James Parker: Storytelling, Systems, and Strategy - Building a World-Class TA Function

Marcus speaks with James Parker about building and implementing a successful in-house talent strategy and some of the recruiting challenges he's encountered in his 8+ years of experience as a Head of Talent.

In the podcast, James shares his mindset around TA, which falls into 3 separate buckets:

1. Storytelling - the perception you are creating around the company - all things "employer branding" related

2. Systems - the infrastructure around the entire recruiting funnel, to ensure that there is a structured process that produces consistent and equitable hiring results

3. Strategy - Getting it done. Sourcing, inbound, referrals - getting the balance right.

James reiterates how important getting the system piece right is:

You have to 

- Understand your needs

- Understand what attributes you are looking for

- Know what kind of answers you are looking for

- Know how to score card every candidate in a uniform manner

- Create consistency across the entire interview panel

- Be mindful of recruiting biases, such as overscoring charisma.

James reveals how each interviewer is pre-armed with a specific list of questions around a given set of desirable attributes whilst being mindful of not bombarding candidates with duplicate interviewing experiences.

Also, James points out how cognizant they are at Tropic of the need to provide a stellar candidate experience from top to bottom - from the minute they get their first piece of correspondence, such as an acknowledgment of application note - right through to the final offer.

From a strategy perspective, James breaks down the top of the funnel into 3 more buckets - referrals, inbound, and sourcing and maintains that world-class recruiting teams absolutely own the sourcing piece of the TA puzzle. And in fact, as a team, they have better conversion ratios for sourced candidates than any inbound or referrals.

He shares how important it is to split test messages - and try different tactics, ranging from playful to short/direct, and maybe some different touch points as well.

Finally - James shares his thoughts on the rejection process and how they like to give mid-stage candidates the choice of communication - if they want to discuss on the phone - that option is open to them. James believes that it is critical to give the best possible brand experience and even try to help set rejected candidates up for success in the future.