Steve Lewis: Welcome to the inaugural Hire Kind podcast, Alex. This podcast will be showcasing some of the great and good from the talent community, some TA execs telling some stories about what it's like to hire in the right way. We've got some pretty Great. Interesting brands coming on to tell those stories, and, we are blessed to be sponsored by Wiser. So thank you very much for putting this on. We're in London in your studios. I'm the managing director of Hire Guide, skills based structured interview company. Why don't you introduce yourself?
Alex Ayin: Thanks very much, Steve. I'm the marketing director at Wiser. We are one of the leading employee branding and early talent companies, based here in Farringdon. We work all over the globe with our clients from Kraft Heinz, to Worldpay, Knight Frank, in the States, APAC, Europe, but we're proudly based here in Farringdon. We've got a phenomenal team, of about a hundred and fifty or so people, And we really believe that if we are going to change the way people think about work, we have to work with companies and help them understand exactly what it what makes them special as an organization. And in order to attract and then retain some of their best people, That messaging, that employer brand is so important. And when we started speaking from a partnership perspective and we looked into skill based hiring, it's one of the things where we thought as a an essential component to really start building your employee brand, hence the the partnership, hence this podcast, and we are very happy to welcome you to WISE HQ today.
Steve Lewis: Thank you so much, Alex. I feel welcome. And, actually, everyone's got a smile on their face. I've been here a few times. They always do, but especially today, we're award winning. This this e b m a, four of them, went for four, got four golds, left
Alex Ayin: a room. It's it's testament to to the to the incredible team that work on the projects from research, creative, the accounts, project management team across the whole the whole company. But, yeah, we won a two employee brand of the years Right. For Trainline Craft Heinz. And we also won best use of data for National Grid and best use of social for King. So Congrats. Yeah. We're really, really happy with that. And and looking to do more, innovative, creative work, which really show showcases the best parts of those companies.
Steve Lewis: Great. Well, certainly, there's a lot of stories to tell in and around skills based hiring because it's a thing. It's having a moment. Yeah. And I know that a lot of the TA leaders that you speak to are trying to solve for how to actually do it, how to operationalize it. Yeah. So we'll have a a discussion in and around the so what of it
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Why it's important, what benefit it has, but also some of the headwinds and challenges in trying to do it as well Yeah. And the the the link and connection between the promise at the employer value proposition level, the Wiser does so well, to actually interviewing to that, onboarding to that, performance, managing to that, having skills based hiring run all the way through with the cultures and values of the business too. So I'm really looking forward to getting into it with you.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. Hundred percent. And we we wanted to do this slightly differently. So it wasn't you asked me questions Yeah. The whole time, and and it's more two way. So kicking that off from a skills based hiring perspective, you are one of the top players in in the space. But could you give us an overview of of the advantages of using it for companies who are could be listening?
Steve Lewis: Sure. Feedback is is a big issue. If you look at it, the three people involved in a hiring decision, the three people are the the recruiting team, yep, the talent team, the hiring manager, the the person that's actually gonna be having the role report to her, and the candidate. There's three people there. And it's sometimes just out of kilter in terms of the experience of those three for the process. So skills based hiring done right, we've seen McKinsey and Company say that you get three to five x better outcomes in terms of on the job performance if you use skills based hiring in your structured interviewing. And that means that the feedback, it's just not good enough to ghost a candidate, to be disrespectful, and not compassionate about what they're going through in terms of the hiring process. And oftentimes, it's not because it's a a sinister reason to to knock your feedback. It's just that the hiring manager hasn't been trained on how to interview well, hasn't made the notes, lots of chicken scratch notes, and then they're asked, do you like the candidate? And they're like, well, I don't think it's a great culture fit. I mean, that's just not good enough. Right? So some of the benefits of skills based hiring are that you agree what good looks like, what questions to ask to determine those skills are evident in the candidate
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: What to look for in a good answer, and then scoring it cleanly and then giving good feedback as to they're great, but there's a skills gap there. It's tangible. And the candidate can do something with it and feels that it's subjective. And it's, okay. Thank you for respecting me. I'll go away and get those skills now. Yeah. So if you have that structure around it, skills based hiring can really mitigate the bias and make sure that the feedback's always there.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. And I think that's so important because because we all work with several clients who, when you go on the Glassdoor, there's now the interview rating. Yeah. And so when you're going through that process, you get real time feedback from candidates that have gone through it. And when you you're getting scores below three, if you think the majority of people will check your glass door ahead of going through the Correct. Interview process Yeah. You really wanna be looking at what can you do to mitigate that or to make that process as enjoyable even if they don't get the job. Yeah. Because that from an employer brand standpoint and what that says about you as an employer is so, so, so valuable. And that's why I think what was the stat that you said to us last time about, hundred percent feedback or something around?
Steve Lewis: If if you can do it if you can have skills based hiring, structured interviewing, control what you can control
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: You can become the hundred percent feedback interview company. Yeah. So you say to the candidate, look, we're gonna we're gonna practice structured skills based interviewing here. Yeah. Which means we're gonna interview you against the skills for the role. Yeah. Not against how you rank with anyone else in terms of your behaviors and and that sort of thing. We look at the competencies, your relatable experience. And that just that dynamic, you feel that in the room. You feel the candidates go, oh, wow. Okay. Thank you. They respect me. They're gonna give me feedback on this, and they're gonna tell me where I need to go next to fill out those gaps if I haven't got it. Yeah. And I think that's really important because to your point, Alex, people are constantly reviewing even in their head. But with social media, it's so easy enough to drop a review. Right? So you wanna make sure that those reviews are on point because otherwise, it damages morale. It's a flight risk, the brand, the reputational issue, and and hit that you get it in terms of getting it wrong. So, yeah, I think that we just need to be a little bit more heightened and aware that everyone's on that buying process for all points of the process, whether it's the talent team, the hiring manager, or the candidate. Those three equally need to be happy with the way it works.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. And I imagine people will be on a journey, right, Steve? So there'll be people have implement implemented this fully, very operational. But some people might be thinking, I'd love to do this. But from a operational standpoint and how our company operates, especially our teams from a talent or a HR perspective Yeah. It might be a difficulty. What are the challenges of skill based hiring? Because it's I I can see the benefits. I'm sure many people out there can see the benefits. But what we're also on this podcast, we wanna be as real as possible.
Steve Lewis: A hundred percent.
Alex Ayin: What are the other challenges with that implementation and potentially other challenges too? The, it's a great question.
Steve Lewis: The the one issue with this is that it can be a bit daunting and overwhelming. Like, oh my goodness. Okay. So do I need to determine what skills each of my roles needs to have? How do I create a taxonomy? At what do I how do I do this? How do I operationalize it?
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: So that's the biggest challenge is how to actually do it. And if you look at the, there was a burning glass, survey that came out recently. Less than one percent of organizations are actually doing this well. If you look at the adoption curve, the maturity model to move into a full skills based organization, and that means working out where your candidates can move internally because they've got the skills to be transferable and move elsewhere, nobody's really cracked that code. And there's some really good organizations out there that are doing it. Tech Wolf just raised forty five million, with the same investors as us to do this very job. We love the founders over in Ghent in Belgium, Andreas and the folk. They're they're doing great, great work. It's almost like, how do we work out, where are skills in and the supply and demand of those skills in the marketplace? Another company is called, Horsefly Analytics. Great, great business. They can tell you where, those skills are by country, by region. You really zoom in on that. So you kinda need to get a handle on the skills themselves. Yeah. But where HIGUIDE has has made a difference is you can drop in the job description, and it'll extract what skills are relevant for that role based on a hundred and twenty nine million job specs that are across the industry. And and then it creates a skills cloud, and you can kinda jab at it like my ecommerce experience, put it in the cart, and then create questions on that. And I'm out of my comfort zone. Oh, that's a good answer to that question. So it kind of supports you through and helps you look at what a good answer is.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: So some of the challenges are, how do I do it? And I think the tech done well supports you being able to do it in an easier way.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. I think that's the the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine it's it's daunting. You said daunting in a word. I was thinking, like, if you're a ten thousand plus organization Correct. And the amount of people you'll be hiring, it can be a daunting experience. But that's why tech is so beautiful, isn't it, in terms of being able to scale a lot of those, job descriptions and challenges?
Steve Lewis: I think that's probably just to your point a little bit about headwinds, there's people are a little uncomfortable about AI involved in this as well, the biases involved. You're never gonna completely be biased free, but you can mitigate those biases. And you can make sure that the DEI objectives are being measured because if you have structured skills based interviewing, you're not pulling out your favorite question out your pocket and using trying to trip the candidate up by how many golf balls on a seven four seven. That's all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think in that way, you have this freedom within a framework that helps you do it, and that mitigates the bias quite a lot.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. That's great. We when we're thinking about building an improved brand, we're always thinking about the principles and the values that operate within the organization. Yeah. So rather than thinking of it as specific singular words, we're like, what are their principles slash behaviors that people are demonstrating that are successful and mean that they're a high performing unit? And so what can you then pull and kinda codify so that when you're looking for other people that would come in and we we were talking about this before. Not not add, not fit into the culture, but contribute or add to the culture. Yes. And so that's where I think this is also useful from a skills perspective, but actually looking at the values and the behaviors that someone's demonstrating in order to be successful in this company.
Steve Lewis: Big time.
Alex Ayin: What do they look what are they, number one? But then also, what are the questions I can ask to ascertain? Does this candidate have that as well as the skills?
Steve Lewis: Yeah. What are they? That's I'd like to get into that with you because, obviously, that's what you do best. Yeah. I would say, How you embody them in the questions, it it you if you put in the employer value proposition, the industry, the comp expectations, and also the culture and value tenants into High Guide, it'll create questions you can ask ask and what to look for in the answers that are wedded to the cultures and values of a company. Yeah. So Okta is a great example. Okta is a really powerful business, hugely successful, growing massively that you might not be aware of. You go in once to your passwords and they then they're like the hub and the spokes go to all your other passwords. They have four new culture and value tenants that came out in April. They've given them to us. We've folded them in, and now the, the blueprint of the questions that you ask are actually embodying the culture and value tenants. It's how do you get them come to life? Well, you do that through such a skill space questions using Hireguide. And we've got, Eloise Walsh. She's the senior director of talent acquisition, Okta, coming on the podcast to tell us about that journey, how she's getting on with it.
Alex Ayin: Great.
Steve Lewis: But I'd be interested to flip it back to you. Yeah. In terms of how you work with a company determine what their cultures and values are, sort of up the the funnel before you get into the questions and the things we do. Yeah. How do you actually get your arms around what's important to that business?
Alex Ayin: Yeah. Great question. One of the first things we always do start with research. So it's important for us when we're thinking of it from a creative lens. We want the creative to resonate as much with the internal people as with the external people on the campus is gonna see. And we also want that person when they join to not be surprised or there'd be too much of a difference or a gap between what the reality is versus the expectations which we potentially have set through the content or the creative which we put on the careers website or on a social media campaign. And so that's why we are so passionately passionately research first. And when I say research, I mean, actually going in and speaking to a large percentage of the organization through surveys, focus groups, one on one interviews to download their experience to us. Now Now the reason why that works so well is we're a third party. So if you're talking to your HR team or your talent team internally, you're thinking sometimes, I would naturally human, you would think, where's this information going? Is this gonna affect my performance review? Can I be as honest? Whereas because we're a we're a third party and the data's anonymous, so that so they can be much more open and free about how they talk about the company so that we know the warts and all. We know the glass mirror experience, positives and negatives so that we don't build something or build a campaign around something which isn't gonna be a reality once they join because that affects retention rates, especially within the first year, six months. So we'll speak to the to the people within the organization, and we'll try and find a golden thread as to why that, company is special. What's the unique difference between them and other companies both within their industry, but also who they're losing talent to. So it's not just, within, say, FMCG because they could be losing, tech talent to Amazon or Google. Yeah. And once we have all of that information, then our creators will go and and turn that language into cultural value tenants, into key principles for the employer branding, EVP taglines, narratives to go on your Glassdoor, on your LinkedIn live pages, on your careers website, all with the view to depict and articulate in the most powerful and authentic way what it's like to work at that organization, what are the projects, what's the career progression, What are the people like? How can I, become my best self for this organization? Yeah. And also what it's not like. So you almost want it to repel as well as attract. Yeah. You don't always want it to out
Steve Lewis: quickly. Yeah.
Alex Ayin: Exactly when it's qualified. And and a really good example of this is with a company we've worked with for the last four or five years, Frasers Group.
Steve Lewis: Okay.
Alex Ayin: One of the largest retail companies across
Steve Lewis: House of Frasers.
Alex Ayin: So it's House of Frasers.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Alex Ayin: Evan Cycles. They own a myriad of brands within the Frasers Group Got it. Umbrella. And when we interviewed their people, especially the people at a senior level, we were seeing that their career progression was very fast, very fast, and they were operating large, significant revenue generating parts of the organization at, say, twenty seven, twenty eight years old. Okay. They wanted to launch an elevation program. So the graduate program coming through was called the elevation program in which it was a fast track to leadership with high intensity, high training, looking for high performers that were willing to work. They weren't afraid of being honest with. It's work hard. That's part of
Steve Lewis: the results. It's part of the values.
Alex Ayin: Exactly. And and so when we started looking into that, the creative team came up with something which was which was perfect. The tagline was for the fearless. Because if you are twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine years old Yeah. You're running a significantly large part of an organization, lots of eyes, lots of pressure on you to deliver.
Steve Lewis: Yes. A certain caliber of
Alex Ayin: person that can That could need that autonomy, that could take that risk, calculated risk, but take on that responsibility. Yeah. And there's a certain type of person that will thrive in that environment. And so like I mentioned earlier, that will help when we go to market without messaging. It will repel people that don't think that's right for them, but it will really attract people that are looking for that, and that's what they want from their career. And it really matches where they aspire to be and not just their skills, but also from a cultural, or character traits. That's the organization and the teams that they wanna be part of. Got it. So that first is key. The research first, and then off the back of it, then we'll start to build the assets.
Steve Lewis: Space, then you can have a few a directionally correct conversation, but you can go back to the data and that can that insight can guide you and have a conversation. That can be quite difficult sometimes because you need to say, this is what we don't want. This is what you're known for now. This is the delta between where you are.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. Because if you
Steve Lewis: don't get that right, then it seems like the deviation between expectations and reality on the first day on the job is off.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and we have a, within the research process, we've got an expectations versus reality. We call it an experience index so that we can look at core pillars across leadership, management, communication, pain, reward, lots of different factors that go into that. And we look at what was their perception of what this would be and what's the reality. And so then we can see that where the deltas are. So the areas where as a HR or a leadership team, they need to work on internally. Right. But also from us, we're then looking at that thinking, well, we don't wanna really push that message if that isn't true. We would never ever wanna communicate or articulate something externally which isn't true. But we there'll be areas within every company that are difficult and not enjoyable and and the people needs to work on them. But there will be all also areas which are phenomenal and are the reason why someone's joined Yeah. Or the reason why someone's stayed ten, fifteen, twenty years. Yeah. It's like, what are those reasons? And how can we double down on those reasons and be honest about all these other areas which potentially are challenges and and showcase with what initiatives and projects which the HR or the talent team are working on to improve those areas. But from an external communication message, how can we go to market with something which is powerful and authentic?
Steve Lewis: And I think what you do really well is the employee activation where you get the actual employees to be authentic and talk about the experience as well. Yeah. I mean, everyone, would get some very high production values now, glossy things. It can turn you off if you think it's just and generally presented at me.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Whereas what what I've seen from the work that you've done and all the brands in that in the offices I've walked through is that you bring it to life, but you're also vulnerable and you're put out there as well the areas that need to be worked on.
Alex Ayin: It's so important. We live in a a social social age. I've grown up in the social generation in terms of life is lived through Instagram, TikTok, the variety of social platforms. So when people see marketing communication, they are immediately, not just turned off by it, but distrusting of that message. Yeah. And so flipping it on his head, then we thought, well, in terms of activation, we need to show this through the lens of people that are actually in the organization. But imagine how much more powerful it would be if the people, the employees were talking about the EDP message, being fearless, the projects, rather than it coming from the brand page. And so the way that we see that now is you have a brand layer, which is the messaging which you still need to put out, a life out page, careers website, social media channels. You need that to be your foundation, your house, which is showcasing all the great things about your organization. But then also, if you can get your employees, which is the additional, layer, talking about
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Alex Ayin: The on LinkedIn, even on Instagram, even on TikTok. Some of the people that we've got now in some of our advocacy programs, they are getting two hundred, three hundred, four hundred thousand views on TikToks or on LinkedIn posts Yeah. Talking about the organization for free. Yeah. No paid spend behind it. And when you look at the stats, eighty five percent of people do not trust what a brand says or a brand endorsement. Whereas when you when you when you flip that and you look at, well, how many people trust a peer recommendation? A friend, an ex colleague, it's three times, four times that depending on which studies you look at.
Steve Lewis: We're talking about peer recommendations. So if I recommend the user goes to a restaurant and you go, thanks, Steve. Great. And you go there and you get food poisoning, you're gonna be like, oh, thanks for that. But you're probably gonna ask, say, how was it? And you're like, yeah. You know, you're not gonna be like, oh my goodness. Right? And that's when it comes to referrals and recommendations in business. Good people know good people and there's a connective tissue of your network. Right? So you wanna activate that. But when it comes to the the referrals that come through to each other, you wanna make sure that you do that in a way that's kind of explainable and defendable if it's not right. Yeah. So let let's dig into that a little bit because I think that if if you get into that, you refer the the company, you say it's a great place to work because you're an employee there. That's like up there at the top. Right? I enjoy this so much. Come here as well. Jump in the water's beautiful. Yeah. You know, that type of approach. But then the people that have to interview those people that get referred, if they're not using skills based hiring, they can't say, actually, she was great, but there was a skills gap there. Yeah. So if you are doing it, it gives you something you can go back and you can actually not lose a friend Yeah. From someone who's referred you in and you can actually give coachable advice to that person to say you need to go and fill that skills gap.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: So I think there's a very it's a good link between the promise and the operational delivery.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: If you can factor it in and do it in an elegant way, you could talk about a golden thread.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: If you can do it in a way that doesn't feel wrong, but then if you do it well and you see the outcome is people have got longer retention, the attrition's lower because they've been qualified in so much well for the job jobs, the skills that needed for the job. I think we're only just getting started to see what the outcome of this really is in the longer term. Yeah. It's been talked about for a long time. But if you marry up the EVP to skills based hiring and then you take it through the promotion, the performance management, all the way through. I think we're gonna start to see over the next twelve, eighteen, twenty four months a real link between the upturn of doing this well Yeah. Versus just the conjecture that the the the kind of the, the the the the the academy of it, the the the you know, just talking about it.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. Yeah. And and I think, like, you mentioned there, I think retention will will improve, and I also think performance will improve Yeah. From those people joining the organization. And I think also time to perform. Yeah. So the time when they can come into an organization and hit the ground running. You hear that phrase all the time. It's like, why is that difficult for some people and and not? And there'll be a load of nuances around that because it could be if you have to move locations, your personality type, but also your skills. Yeah. Like, if you if you join a team and you're and you've got say what's the stat around men will apply if they only have seventy percent
Steve Lewis: chance they're on. Even less than that.
Alex Ayin: Or sixty percent Yeah. Yeah. Of the skills on on a job description. Yeah. Whereas I think women, it's close to ninety or
Steve Lewis: ninety five. It it's that kind of fake
Alex Ayin: it till
Steve Lewis: you make it. Yeah. Versus I have the and I was the at LinkedIn, I was the UK ally for women at LinkedIn. I wanted imposter syndrome. I I sat on the board there. I wanted to feel what it was like to be out of sorts. Yeah. And and for for women, we've seen through the data that they need to be much more, absolutely on point that they can demonstrate this to to a much higher degree before they go for it. Yeah. Whereas we see the men, it's like Yeah.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: It's good enough.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Yeah. I'm in. Yeah. And it just that knowing being high into that type of thing
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Is so important.
Alex Ayin: And and I think with this approach, if you know it's based on skills, which you've acquired through your experience, through your learning, that will then help increase, hopefully, or alleviate some of that.
Steve Lewis: It's endorsed. It's validated. It's transferrable. People don't have to brag. I've got that skill
Alex Ayin: to a
Steve Lewis: very high level. Mark me four out of five five out of five on it.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: And then I'll link I'll update my LinkedIn profile with that, but I've actually been through an interview with Meta or Google recently where they said I'm five out of five for data science. Yeah. That means something. Yeah. And men or women, they can then use something very tangible without having to try and oversell it all.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Lewis: That's a great point.
Alex Ayin: Question question I've got around skills, especially hard skills, which are changing so fast in this world of AI technology and what's needed for, say, in five years' time. The skills that you'll have now will almost be obsolete, and you need to have re re re skilled upskilled. That's true. How is there anything by using Hire Guide that you can look at and go, these are the skills which the organization is gonna need in, say, five or ten years' time. So then we need to start looking for people with those skill sets, or do you have to put that information into the platform?
Steve Lewis: So we don't have that as a part of our products or service offering today. Yeah. What we are finding is that if you think about the selection marketplace, there's a six hundred and fifty billion dollar marketplace for candidate attraction selection, the the EVP, all of that's
Alex Ayin: on the funnel. But when
Steve Lewis: it comes to really choosing from five candidates to one and offering the one, the other four are silver medalists
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Is what do you do with those silver medalists? If it's internal, they're a flight risk because they haven't got the job. Yeah. But you can say you've got a skills gap there. We'll we'll we'll invest in you. We care about you. Let's fill that up, and then you can get ready for promotion. So that's quite nice. So then you start to build out a data lake of the candidates that have got been interviewed that actually the metadata for the first time is that they have passed an interview and they had validated skills marked and scored cleanly. Yeah. That's not on any of the job board platforms. It's not on your CV or resume. That's a new layer of, of of metadata that Hire guy can bring to it because you've actually been in an interview and people have scored you, And if you think about it, if you're in an interview in the last final three or final five, you're you're you're the four five or three percent that have really made it to the point where you're gonna be offered. So we're starting to see that comes come to life, which is quite interesting.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. That be really interesting especially for the individual. Yeah. Because we talked about this from the employer standpoint. But from an employee standpoint, are you saying there
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Alex Ayin: Could they then go on to do l and d in the areas where they might not scored well? Getting that feedback, all I can imagine would be really valuable too.
Steve Lewis: That that the candidate owning her data. Right? And these are my this is where I need to focus on these skills now. That's a really important, attribute that it's being aware that you've got areas that need work, which is really important. But it's also sort of saying, I'm gonna go and invest in getting those skills from Udemy or Upwork or LinkedIn Learning or or Degreed. I I'm gonna go and fill those out because I know that they're gonna be needed in the future.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: I I we talk about what what roles that the the stat is in the next three to five years. The skills you've got now are gonna be redundant. You're gonna need to be learning those all the time. I think the time frame's gonna get shorter and shorter Yeah. As it comes through. There might be an AI ethicist. Is AI that's being used responsible? Is it mitigating risk? Is it used for the intended purposes? Has it got control and calibration? Is it course corrected? That's gonna be a job. Who knew that AI ethicist was gonna be a job? Right? So there's gonna be new jobs being created around this whole infrastructure now that we're creating. But our our position is that GenAI should augment what you do as a kind of a copilot to help you. Shouldn't face the candidate, shouldn't make an informed view on whether she's right for the role. That type of AI pointed to the candidate doesn't feel right. And as we're seeing with California case law as well, there's lots of challenge saying that's that's an illegal use of of AI for that purpose. You shouldn't be screened out Yeah. By AI without even getting to be reviewed by a human. Yeah. It's just not right.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. And because we we run graduate programs, intern programs
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Alex Ayin: For several large multinationals. We're always looking at how do we attract the next generation of talent, people at university, people coming out of school with the skill sets, who are practicing it, who are, on top of the technology, the emerging technologies now. One trend which we're seeing over the last, I would say, two years is the applications for each of our graduate programs has skyrocketed. People being able to use AI to autofill Yeah. Their information. So they apply to, say, a hundred graduate programs rather than selecting maybe the five or ten which they really wanted. And then off the back of the ones that which they're successful on because it's very competitive, they can then pick and choose the specific ones and drop out of the eighty percent or the ninety percent, which then cause an causes an issue if you think about it from the employee standpoint or when we're going through all of these applications I bet. Is how many people within that process will then stay all the way through to assessment center, phone screening, final interviewing. Are are there anything or from your perspective using skills based hiring, we were talking earlier around if you then have more of a skill based approach, you can start to filter out more of those at that stage potentially because you're going to market with the skills or the experience which they have will have had to have acquired through jobs, through work experience, or through different areas, or would you see that still being a problem regardless?
Steve Lewis: It's so easy to do one to many, isn't it? As you say, you could in an hour, you can apply to a hundred Yeah. Using chat g p t, and it could feel and look and sound like you. Personality could be too true. And then just pick up the but you're less wedded to it. You're almost like no. It's like trancing your arm and seeing who gets whose attention you get. That's Yeah. That so there's obviously that. And then there's an AI arms race. So then the companies then employ a a screening bot. So but then if you're early stage talent, you talent, you might not have the relatable work experience to be able to bring to
Alex Ayin: it. Yeah.
Steve Lewis: But you need to have an open coaching mindset. You need to have the skill enablers to say that that I've got these skills and I am I've got the behaviors to do it. But the behavior is the antithesis, if you like, of skills based. So it's more situation and judgment. So I I think you just have to be pragmatic and work out what skills are relevant for this job now that you've got or that you've got close enough and that you can be trained to. And and and deploy a kind of a a an an oversight, not thinking it's gonna be binary one or the other. There is this there's certain tools that will help you, but we're entering a new age now as we've seen where it's gonna be you've put a knife to a gunfight. No. I haven't. You know, it's gonna be like an escalation of AI to AI. Digital note takers arriving for both sides and then taking a view of who said what in the room. Yeah. I mean, you don't know where this is gonna end. I mean, let's not get too kinda skynet about it. But when it comes to what can we do now pragmatically, I think you're right. If you very much focus on this is the job. These are the skills that we need for the job. These are the questions to answer for these skills. As a hiring team, we're all gonna ask these questions. Right? Yeah. Good. And these are the answers we've seen are good for those questions. So we all agreed on that? Yeah. Good. And this is the scorecard. And if those people hit on these scores, they're precedable. They can be going through to the next stage. Correct? So you're almost
Alex Ayin: Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: In a safe space with the hiring team, cocreating on what good looks like. Yeah. Now if you use tech to do that, that's gonna be helpful, but not to the point of saying, I wanna go from a hundred applications that have been that Gen AI created down to two based on the fact that I trust this to make that decision for me.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. It definitely is human,
Steve Lewis: interaction. On the relational, the human stuff more. You get to do it in the right places. Yeah. But a lot of people out there are allergic to it. Yeah. So can I record this interview? No. You're like, but recording it will mean that I can watch it asynchronously and I can score you against it on the game tape and you'll get clean up rather than me writing down and then
Alex Ayin: and they're
Steve Lewis: like, oh, okay. Alright. And then as long as you explain to them what it's used for.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. Give them a reason why. Almost commander's intent. Correct. Which is a a leadership principle, which I learned ages ago from the army where if you give intent as to why your instructions why you're giving people instructions, they'll tend to
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Alex Ayin: Follow through with the action much more than if you just ask them to do something like
Steve Lewis: hide it. The the army term bluff, bottom line up front. Tell them the so what of why you're doing
Alex Ayin: it. What. Yeah. Exactly.
Steve Lewis: And then be true to that. Yeah. But also, as you say, signpost the vulnerabilities, the the headwinds, the issues as well. And then you've got a much more realistic kind of version of whether you're right or wrong for
Alex Ayin: a company. And is is there an optimum amount of skills per role, or is that completely dependent on the company?
Steve Lewis: We spin up five rounds. Like, there's a screening, a manager one to one, a technical culture, ad, not fit.
Alex Ayin: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: You know? And then they're fine. So so that that but the skills then, you don't want duplicative questions in the different rounds. Yeah. Who's gonna ask what question in what round? And it will create that for you. But then it'll do the heavy lift and eighty percent will be there and then you do the nuance and add your thing to it. Yeah. So I don't think there's any kind of catch all kind of silver bullet for it. It's just knowing that interviews are a series of conversations. Yeah. And if you go back and you say, will this expose our ability to bring these cultures and values off the wall, as you said,
Alex Ayin: that can
Steve Lewis: be embodied in the candidate. If you have that oversight in it, what you're asking each time, you'll get better outcomes.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. And that's what I'm thinking from our perspective. If we're able to work in collaboration, say that some of the top five skills, one of them could be around data management Yeah. Or data optimization. So then in the creative, we could showcase someone from the team who has changed the whole landscape of how they work with data in an organization.
Steve Lewis: That's good. Well, that's the key.
Alex Ayin: And then off the back of it, then you ideally, you would think people that then see that and relate to that and think I would wanna do that type of role would then apply. And what I'm hoping then with our partnership is then to see, right, well, out of the five hundred applications we've got for this role, you can see that when we've promoted this campaign in these areas on these platforms where we know that audience is spending time, and we have showcased the skills that are required and also the value tenants too, versus when it's just been a generic ad, the application conversion rate to higher is higher.
Steve Lewis: I love where you go with this. See what I mean? I tell them it's the golden thread again, but it's also the interoperability of data. The fact it needs to flow back up the chain, and the creative needs to then be able to give you a chance to then deliver on it later on.
Alex Ayin: Exactly. Yeah. And then almost feeding back. And then then we can even say, when we when we talk about this skill externally Yeah. It it alienates people. Whereas there is could be six or seven skills that you might need in a in a role. And it's like, could could we focus on these three versus these four? You can start to AB tests on the different creative ads which you use.
Steve Lewis: I like that a lot. You you wanna ask little and often questions. Did the interview start on time? Did I feel respected? Did was I asked enough about the role? Did I get a chance to ask? You you wanna make sure that that hundred percent anonymous feedback always forever is always there. Yeah. And that that's what we're we're starting to do to iterate those and get marginal gains through the whole thing rather than at the end, will you give me an NPS score or something, which is good for us. Yeah. But it's the candidate we need to focus on. Right? Because at the moment, it's almost suboptimal with the candidate experience broken. Hiring managers don't feel they've been listened to by the TA team. The whole dynamic is very siloed with sharp elbows where you want to get that arms around there and have the interoperability of the data so it flows through. And what you're saying is beautiful because it can be meaningful if you push that back up there. And then you look at actually the output, you might get a big uptick if you've done it in the right way. Because you're working out that you're one part of it. You're not a point solution that's been Frankenstein stitched together. You're you actually should be a bit more of a unified approach.
Alex Ayin: Exactly. Yeah. Coming together. And and that was one of the challenges which we we found in the employer branding space is how do you measure the ROI of your efforts outside of the application Yeah. Figures or the internal engagement figures. Yeah. And so about two and a half years ago, we then started thinking about how could we survey candidates, people across the UK and other markets externally to find out what their opinion of a brand from a talent lens was. So say you are Joe Bloggs, you're in Manchester, you're a marketeer, what are your thoughts on Sky, working at Sky, versus working at Google? And what how like how aware are you of the roles of in marketing in both of those companies, and how likely would you be to work at Sky versus how likely would you be to work at, say, Google? Because it's all well and good having the application data and having the inter a lot of people have lots of employee engagement data. But really, you from a talent attraction standpoint and an employer branding standpoint, you really wanna know what someone who doesn't work there Yeah. Thinks about your employer brand. Yeah. And then over time, you can then start to track how aware they were. Has that awareness gone from, say, ten percent to fifty percent? And then out of the fifty percent, how many people or what percentage out of the fifty percent would want to work for you? Yeah. I I like that a lot. So we launched Wisdom two and a half years ago. So what
Steve Lewis: you called it Wisdom?
Alex Ayin: Wisdom. Yeah. So it goes out every, six months to analyze the general working population, and we send out tens of thousands of surveys with that view so that we can find out generic, not generic, but general talent motivators as to trends, what people want from work, why they choose certain, companies or certain roles. But also specifically, especially for our clients or people that are up, are on Wisdom each of the surveys, we can find out which creative is gonna resonate or career side is gonna resonate with marketing versus sales, versus tech, versus finance. Yeah.
Steve Lewis: I saw entrepreneur.
Alex Ayin: And then we can split the data around so we can then start to say, right. So people in Manchester who are marketing, it could be purpose, which generally is, more impactful or the people or the that they're gonna be working with versus if you're in London in marketing, it could be the career progression or it could be, diversity inclusion. But what does that look like for, the general working population split by age, split by role, split by location in the country? And then from a creative standpoint, you can then start to change your messaging depending on what the data is saying. Like, we're saying about skill based. Then we feed that back into Yeah. The marketing machine, which then it the whole goal of it is to improve your employer brand, but also to get you really good people who believe in your purpose and your mission, and and they're gonna work to try and achieve that over the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. That ultimately is what we want because then more people will be in work engaged, happy, performing, building a life rather than the stats which you see from Gallup where eighty five percent of people are disengaged and I know. Not not enjoying work.
Steve Lewis: The bad news travels fast. Right? People, like, lean on that. And and it's it's it's difficult to go against it and uplift and say, we know with our wisdom data that this segment buy into this, especially in this region. I mean, it's it's giving people an element of of of of a bit more influence and understanding Yeah. Than they ever had before, making quite important decisions as to where they're gonna focus and attract people. I I love it. Yeah. You don't really get that many employer stories out there in the world. John Lewis recently published some of the questions, and there was a debate on whether you should see the questions in an interview before or not. That was quite interesting. Yeah. And then Netflix quite famously published their culture agenda saying, we're not a family. We're a high performing team. Everyone needs to earn their right, get off the bench. Yeah. Nobody's in entitled. Nobody's loved, you know, unconditionally here. You know, we we will so but in the marketplace, your value of a that employer, a company as a potential employer, is pretty much kinda governed by your consumer commercial experience. Exactly.
Alex Ayin: Because net realism land. Exactly. And and that will impact so say you have a negative say in the pandemic when, Amazon, there was that all that came out with TikToks of people looking at how they treat some of their staff.
Steve Lewis: In the fulfillment centers.
Alex Ayin: In the fulfillment centers. Yeah. I get that. All that came out. And then off the back of it, then that has a negative message that's that's then that's then traveled and and stayed to a certain extent. And so I think how you treat your employees also has an impact on your consumer brand, and your consumer brand, like you were saying, also is probably the biggest touch point they've had to date with what they think your brand stands for.
Steve Lewis: Correct.
Alex Ayin: So those two are becoming more and more, interdependent on each other. Yeah. And so when you're thinking about an employer brand campaign, you you're also thinking about, well, from a positive standpoint, how could our employer brand be better? Because we invest in our people, which are gonna give you the best customer service and the best product or whatever it may be. That for some people, especially from an ethical standpoint, is why you'd wanna go buy a product from them I understand. As well as were there.
Steve Lewis: I was at earlier, total jobs dot com, one of the big UK job boards. I was employee number four, And the COO where it was sent to Harvard, for a business exchange, and he came back and he said, I learned three things, Steve. I said, tell me them. He said, happy employees equals happy customers equals profit growth. I'm like, deal that's it. That's what you learned from the you said, that's what I learned from Harvard. And it's like
Alex Ayin: Mic drop.
Steve Lewis: But it's one of those. Right? It's like literally, that's very difficult to deliver and do. Yeah. But to know cleanly that you've gotta make your employees happy and wedded to it and actually wanna manifest and mean meaning and purpose by what they do.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Lewis: And they really care about the customers and the experience, and they want those customers to be raving fans and be really like a like an Apple or a Sonos type customer. I'm using brands that I obviously know and love. Yeah. And then you get the profit growth. That's the ancillary. That's the third. That's the output. You get it if you look after those two things there. And I think what you've done really well, and I met the some of the founders on the way in, was was to embody the the way in which a company can activate its EVP and actually do it.
Alex Ayin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is
Steve Lewis: really hard.
Alex Ayin: And what you're talking about there reminds me of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. So extrinsic people will do things for money, status Okay. All those type types of, of things, whereas intrinsic is the longer lasting type of motivation. And the things which people usually look for are purpose, which is why it's talked about so heavily in our industry. Yeah. Progression. Career progression. People wanna feel like they've got momentum going forward. And then the final one is mastery. And people want to feel like they're experts, which is why I think skill based hiring is so important because when you're working at something, if you feel like you're becoming more proficient at it in whatever it is, could be Yeah. I've just started learning how to do calisthenics, your gym workouts, and I'm right now at the very bottom of the totem pole falling on my face. But then if I if I can slowly start to become better each and every time, you feel that sense of I'm going somewhere here. And the same with the skills. If you go into an organization and you're and the skills that you have are so mismatched to what's required Yeah. That also isn't great for you from a motivation. It's almost like it's too far of a leap for me to perform. You're trying to catch always, like, chasing your tail. Yeah. As well as it not being good for the organization, you're never gonna get someone who's really intrinsically motivated because of that.
Steve Lewis: Yeah. And to bring the intrinsic motivation to life, that's when you get the best out of people, I suppose, because they're they don't have to try. It's what they do and love anyway.
Alex Ayin: Exactly. I like that a lot. I like that a lot. Final question. Couple of final questions. What are you most excited about when it comes to skill based hiring, the world that you operate in?
Steve Lewis: Back to purpose and meaning. Right? Skills based hiring is having a moment now. But if we talk about competency based interviewing, working out what you need to be to do to be good at something, it's been around for a long time. I think just now it's becoming a system and a subsystem in and of itself, and with tech, it enables you to do it. So I'm I'm feeling that we're on the precipice of something really great here, which is if you think about what's in the minds of boards, if you think your the talent is your number one operating priority.
Alex Ayin: You need
Steve Lewis: to get that right. So what's in the mind of boards? It's well, the TA team need to hire the best talent into the company. They need to nurture that talent. They need to develop that talent. But they also need to work out what skills are gonna be needed next. They need to do in a compliant way. I think now we're getting to the point where that's all converging with tech underpinning it. And you're gonna have Gen AI, gonna have skills based hiring, you can have DNI, and you have the big checkbox in the middle of it of actually how to do it. That's what I'm feeling excited about. It's almost like I can see that this is gonna become a kind of an operating standard if you like moving forward for talent. So, yeah, I'd say that's what what what's keeping kind of me up in a good way is to how to solve for that and how to to make sure the concept is something people can get hold of and do. Exciting. Back at you.
Alex Ayin: Similar to what you said in terms of the moment, employer branding has always been the forgotten cousin k. When it comes to marketing from a corporate branding or corp corporate communications. They usually have the lion's share of the marketing budgets and the, a seat at the top table from a board perspective like you mentioned. Whereas there's been a shift definitely since COVID, and I would say more recently in the last two years, where now this conversation around talent, culture, high performance teams is now right at the center because people like going back to the Harvard quote about happy employees equals happy customers equals profit growth. That now is essential. And if you're losing talent, especially your best people in a very competitive market again, that's then gonna impact your revenue growth, your company growth, expansion plans, any of the best laid plans from a business perspective. If you don't have great people and you're not able to attract great people and you're not able to get the people with the right skill sets, that's gonna have it and the right, and people that are gonna come in and add to the culture and take your business to the next level. That's gonna seriously impact your your future success. And so the thing that I'm most excited about is that employer branding, elevation at and seat at the top table because of how important it is. And from a personal standpoint, I love being in teams, like being in teams that are have a great purpose and are looking to achieve things and I really wanna get more people with the work that we do into the right teams and the right environment because I believe, like, all the best moments of my life especially from work con con context has come from being with people, doing extraordinary things, or achieving things for the first time, or like you said at the beginning, winning awards for or being recognized for being the best at your field. And I would just love more people to experience that. I love that. So, realistically, the work that we do will help more people get into more of the right roles in the right companies, and that for me is something that, inspires me every day.
Steve Lewis: Fantastic. Well, thank you for being part of this inaugural launched episode. I'm looking forward to the series of conversations, that'll be gonna be coming our way as well. So thanks very much, Nesha.
Alex Ayin: Worries. And we've got some great guests coming up.
Steve Lewis: We do. We do. We have Rupesh, Rupesh Panchera, from ServiceNow. He was at Expedia, SAP, Uber. He's now a global head of executive hiring and go to market. So really good job with ServiceNow, being, being doing so well and growing so much. I mentioned Eloise from Okta. Yeah. We have applied materials, which is in the kind of the picks and shovels of the AI chip Gold Rush and, Disney as well. So there's some pretty interesting brands coming in talking about this subject, which is close to everybody's heart. Yeah. It really really is. So I'm looking forward to that.
Alex Ayin: Looking forward to it. And, also, if anyone out there knows of any great guests in and around this space who you think would be someone that we should speak to, Steve should bring on, then please let us know, and we are looking to to really have an impact in this space. Hundred percent.
Steve Lewis: Thanks very much. Thanks, Alex.
