Amanda Green, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Wiley, joined our Integrated Talent Management class to discuss Recruitment and Selection. She brought a wealth of experience developing and implementing Talent Acquisition solutions in different contexts across numerous organizations, including American Express Global Business Travel, ADP, and Delta Dental.
Amanda discussed recent hiring trends, especially in light of the COVID pandemic’s impact on hiring volume, increased candidate expectations for hybrid work arrangements, and significantly higher organizational focus on improving workforce diversity. Key takeaways from Amanda’s discussion include:
- The challenge of candidates’ fear of job change during the pandemic in 2020 has shifted to a deeper talent shortage in 2021 due to huge pent-up turnover in the market. Per a study by the American Staffing Association, 80% of talent will seek a new role in 2021, creating a lot of pressure on hiring teams.
- In addition to pent-up turnover, technology is outpacing what people are learning in school. Therefore, the notion of “everyone is replaceable” is not as true as what was once believed. This pushes companies to further innovate on talent strategies and experiment with different combinations of building-buying-borrowing talent.
- The leading talent practices are increasingly more comprehensive and connected and geared towards retaining talent. Talent Acquisition must collaborate with Learning & Development for upskilling new hires and with other HCM and non-HCM leadership to listen for employee needs, create an engaging environment, offering “well-being” solutions, and, overall, telling the story of the employee value proposition much more clearly.
Our students had several observations and questions about the real-world challenges of attracting the desired talent. There was a rich discussion on how to attract diverse talent more effectively in a tight talent market. The learning point was that it’s not just about attracting diverse talent, instead of driving a supportive culture with programs and processes that help retain such talent.
In closing, Amanda shared very insightful career advice based on her own career journey. The key message was to create and sustain one’s professional networks to continue to grow and develop. She stressed being intentional about it and taking the time to meet people even without an immediate objective.
We are grateful to Amanda for making the time for the class and sharing insights from the real world and practical ways of dealing with some of the talent challenges being faced by most organizations.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any other person or entity.
