3 quick questions with… Aurelio Tedesco

We sat down with Aurelio Tedesco, Talent Acquisition Manager at C&K, the Creche and Kindergarten Association, one of Queensland’s Early Childhood Education providers.  We asked him 3 quick questions about his session which will be held at ATC2024 and boy, did he deliver!

Your ATC2024 session is called Reviving TA’s brand when trust is gone. What is the biggest mistake you see TA teams make when it comes to losing trust? How do TA teams lose trust within their business?

I believe the absolute foundation of building trust as a TA team is a customer service mindset internally within the TA team. It all starts there.

There is nothing more important than identifying your workforce segments (such as hiring managers, executives, and candidates) as clients and building a culture of striving to achieve outcomes and a positive experience for your clients before any other priority.

This is often a mental shift for many internal teams I have spoken with who are very wrapped up in their operation and processes. However, the reality is, you can be a solidly performing recruitment team on paper but if your clients are not engaged and don’t feel like you are a committed partner focused on helping them achieve their outcomes with a complete openness to feedback, you will struggle to build partnership and trust.

It was important to you to establish trust as a key part of your talent strategy – how did you keep this as a focal point of your strategy?

Talking about it all the time! We made customer service and how we go the extra mile for our clients a regular topic in both our end of week catchups, standups and PD sessions. We celebrated and made a point of sharing examples of how we brought that to life in our day to day as often as we could and we made it really clear what the expectations were and how our team could drive it.

From a more formal perspective, we embedded it deeply in our strategic framework. From having Partnership as one of our key strategic streams to including targets on hiring manager surveys for each individual recruiter in their performance measures, we made a focus of striving for a positive client experience pervasive within the TA team ecosystem. Additionally, we took and sought hiring manager feedback very proactively and not only strove to incorporate it into our strategy and continual improvement projects as much as we could, but also ensured senior TA team members always reached out to respond and engage feedback directly.

 What changes have you noticed since you revived TA’s brand at C&K and focused on trust?

I think for me the most impactful changes are the soft ones. Yes, it is amazing to see numbers on engagement surveys become more positive, but the reality is in any organisations of medium-large size, those results will change slowly. But what we can see more quickly are the more interpersonal moments. Interactions that I experienced, which really began to show me our strategy was working and the way the business felt about our team was changing for the positive. For example:

1. Some of our centre directors coming up to take pictures with their talent partner when they attended a PD day.
2. Other business leaders now asking TA to sit in forums we never did before because they value our workforce expertise.
3. A regional leader inviting their partner to come to Townsville to run an event with them and making a big point of picking them up and hosting them for the time they were there.
4. One of our recruiters saying ‘Before I felt they saw us as order-takers. But thinking about how it is now, I feel my Directors actually value my support and respect what I have to say. It feels weird!’.

At C&K I feel we are only at the start of this journey. But the ball is rolling, and these interactions (amongst dozens of others) showed me it is picking up speed. We haven’t demanded, pleaded or asked to be treated different by our clients. We have started earning it through service.

Bonus question:  2024 is the first year we’ve ever held the big ATC in Melbourne. What’s your favourite thing to do in Melbourne (activity/restaurant/sight) that you recommend any of our out of town visitors try?

Early in my career I had the pleasure of flying often to Melbourne in my first recruiter roles and my favourite stop was always San Telmo for dinner. Funnily enough, being someone who doesn’t eat meat, an Argentine Woodfire Steak joint seems a bit strange as a pick. But, they have an amazing atmosphere, brilliant wine list and a gun selection of small plates to share. Also, if you are on your own its nice to snag a seat at the kitchen counter and watch the chefs at their craft.

Want to hear more from Aurelio? Join us at ATC2024 on 14 & 15 October. Hurry, the early-bird discount is ending soon!