HireVue CEO Anthony Reynolds: Show people the path – they’ll grow their career with you

UNLEASH editor Jon Kennard speaks to the head of HireVue about what’s going on in the hiring market, the changes that could be on the way, and his secret formula for a better work culture. We join the conversation as they try to unravel a recruitment paradox.

+++

Jon Kennard: We’ve got quit rates, and we’ve got a record number of vacancies. My simple question to you is…what is going on? How have we got these two things going on? Are there certain industries that are affected more than others in different ways?

Anthony Reynolds: Yeah, it’s been a interesting year, Jon – thanks for having me on. You know, at the start of this year, clearly, everything everyone was focused on the fact that, hey, there’s way more job openings than there are workers or people that are looking for work. If you look at the stats in the US, there’s 11 million job openings. And there’s five and a half million people looking for jobs, the simple ratio is for every person looking for a job, there’s two jobs out there. And that’s echoed around the world.

I was in London, in Paris, a month ago; two weeks ago, I was in Australia, and you hear the same things. Now, the middle of the year, we started to see raising interest rates and inflation. And I think there was a thought that as interest rates and inflation crept up, that would have an impact on the number of job openings. And so far, it hasn’t. And so this trend in terms of the number of job openings in comparison to the number of workers is still, like I said, in the US this two-to-one ratio. In some other economies around the world, it’s maybe one to one like it is in Australia; there’s about a half a million job openings and a half a million people looking for jobs.

But still, the conclusion is the same. It’s very much a candidate’s market right now. And so for employers, they need to get creative in their strategies of how they are attracting talent into their organizations.

JK: With that in mind, even if it is a candidate’s market, and people have more options than ever, albeit in slightly different ways and across different markets, are we still, do you think, in the ultimate reskilling environment, where we’re seeing organizations look internally and realizing that for all the instability out there, the people that they have in their own organizations might be part of the solution to this instability?

AR: Well I think that needs to be part of the solution, whether organizations have figured out that reskilling as of yet is to be determined, because the data certainly wouldn’t point to that in solving the problem. When we look at the market from a higher view perspective, we really look at it in terms of early career/new grads, as one segment, hourly or casual workers or wage earners as a second segment, third, as professional workers. And then you have cutting across that this idea of internal mobility, right. And so in the last few months, what we’ve seen in some industries is the raising interest rates and inflation, of course, caused companies to cut back. And one of the ways they cut back is on in their hiring and their people.

You’ve seen some that particularly in the technology industry, where you see hiring freezes at some of the larger organizations like Google, Apple, Meta and things like this. The right way to approach the problem, as you pointed out is around reskilling, and looking at workers who have a particular skill set – today – that may be capable of doing something that is different in the future. There was a report out a while ago, where Ford had made a decision to lay off 8,000 people. And at the same time, were hiring thousands of people in their electric vehicle division. And one would argue, hey, if these workers in the classic part of Ford clearly had the skills, could there be an investment in training and reskilling to then make them capable of taking those jobs in the new electrical vehicle segment of their business?

At HireVue one of the things that we’ve done is invested a lot of time and energy around the science of assessments and assessing skill sets. And one of the things we’ve just launched is what we’ve called an agile mindset assessment to help organizations with this reskilling, and essentially what it is, it’s combination of interview questions as well as games, but it’s used to assess individuals around their people agility, their results, agility, their mental agility, and their change agility.

And all in the spirit of understanding, hey, is this someone that’s capable, maybe they’re in a position today, but moving into this new position that the organization demands in the future. So we think this is a large opportunity. Still, I don’t think there’s enough data to say that organizations are taking advantage of this reskilling opportunity, and we want to help them with that.

JK: Yeah, I’m sure there’s some out there who are quite far down that journey but plenty, who aren’t. As we head into this period of..well, continued period of instability, it looks like there’s recession on the way for countries that aren’t already in it; how would you suggest that organizations adjust their talent strategy? Does it look that much different to during the boom times? Or what kind of adjustments do people need to make?

AR: I think whether we’re officially in a recession or not, it feels like we are and I think in the UK, they’re officially in a recession and have been maybe since August.

That being said, from a worker perspective, it’s still very much a candidate’s market, right, because the candidates still have choice, there’s still an abundance of jobs that are out there. But what I think has changed in the post COVID-19 world is, clearly remote working is here to stay.

And I think many organizations are offering that to their employees or some sort of hybrid type work environment. Because it’s a candidate’s market, I always say you’ve got to look at the demographics of the candidates and the people you’re bringing into the organization.

But in general, I have this four C’s that I like to talk about. First is you’ve got to have a competitive compensation and benefits program; you’ve got to meet the bar, right? Because if you can’t meet the bar, someone’s gonna go find that job that does meet the bar for them. The second is around communication. Because everyone is working in a decentralized environment, they’re not working necessarily in an office environment, there’s not the watercooler talk there is and people rubbing shoulders, people want to be informed, right? They want to work for an organization that they know what’s going on.

And so as a leader in that organization, you need to take extra steps, invest in systems and processes to ensure you’re communicating with your people. Because if they don’t feel like they’re informed, then they don’t feel like they’re engaged, that’s when they’re going to make a decision to potentially start looking for other opportunities. So the second is communication and proactively communicating, and as leaders, I think that’s something that we all need to address.

The third is, then, culture. And that falls on the shoulders of the CEO, or the head of the company. And it’s that culture that you create, where people feel like they can show up and be their best every day. They want to feel included, they want to feel like this is a place that they believe in the mission and purpose. And so culture is becoming critically important, especially for those early career new grads. Generation Zs, as we call them.

And so that is the third C, the first C being the compensation that I mentioned in benefits, the second C being the communication, the third being the culture and creating this great work environment. And then four is around career progression. We’ve done a lot of studies, both internally and externally at HireVue, and what consistently comes as one of the top three themes that people want to see is they want an opportunity to grow within the organization. Show me a path, that if I build my skill sets, that I can move within the organization both upward and laterally.

And so to me, it’s the combination of those four C’s, the competitive compensation and benefits, the proactive communication, the creating of a culture where people feel like they’re included, can show up to do their best every day, and believe in the mission and purpose of the company and four is really around the career progression and giving me an opportunity to build and grow my career….

+++

The international festival of HR is back – don’t miss out, get early bird tickets for UNLEASH America today.