Week 2, week 2, week 2!
Not sure if you saw Jo Vo’s poll last week on LinkedIn, but the results are super interesting.
When 111 people answered what their preferred TA function would be if they were looking for a change right now … “mature and high performing” only got 3% of votes?! The majority of votes went to “hot mess to fix”, with “build from scratch” coming in a close 2nd place.
So that just confirms to me that we (Talent people) all have that in common – we LOVE a challenge, and we LOVE solving people problems. #twins
There is a delightful, satisfying joy that comes from fixing something that’s broken, and seeing the subsequent results. It’s what I’ve always loved doing in any organisation I’ve worked at (even back when I worked at General Pants and would spend hours hyperfocusing on re-folding the entire floor-to-ceiling denim wall so that it looked absolutely perfect). It’s why I was attracted to leave the Vic Gov and join We Are Charlotte, cause that is our bread and butter.
Granted, sometimes not everything is “broken”. Sometimes it’s just ugly, annoying, or weird (legit how my high school bullies used to describe me). But how do you convince your higher ups that an ugly user experience is worth investing time and money in to give it a make over?
Hot tip – if you say “hey, I think this fancy (expensive) tech system would solve our ugly problems. Can I have some money please?” Then … ya dreamin’. Just making something pretty isn’t going to convince the purse string holders to invest in your idea. So why not apply design thinking and map it out with a journey map, so you can visually see the current state of the experience you provide to a certain user group (or persona)? Huh? Yeah? WHY NOT?! Then you have data and info to use as facts and evidence when you’re asking for a dip into the wallet.
While I was TA Lead in my last organisation, our recruitment process was okay. It got the job done. But I just knew deep in my waters that something wasn’t working – people that interacted with the process in some capacity weren’t finding the experience useful, we weren’t always getting the “best” people into the roles, and we had a high candidate drop off rate throughout the assessment process. There was a mentality, for all personas, that the process just ‘is what it is’.
Creating personas and user journey maps for the 3 key users of a talent acquisition process was a game changer. It gave me the data I needed to pinpoint the high and low experience points (and why that was), where the process lags and bottlenecks were, and highlight some key themes that needed to be addressed in priority order. I did some fancy maths (not my forte so don’t @ me on that one) and relayed back to the leadership team the risks to cost, time, and quality which had ramifications on the entire business AND the taxpayer (we were a government entity, after all). And voila – they agreed to invest in what we called project “Recruitment Reboot”, and the rest is history.
So if you weren’t sure about Design Thinking before this, then THINK AGAIN and start looking into it. Cause it’ll make your life a bazillion times easier when you need to influence the people at the top.
AND on that note (cheeky segue) … Think Again is one of the main themes at this year’s ATC event in Fed Square, Melbourne and I SHALL BE THE HOST! Yes, that’s right. I’m hosting a stage and you’re COMIN’ WITH ME! See ya there (buy your tickets here ASAP before you get FOMO).
Things that caught my attention this week:
I’ve used heaps of these. They’re good
A great article on how to apply HCD thinking to Talent Acquisition specifically
AND … influence your stakeholders so they agree that it’s a good idea to invest in your project
