TA leaders often fight for credibility despite driving revenue through strategic hiring. This is my take on how to quantify TA’s business impact, shift from order-taker to advisor, and build data-driven operations, calculate hiring ROI, optimise budgets, and position TA as a profit centre – not just overhead.
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.
At a time when tech is advancing rapidly, it’s tempting to keep adding. But the most future-ready teams I know are doing the opposite. They’re auditing. They’re simplifying. They’re choosing tools that align with their process, not contorting their process to fit a platform. They understand that great recruitment isn’t about toolkits. It’s about clarity of thought. About process discipline. About being intentional at every stage
The single most important thing we can do to improve hiring decisions is to standardise the interview process. Not just in structure, but in mindset. It’s about treating interviews not as informal chats or instinct-driven conversations, but as designed, repeatable systems. Because when we don’t, we introduce noise. And noise is the enemy of good judgement.
This Week in Talent – In high-pressure business environments, teams in TA, legal, risk, procurement, and finance often get unfairly branded as the “Party Poopers” – seen as blockers while others race ahead toward growth. But when done well, these functions aren’t the brakes – they’re the steering wheel. In this blog, Carrie Harding unpacks how strategic enablers shift the narrative by designing smarter systems, empowering teams, and aligning compliance with business outcomes. If you’re tired of being seen as the department of “no,” this one’s for you. Because playing by the rules shouldn’t mean slowing the game down – it should help you win it.
Talent Leaders are facing increasing confusion and complexity as they navigate a crowded HR Tech market, stricter regulations, and shifting business needs. Here we look at the key trends and challenges
This Week in Talent – Corporate Australia is made up of more than just employees. Temps, freelancers, contractors, consultants – we all play a part. But there’s still a lingering mindset that some contributions matter more than others, depending on employment status. This blog challenges that thinking. Because in a fast-changing world, value isn’t defined by employment status – it’s defined by impact. Whether you’re here for a project or the long haul, your work helps shape the organisation’s story. It’s time to drop the “us vs them” mentality and embrace a more inclusive way of working – where everyone belongs.