INSPIRE 2020: Day two event recap

Welcome to day two of INSPIRE. Today we spent time with some truly amazing people at the height of their crafts. We started with two witty, boundary-pushing creatives, Trevor Noah and Mindy Kaling.

From there we had eye-opening conversations with talent innovators from all over the world. We announced new recruiting analytics integrated across the iCIMS Talent Cloud and an exciting new partnership with talent analytics platform Visier. Finally, we wrapped up the day with a refreshing talk on the impact of self-care.

There’s a lot to share, and only so much space to do it. Here’s a (semi) brief look at some of the highlights from day two.

A conversation with Trevor Noah and Mindy Kaling

Susan Vitale, Chief Marketing Officer at iCIMS hosts.

It’s hard to recreate the magic of being together. For Noah, not sharing a space with his team has been a challenge. While big Zoom meetings haven’t worked, collaborating in small groups has kept everyone feeling energized and inspired.

Kaling misses structure. There’s a ritual to having set hours and commuting. It helps maintain focus and transition between home life and work. Walking from the shower to your Zoom meeting isn’t enough.

Work today is measured by productivity, not the clock. Noah likes that people are focused on getting things done and then getting back to their lives. It’s also healthy that work can be done wherever you live, and that you don’t need to uproot to a city for work.

Now he says, “People live their lives the way they want to, not the way they have to.”

Finding and advancing talent looks different today. Kaling used to rely on talent provided from studios. Now she hires young people with visions that match her own and grows them into writers.

For Noah the pandemic has exposed new talent. Who are they? Pre-lock down they weren’t necessarily the loudest, quickest, or most charismatic in a room full of people. But they have great ideas and are showing their skills now in this new way of working.

That’s changed Noah’s outlook on hiring. Now he looks to hire people based on what they’ve done and their potential to do great work.

His advice? Don’t let formal interviews shape your expectations of people. Listen to their goals and where they want to go; these change over time.

Talent leaders get real on today’s hiring realities

These are strange times. With challenges come successes – and sometimes more challenges.

We asked representatives from Enterprise Holdings, Sodexo, Mercy Health, and Wellpath what it’s like to hire in today’s environment. What they had to say highlights the silver linings of 2020.

How did COVID-19 impact your business?

Difficult decisions. Sodexo played a key role in transporting essential workers but everything else came to a halt. That meant dialing back and consolidating after what had been a record-setting year.

Fast-forward to the future. Enterprise had plans to launch a “low-touch, no-touch” customer experience next year. Then COVID happened and they accelerated the program, launching it in 30 days. All their procedures have been completely redesigned with input from medical professionals.

Hiring took a hit but then rebounded. At the beginning of the year Mercy Health had 3,000 openings. That number dropped to just 1,000 essential openings once the pandemic hit. With resources stretched thin, most of their focus was on patient care, not recruiting. Things have improved, and now they’re looking to hire 3,500 new personnel.

Pushing innovation to keep people safe. Wellpath provides healthcare in challenging environments. They didn’t have to furlough; they needed more talent. However, most of their employees work in COVID hotspots like hospitals and prisons. This pushed them to develop new, safer ways of doing things, including an emphasis on telemedicine to keep workers out of harm’s way.

Delivering exceptional talent mobility programs and experiences with Candidate Experience (CandE) Award Winners

Multi-year CandE Award Winners sat down for a panel hosted by Talent Board.

iCIMS was represented by our very own Amy Warner, Director of Talent Acquisition. She was joined by representatives from Valvoline, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Celanese.

Tell us about your company’s candidate experience journey. What improvements are you most proud of, and how do you sustain them with the impact of COVID?

• Don’t call it beginner’s luck. Valvoline were first time participants in the CandE Awards last year. Valvoline credits their success to a heightened awareness of, and commitment to, the candidate experience.
• Climbing the ranks. JPL has used award feedback to climb the ranks in the CandE Awards for many years.
• No hard feelings here: referrals from rejected candidates. Celanese measures their candidate experience by the number of referrals they get from rejected candidates. They credit their success to humanizing the hiring process, making it equitable and transparent.
• Great communication. That’s iCIMS’ recipe for success. A big part of communication is keeping candidates engaged with relevant and meaningful content. Example: during a hiring freeze earlier in the year we helped candidates by sharing job search tips and advice.

How do you measure candidate experience and the impact on your business? What recruiting and retention metrics are critical to success?

• JPL keeps close tabs on how they’re doing year-round by using candidate surveys and qualitative data from sites like Glassdoor to get feedback on their process.
• Celanese’s benchmark is a 99% offer acceptance rate. It also keeps track of hiring velocity and net promoter scores (including best interviewers outside talent acquisition).
• iCIMS: Listen to those who didn’t get the job. Way more people don’t get hired than do. Listen to what worked and what didn’t. Then talk to new hires, understand their journey. Warner’s favorite question: “What was the tipping point that brought you here?”
• Valvoline sees every candidate as a current or potential customer. “We want every candidate to end their recruitment journey at Valvoline better than when they started.”

From human resource to human relationships: Rethinking HR to build a resilient culture with self-care

Jeanette Bronee, CEO and Founder of Path for Life shared her philosophy on humanizing work and building a self-care culture.

Work by day, recover by night. That’s how most of us work, but is it healthy? Not according to Bronee. Ignoring our emotions is what exhausts us. Not taking breaks leads to burnout.

Work better so we don’t have to recover after a day of work. That’s self-care.

Make self-care proactive. We tend to wait on self-care until we break down. Our bodies know what we need, but we need to learn how to pause and listen.

Build a company culture of pausing. We cannot access our best skills or emotions when we’re running on survival mode. Pausing helps us focus on our challenges and what we need to be our best.

Be a whole human. Rethinking self-care means being a whole human being. This encompasses physical, emotional, mental health.

Self-care isn’t selfish. It has a much larger impact on your environment than just yourself. Why? We’re at the core of all the relationships in our lives. Neglecting yourself isn’t just a you-problem. It also becomes a them-problem.

The power of lunch. Bronee worked with a leader who wasn’t taking lunch. Why? Because her boss wasn’t. She finally started taking lunch (despite what her boss was doing). Now she feels more energetic, focused, and patient. And her team started taking lunch too.

#PowerPausing. Emotion is humanity’s superpower. Emotions are not a problem, they’re a possibility. We need to pause and take stock, even when things are hectic and deadlines are tight.

Stay tuned for access to the full library of content from INSPIRE 2020. In the meantime, hit pause on your own work and take a deep breath. It’s what Bronee would want.

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Thank you to all who made this event possible, especially our customers, partners, and talent leaders from all over the world who joined us in this global conversation.

Still have more to say? Want to learn more about products we unveiled?

Tell us here: icimsinspire@icims.com