Understand the practices keeping your department stuck in a reactive-hiring hamster wheel.

In the countryside of Geneva lives the largest scientific experiment humans have ever undertaken. Born from the rubble of WWII, The European Council for Nuclear Research, commonly known as CERN, operates on the principles of peace, transparency, and cross-cultural cooperation. The 27-kilometer facility is home to 10,000+ scientists of over 100 nationalities, all working to deepen humanity’s understanding of our world through particle physics.

Every second on CERN’s campus marks another 11,000 protons colliding at 99.999…percent the speed of light in the world’s largest particle accelerator. But it can’t happen without the people. And that’s what worried James Purvis, Head of HR at CERN when he entered recruitment at the lab 12 years ago – no one was applying.

He realized quickly that CERN would have to level up on candidate experience to start seeing an influx of candidates but there was another crucial element missing from their strategy – they needed to lay a talent pipeline in order to keep pace with the company’s roadmap – a plan stretching 35 years into the future.

After considering the company prospectus and turn-over/average-employee-tenure data, and comparing that information to labor trends, it became clear vocational workers in the form of maintenance technicians, not high-level scientists, would become the most difficult roles to source in the future. In response, CERN launched a comprehensive training program with an advertising campaign targeting recent high school graduates (see video below of James speaking at Hiring Success 18 – Berlin Edition).

This targeted campaign was extremely successful, and CERN now has a deep bench of technicians waiting to come into the ranks!

So what can you, as a recruiter, take from CERN’s journey to hiring success?

Yes, it’s true that this organization is exceptional, yet their methods for building their candidate pipeline are largely universal.

Looking to these scientific pioneers, recruiters can accelerate out of reactive recruiting and into proactive talent acquisition (TA.) To get you started, we’ve outlined some of the most common errors recruiters make when building and maintaining a candidate pipeline, as well as what to do instead.

1.

Not using your data…

Data analytics sounds like scary, esoteric stuff. So, think of it as getting to know your company. Talk to department heads about the reqs they foresee for the next quarter or next year. Look into the records to learn the yearly rollover rate and average employee tenure.

Armed with these simple data points, you can start predicting the personnel needs for the coming year and organizing a recruiting strategy.

2.

Making plans for tomorrow based on the reality of today…

You can’t use a fixed-model to forecast a TA strategy. That is to say, just because you don’t have a shortage of ‘sales associates’ today doesn’t mean you should ignore that pipeline. No candidate pool is guaranteed. Economic fluctuations, tech innovations, and legislative changes will inevitably affect whom you hire, how you hire them, and what you hire them for. Most of these economic/tech/job trends can be foreseen and planned for today. As we learned from CERN,  it’s a matter of paying attention.

3.

Forgetting about internal talent…

Once an employee is onboarded, it’s easy to forget about them as potential talent. However, internal candidates should always be part of your bench. Internal mobility is a great strategy for both retention and attracting new talent. Fifty-six percent of candidates choose to stay with their current employers because of growth opportunities, and “career growth” is one of the top three reasons why candidates accept offers.

Start simple. Create an internal career site that informs current employees about open opportunities. Then, take your strategy to the next level by using AI to identify relevantly skilled workers for you to contact.

4.

Skimping on learning and development (L&D)…

L&D programming directly influences functions like internal mobility. A recent LinkedIn study found that 27 percent of organizations in North America increased their L&D budgets in 2017. This kind of investment makes sense considering the predicted talent shortage, which will impact the technology and financial sectors the most, costing the global economy an estimated $1.31 trillion in lost economic output over the next 12 years.

5.

Reading resumes for job titles instead of skills…

Reviewing resumes from internal candidates is key to L&D/ internal mobility programs, but don’t get distracted by headlines. You must read the fine print to identify employees who have transferable skills and a good knowledge base to be upskilled into open roles.

Similarly, for outside hires, candidates shouldn’t be knocked out because they hail from a disparate industry or job title – it’s all about having the skills to execute the job.

6.

Falling out of touch…

It’s hard to prioritize future hires when you have reqs to fill today. However, if you spend the time building quality talent pools, it’s a shame to see that work go to waste by neglecting them. Nurturing these communities is a key aspect of recruitment marketing.

So, how do you find time for this? It’s not magic, it’s tech! Most TA teams use candidate relationship management systems (CRM) to automate and scale communication, including drip campaigns and branded landing pages.

It’s important to remember recruitment marketing programs are a two-way street. Don’t just push information to potential applicants, make sure they are updating their information and engaging with you as well.

7.

Not using freelancers…

Upwork estimates that 36 percent of the US workforce already freelance, and projects that number will reach 50 percent by 2027, so why not get ahead of the trend?

An active community of contract workers ensures that no project stalls out due to missing talent. These temporary hires can buttress a department while recruiters seek a full-time team member, or they can provide specialized skills that may be too expensive for your company to employ full time.

He’s worked at one of the most respected institutions of brainiacs in the world for three decades. As the head of a hiring team responsible for onboarding some of the most brilliant scientists on earth, James Purvis isn’t your average backroom resume sorter. Leading up to his session at Hiring Success 18, we manage to turn the interview tables and get a few questions going his way.

What are you looking forward to at Hiring Success?

Talent Acquisition is often the spearhead of HR innovation, so I’m particularly looking for the latest innovative ideas, thoughts and technology evolution. It’s not just about the emerging products, but the HR processes and networking with the people attending.

Given the growing tech support for recruiting, are conferences still important?

HR conference options are myriad, so it’s important to choosing the right ones. The calibre of the products, thought leaders, but also other participants, sharing their ideas and challenges is key. The HR conferences I have attended have always given a great ROI.

What are you hoping to take away from the conference?

We have some specific challenges at CERN, where I have yet to find off-the-shelf solutions. I’m looking forward to meeting other people with similar challenges, and learn how they have addressed them as well as getting a glimpse into the technology evolution.

CERN must be a very interesting place to work. What are some things you enjoy there that don’t exist anywhere else?

What I love is the incredible passion and energy – people united around a common process: to push forward the frontiers of humankind’s knowledge. People of all nationalities and backgrounds, united by a common purpose – the excitement is tangible. You can arrive in the morning, grab a coffee and you could end up bumping into the Director General or a Nobel Prize winner.

You are in charge of handling some of the brightest minds in the world, are there special challenges to that? Does the high-level and specialization make things easier or more difficult for you? Does it take longer or shorter to hire someone at CERN than somewhere else?

The high-level specialization can certainly provide a challenge, and means the organization requires a talent acquisition strategy closely coupled to its workforce planning. Some of the engineering skills are already in high demand (and we are competing with all the well-known engineering and technology firms in the private sector). Other specialities simply don’t exist and require a longer-term, in-house talent building strategy. However, when it comes to recruiting, I believe we have a highly candidate-centric experience with huge positive feedback (even from those who aren’t successful). In terms of delays we have a target of under 100 days from ‘request’ to ‘in position’ and we are inline with that target (and that includes candidates having sometimes a three-month notice period).

How many new hires do you bring in a year?

In terms of staff positions, we recruited 200 last year, but when you add on graduates, students, interns and other personnel, we recruit and onboard almost 2000 people per annum.

What is something CERN HR does better than anyone else?

This sounds almost like the ubiquitous (but not recommended) interview question asking a candidate why they are better than the other candidates. I can’t answer relative to other HR departments, but I am extremely proud of the calibre of people and service that CERN’s HR department offers. We regularly receive positive feedback on our staff and processes. I’m particularly proud of the customer-focus and the understanding our HR staff have of their impact on the bigger picture at CERN. There is no ‘us and them’, no ‘HR vs the business’. We are all part of a common challenge working for the common objectives.

What would you like to change?

Improving the IT tools to offer a smartphone-style experience, a Siri or Alexa for HR services, through to predictive analytics and integrated talent management solutions – a vision of a more technology-enabled HR.

Will your job requirements be different in a few years?

As machines become more skilful and as AI evolves, the key difference in job requirements, in my opinion, will be that the IT & HR competencies will be taken for granted, and the key job requirements will be the jobs that require skills unique to people and that can neither be replicated or found in machines. We will need an increased emphasis on innovation, collaboration, teamwork, emotional intelligence – of course all combined with first-class technical and communication skills.  

How much more do you rely on tech now than you did when you started?

CERN has always been very avant-garde with technology, after all, much the technology on your smartphone, be it the web or the touchscreen, originated from CERN. As early as 1990 I could submit a vacation request from my desk and the workflow sent it to my supervisor for authorization. We could access HR data on the web in the mid-90s and purchase from an internal e-catalog prior to the existence of Amazon and e-Bay. Our first recruitment on the web went live in the early 2000s – at a time when our number-one concern was how to deal with candidates who didn’t have access to the internet. Now, technology has become an enabler – it allows us to do far more with less resources. It assists us in our daily lives and also forms an integral part of our branding. We have come to rely on it like relying on a utility such as electricity.

Is tech overtaking HR a good thing overall? Why or why not and how do you things changing in the future?

Tech isn’t overtaking HR – tech is enabling HR. Regarding the future, this is an ideal opportunity to end with a quote Nils Bohr, Nobel laureate in Physics, who said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”

Featured Image Credit: Simon Bühler