This Week in Talent (15th December)

Welcome to the last TWIT of the year that was 2023. WHAAAATTTTT?!

If you’re thinking “that came up way too quickly and I feel like I didn’t accomplish a single thing this year” … same.

That is why it’s the PERFECT time to do a retro with your team, and plan for the year ahead that is 2024 (yikes). I’m running a session with my Talent Acq leaders this week and here is how we are structuring the session:

  1. Book in 2 hours of time. If it finishes early that’s great, but I bet the conversation will go right up to the last second.
  2. If you can, do it in person. Book a room or area that can facilitate some whiteboarding and discussion.
  3. Use a Playbook! I use the Atlassian plays all the time, and I also use the MURAL board templates too. I’m sure there are a bazillion more out there!
  4. Have a plan of action for post-sesh. Nothing worse than running a session like this, and then it all just sits there then suddenly you’re 6 months into the new year and haven’t actioned a single thing. Summarise the feedback, get your team to come up with strategies to address it, and start prioritising the ideas for 2024. There will be a playbook somewhere for this too!

If you have the time and money, it’s great to get someone in to facilitate these sessions. An unbiased outsider, so that you can all fully participate and don’t have to worry about facilitating. You can outsource this, OR why not ask someone in another business unit to do it? It’s a great way to build relationships across the business, and even add some diversity of thought to your ideas.

We actually run a TA Kick Off session with the whole team at the start of each year to get them involved with some of the high level strategic thinking. It’s always a really nice way to take time out to bond together, and get to know each other’s goals and aspirations for the year. I highly recommend.

Anyway, in the spirit of retrospectives and forward planning … here is this week’s TWIT with resources for you to explore Good luck and see y’all in the New Year!


Indeed Reveals Strategies to Navigate Hiring in 2024

It’s important for us to take into account all of the factors that are affecting the job market, such as the aging workforce, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the changing demands of job seekers. Consider how you can incorporate all of these into your 2024 talent strategies.

How to implement an agile recruitment strategy in 4 easy steps

Working Agile is my jam – emphasising collaboration, flexibility and continuous improvement is something we should all be doing. I really want to lean into this in 2024, and incorporate our hiring managers into the world of sprints, after parties and retro’s.

Will 2024 be the year of innovative talent acquisition strategies?

How will you embrace AI in your talent strategy, and lean into the world of automation? How will you prioritise mobile-first application processes? Will you use talent intelligence tools to assess the market and open up non-traditional pathways for candidates? Will you include organisation alumni and the voice of current employees to amplify and advocate? Much to ponder …

The Complete Guide to Job Simulations

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a THOUSAND times … let’s get rid of behavioural interviews once and for all, and use job simulations and case studies to assess candidate skill and potential instead. WHO’S WITH ME?!

How to use ChatGPT in Recruitment [12 sample use cases]

I mean … if you’re not using ChatGPT or Bard to help you with recruitment stuff, what the heck are ya doin’?!

Article By

Get more articles direct to your inbox

Upcoming Events

Long Lunch Series for Talent Leaders

Ongoing

Restaurant Bar
ATC2025 Annual Conference

28 & 29 October

TA Brew for Internal Talent Teams

Ongoing

You may also enjoy reading...

Too often 'Agile' means 'we have no deadlines or planning', 'we react to every whim', 'need for speed, quality is secondary'. In fact, any mess can be justified as an 'Agile approach', and if you dare ask for structure or sanity, you risk being labelled 'rigid'. The Agile Manifesto, born when developers, sick of siloed work, realised the only way to satisfy customers was through collaboration. With geographical expansion, demand surges and spikes, high volume of niche roles and business pressures to keep productivity up and cost per hire down came some big changes. Working just in your locale with occasional 'support' from others was not an option anymore. Before adopting Agile, we had to embody its core principle: being agile - able to move quickly and easily. When role surges hit, we assembled cross-border project teams (TA Leads, Ops, Sourcers, Marketing).
Skills-based recruitment has become increasingly popular in the last few years, and for a good reason. We are looking at a range of sizeable benefits that happen to be especially relevant in the world of the gig-economy upsurge and talent scarcity. After we finally admitted that the past does not necessarily define the future, and that lie detectors and psychological testing can predict one’s success only slightly better than astrology and fortune telling, many companies came to realise that when done right, skills-based recruitment is quite cost-effective. And indeed, what is there not to love?
For all the talk about candidate experience, most hiring processes are deeply transactional. Timelines blow out. Feedback is vague. Communication is automated. The human moments get lost in the workflow. When did we forget to just pick up the phone and have a chat? If I can leave you with anything this week, it’s this: phone before email.