find more pressure on fees than in recent years (with a few ‘hot sector’ exceptions); RPO and MSP providers will be challenged to be more agile and flexible and to

TALiNT

vs. economy CEOs

deliver better service levels and talent tech providers will need to demonstrate both rapid product effectiveness and clearer ROI than in recent years.

For TA and HR teams, two things will help them not just cope but improve:

prioritization and Talent Intelligence (TI). The sheer range of activities for TA teams can seem overwhelming – planning, sourcing, attracting, assessing and engaging are all important but knowing which area is going to deliver the biggest and/or quickest return is key. And this leads neatly into the second point: the use of talent intelligence. Whilst many organizations have been using TI in various ways for some time, overall, this is still a nascent skill for too many TA and HR execs. No longer. Using TI to support isn’t a

nice to have, it is an essential entry ticket for discussions with any board or exec team and the ways it can be deployed are growing rapidly. Here at TALiNT Partners we will have a lot more to say about this in 2023.

So, there you go. This year is going to be an interesting year – challenging in many ways, but not nearly as bad as we feared. The skills and talent agenda will continue to be front and center creating lots of opportunities to shine and showcase the amazing capabilities of those of you who make this your profession.

Buckleup!

Connecting the talent ecosystem: we bring together a global network of leading employers and solution providers to make better talent and technology decisions.