The importance of future proofing your recruitment process

For large organisations the talent acquisition function needs to remain at the leading edge of innovation, while being fit for the future, ensuring candidates have a great experience, and remaining fair can be a difficult balance to strike. The demands on your tech, team and time are all crucial elements to consider when transforming your talent assessment processes.

In a recent HR Grapevine webinar, Emma Foote, Head of Growth Marketing at Sova, sat down with Jenna Alexander, Director of Internal Talent Acquisition at Randstad UK, to discuss the need for building a recruitment process fit for the future. If you are not familiar with Randstad, they are a global leader in the HR services industry and the largest recruitment agency in the world. In 2020, Randstad helped nearly two million candidates find a meaningful job with more than 236,000 clients. Randstad is active in 38 markets around the world and has a top-three position in almost half of these. Randstad understood the need to make sure their recruitment processes are fair, engaging, and virtual yet personal. While this is easier said than done, we were able to help them deliver a fully virtual and scalable end-to-end recruitment solution for their internal hires. So how were they able to do this? What does a recruitment process fit for the future look like, and how does it affect the candidate and employee experience?

Human centred design 

According to Jenna, it starts with a human centred design. “We challenged how we could move away from traditional competencies, old fashioned company value assessments, and actually start to consider a state of play with fluid movement…”.

To adapt to a human centred design, the Randstad team breaks their strategy down into three core areas which include best talent, employee experience, and talent agility. Focusing on these areas allowed Randstad to ensure that they embed a human forward framework into their recruitment process, and that their learning and development are not just your typical “cookie cutter approach”, but also future proofed.

A justifiable and analytical approach 

In addition to their human centred design, Randstad wanted to provide a justifiable and analytical approach to their recruitment process. Simply put, they want to be able to analyse their high performers without losing their natural intuition in the process. To do this they have begun to assess candidates against a multitude of different traits, decode their natural strengths, and see what they could bring to the table. Why this may seem like a simple process, Jenna acknowledges it takes a lot of effort and time to implement effectively, but also believes it’s necessary when creating fully virtual and scalable end-to-end recruitment solutions.

An inclusive recruitment methodology 

While the above points are key, candidate experience may be one of the most crucial elements to consider when making sure your recruitment process is successful. To address their candidate experience, Randstad decided to implement an inclusive recruitment approach and Jenna credits Sova for helping them implement this methodology effectively. Elements of this method include making sure to do a virtual intake meeting and truly understanding the bespoke and unique nature of each particular job, holding virtual open days to drive external engagement, and not requiring candidates to submit their CV’s. “We don’t need someone’s CV because we’re not looking at the legacy experience in the workplace. We’re looking at their natural strengths. We’re looking at the traits that they can bring.” Jenna Alexander, Director of Internal Talent Acquisition at Randstad UK.

Along with eliminating the need for CVs, Randstad also ensures that they have a diversity panel member involved in the interview process to enhance the candidate experience and make sure they feel engaged and welcomed. It is no secret that overhauling your recruitment process, making it fair, engaging, virtual, and scalable can be a difficult and time consuming task. But with the ever changing modern workplace the time to future proof your recruitment process is now. With the help of Sova, Randstad has done just that, and their business, clients, and candidates will be the better for it.