Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast

Welcome back to the Talent Intelligence Collective podcast for another insightful episode! In episode 30, your hosts Alan Walker, Alison Ettridge, and Toby Culshaw are joined by the "workforce geek" himself, Maarten Hansson of Novartis. Toby kicks off the show with a thought-provoking news segment, covering topics like the war for AI talent, the UK's controversial immigration salary threshold hike, and Latin America's tech talent boom. The discussion sparks debate around the challenges of attracting and retaining top AI talent, the potential impact of immigration policies on various industries, and the factors driving the growth of tech hubs in Latin America. In the interview with Maarten, we dive deep into his fascinating career journey, spanning roles in the Dutch military, IT engineering, and his transformative experience living and working in India. Maarten shares how his time in India fuelled his passion for leveraging global talent and the importance of consciously choosing how to interact with and manage distributed teams. Maarten introduces us to the concept of "total workforce" and the proprietary workforce drivers he uses to help organisations make informed decisions about their talent strategies. He emphasises the importance of visibility into all aspects of the workforce, including employees, contingent workers, and outsourced or automated work, to effectively manage costs, risks, and access to talent. Throughout the conversation, Maarten stresses the value of combining internal workforce data with external labour market insights to provide actionable advice to the business. He shares examples of how his work has triggered procurement teams to change their category strategies, HR to rethink workforce policies, and finance to optimise total workforce costs. Maarten's unique perspective, shaped by his diverse background in procurement, HR, and engineering, leaves us with a fresh understanding of how talent intelligence can drive transformative workforce decisions. His passion for the topic is infectious, leaving us eager to explore more in future episodes! Until next time, stay intelligent, and don't forget to share the podcast with your network! ** Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → ⁠⁠Stratigens⁠⁠! **

Welcome back for another fascinating episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective podcast! In episode 29, your regular hosts Alan Walker, Alison Etridge and Toby Culshaw have an enlightening discussion with Megan Reif, Talent Intelligence Lead at Volvo Cars. Kicking things off, Toby provides an intriguing news roundup spanning topics like the rise of tech hubs in Canada, AI proliferation in HR roles, and the transition towards skills-based organizations. The trends spark thoughtful debate around data architecture challenges in HR, attracting technical talent to people-focused roles, and the complexity of fully adopting skills-based frameworks. Shifting gears to our interview with Megan Reif, we uncover her eclectic career journey spanning academia, international development, recruiting and more. A recurring theme is Megan’s insatiable curiosity to dig deeper, learn something new and challenge assumptions with data. Megan provides a fascinating window into the world of automotive manufacturing talent. We explore the intersection of software and hardware, blending agile and waterfall development approaches, and massive talent ecosystems including R&D, factories, suppliers and beyond. Megan emphasizes the highly technical skills involved in areas often dismissed as “blue collar,” like welders who will drive the green transition. On talent issues, Megan explains how Sweden’s largest private employer collaborates with industry consortia, universities and government around long-term skills gaps like electricians and battery talent needs. We debate how to better expose youth to the exciting real-world opportunities in science, tech and manufacturing. Megan also shares thoughts on balancing national policies around freelance passions, labor market alignment and managed immigration. Throughout the wide-ranging discussion, Megan underscores how she sees boundless potential for talent intelligence to bring context, challenge assumptions and transform workforce decisions. Her wisdom and optimism leave us delighted to have her perspective, with much still left to explore in future episodes! Until next time, stay intelligent folks, and don't forget to share the podcast! ** Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → ⁠Stratigens⁠! **

Welcome back for another captivating episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective podcast! In episode 28, your regular hosts Alan Walker, Alison Etridge and Toby Culshaw engage in an intriguing discussion with Matt Higgs, Director of Organisational Capability at Arambol. Kicking things off, Toby provides the latest news roundup, spanning topics like Corn Ferry’s 2024 talent acquisition trends report, the impacts of an ageing workforce and associated “grey tsunami”, and increased government attention on how AI will transform jobs and workplaces. The trends provide much food for thought on the external factors shaping workforce planning. Shifting gears to our interview with Matt Higgs, we uncover his varied career journey through recruitment consulting, strategic HR business partner roles, analytics, strategic workforce planning and organisational capability building. A key theme is the connection between proactive early careers planning and forecasting future talent needs. By scrutinising historical hiring patterns and projecting retirement trends, Matt was able to build a convincing business case for significantly expanding apprenticeship programmes. This demonstrates how data and analytics can transform typically reactive talent acquisition into forward-looking planning. Matt explains how he has expanded this approach over time, leveraging analytics to bring rigour and metrics to “softer” areas of HR like leadership development. He also shares his experience spearheading a nascent strategic workforce planning pilot, demonstrating how integrated business planning principles can create an “organic” and sustainable planning capability. Throughout the discussion, Matt emphasises the vital context talent intelligence brings to supplement internal workforce planning. By providing insights on external talent dynamics, TI enables more informed assessments of whether talent gaps can feasibly be addressed through hiring or require alternative solutions. We also cover the importance of translating long-range strategic plans into specific actions for talent acquisition to execute. The conversation underscores Matt’s invaluable perspective on bringing together analytics, planning, talent intelligence and more to enable superior workforce decisions. His wisdom leaves us eager to have him back for future episodes to share more talent insights! Until next time, stay intelligent folks, and don't forget to share the podcast! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens!

Get ready to geek out over data science and talent intelligence in this meaty new episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective podcast! Regular hosts Alan Walker, Alison Etridge and Toby Culshaw engage in an illuminating discussion with Ranjan Dhar, Principal Data Scientist at Stratagem. Kicking things off, Toby provides a roundup of the latest TI news, spanning decentralised TI capabilities, major plays by Microsoft, SAP and others in skills intelligence platforms, early signs of cooling demand despite skill shortages, and more trends shaping the external talent landscape. Shifting focus to our interview, we unravel Ranjan's fascinating journey into talent data science, stemming from his early days helping to scale a pioneering TI supplier from 20 to 200+ employees after its acquisition by Gartner. He recounts the challenges of working with complex, messy talent data sets, and explains typical day-to-day work ranging from data exploration to advanced machine learning modelling. We explore a number of applied examples where Ranjan has leveraged natural language processing and other techniques to uncover insights from job postings, profiles, and more talent data sources. He emphasises how properly framing the business problem is vital before applying advanced analytics, so the techniques match the use case rather than being solutions seeking problems. Ranjan shares thoughtful advice on working with data scientists as a business leader, highlighting the need for trust, data access, and taking an exploratory approach to the art of the possible. We discuss the pros and cons of centralised versus decentralised models for embedding TI and analytics capabilities through organisations. With his extensive perspective spanning both the supplier side and in-house talent intelligence, Ranjan elucidates the huge potential impact when talent leaders effectively collaborate with data scientists. He demystifies how advanced analytics can transform messy, unstructured hiring data into actionable skills-based insights that drive better workforce decisions. If you're interested in the intersection of data science and talent intelligence, don't miss this engaging insider view into the art of the possible! As always, stay intelligent folks! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens!

Welcome back, dear listeners and readers, to another episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! In this riveting episode, we had the pleasure of diving deep into the world of AI in talent with our very own co-host Alan Walker in the hot seat. We kick off this milestone episode with Toby taking the reins to provide us with the latest updates in the world of AI. Toby enlightens us about chatbot vulnerabilities, shining a light on the growing cybersecurity risks as AI adoption spreads. Alison chimes in about the global race for AI talent, with tech giants rapidly expanding teams of AI researchers and engineers. However, we acknowledge the risks of large language models like GPT-3 hallucinating false insights without proper governance. Now, shifting our focus to the main topic of this episode - our guest, Alan, Alison takes the lead in asking all the right questions. Alan's journey into AI began with a passion for leveraging technology to transform HR processes. Little did he know that this enthusiasm would set him on a path to becoming a thought leader in applying AI in talent. "The perception of intelligence is what really matters when defining AI." Alan Walker His experience co-founding the consultancy Udder provided him with remarkable insight into AI's potential. He gained exposure to innovative applications of AI across functions like recruitment, mobility and analytics. This experience has been invaluable in envisioning an AI-powered future of talent. One of the key takeaways from our conversation is the importance of ethics, quality control and human oversight over AI systems. Data literacy is critical to ensure AI doesn't hallucinate false insights from incomplete data. "AI won't necessarily create more jobs, but may allow more enriching lives with less work time needed." Alan Walker The world of AI in talent is evolving rapidly. Alan shed light on emerging multi-agent AI architectures that enable diverse algorithms to coordinate insights. However, what makes it even more intriguing is the simultaneous hype and uncertainty surrounding AI's impacts. Looking forward, Alan envisions the future of AI as an integrated approach combining agents with specialized capabilities. By harmonizing workforce strategy, future of work initiatives, and AI, organizations can better act on insights. It has been a pleasure having Alan Walker as our guest, sharing his profound insights on the dynamic field of AI in talent. And, as always, your support means the world to us. Be sure to tune in to the full episode and share your thoughts with us. Until next time – stay intelligent!

Welcome back, dear listeners and readers,  to another episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! But, fear not. This episode is 100% robot-free. In this riveting episode, we (the usual motley crew of myself, Alan Walker, Alison Ettridge and Toby Culshaw) had the pleasure of diving deep into the world of Talent Intelligence with the brilliant Anastasiia Kolos.  We kick off this milestone episode with Toby taking the reins to provide us with the latest updates in the world of Talent Intelligence. Toby enlightens us about an intriguing product called dot ai, which demonstrated an AI-driven sales conversation, making us ponder the future of AI in recruitment and sales. Alison chimes in about the skills-based hiring trend that's gaining momentum. LinkedIn's research on skills-based hiring in the European labour market and the shift away from traditional degrees toward skills-based qualifications are causing ripples in the talent pool. However, we acknowledge that while skills-based hiring is exciting, its practical implementation presents numerous challenges. Now, shifting our focus to the main topic of this episode - our amazing guest, Anastasiia Kolos, Alison takes the lead in asking all the right questions. Anastasiia's journey into Talent Intelligence began with a fortunate encounter during her master's program in strategic management. Little did she know that this chance encounter would set her on a path to becoming a thought leader in the field. "Exploring the whole new world of being in a big corporate environment was like solving a complex puzzle." Anastasiia Kolos Her experience at Philips, a global giant, provided her with a remarkable training ground. She gained exposure to the inner workings of a corporate powerhouse, from mergers and acquisitions to strategic execution. This experience has been invaluable in her current role at Nexperia. One of the key takeaways from our conversation is the importance of shifting the conversation from hiring individuals to addressing an organization's broader strategic challenges. "Understanding the broader strategy is the first step to providing meaningful Talent Intelligence insights." Anastasiia Kolos The world of Talent Intelligence is evolving, and Anastasiia shed light on how it plays a pivotal role in addressing talent shortages—a pressing issue in her industry, semiconductors. However, what makes it even more intriguing is the simultaneous existence of talent shortages and oversupply in other areas of the industry. Market intelligence and competitive insights are also on Anastasiia's radar. She emphasized the importance of understanding how different elements within an organization interconnect to provide more meaningful insights to drive success. Looking forward, Anastasiia envisions the future of Talent Intelligence as an integrated approach that combines internal and external data sources. By harmonizing workforce strategy, future of work initiatives, and Talent Intelligence, organizations can better answer the "So what?" question and act on insights effectively. It has been a pleasure having Anastasiia Kolos as our guest, sharing her profound insights and experiences in the dynamic field of Talent Intelligence.  And, as always, your support means the world to us. Be sure to tune in to the full episode and share your thoughts with us. Until next time – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to a rather different episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast. That's all we're going to say. Oh, other than this - please get past the 6-minute 5-second mark. Otherwise, you won't listen to another episode ever again. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition. Beep, beep, boop.

Welcome to another episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! In this ‘not a milestone’ episode, my amazing co-hosts Toby Culshaw and Alison Ettridge and I welcomed the incredible Adrian Malatesta from Remitly. After our usual pleasantries, Toby dived straight in with his update on the happening within the world of Talent Intelligence. 2023 started in the worst way possible, talent-wise, with so many roles being laid off.  According to layoffs.fyi, there have already been 40,474 tech jobs cut in January 2023 from 151 different companies. “I read an article on this. It really isn’t about decline. What we are seeing is a reversion to the norm after companies hired at a new rate in 2021/2022.” Alison Ettridge Looking to move towards some slightly more ‘sunshine positive’ news, we were thrilled to hear that Josh Bersin highlighted Talent Intelligence as a critical area of focus for many companies in 2023. The hated term, ‘war for talent,’ may be a thing of the past as companies also start to focus more on skills. Ensuring that even as unneeded roles are eliminated, employees with critical skills are retained and redeployed to different areas. At this point, I felt we had heard everyone's opinion about the world and its news, and we were eager to learn more about our guest, Adrian. About his world and his background. So I virtually passed the mic onto our resident hard-hitting interviewer extraordinaire - Alison. There is research that shows that 75% of C-suite leave an organisation within three years of acquisition. So is that where the use of Talent intelligence comes in? “I think in the early stages, maybe. We go back a lot to our conversation from before about skill sets. Answering the question - are we buying and acquiring the skills we need.” Adrian Malatesta During the Talent Intelligence Jamboree back in November, Andrian touched on the topic of Global expansion and location, and here on the podcast, we talk a lot about joining the dots between the labour market, economy and locations. What other dots  should be connected for maximum insight in terms of Talent Intelligence? “Probably a mix of qualitative aspects. Like immigration, culture & values, and DEI. And their overlay on data. ” Adrian Malatesta As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. A review or a share on social really goes a long way in helping us reach as many ears as possible. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to another episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! In this one, I - Alan Walker - Alison Ettridge of Stratigens and Toby Culshaw of Amazon - met Jerry Hu from Amazon Web Services. Passing the mic over to Toby, we caught up on everything happening in the talent intelligence world. According to a 2022 report by IndiaAI, a government-led industry group, AI is expected to raise India’s annual growth rate by 1.3% by 2035 – which, for context, is an additional $957bn to India’s economy. “I think this is really fascinating. We’re already seeing a lot of companies looking to India for their tech solutions in terms of workforces.” Toby Culshaw “On the talent piece, you can see this great migration trend, with many who may have been living overseas deciding to come back.” Jerry Hu Another survey of 20,000 employees from 11 countries found that 52% of Gen Z and millennial workers are considering changing employers this year. However, 73% said they would stay at their jobs if it were easier to change roles internally. “That really ties into what we were saying on our last episode. Internal and external data needs to be looked at separately to make sensible decisions regarding how to shape the workforce.” Alison Ettridge With the utter chaos that the UK workforce seems to find itself in, it was impossible for us not to talk about it.  With 350,000 people across the UK being inactive due to long-term sickness due to the pandemic, the new UK chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, aims to reverse this inactivity by pushing those over-50s into full-time work. “I’m not convinced. I think in most industries, age discrimination is still alive and well. It’s one of those issues we don’t really discuss. That makes it hard for those over-50s to pick up work.” Toby Culshaw After this very labour-focused discussion, it was time for us to learn more about our fantastic guest, Jerry Hu. Alison was especially eager to explore Jerry’s career path - the why and how he got to where he is today. “I started my Talent Intelligence journey with Alibaba. At first, it was about sourcing new talent across the border but then it transitioned. Some skills were non-existent, so we started going beyond a typical talent acquisition approach. We began utilising data and tying that back to how we were helping the business.” Jerry Hu While we know that Talent Intelligence can be so fundamental for making business decisions, when you’re working for large-scale companies, it’s easy to experiment. But what about when you’re working within a startup? “I absolutely think that Talent Intelligence has a place in startups. But when every decision you make impacts whether your business will survive tomorrow, plan your talent first. What is the number one thing you’ll need to know to solve your recruiting problems?” Jerry Hu As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. A review or a share on social really goes a long way in helping us reach as many ears as possible. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to an extra special edition of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! In honour of Toby, our fantastic colleague and friend, and the release of his book today, we’ve flipped the episode on its head, roped some extra exceptional help and instead of a guest, put Toby Culshaw in the hot seat. In this one, it’s me - Alan Walker - Alison Ettridge of Stratigens and Joe Thompson of Booz Allen Hamilton co-hosting an episode. The episode started, but not in its usual fashion. There is no news, no worldly updates, just tips, hints and tested tricks that Toby has learned over the years and poured into his book. As I had the virtual mic, I kicked things off. Starting easy by asking the name of the book, the release date and why Toby ever decided to write a book. “Throughout the last few years, so many companies have been branching out into the world of Talent Intelligence. And there is just so little information out there. No general how-to guide. So I thought - I could do that.” Toby Culshaw Toby started writing content way before it was ever meant to become a book, we’re talking hundreds of virtual notes and post-its, but he confessed that the overall process was very fluid. “Thank you for doing this, Toby. The fascinating bit for me is that your book is from a completely different view. That of the client. It gives you a depth of understanding of Talent Intelligence as a whole” Alison Ettridge We’ve talked a lot about connecting the dots on the podcast, it’s our favourite saying, and that was very much one of the things that Toby wanted to talk about in his book. Talent Intelligence doesn’t just stop at one project. Another element that we’ve talked about and discussed a lot on our podcast, which simply had to be included in the book, was Toby’s definition of Talent Intelligence. Which, funnily enough, changed after our latest episode with Joe Thompson. “In the opening chapter, I actually included multiple definitions. But, the core thing for me, which is up for debate, is the word Talent.” Toby Culshaw The definition of talent refers to a natural aptitude or skill, not an element you would work to achieve. In contrast, Talent Intelligence is very much a learning experience for everyone. Therefore, such words as workforce or decision are possibly better suited. The book is filled with tips about what to do, where to look and how to build a Talent Intelligence function. What about what not to do? “I may be a bit biased with this answer, but don’t tie Talent Intelligence to filling jobs. The power of Talent Intelligence lies in de-risking decision-making, trying to be as broad-minded as possible and a whole host of other things. Not simply filling jobs.” Toby Culshaw A big big thank you to everyone who helped make this book a reality. Toby may have been the one who wrote, but it was thanks to everyone contributing. And as always, a massive thank you for supporting us. And of course, if you liked this episode, Toby’s book: Talent Intelligence: Use Business and People Data to Drive Organisational Performance releases today and is available on Amazon here. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don’t forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to a milestone edition of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! That's right - by hook or by crook, we've hit our 20th episode. And what a cracker it is. In this one, me - Alan Walker - and, of course, Alison Ettridge of Stratigens and Toby Culshaw of Amazon - co-hosted an episode where we spoke to Joe Thompson of Booz Allen Hamilton. First up in the world of Talent Intelligence, PRO Unlimited, an integrated workforce management platform provider, introduced Total Talent Intelligence, a solution providing organisations with real-time data on their talent landscape to help inform strategic hiring and retention decisions. "I think it's interesting. We're seeing a lot of these platforms appearing. I do wonder if more data will mean more clarity." Joe Thompson "The most challenging thing with all these new pieces of technology is accuracy. The danger is the generalisation of job roles and titles." Toby Culshaw As the European labour market experiences vast shortages, with more and more job vacancies going unfilled, many recruiters and international companies are struggling to attract skilled workers. To shed some light on this issue, and help companies attract employees, the market research firm Intelligence Group, has compiled the first-ever European Talent Intelligence Manual for 2022. "Personally, I was really surprised to see London up there in the Top10." Toby Culshaw "Although this is a wonderful piece of work, for me, too much detail is missing. Who did the survey? How was it split? What are the age groups? What are they really basing good on?" Alison Ettridge An interesting report from the Hiring Lab, Economic Research by Indeed, showed during the pandemic’s initial phase, demand for workers in sectors that predominantly employed women was significantly crippled. The subsequent loss of pay and work experience set women back further than they were before. "This is where we talk about how the 'return to work' policies have affected families. With the lack of childcare and other constraints, women’s ability to work has really skyrocketed. And not in the right direction." Joe Thompson At this point, it was definitely time to focus on Joe and his world. Alison, our interview extraordinaire, was really eager to learn more about the evolution of Joe's career - from working US navy submarine service to heading up a Talent Transformation consulting function Next, Alison asked the question that nobody on this podcast ever escapes from - what is your definition of Talent Intelligence? "I think Talent Intelligence is a toolbox. You've talked about different talent lenses, and for our clients, it's about helping them use data to make better decisions. Particularly today where no manager has ever experienced a global competition for talent like this ever before". Joe Thompson As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. Massive thanks for supporting us. Keep telling your friends about us. If you aren't telling your friends about us, start telling your friends about us. And if you haven’t any friends - join the Talent Intelligence Collective Facebook Group whilst Facebook still has users. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the 19th episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! No major break this time. We're fully on the case, powering episodes out at an incredible rate of around once a month. In this episode, Alison Ettridge, Toby Culshaw and I co-hosted an incredibly insightful conversation with Teresa Wykes of technology behemoth SAP. Quite a bit was happening in the world of Talent Intelligence when we recorded this episode. A new report from the International Labour Organisation found the number of hours worked globally dropped in the first quarter of 2022 to 3.8% below the pre-crisis benchmark. While Microsoft said, it plans to "nearly double" its budget for employee salary increases to retain staff and help people cope with inflation. In more news,  Apple has reported lost talent due to its return to office policy, and a survey of 1thousand US graduates are craving a more traditional work experience. “Stability is key”, stated the director of data insights and customer intelligence at iCIMS. After this very heated news roundup, I thought it was time for us to learn more about our fantastic guest, Teresa. Starting with the background role at SAP, obviously. How she got to where she is, and if her commercial background helped with her success. “For the first time, the business has to look externally more than ever. So our version of Talent Intelligence is educational. Primarily providing talent and competitor data to help the business make better decisions.” Teresa Wykes Talent Intelligence as a function is still relatively new. When you joined SAP, you were tasked to set up from scratch. How did you go about this? What qualities and skills did you look for? “Someone who has a lot of patience, resilience, who is interested in the world and people, who can write for different audiences and tell a story.” Teresa Wykes As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. Your support really does mean the world to us, and it is all we need to ensure this podcast continues to grow. And if you want to talk more about all things Talent Intelligence join our Facebook Group or WhatApps, if that’s more your thing. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to the 18th episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! After one of our famous ‘longer than expected’ breaks, we're back strong with what we believe is one of our best episodes yet. In this episode, Alison Ettridge, Toby Culshaw and I co-hosted an incredibly insightful conversation with Kim Bryan, Head of Global Insights & Intelligence - Sourcing Centre of Excellence at AMS. Throughout the episode, we cover some meaty old topics. Starting with some recommended listening - yes, we like other podcasts. For example, The IntelliCast Podcast latest episode on How Strategy & Intelligence Work Together at Target gave some great ideas about how Talent Intelligence could mature. We then discussed the cyber security industry's growth (or potential growth), as a new report has found that Ireland could grow its cybersecurity workforce to more than 17,000 by 2030. Yet the most prominent factor restricting it is the lack of qualified individuals. “I’m going to sound like a broken record, but this is yet another example of how we (as countries) must learn to tie in our economic growth ambitions with education.” Alison Ettridge Stemming from the news of Eightfold AI entering into a partnership with the US Defense Innovation Unit, tasked with creating a platform to identify undiscoverable expertise within the Department, we discussed the age-old question. Should companies start hiring individuals based on their skills, not their existing job title? “The potential for this is HUGE. The pandemic has accelerated this to a degree. People have had the time to fine-tune skills and learn new ones. Especially when learning code, website development, and other things have never been easier.” Kim Bryan Believed that to be enough news and insights - as informative as it was - Alison was eager to start questioning our guest, Kim. With questions like: "How has her team at AMS changed over her five years with them", and "What does a typical work day look like".  And “How do you present your findings? How much detail should you include?” “The important thing to remember is being mindful of who your end-user will be. From Heads of Talent Acquisition to HR to the CFOs or CEOs. That will inform how big that piece of insight is, the terminology you use, and the whole set-up.” Kim Bryan We’ve definitely mentioned this on the podcast before. While the insights are interesting to us for most clients or end-users, they are simply looking for direction on what to do next and where to look. “I most likely say this countless times a day. “So what?” Whether it’s a small tactical piece or a huge strategic one if you don’t have that, it’s just data and stakeholders using it if they don’t know what to do with it.” Kim Bryan As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. A review or a social share really goes a long way in helping us reach as many ears as possible. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to the 17th episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! This is our second episode of 2022; we’ll be coming up to a whole year of TIC soon. In this episode, myself, Alison Ettridge and Toby Culshaw spoke to Hallie Bregman from Cuup. Hallie is an ex-data scientist who really understands the power of analytics and how combining Talent Intelligence with People Analytics can bring outstanding results. Perfect for this show, don’t you think? After our usual (I think I can say usual now? After 17 episodes?) introductions, an article in the Financial Times questioned whether US workers will return to the labour market. At the end of last year, there were almost 11million unfilled openings, yet the unemployment rate was just 3.9%. As we begin to come out of the other side of the pandemic, this piece then won’t be permanent. It will be interesting to see how it flip and changes in the coming months and years. First shift we will see is a change in organisations approach to talent attraction. I also think, we will also see a change in workforce planning. Changing the focus from our immediate plan and instead switching to a proactive approach about what the hiring trends will be on the horizon. Alison Ettridge Unsurprisingly, the other article Toby flagged was that half of US SMEs were having to raise their salaries amid the tightening labour market. However, the article, which questioned whether the gender wage gap had roots extending back into childhood, raised the most questions. I think this is retrospective. We would need to take into consideration the culture shifts we are seeing in this generation. Hallie Bregman Believed that to be enough news and insights - as informative as it was - Alison was eager to start questioning our guest, Hallie. With questions like: “What were the different motivators for your career moves?” and “what was the things that surprised you when you entered the world of talent intelligence and people analytics?”. How manual everything was. The lack of automation was outstanding. I have been so encouraged to see how much technology has really been accepted in these past few years. Hallie Bregman Picking up on what Hallie mentioned way back at the start of the episode, her love for storytelling, Alison and Hallie started a conversation on the skills needed to present data to stakeholders. Data is very much a part of how things work these days, and a lot of people do actually understand metrics. It’s trying to shift the metrics we look at. Pulling them towards business metrics. Things like productivity, retention, attrition, those are the things that matter more. Hallie Bregman As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. A review or a share on social really does go a long way in helping us reach as many ears as possible. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to the 16th episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! Or should I say welcome back? We owe you all a big apology. It's been faaaaar to long since we released one of these. To the point that our last guest - Randy Bailey - messaged us last week asking whether he'd killed the podcast forever. Thankfully not. It's alive and kicking, and we're pleased to release our latest episode! In this one, myself, Alison Ettridge and Toby Culshaw co-hosted an episode where we spoke to Ian Addison-Smith of EY. And it's a goodun! We started off the episode in our typical fashion, with Toby updating us on the happenings within the world of Talent Intelligence. Unsurprisingly, 'quite a lot' has happened. The first piece of news that Toby was quite excited to talk about was how the scientific 'war for talent' was heating up as the pandemic restrictions continued to ease. After a brief discussion about the warning issued by US economist, Francisco Mary Daly related to Covid undermining female participation in the workforce. We moved to a rather interesting study about how important it is to be born at the right time of year. The study claims that young people born at the beginning of the year do significantly better in the labour market than their peers born later in the year. The final piece of news is about the new piece of tech entering the market, The Korn Ferry Intelligence Cloud. An AI-trained cloud powered by external market intelligence and 4 billion Korn Ferry datapoints on work structures, roles and employees' skills and motivation. I’m comforted by it, to know that the choice is there. But I completely agree, the word that kept screaming in my head was benchmarking. How much is it based on real tangible recent data? Ian Addison-Smith Absolutely, the is not one answer to this. And rightly so, teams are taking the multi vendor approach. No one is the single source of truth, so cross validation is the approach to take at the moment. Toby Culshaw At which point I felt like we had heard everyone's opinion about the world and its news, but we were eager to find out more about our guest, Ian. His world, his background. So I virtually passed the mic onto our only resident hard-hitting interviewer extraordinaire today - Alison. As someone who currently works in Talent Attraction but is building out a Talent Intelligence team, do you see insights applicable? And how would you envision them being used? I think with Talent Attraction, the way that a lot of teams operate has become really transactional. Which does delivers results. But it creates a blind spots as to how skills are evolving. While talent Intelligence has an ability to broaden the skills discussion and offer a more sophisticate voice, specifically when it comes to diversity. Ian Addison-Smith With enough time for one big final question, as we were approaching our 1hour cutoff mark, Alison asked Ian's top tips for creating a Talent Intelligence function. Don’t rush. Don’t build it on the fly. Take time and assess what is your definition is of Talent Intelligence and what kind of questions are you seeking to answer for your C-suite and other departments. Ian Addison Smith As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. A review or a share on social really does go a long way in helping us reach as many ears as possible. Till the next one – stay intelligent! ---------- Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to the 15th episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! Before I jump into this episode - we are excited to launch the 2021 Talent Intelligence Awards in partnership with Stratigens. Celebrating the most insightful, innovative, and best of talent intelligence. If you want to showcase your amazing work - check out this link (deadline for entries is the 15th of November). I was, as always, joined by my fabulous co-hosts Alison Ettridge of Talent Intuition and Toby Culshaw of Amazon, but unfortunately, no Nick Brooks. He was settling into a brand new role, but more on that in the next episode. This show wouldn't be anything without our guests - and this time, we were joined by a longtime fan of the show - the fantastic Randy Bailey of Walmart. We started off the episode in our typical fashion, with Toby updating us on the happenings within the world of Talent Intelligence. The news has been pretty active this month, but it has all revolved around the same topic - the widening labour jab. I've found this whole discussion to be quite eye-opening. They've talked a lot about improving the business environment but fundamentally it's really about a skills gap. The declining supply of labour and skills. Alison Ettridge As the gap continues to widen, many organisations are going to be looking at their existing workforce planning. We will have to expand into other markets outside of the UK, which is how the issue really ties into Talent Intelligence. It's the role of Talent Intelligence to help the conversation. We are often not solving the problem but bringing the conversation to the table to help get to an answer. Randy Bailey However, Europe is also facing a challenging labour environment, with Eurostat reporting their employment rate of people aged 20 to 64 was increasing quarter on quarter. Meaning their labour market slack - which comprises all people who have an unmet need for employment - is falling. Even if we decided to look outside the UK, we aren't going to see this immediate influx in labour. That talent market is ridiculously tight anywhere. It's time we start thinking about transferable skills. Toby Culshaw After this very labour focused discussion, it was time for us to find out more about our amazing guest, Randy. Eager to find out how Randy became the Sourcing Grandmaster (and what that is), the skills he needed to transition into Talent Intelligence and how sourcing has changed over the years. I was much more about the data initially, but I learned pretty early on within Talent Intelligence, making this information visually easier to read and explain is as important as the data you are presenting. Randy Bailey On that topic, is there any advice you should share with your past self about starting a Talent Intelligence team? Where to start? Or with what skills? Always be curious. Take the extra time to present the ideas in a way that people can actually understand the information. Having an amazing diverse team as well really helps with diversity of thought and approach to the puzzle. Randy Bailey As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. A review or a share on social really does go a long way in helping us reach as many ears as possible. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to the 14th episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! Before I jump into this episode - I wanted to let you know about an extra special offer our sponsors Stratigens are offering to all our listeners. If you go to Stratigens.com, book a demo, and enter the promotional code "TIC2021", you'll get a discount and a free proof of concept. How wonderful! It's been a while, but the group is finally back together. And we've all been pretty excited. Because in this episode, Alison, Toby, Nick and I were joined by a big hitter - Elke Manjet from SAP. One of the most interesting articles that Toby saw this month was about women in the workforce. The Financial Times article quoted, "The biggest trend we will see over the coming years is women dominating and redefining much of the labour market." If you look at the enrolment rates across the colleges, there is often a higher representation of females, but you see the drop off rate in the post-education. I think this will truly show the companies who are ready to embrace the future - they will be setting themselves up to capitalise on diversity as a competitive advantage. - Nick Brooks It's a cultural change that is allowing this shift to happen. And the ramifications of this shift are likely going to affect a lot of departments outside of Talent Intelligence. Workforce planning, for example. On the topic of the workforce, there are ample pockets of people that historically, companies have been terrible at engaging with. With over 790 thousand people aged between 50 and 64 years either actively seeking work or are inactive but willing to work, this is undoubtedly a gap that companies shouldn't be overlooking? Ageism is still a colossal issue. We're talking about a group filled with knowledge and expertise. It's a real missed opportunity. And I find that most companies do try to hide behind the guise that the workforce is simply unable to keep up with digital transformation. - Toby Culshaw However, digital transformation is ever-changing and with time out of the workplace, you can risk being left behind. So when looking at this gap as an opportunity, we also need to consider returnships. How do we re-introduce this workforce? How do we bring them up to speed? Given the skill shortage, this part of the population is definitely not tackled enough. We should be looking at upskilling society. So at SAP, we've partnered with a company that offers digital upskilling regardless of their prerequisite. - Elke Manjet Maybe you could tell, but as we were all quite eager to find out more about our fantastic guest, I figuratively passed the mic onto our hard-hitting resident interviewers extraordinaire, Alison and Nick. Alison, in particular, was extremely excited to hear about Elke's thoughts on the rise of Talent Intelligence. From someone who is not a leader in Talent Intelligence but has spent years within the tech transformation industry, working for one of the biggest global tech industries. While before we gathered insights anecdotally, Talent Intelligence is the professionalisation of information gathering. The need for data has also grown as companies globalise and labour markets grow tighter, which has fuelled the demand for Talent Intelligence. - Elke Manjet As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. A review or a share on social really does go a long way in helping us reach as many ears as possible. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to the 13th episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! In this episode, apart from being joined by my amazing co-hosts Toby Culshaw and Nick Brooks, we welcomed the incredible Andrew Gadomski from Aspen Analytics. We started off the episode in our typical fashion, with Toby updating us on the happenings within the world of Talent Intelligence. Specifically with a topic that has caused quite a stir - Google considering cutting pay off those work from home. For me, it's quite an interesting one, as I don't really see it as big of news as it's been built up to be. Most companies will have some form of calculation based on where their employees are working (regions, cities and countries). There has always been a pay flex. Toby Culshaw This is a hot topic, isn't it? And I think the biggest issue is that people are confused. Employers should start making this part of their employment brand. Full transparency. Andrew Gadomski However, when viewing this topic from a different perspective, surely employees should be paid on the outcome of their roles, regardless of where and how it is completed? I think many companies, and specifically Google have just caused quite a bit of confusion for their staff. So with this transparent tool, employees will be able to select whatever works for them, and they will be compensated in accordance with their choices. Nick Brooks Clearly, there are definitely a lot of factors. It's not just a clean-cut solution. And most of us are still in experiment mode. Moving on to a completely new topic, we discussed the often seen parallels between Talent Intelligence and Competitive Intelligence, highlighted with a PhD paper by Luis Madureira. Which, of course, fuelled me to ask Andrew the essential question for our podcast guests - What is his definition of Talent Intelligence? I was prepared for this question and I believe Talent Intelligence to be a function whose job it is to aggregate information about the workforce, the competition, the diversity, the salaries etc.. and to use that information to determine where, when and how to do things differently. Andrew Gadomski It's definitely murky waters. With many cross overs between competitive, sourcing and talent intelligence. So much so that Toby shared his idea of renaming Talent Intelligence to Labour Market Intelligence. Already way past our halfway point; it was definitely time for us to find out more about our amazing guest, Andrew. And as Alison was away enjoying some much-needed sunshine on holiday, it was up to Nick to ask those hard-hitting questions. We discussed the challenges of bringing together internal and external data sources and deriving meaningful insights from them. As well as the importance of data hygiene. I may be a bit bias when I say this, but I really do think this was such an interesting episode. Especially when Andrew discussed his definition of Talent Intelligence and how he believes it will change over the coming years. As always, we would love to hear your feedback! So please leave us a review. Let us know what works, what doesn’t... And if you can, help us spread the word, your support is very much appreciated. Till the next one – stay intelligent! Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → Stratigens from @Talent Intuition.

Welcome to the 12th episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! Before I jump into this episode - I wanted to let you know about an extra special offer our sponsors Stratigens are offering to all our listeners. If you go to Stratigens.com, book a demo, and enter the promotional code "TIC2021", you'll get a discount and a free proof of concept! How wonderful! And, just as a warning, Nick's audio broke down halfway through the episode. So he asked his questions through me, via chat. Which was odd. In this episode me - Alan Walker - Alison Ettridge and Nick Brooks co-hosted an incredibly insightful conversation with Eric Moskowitz Head of Talent Intelligence and Analytics at Modern Executive Solutions. In Toby's absence, the role of leading us through the news section - highlighting the compelling and thought-inducing hot topics around Talent Intelligence - fell upon me. So bare with me as we work out way through Toby's list, which luckily he managed to collate and pull together for me. The first interesting piece that I was eager to talk about revolved around the increase in US Workforce volatility. With the unemployment rate down nearly 50% year-over-year, almost every job category showed a significant volatility increase in Q2. What I found really fascinating about this report were the sectors that saw the most change. Categories like: Public Safety, Military and Skilled Trade. Which are not the typical sectors we would be seeing with these increases in volatility. - Alison Ettridge I think it's because people have been sitting in their houses for the past 15ish months. And now that they have the opportunity to run away or go on that trip of a lifetime - they don't want to wait any longer. - Eric Moskowitz With many of us reprioritising what is important, the lure of truly flexible working is causing a massive shift in the corporate world. With many employees shifting industries and sectors on the hunt for that flexibility and possibility higher quality of life. Transitioning our conversation smoothly onto our final piece of worldly news from the Future of Education, we discussed the fundamental disconnect between the UK's modern education system and the job market requirements. What is crazy to me is that the Common Entrance Exam I took 30ish years ago, is exactly the same today. And yet the skills you need now are completely different. - Alison Ettridge To add to your point Alison. What about emotional intelligence? Or soft skills? How do we prepare the next generation to operate and think in different ways so that they can hit the workforce with a different perspective. There is a fundamental redesign that needs to happen - Nick Brooks At this point, I felt like we had heard everyone's opinion about the world and its news, and we were eager to find out more about our guest, Eric. About his world and his background. So I virtually passed the mic onto our resident hard-hitting interview extraordinaires - Alison and Nick (while I took a see back and put my feet up). As ex-reporter for Bloomberg, Alison and Nick were curious to know how Eric had transitioned into Talent Intelligence and his learnings from journalism into his role today. We then discussed what are some of the best primary or human intelligence-gathering practices out there. What type of success could you experience with consistent collection practices. And how to help a client diagnose internal business opportunities versus external business landscapes and competition. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. Till the next one – stay intelligent!

Welcome to the 11th episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast! Where we, meaning me and my far more talented co-hosts Alison Ettridge and Toby Culshaw, and Nick Brooks the wonderful Gerrit Schimmelpenninck from Philips. After our usual pleasantries, Toby dived straight in with his update on the happening within the world of Talent Intelligence. We started by discussing a recently released article by Indeed, Employer Use of Hiring Incentives Grows. The article states that job searches for hiring incentives, such as signing bonuses, retention bonuses, and cash incentives, have jumped 134% since the beginning of the year. Not only have searches gone up, but job postings advertising hiring incentives has also doubled since last July. I think that a great sign as to how hot the market is at the moment. – TOBY CULSHAW Hiring incentives have always been around for more senior roles, so what is really interesting is how this is now trickling down into more junior roles. We all know there are skills that are hard to find, cause perhaps they are hard to learn. But what this increase is telling is that the search for specific talent is expanding to the rest of the labour market. – ALAN WALKER Toby continued with his worldly updates pivoting our chat to something that many may not have thought about. As we begin to see many companies returning to office-based work, could this be the end of the baby boomer workforce? As many will likely be debating if there is worth in re-joining the commuting rat race. Will we see a much larger than usual surge of retirements during the rest of this year? And will that mean to the labour market? I think this is when we should talk about forecasting. We just all assume a constant supply. But there is no allowing for a big event that could cause a massive change. So I’m really excited to see if some of the economic forecasts pickup on it. – ALISON ETTRIDGE The final piece of news for this episode that Toby shared was around a quote from the International Labour Organisation’s Director-General, Guy Ryder. He underlined that unless deliberate action is taken to protect the labour market, the world of work will become even more unjust, less inclusive and ultimately less sustainable. At which point I felt like we had heard everyone’s opinion about the world and its news, but we were eager to find out more about our guest, Gerrit. His world, his background. So I virtually passed the mic onto our resident hard-hitting interviewer extraordinaires – Alison and Nick (through me, via chat). We find out about Gerrit’s university degree in history and how it may or may not have helped his Talent Intelligence career. And where Gerrit feels that his role as Senior Talent Intelligence Manager at Philips sits. In analytics, or a commercial role, or a broader role. And the type of projects that his team would get involved in. The thing with Talent Intelligence is that is hard to convey the value of it, without showing the work. So you need to be confident and show how much value you can bring to any department. – GERRIT SCHIMMELPENNINCK As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. All we ask in return is your help in telling the world. This podcast needs your support to reach as many ears as possible. A review or rating on your favourite podcast listening app does go a long way. And of course, if there’s anything we can do better – drop us a line. You can do this via email or reach out to us on our LinkedIn page or Facebook Group. Till the next one – stay intelligent!