developing talent acquisition during a recruitment pause
What happens to talent acquisition professionals when one of the world ’ s biggest professional services firms goes on a recruitment pause ? They spend time upskilling their teams , focusing on diversity and celebrating their story , says Joe Archila , Head of the Talent Acquisition Programme Office at Marsh & McLennan Companies .
One of the key commitments our executive leadership team communicated to colleagues when the COVID-19 pandemic hit was that no one was going to lose their job . Yes , we had to shut down our recruiting for a couple of months from March , but we ’ re now beginning to see an uptick in hiring , particularly in parts of our business that weren ’ t impacted as strongly , such as insurance and re-insurance .
During this downturn , we focused on upskilling our recruiters . Part of it was around our tools and technology , really drilling down into the platforms we use to hone our skills and better understand their impact , as well as retraining on unconscious bias .
We spent more time studying our businesses – and I think this is key to the success of talent acquisition . We have four business units with different models . For our recruiters to be most effective , they need to understand the business they ’ re supporting . So , we invited guest speakers from each specialty to drill down into what those businesses need , alongside conducting deep-dive research into how they operate . We had the luxury of bandwidth to do this and I believe it ’ s not on the agenda enough for recruiters .
Job seekers today want to know where they ’ re going and if yours is a place they ’ ll feel good about working in
Tell your story
Another big shift we made – and this took shape as we were going through COVID – was to revamp our careers website . Our old site was a marketing wall of words and pretty pictures . Our new site speaks to who we are , what we believe in and what we celebrate . It ’ s all about storytelling , with colleagues sharing what they love about working at Marsh & McLennan and why they ’ re here .
I believe that ’ s what job seekers want today . They want to know where they ’ re going and if it ’ s a place they ’ ll feel good about working in . They want to know if they ’ ll be able to grow their careers and do fun and exciting things . In an average year , we get150,000-200,000 applicants , and I want to see the career site increase our applicant flow .
The career site also speaks to another of our key targets – increasing diversity . Gender diversity is a focus and we recently won three FAIRYGODBOSS awards for our efforts here : best company , best CEO focused on gender diversity , and best company for women in finance . We ’ re very proud of that . We ’ d like to do more in terms of showing up and being part of the conversation with other groups , such as working parents and the LGBTQ community , to show that we ’ re an employer of choice , striving to increase the diversity of our workforce .
An obvious focus has been hiring more black colleagues . Our CEO has been publicly vocal about doing so , and we ’ ve formed an internal Race Advisory Council – whose initial focus will be on the black community – to meet with our executive committee on a regular basis , as well as working closer with our employee resource groups . The challenge for organisations is that we ’ re all competing with each other for the same talent pool . We believe that to win , you have to show up as an employer of choice . You have to be the place people want to go to work , which is why our new enterprise career site is so important .
The future
As the COVID vaccine becomes widely available , we ’ re going to see a big shift back towards a job seeker ’ s market . The corporate world was shielded from the worst of the pandemic in many ways , as we could go almost 100 % virtual , unlike the retail and hospitality industries . However , it ’ s still going to be competitive , so recruiters will need to understand the talent landscape and make it easy for candidates to understand who you are as an organisation , what you stand for and where you ’ re going .
Finally – technology . There ’ s been a big shift towards artificial intelligence , chatbots and machine learning . Be careful how far you swing the pendulum . Leverage technology where it makes sense , but make sure you have personal interaction where it brings you closer to candidates , creates an advantage and strikes a balance – with the goal to make the end-to-end candidate experience better .
The view from AMS : Kristin Thomas
Marsh & McLennan has been an AMS client since April 2018 . Back at the start of our relationship , some of their strategic goals specific to recruitment were to streamline administrative processes globally , while ensuring a positive candidate experience and a high level of scalability . As a result , we provide end-to-end recruitment for lower-level roles in North America , the UK and Australia , and administrative support for roles outside of our scope in many other countries globally .