Steve Lewis: Well, good morning, and welcome to the Hire Kind podcast.
Steve Lewis: I'm kind of got a professional crush on you both after I've seen you on stage at Wreckfest owning it, and now I'm sitting opposite you both.
Steve Lewis: It's quite bizarre.
Steve Lewis: It's like I'm at the final stage of an interview for w t w, so I hope I do well.
Steve Lewis: We are at the Wiser HQ in Farringdon, the employer value proposition people, the sponsors of this podcast.
Steve Lewis: I'm the managing director of, Hire Guide, and I'm delighted to meet you both and talk a little bit about talent acquisition at WTW.
Steve Lewis: Can I ask you both to introduce yourselves, give us an idea of what's in your span of control, what you do day to day?
Steve Lewis: That'd be great.
Amelia Dowty: You go, Claire.
Claire Lewis: Sure.
Claire Lewis: So hello.
Claire Lewis: Hello.
Claire Lewis: Claire Lewis, as you say.
Claire Lewis: I am the talent acquisition director for what we call WTWM for GB Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Claire Lewis: I also have a segment role and very recently have expanded my role to also now cover early careers.
Claire Lewis: So lots to learn.
Claire Lewis: Big year.
Claire Lewis: I've been with the organization for, in February, thirteen years.
Claire Lewis: So hopefully, it's a lucky thirteen years for me.
Claire Lewis: But, yeah, pretty much have always done some form of talent acquisition other than an eighteen month stint as an HR lead, which really reinforced the fact that I love talent acquisition, and came back and haven't looked back since.
Steve Lewis: Great.
Steve Lewis: Well, welcome.
Steve Lewis: Great to meet you, Claire.
Amelia Dowty: Thank you.
Amelia Dowty: Amelia?
Amelia Dowty: Amelia.
Amelia Dowty: I also work at WCW, and I look after, a portion of Claire's remit.
Amelia Dowty: So my role covers the UK and Ireland.
Amelia Dowty: And like Claire, I have a segment, responsibility, so I look after the insurance consulting and technology business across the European region.
Amelia Dowty: I've been at the business for about two years coming up now, and like Claire, have always been a recruiter of some kind, did a bit of agency, spent a long time in early careers.
Amelia Dowty: And, yeah, I'm really happy to be at this organization.
Amelia Dowty: I still feel like I'm new two years in, but I probably can't get away with saying that anymore.
Amelia Dowty: But, yeah, we've been through a lot over the past couple of years.
Amelia Dowty: It's been quite intense as an introduction.
Amelia Dowty: But, yeah, we're looking forward to the year ahead.
Steve Lewis: Great.
Steve Lewis: So if I wandered up to you at a careers fair, and I'm thinking WTW, I kind of know Willis Towers Watson.
Steve Lewis: I know you've got about eighty thousand people in the UK, about fifty thousand globally.
Steve Lewis: But what is it?
Steve Lewis: What do you do apart from having the fanciest offices in London next to the Gherkin?
Steve Lewis: Can you just give us a high level?
Amelia Dowty: Not as fancy as these offices.
Amelia Dowty: But, yes.
Amelia Dowty: So there's always been a bit of confusion.
Amelia Dowty: People still call us Willis sometimes.
Amelia Dowty: But we are a legacy, many, many businesses that have come together over the years.
Amelia Dowty: We've been WTW for a few years now, but in a nutshell, we are, an insurance broking and consulting organization.
Steve Lewis: Great.
Claire Lewis: And I and I think, you know, as you say, Amelia, one of the things that, you know, we've had to work hard on is is is our brand because Yeah.
Claire Lewis: Unlike some of the other organizations out there, WTW, Willis, and other than one of my highlights in going from Willis Towers Watson to WTW was the shortened email address, is is definitely being able to articulate.
Claire Lewis: Because sometimes when you say insurance, people go, that's really boring.
Claire Lewis: It's house, car.
Claire Lewis: Whereas we're the kind of organization where we insure buildings, crown jewels.
Claire Lewis: We have, you know Very good.
Claire Lewis: You know, terrorism, all those kind of cool things.
Steve Lewis: Right.
Steve Lewis: So part of your EVP, your value proposition as to why you're a great company to work for, when you've grown and you've rebranded and repositioned, you now need to say who you are now and where you're what you're striving for, where you wanna get to.
Steve Lewis: If you look at your cultures and values, not just a set of tenants on the wall as to, what you aspire to, could you give us an overview of your how that's blended into your, your promise to future employees and how you performance manage and and promote to those cultures and values as well?
Steve Lewis: How is it part of what you do as as an org?
Claire Lewis: I think one of the things that that for me summarizes it is something that our CEO said a couple of years ago when he was appointed into the role is that we're not striving to be the biggest organization out there.
Claire Lewis: We wanna be the best.
Claire Lewis: And you talk to our clients.
Claire Lewis: You talk to anybody that's that's joined WTW, whether it's from a senior leader, managing director, all the way down to a graduate.
Claire Lewis: And they they keep telling us, oh, you always told us it was so nice.
Claire Lewis: People like working here.
Claire Lewis: We kind of thought it was too good to be true.
Claire Lewis: Now we're here.
Claire Lewis: We absolutely see what you're saying.
Claire Lewis: And I think, you know, what that actually translates into is we we we we try to inspire people to bring their true self to the workplace.
Claire Lewis: So regardless of of your background, your view on the world, that is celebrated.
Claire Lewis: We don't have a overly political setup or institutionalized way.
Claire Lewis: You can only go to the sixteenth floor if you're c suite.
Claire Lewis: You know, when Carl, who is our CEO, comes to London, he sits on the same floor as us.
Steve Lewis: That's great.
Amelia Dowty: And I think that's bank of desks indeed.
Claire Lewis: Literally.
Claire Lewis: So I think it's it is.
Claire Lewis: It's about the authenticity.
Claire Lewis: It's about people feeling that they can bring whatever it is of their personality to the office, but thrive.
Claire Lewis: So it's not just here I am, but I'm able to thrive.
Claire Lewis: And me, personally, that's one of the reasons I'm still here thirteen years later is because the people Yeah.
Claire Lewis: Literally inspire me to be the best version.
Claire Lewis: And that sounds a bit cheesy, but I think that's something that you absolutely feed off and people see it whether you've been here five minutes or fifty years.
Steve Lewis: Well, that's that's that's great from within to to say it so authentically and passionately still.
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: Means a lot, doesn't it?
Steve Lewis: How you go through the the interview process of determining whether the candidate is right for the role or not and blending in those cultures and values and giving her a chance to shine when she goes through that process.
Steve Lewis: As we know, there's a number of different moving parts in an interview.
Steve Lewis: You've got the talent team, the recruiters.
Steve Lewis: You've got the hiring managers who are really good at what their job is, but maybe haven't been trained to interview really, really well.
Steve Lewis: You've got the candidate experience.
Steve Lewis: It's always running high and looking to say, oh, this is a really an example of what it maybe is like to work for the company.
Steve Lewis: I hope I get treated well in the interview.
Steve Lewis: Could you talk us through a little bit about your interview practices?
Steve Lewis: What underpins it to make sure that you've got more than your fair share of chance that it's gonna go well?
Steve Lewis: I mean, there's gonna be a delta to where you really ideally always wanna be every time consistently.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: But what kind of is the framework according to how you approach this?
Steve Lewis: So you've got you've got some guidance, that you give to to the people involved.
Claire Lewis: Sure.
Claire Lewis: So I'll take a stab, and then I'm sure Amelia's got some great examples herself.
Claire Lewis: But I think, you know, first of all, kind of acknowledging that we, by no means, get it right all the time.
Amelia Dowty: Okay.
Claire Lewis: And I think, you know, any organization is on that journey.
Claire Lewis: It's one of those scenarios where now more than ever, we've got a, you know, five to six generations in the workforce.
Claire Lewis: So when you're going through that interview process right from the beginning, your job description needs to bring to life not, you know, here's all the technical components.
Claire Lewis: It needs to bring to life, well, what does a day feel like in this job?
Claire Lewis: So we're trying to weave some of that inclusive language into our job descriptions.
Claire Lewis: We try to do things like, you know, hiring managers take a license to hire training, which really helps them remember things such as not using certain biases, what language should you use, sell the organization, for example.
Claire Lewis: So it's things like that that we're constantly trying to find ways to remind, particularly our hiring managers and our recruiters, that it's not just about you wanting to work for us, but how we sell the opportunity to you in an authentic way.
Claire Lewis: Because you don't wanna rose tinted approach, and you arrive and think, wow.
Claire Lewis: This is the furthest thing from what you told me it was gonna be.
Steve Lewis: Don't want that.
Steve Lewis: You don't.
Claire Lewis: I know, Amina, you've done some great things in the UK around there.
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: A couple of things spring to mind, actually.
Amelia Dowty: And following on from your mention of license to hire, I was in person yesterday in our Cambridge office delivering some hiring manager training to some of our, people there.
Amelia Dowty: Okay.
Amelia Dowty: And I'm going there for the first time and meeting them face to face, always a great thing to do.
Amelia Dowty: But we had some really interesting and engaging topics and conversation around the room.
Amelia Dowty: It was a really active audience.
Amelia Dowty: And the passion and the investment with which they came and brought themselves to that room really showed me that they really wanna give people a great experience.
Amelia Dowty: And, you know, it's not because they're sitting there scratching their heads, crying out desperate for talent, or, you know, they're not seeing good quality candidates come through, but they want to present a realistic view of what it's like in the organization.
Amelia Dowty: And we got into some real depth of, conversation about, you know, okay.
Amelia Dowty: Sure.
Amelia Dowty: These are your standard things that you might teach in that kind of session about, you know, about understanding and being aware of your bias or the legal obligations with which you are, you know, bound within an interview scenario, but also more in-depth quality conversation about, okay.
Amelia Dowty: So, you know, thinking about it from every angle, what's the long term impact on how does that feel that candidate feel like when they walk in out of the room?
Amelia Dowty: Should you even go and, introduce them to people in the office if they've bothered to come in?
Claire Lewis: You know, things like that.
Amelia Dowty: And, actually, they're really getting to the the depth of of of every aspect of the candidate experience.
Amelia Dowty: So I loved that.
Amelia Dowty: It was a great session.
Amelia Dowty: But, you know, also, you can have lots of really great content that underpins a framework.
Amelia Dowty: You know, we've got a global competency framework, and,
Steve Lewis: you
Amelia Dowty: know, we're a mature organization in that respect.
Amelia Dowty: But, actually bringing those things to life and giving a hiring manager the confidence to be able to empower and bring their own personal stamp to that interview conversation.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: You know, if they're confident in their own skin, the candidate's gonna be confident in theirs.
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: And it's that that being bringing themselves in, but also knowing that there's a certain obligation.
Steve Lewis: I love it.
Steve Lewis: They've gotta pass a license to hire exam or certification to earn the right to be able to do this because it's a touch point for the business.
Steve Lewis: Right?
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: And how they interact, candidate wait time, the feedback, not ghosting, the respect and compassion about what it's like to be in the other person's shoes.
Steve Lewis: You can you can provide frameworks, but you also need to coach the hiring managers to know what's expected of them as well.
Steve Lewis: And that's quite an interesting sometimes an unhealthy dynamic between the talent team and the hiring managers.
Steve Lewis: Sometimes it's not always right.
Claire Lewis: Hundred percent.
Claire Lewis: And one of the things that we that we've introduced in recent years is a candidate and hiring manager survey.
Claire Lewis: Okay.
Claire Lewis: And to be fair, I say recent years.
Claire Lewis: We've had it for a while.
Claire Lewis: But what we've done is we've enhanced the questions over the years Right.
Claire Lewis: To really try and understand where we're getting it right and where we're getting it wrong.
Claire Lewis: And that's both with candidates as well as hiring managers.
Claire Lewis: And I think some of the the feedback that that for me has been the most kind of heartwarming is when candidates have said, even though I didn't get the job, the experience at WTW was so impressive.
Claire Lewis: I'm gonna keep applying.
Claire Lewis: That's good.
Claire Lewis: That's really ultimate.
Claire Lewis: That's the ultimate compliment, isn't it?
Steve Lewis: I agree.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: That's that that that is because it's you putting yourself out there.
Steve Lewis: Now because you're not a big consumer brand, it's not like they're not gonna buy your sneakers or your, you know, your your iPods.
Steve Lewis: But but, essentially, good people know good people, and it's all part of your reputational piece you have out in the marketplace.
Steve Lewis: Let's let's dig into a little bit to what what you've done so far, what's got you here, your transformation.
Steve Lewis: I think we're coming up to a year anniversary of something big that you've done, but you talked a little bit about at, RecFest.
Steve Lewis: I was standing at the back of the pub crawl watching this thinking this is this is great.
Steve Lewis: We're a year gone past now, so I'd love to know a little bit about what's hap what what did you set out to do?
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: How close have you got to achieving it?
Steve Lewis: Just, kind of give us a kind of a high level pitch as to what you were trying to do.
Claire Lewis: Sure.
Claire Lewis: And then I think just the testament that we're here, we're laughing about it.
Claire Lewis: Actually, manage managers that we've, you know, somehow.
Claire Lewis: And and and not laughing in the sense because transformation is always really painful
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: To the individuals that it's often being done to.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: So I always have to kinda be really sensitive about the fact that we're laughing because we have managed to come through on the other side, and we're able to celebrate what we achieved.
Claire Lewis: But it's definitely really tough when people are losing their jobs.
Claire Lewis: But, ultimately, at a, you know, Innovator Pitch, what we what we were tasked to do about two years ago was as an organization, we were doing really well with our revenue, but our costs were a little bit too high internally.
Claire Lewis: So we were tasked as a leadership team, and, of course, I sit on the recruitment leadership team globally, was to come up with a way to reduce our costs.
Claire Lewis: So not reduce the quality, not necessarily reduce the headcount per se, but come up with a more sustainable, affordable model.
Claire Lewis: So what we did was we looked at our US and UK business to start with because that's where the most activity happens.
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: And we look to offshore the recruitment for some of our mid to lower level roles, and they were then, staffed in India and in the Philippines.
Claire Lewis: So, yeah, we we managed to hire a team.
Claire Lewis: When I say we, Amelia, managed to hire a team in India, and, you know, really go through the whole journey of from start to finish in terms of hiring the team in India, but then also how we educated hiring managers in terms of there's no change in process.
Claire Lewis: It's just a different person on the end of the line.
Claire Lewis: So
Steve Lewis: some assurance.
Steve Lewis: You don't want anyone spooked like a highly thoroughbred racehorse.
Steve Lewis: Like, oh, you know, is the growing too soft?
Steve Lewis: Is so you almost need to give some assurance and guidance.
Steve Lewis: And and and doing this through a period of transformation leading through change is tough.
Steve Lewis: Right?
Steve Lewis: Do you do you overprescribe how it's done, or do you allow them to run with it so they're they're authentic selves?
Steve Lewis: And you mentioned India.
Steve Lewis: If we could just focus on that as a it's quite an interesting market place anyway.
Steve Lewis: So let's look at the transformation in this particular area, geographically.
Steve Lewis: India is quite big there.
Steve Lewis: Now that healthy understanding of what's a directional prescriptive, this is the way we do things, versus more sitting next to them and coaching them through change.
Steve Lewis: Transformation through change is obviously challenging.
Steve Lewis: How did you approach that?
Steve Lewis: How did you get through it?
Amelia Dowty: So I would say that for my my team was previously based just in the UK.
Amelia Dowty: And so we set out to hire a brand new team from scratch, not having had any recruiting function at all in India.
Amelia Dowty: So it was a day one, you know, start up conversation from, okay.
Amelia Dowty: How are we gonna do this?
Amelia Dowty: Where are we gonna find these people?
Amelia Dowty: What's our activity?
Amelia Dowty: What's our approach?
Amelia Dowty: And also then working the business to try to get them to, you know, understand and come with us on the journey.
Amelia Dowty: So in terms of our, offshore recruiting activity, you know, I very much needed to have the investment of my remaining team members and business, recruiting leads to be part of that conversation, that journey.
Amelia Dowty: And, you know, we did it collectively as a team.
Amelia Dowty: It was not one person's activity or responsibility.
Amelia Dowty: And, we set out to hire, eleven people.
Amelia Dowty: We found twelve great people and ended up overhiring, which was a fantastic outcome, and had, you know, got to a position where, you know, it was very intensive, but with the end result of being in a really great place of having people that we were so pleased and proud to have hired.
Amelia Dowty: And, you know, the journey that they've been on for the past year has been incredible.
Amelia Dowty: And with the support of the local resources, global HR services sit there, the domestic recruiting team in India, you know, really collaborating on all parts of it.
Amelia Dowty: And I guess, culturally, yeah, it is a different setup.
Amelia Dowty: And, you know, we've had to do a lot of learning from our perspective, you know, both ways.
Amelia Dowty: Our India colleagues, many of them, you know, we set out with the intention of, like Claire said, not compromising on any quality.
Amelia Dowty: So the vast majority had hired in our space before within industry or within the UK and Ireland and Europe.
Amelia Dowty: So we had that quality, of, experience behind them, and we're just so impressed with everything that they've managed to do.
Amelia Dowty: But it's it's been a partnership the entire way through.
Amelia Dowty: And that helping the business understand that, you know, we're not going out to, change or compromise the service.
Amelia Dowty: These are really skilled recruiters, and we're, you know, in a great position because of it.
Claire Lewis: And I think one of one of the success stories to to what Emilia touched upon was we were actually able to grow the size of the team.
Claire Lewis: So our time to fill higher our time to fill ratio, should I say, reduced.
Claire Lewis: The quality increased.
Claire Lewis: Now, you know, that didn't happen overnight.
Claire Lewis: And I think for for for for us as as as a team onshore, it was really important that, because as a business, we we've had service centers in India and the Philippines for years, but we'd not had a team base there supporting our UK business.
Claire Lewis: So it was about being able to foster an environment where the team in India felt like we were learning from them as much as they were learning from us.
Steve Lewis: So important.
Steve Lewis: That's two ways.
Steve Lewis: It's a social contract between understandings Absolutely.
Steve Lewis: Adjusting.
Steve Lewis: It was great.
Steve Lewis: Very really great.
Steve Lewis: You said time to hire candidates.
Steve Lewis: That that's obviously a metric.
Steve Lewis: You can you can measure that.
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: And you can manage what you can measure.
Steve Lewis: So that's good.
Steve Lewis: So you can say, hey.
Steve Lewis: Look.
Steve Lewis: ICT was mentioned there.
Steve Lewis: I don't know what it stands for, but that's pretty important.
Steve Lewis: So it's like, hey.
Steve Lewis: ICT.
Steve Lewis: Look.
Steve Lewis: We've we've reduced that.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Right?
Steve Lewis: If we look at quality of hire Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: It's a little bit more esoteric, a little bit vaguer.
Steve Lewis: People are I don't even know vague is a word.
Steve Lewis: It it's kinda like how do you how do you measure and the quality of hiring decision?
Steve Lewis: How do you determine, is it through I'll throw a couple in there because we're seeing this a lot across the industry.
Steve Lewis: Is it that, if you focus on skills based hiring competency framework and you inject that into the interview
Amelia Dowty: Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: If you give people, hey.
Steve Lewis: These are great questions to expose that skill, and this is a good answer.
Steve Lewis: Can we all agree that's a good answer?
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: You let's proceed with candidates you've agreed.
Steve Lewis: If you measure all of that, and then you look a year later and you see the retention is there and they've been promoted, they've proven themselves from the promise they made in the interview, How does WTW go about the quality of hiring decisions so you can have the confidence in that your your team is doing its job well?
Steve Lewis: Are there any any kind of core four principles or anything you can share with us about how you approach that measurement of quality of high decision?
Claire Lewis: Sure.
Claire Lewis: And I think you've you've touched upon some of them already in terms of, you know, one one of the the the easiest metrics to measure is the turnover.
Claire Lewis: So if you're hiring people and, for example, they're not passing their probation or they're choosing to leave Yeah.
Claire Lewis: Through through feedback and exit interviews where it's like, well, this is not what I thought it was or I didn't get the support of my manager.
Claire Lewis: That tells us, whilst it's not necessary technically, in some cases based on the quality of hire, it does mean that we've got work to do.
Claire Lewis: Because, you know, the age old story is if you have a good experience, you'll maybe tell one or two people.
Claire Lewis: If you have a bad experience, you tell at least ten people.
Claire Lewis: So it it's it's it's that kind of, you know, looking at ratings on Glassdoor and other other organizations to kinda see what's out there.
Claire Lewis: But one of the easiest metrics is in our partnership with our HR partners and talent advisers in terms of how successful are the people that we have hired to your point.
Claire Lewis: Are we seeing longevity?
Claire Lewis: Are we seeing promotions?
Claire Lewis: Are we seeing development?
Claire Lewis: And we you know, we we've got a really good tenure of our average colleague at WTW.
Claire Lewis: I think a lot of that talks to the fact that people like working with us and so to the values.
Claire Lewis: But as a performance culture, our clients tell us they like working with us.
Claire Lewis: They see the value add.
Claire Lewis: They see the collaboration.
Claire Lewis: So it's a little bit of a fuzzy answer, but I think there is a one set principle that, you know, because it's such a diverse business.
Claire Lewis: So what good looks like for technology is very different
Amelia Dowty: to what
Claire Lewis: it looks like for consulting.
Claire Lewis: So those are some of the high level themes, but anything to add, Amelia?
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: I do.
Amelia Dowty: I think one of the things that just sort of hopping back to transformation is that we were able to make some really amazing tech improvements and data and reporting capability with the cost savings we were we made through that project.
Amelia Dowty: Right.
Amelia Dowty: And so that's enabled us to have much clearer and accurate visibility about the performance of our team in terms of delivery.
Amelia Dowty: But from a long term perspective, what we can use that data for for is also to look at then, okay.
Amelia Dowty: Well, these are the people that we hired.
Amelia Dowty: This is how long it took us.
Amelia Dowty: This was the and then, okay.
Amelia Dowty: Well, where are they?
Amelia Dowty: And we can track more accurate accurately that information going forward.
Amelia Dowty: And, you know, our our colleagues in the talent advisory team are, you know, our best friends in all of this process as well and its collaboration.
Amelia Dowty: But, you know, we hear, you know, anecdotally a lot of good feedback from the people that we have hired, versus, you know, other avenues.
Amelia Dowty: And we know that, you know, it's a testament to the fact that people buy into somebody who lives and breathes the cultures and values of the organization and shares their experience through the process as a recruiter, managing that all of those steps to bring them in.
Amelia Dowty: Those people tend to stay longer as well.
Amelia Dowty: It's no not being disparaging to any of our vendors or partners, but we we know that that's the experience.
Amelia Dowty: So, you know, that's something that we also have an objective to improve and increase, going forwards, and and we know that it comes it gives better outcomes.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Better outcomes.
Steve Lewis: McKinsey say that structured skills based interview gives you three to five times better on the job performative outcomes.
Steve Lewis: Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: If you focus especially in the early talent and early careers where they don't have a lot of relatable experience to tell stories about how they've done it before.
Amelia Dowty: Exactly.
Amelia Dowty: You
Steve Lewis: know, those transferable skills are gonna be an area, a safe space for them to talk about in an interview
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: In that way.
Steve Lewis: Tech enablement gave you a chance for transformation to bring some of that in and help your team understand where they are, when they need to get to.
Steve Lewis: So in an earlier episode, Rupesh, Panchero, who is head of go to market talent acquisition and exec hiring at ServiceNow, said that the role of the recruiter in its current form is obsolete.
Claire Lewis: Mhmm.
Claire Lewis: Quite
Steve Lewis: a mic drop moment.
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: Then he wanted to explain what how he used data to deliver that outcome and how the business was itself to sharps itself in changing.
Steve Lewis: So if you look at the tech toolkit and what you give to your recruiters, I was at LinkedIn around the corner for eight years.
Steve Lewis: So I'm guessing they got access to LinkedIn in some way with some licenses, and they search and approach people that way.
Steve Lewis: Do you can I do some cat, dog, coffee, tea question answer firing to you?
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: Of course.
Steve Lewis: Okay.
Steve Lewis: Let's get ready for this.
Steve Lewis: Alright.
Steve Lewis: So do you record interviews?
Steve Lewis: And either of you can answer.
Steve Lewis: First one first.
Steve Lewis: Do you record interviews, and, then measure, transcribe what was said and and and get data and insight from those interviews?
Claire Lewis: In Well, it's it's Amelia says no.
Claire Lewis: I say yes.
Claire Lewis: In some cases, we we use HireVue and got HireVue on demand.
Claire Lewis: So that's some recording.
Claire Lewis: Yep.
Claire Lewis: Don't necessarily transcribe it, but it's an easy way for a candidate to always bring their CV to life.
Claire Lewis: Manager watches the video.
Claire Lewis: We then invite them for an interview.
Claire Lewis: So Got it.
Claire Lewis: I don't know if that answers the question.
Steve Lewis: Live or async and gives them a chance to to record themselves, or do you actually record a live interview as well?
Claire Lewis: So we don't record live interviews.
Steve Lewis: So this is kind of a set of questions.
Steve Lewis: Please record yourself.
Steve Lewis: The manager, then she looks at it in her own time and then decides as a screening stage
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Top of funnel to bring through.
Amelia Dowty: Yes.
Steve Lewis: Okay.
Steve Lewis: So async interview is good.
Steve Lewis: We're enjoying enjoying this.
Steve Lewis: In terms of, answers if
Amelia Dowty: we're gonna ask opposite answers to everything.
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: It's been good so far.
Claire Lewis: It's like how we married.
Claire Lewis: How long do we know each other?
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: You're right.
Steve Lewis: Ask a minute.
Steve Lewis: Put the headphones on.
Amelia Dowty: I'll give a straight answer.
Amelia Dowty: I'll give a straight answer.
Amelia Dowty: Claire will give some color and actually explain the answer.
Steve Lewis: So correcting the no, you don't record live interviews.
Steve Lewis: Correcting the yes for AC with HireVue.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Understood.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Okay.
Steve Lewis: Good.
Steve Lewis: Let's move on.
Steve Lewis: Do you give a you mentioned competency based frameworks.
Steve Lewis: How do you work with the hiring managers and the talent team to agree on what a good set of questions and what a good set of answers looks like?
Steve Lewis: That's really important during that intake to calibrate on that.
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: That's a really good question.
Amelia Dowty: And we were talking about this yesterday, in fact.
Amelia Dowty: Fact.
Amelia Dowty: And, you know, one of the great things that we discussed around the table about alongside the interview training was talking about okay.
Amelia Dowty: It's of course, you wanna be prepared for how you're gonna, you know, feel in the room and set everyone, you know, off on their best possible journey in the conversation.
Amelia Dowty: But so much of the work is what you do beforehand Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: And and not just in an intake call with a recruiter, but how you assess, you know, have we got a diverse panel?
Amelia Dowty: Are you gonna make sure that through the process, each stage, who's gonna be in the room?
Amelia Dowty: Who's going to be asking what questions?
Amelia Dowty: And how are you gonna ensure that after one round, if you've got any reservations, the next person, you know, ticks those things off and identifies any concerns?
Amelia Dowty: So, exactly that.
Amelia Dowty: You know?
Amelia Dowty: We do it in a recruiting intake call.
Amelia Dowty: Exactly what's gonna be your process.
Amelia Dowty: And, you know, the recruiter doesn't have to be in every single conversation as it goes, you know, all the way through the panel and, you know, to brief everybody about it, but they they should do that.
Amelia Dowty: And that's our you know, it might not happen all the time.
Amelia Dowty: We aren't perfect.
Amelia Dowty: But, equally, you know, we know that by setting out a framework and saying, we've got a very clear structure of if you're at a certain career level, how many interviews should you have, what we think is the right number Okay.
Amelia Dowty: In terms of a process, and how many people should you be meeting through the from the business through that conversation.
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: And that's our framework.
Amelia Dowty: Okay.
Amelia Dowty: Go go away and do that.
Amelia Dowty: You decide between you who's gonna who's going to address which areas, and then you know, and we will debrief afterwards with feedback.
Amelia Dowty: So we've got a kind of framework for that, and it does work.
Amelia Dowty: But, you know, what you need to do is enable the the conversation for all of the hiring managers to feel like they have given themselves the best opportunity to reach all of those different areas, and that's why they need to communicate all the way through the process.
Steve Lewis: Great.
Steve Lewis: Good to know the intent is there.
Steve Lewis: Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: Whether it's on a system of record and it helps to support and generate and build it through, we're starting to see some companies drop in a spec and extract a skills cloud and then have questions generated and answers.
Steve Lewis: And they they have that as part of the discussion on creating what the scorecard looks like.
Steve Lewis: Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: So if we pivot a little bit to Claire in your role with early stage talent Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: And early careers, they don't they haven't done it before in a lot of cases to tell that story.
Steve Lewis: So how do you agree what a good scorecard is and how you progress when it comes to, the the the, the the initial screening and and manager interviews in early talent.
Claire Lewis: So now you're really going to quiz me.
Claire Lewis: What is it?
Claire Lewis: Week two in the job?
Claire Lewis: So my understanding is and and and this is absolutely something that I'm I'm kind of exploring as this expanded part of my role, is what I know that we've we've started to move away from is rather than, you know, the traditional CV based application process, is doing more of an assessment center.
Claire Lewis: So you're using using tools to help with the assessment, whether it's virtually or in person.
Steve Lewis: Game and task based tools.
Steve Lewis: Something like that.
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: So it's it's really allowing the individual to have some practical examples that that that allows us to test some of their their capability in terms of, you know, how do you deal with change, how how do you deal with with, you know, communication, all those kind of things that really test the skill, as you say, rather than you know, I always one of my favorite stories is talking to one of our HR leaders.
Claire Lewis: And he applied for well, applied for several early career roles in his in his kind of trajectory, and he kept not getting the job.
Claire Lewis: And the reason was, he found out many years later, was one of the questions was, you know, what do you see your future looking like?
Claire Lewis: What does success look like?
Claire Lewis: And he's on broad.
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: Nice and broad to somebody that knows very little.
Claire Lewis: And his response was, my goal is to be on Big Brother.
Steve Lewis: Okay.
Claire Lewis: Which, you know, I just give
Steve Lewis: You can't unpack that.
Steve Lewis: There might be something actually of merit in there.
Claire Lewis: Absolutely.
Claire Lewis: But, you know, to somebody that's sixteen years old, at the time, this is probably even my age away, you know, whether or not Big Brother's still, you know, really cool or not.
Claire Lewis: But that was his ultimate goal.
Claire Lewis: That was what success looked like to him.
Claire Lewis: But, you know, I think in in in kind of some of the insurance space, that was like, you are so not our person.
Steve Lewis: It's unrelatable, isn't it?
Steve Lewis: Probably our people in that
Claire Lewis: Whereas he's now one of the most successful HR leads I've ever worked with.
Steve Lewis: Drop the mic.
Claire Lewis: Drop the mic.
Claire Lewis: Perfect.
Claire Lewis: And so maybe we all should be wanting to be on big brother, and maybe that's how we determine success.
Steve Lewis: We well, yeah.
Steve Lewis: Because, obviously, there was something in there and to dive deeper and understand what the motivation was Yes.
Steve Lewis: And why was it it's the definition of success to unpack.
Steve Lewis: And some people, it's so alien they can't understand.
Steve Lewis: And we talked about the generations in the workforce as well.
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: Sometimes that leap is too much to do.
Steve Lewis: So it's good to have some framework and guidelines around, but not so much it smothers you when you can't have an authentic experience.
Claire Lewis: Absolutely.
Claire Lewis: And, really, as you say, his reason to going on Big Brother was he loves people.
Claire Lewis: He loves different people from different backgrounds.
Claire Lewis: Hello.
Claire Lewis: Is that not a core skill for an HR director?
Claire Lewis: So I think it is.
Claire Lewis: As as as to your earlier point, Steve, is that I do if I think about what my role was like when I started in recruiting, that that aspect is obsolete.
Claire Lewis: We're now having to be more consultative than we've ever had to be, and that's consultative in terms of the experience, the type of questions, how we make it really diverse for somebody that maybe has you know, is on the spectrum or somebody that doesn't cope well with crowds to somebody that maybe grew up in a different country.
Claire Lewis: There's so much of that.
Claire Lewis: If we wanna really attract top talent, we have to consult our business, our candidates throughout the process.
Claire Lewis: Even our vendors, we have to consult with them to bring to life who we are.
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: That then determines successful hiring.
Steve Lewis: Got it.
Steve Lewis: You you've you've hit it on the head there.
Steve Lewis: Diverse teams are more successful.
Steve Lewis: There's no monopoly on wisdom.
Steve Lewis: So to have that challenge of thought around a a a question and a challenge and people understanding how to solve for it, it it is important.
Steve Lewis: It it it's almost like how do you mitigate risk and bias within the process?
Steve Lewis: How do you set yourself up for success?
Steve Lewis: I know, Amelia, you were exposed recently to something that could be an industry standard in this area.
Steve Lewis: Do you wanna say a little bit more about that?
Amelia Dowty: I'd love to because it's such a great initiative.
Amelia Dowty: So, I was lucky enough to be in these very offices, back end of last year to meet, Lucy Killaby and Dan Gallagher who have partnered on initiative to, create an industry standard for inclusive hiring, which is awesome.
Amelia Dowty: And I I think for the first time, it's looking at inclusion within hiring across so many different lenses.
Amelia Dowty: It's not just looking at gender balance or ethnicity.
Amelia Dowty: It's eight different, lenses of diversity Right.
Amelia Dowty: With a view to, effectively, what they do is partner with organizations to kind of run an audit process.
Amelia Dowty: They set a road map for the organization to think about, okay, lots of different avenues about how they can great create a great inclusive recruiting structure and process.
Amelia Dowty: And I think it it sounds incredible, and we're gonna be taking part in that this year, hopefully.
Amelia Dowty: And they're doing a a version for, vendor partners as well, so third party agencies.
Amelia Dowty: So, hopefully, they are don't mind me mentioning their names,
Steve Lewis: and they're dropping them.
Steve Lewis: In here.
Amelia Dowty: But I think it's awesome.
Amelia Dowty: And I think, you know, more organizations need you know, it's not just a, you know, once a year kind of, oh, hello.
Amelia Dowty: We did this one thing once, and we and we check.
Amelia Dowty: And we ticked a box.
Amelia Dowty: It shows that you are, in truth, committed to creating an inclusive hiring process and, you know, hopefully opens the doors up to lots of different people who wouldn't have considered us before.
Steve Lewis: I love it.
Steve Lewis: So Hire Guide is a certified b corp, b benefit corporation, so we care about social impact.
Amelia Dowty: Which is incredible.
Amelia Dowty: Thank you.
Amelia Dowty: And that's a hard thing
Steve Lewis: to achieve.
Steve Lewis: Correct.
Steve Lewis: You don't
Amelia Dowty: get enough credit for that, Steve.
Amelia Dowty: Well, I'll
Steve Lewis: take as much as I can.
Steve Lewis: It wasn't all me.
Steve Lewis: The actual most powerful person in the business isn't the CEO or the founders.
Steve Lewis: Her name's doctor Alicia Dam.
Steve Lewis: She is a PhD in IO site hiring science.
Amelia Dowty: Yep.
Amelia Dowty: So
Steve Lewis: she makes sure
Claire Lewis: Super smart too.
Steve Lewis: She's super smart and relatable, but she keeps us all on point to make sure that the AI is responsible AI.
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: It doesn't give you a view and tell you who should hire when you interrogate the the scores people have made and the, the transcripts of the interviews.
Steve Lewis: It'll be, is Steve coachable?
Steve Lewis: And it'll give you the evidence of what was given in the interview plus the scores of people, and it'll help you make the right decision.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: But we all need to level up in terms of, making sure that we don't just hire people that look like us.
Steve Lewis: That actually, we think about what needs to be done for it to be a level playing field on merit, but the new normally is pouring more of a certain type in at the top so it is on merit, and you get equal numbers to be able to look for.
Steve Lewis: That's obviously that where we wanna get to.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: So interviewing is shit.
Steve Lewis: I think that's a technical term.
Steve Lewis: I I think it's shit because I think it's shit because, it's so gut feel.
Steve Lewis: And this is my favorite question, so I'm gonna ask ask it.
Steve Lewis: This is how many golf balls on a seven four seven?
Steve Lewis: How many washing machines in Mexico?
Steve Lewis: I wanna be really smart and trip you up, and I wanna see you working out.
Steve Lewis: And oftentimes, you look around the table, and they don't even know if it's a good answer or not.
Steve Lewis: They're vague.
Steve Lewis: They ask a clever question, and then they they they don't know if it's a good answer.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: So in terms of the interview process and structure and mitigating the bias out of it, making sure that the questions are on point relatable to the role, you said some competency based frameworks.
Amelia Dowty: Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: You mentioned the license to hire training.
Amelia Dowty: Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: What is WTW thinking about to make sure that dynamic between the candidate, the hiring manager, and the talent team is on point so that experience of the candidate, if she gets the role or not, is absolutely as you want it to be as much of the time, every time as possible.
Steve Lewis: What what what more could you do?
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: It's it's it's a really good question.
Claire Lewis: And I think, you know, going back to, you know, what is what my definition is of what is diverse probably differs to both of yours.
Claire Lewis: You know, what does good look like probably differs.
Claire Lewis: And one of the the challenges we have, and it's a good thing, but we have a challenge in our organization, is that we're hiring for so many different type of individuals.
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: So, you know, what looks good
Steve Lewis: Crown jewels to terrorism.
Steve Lewis: Right?
Steve Lewis: Exactly.
Claire Lewis: To an actuary, to a consultant, to, you know, a technical Java developer.
Claire Lewis: So I I think it's about using as much as we can in terms of the surveys, the feedback from our candidates, in terms of, as you say, trying to create that experience.
Claire Lewis: So, you know, the job description, making that as true to what the job will be as possible Yeah.
Claire Lewis: When they're talking to the recruiter.
Claire Lewis: And that could be from the application process.
Claire Lewis: Is that quick?
Claire Lewis: Do I find the stuff that I need?
Claire Lewis: So having a good careers page that, again, has videos of people talking what it's like to be at the organization.
Claire Lewis: The interview questions, not looking to try and set somebody up.
Claire Lewis: Because to your point, Steve, I think some of the best interviews that you have is where it's sometimes almost a little bit of a chat, so it feels unstructured, but there is a structure.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: That's
Claire Lewis: That's the best kind of interview.
Claire Lewis: And then seeing them whether they get the job or not, then giving the feedback in the various different portals we can
Steve Lewis: give feedback.
Claire Lewis: Must give feedback.
Steve Lewis: Don't go Absolutely.
Steve Lewis: Not in this day and age.
Claire Lewis: Oh, and and, you know, we we we really do try.
Claire Lewis: And I think, you know, the market that we're in at the moment, sadly, has got more people applying than ever.
Claire Lewis: We had a role that we posted the other day, and within twelve hours, we had seventy four applications.
Claire Lewis: Now that's really difficult to give all seventy four a meaningful experience.
Claire Lewis: So we do try in terms of using automation and technology to help us through some of the stages.
Claire Lewis: But if you're having a conversation with us, then we try, we're humanly possible, to give you some sort of feedback.
Claire Lewis: Because as you say, ghosting is is awful, but I think some of it is where because of the market that we're in at the moment, I think many TA functions are struggling because there's less of us, but there's more work.
Claire Lewis: So Yeah.
Claire Lewis: It it's it's a fine balance, isn't it?
Steve Lewis: Big time.
Steve Lewis: Big time.
Amelia Dowty: I would add to that as well.
Amelia Dowty: I think, you know, there's always more you can do, and we always have the, you know, the challenge of doing doing more with less, and and yet there's still more to do.
Amelia Dowty: And I think as you go on a transformation journey like we have, what I've seen over the past year or so is that we have had to put ourselves in a different position, with the business to be able to be more consultative.
Amelia Dowty: And and I feel as though and I I might have read this entirely wrong, Claire.
Amelia Dowty: But I feel as though we have leveled up our team, and not only just by the fact of the our increased capacity and capability, you know, headcount for for a start.
Amelia Dowty: But I think in terms of the value we're able to offer with that additional service from our leadership perspective, it gives us more credibility in the ring of the business.
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: And therefore, we're able to bring to the table much more challenge to them with things like hiring for potential when you've got a candidate that's, okay.
Amelia Dowty: Joe's just left.
Amelia Dowty: I want to replace Joe with Joe.
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: That's true.
Amelia Dowty: But but let's unpick that.
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: And, actually, let's think about, okay, really what you need and trying to get into the roots of, you know, any hiring decision.
Amelia Dowty: There's so much more at play than just I really need that bum on that seat.
Amelia Dowty: And, you know, again, got harping on about my day, my great day in Cambridge yesterday.
Amelia Dowty: But with these hiring managers yesterday, we were talking about, okay.
Amelia Dowty: We we are going to ask you these questions, and you might not have thought about it.
Amelia Dowty: You might have just sit there and thinking, okay.
Amelia Dowty: I'm gonna write my job description, and it's exactly the same role that just became vacant.
Amelia Dowty: Well, let's work through that.
Amelia Dowty: And what do you really need?
Amelia Dowty: And what don't you need, actually?
Steve Lewis: Simple.
Steve Lewis: Simple.
Amelia Dowty: Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: It is important.
Amelia Dowty: It's not a shopping list of requirements.
Amelia Dowty: It is a, you know, a must have, tight, concise, you know, ideal, you know, well, fit for purpose.
Amelia Dowty: And then, sure, there's always gonna be some ideals, but let's just be accurate about what we're looking for so that we can, you know, be as, fair and inclusive as possible.
Amelia Dowty: And think about what exactly that, what's coachable, what's buildable, and what can we get from somewhere else if we need to.
Steve Lewis: Yep.
Steve Lewis: And
Amelia Dowty: where create opportunities for other people?
Claire Lewis: It's just reminded me of something.
Claire Lewis: One of you know, in terms of there's a lot of talk about skills based hiring at the moment.
Claire Lewis: We've almost taken a slightly different angle, and we're doing skills based sourcing.
Claire Lewis: Okay.
Claire Lewis: Because sometimes it is it's about being that consultative.
Claire Lewis: So you've gotta understand what your business is doing.
Claire Lewis: You've gotta understand what they need.
Claire Lewis: You go and source the talent, and then you put profiles in front of them and go, have you considered these skills?
Claire Lewis: Because so often we hear, I know everybody in the market.
Claire Lewis: We go and do some skills based
Steve Lewis: on vanity at WTW.
Steve Lewis: Is that okay?
Claire Lewis: Right?
Claire Lewis: No. That's previous organizations long time ago.
Claire Lewis: But I think when you're bringing it through the eyes of skills based sourcing, you have the opportunity to put some profiles in front of your leaders that they might not have considered.
Steve Lewis: And you're a credible business partner.
Steve Lewis: You've earned the right to be at the table because you're bringing some business metrics.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: I know you work with our friends at Horsefly Analytics to look at labor market analytics as well.
Steve Lewis: So the more of that decision support where the data can can can kind of just validate what what you're doing.
Steve Lewis: You hit on something really interesting.
Steve Lewis: I'd just like to unpack a little bit, the the candidate experience and the satisfaction and saying that, oh, I'll I really enjoyed the experience even if I didn't get the job.
Steve Lewis: That's the ultimate.
Steve Lewis: Right?
Steve Lewis: You know, you've looked after them.
Steve Lewis: Just in terms of questioning, sometimes it's like a, would you recommend the NPS piece?
Steve Lewis: Or sometimes it's customer satisfaction kind of scoring.
Steve Lewis: After each round of interview with Hire Guide, they have an always anonymous feedback where it was, do you feel respected in that interview?
Steve Lewis: Did you have enough space and time for you to ask the questions you needed to?
Steve Lewis: What was the quality of the questions?
Steve Lewis: And this goes back into leveling up the recruiters and the hiring managers, which might say you started two minutes too late.
Steve Lewis: You're you're late because you're disrespectful or the or or you're kind of disorganized.
Steve Lewis: Which one is it?
Steve Lewis: It's one of them.
Steve Lewis: You know, you can't be late to you know, or you were distracted.
Steve Lewis: You were easing off camera.
Steve Lewis: You were driving along.
Steve Lewis: Just reschedule this.
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: How much feedback do you give as to what minimum standards table stakes needs to be if you're gonna be interviewing on behalf of WTW?
Steve Lewis: So I I think
Claire Lewis: we definitely have as part of our interview framework as we give you know, we've got some you know, you got the star rating, so we remind them of kind of when you are asking questions, make sure you get the details.
Claire Lewis: But we do try and coach our managers as part of this license to hire training Yeah.
Claire Lewis: Is is because sometimes you don't realize you're doing something that's disrespectful.
Claire Lewis: And I think, you know, that's probably depending on the generation that you're interviewing is being able to you know, one of my colleagues uses the quote that says feedback is a gift.
Claire Lewis: And I don't think everybody always necessarily embraces that, but I think it's fantastic.
Steve Lewis: I agree with that.
Claire Lewis: Because You're right about whether they
Steve Lewis: do it.
Claire Lewis: It's sometimes a little bit hard to say, you know, I think I'm being super inclusive, but, Claire, actually, you just I felt like you asked me too many direct questions, enjoyed that interview.
Claire Lewis: Alright.
Claire Lewis: So how do I, you know, how do I make that work?
Steve Lewis: You get over yourself to take that feedback on board
Amelia Dowty: Exactly.
Steve Lewis: Which is which is the key piece, isn't it?
Claire Lewis: So you you you do.
Claire Lewis: You have to, I think, weave it in.
Claire Lewis: And and and we are really fortunate that a lot of our managers are really keen to do a good job.
Steve Lewis: Right.
Claire Lewis: So they're asking the right questions.
Claire Lewis: So for us, I think as we we kind of expand upon this framework, Amelia and her team, as as do do any, you know, any of our other regional leaders, they often hold two or three times a year a hiring manager drop in session.
Steve Lewis: K.
Claire Lewis: And we show
Steve Lewis: them links to talk about links.
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: We show them some of the data, how many people visited our LinkedIn site, what people are saying about us on Glassdoor.
Claire Lewis: So that way, sometimes you can weave in some of the less than desirable feedback without going, Steve, you did a great job.
Claire Lewis: Amelia, you need some work.
Steve Lewis: Got it.
Claire Lewis: You you can kind of weave that in and use some of the analytics.
Claire Lewis: We've got a fantastic dashboard that allows us now to see where some of the feedback is coming.
Claire Lewis: So is it to a certain line of business?
Claire Lewis: Is it to a certain geography
Steve Lewis: or country?
Steve Lewis: Into that detail and helping.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Because if you're in sales, the dependent variable is, did you close the deal or not?
Steve Lewis: Yes.
Steve Lewis: Right?
Steve Lewis: And if you look at sales calls that record it, it's like you missed that buying signal there.
Steve Lewis: You talk too much.
Steve Lewis: You didn't allow her to but when it's interviewing, that's all a black box never unpacked.
Steve Lewis: It's like you're not getting into the nightclub, and we're not telling you the door policy, and never come back, and we hate you.
Steve Lewis: It's like what?
Steve Lewis: I I I I apply to this company because I want this to be part of my career journey.
Steve Lewis: And I love it enough to be keeping the lights on and paying the mortgage, but I wanna be part of your growth story.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: So when it comes round to what metrics you've got to measure the quality of hiring decision, it's also thinking about how you can use it to level up your own game as well.
Steve Lewis: Mhmm.
Steve Lewis: And some of the tech that we're seeing now, we're on the cusp of this, and we're growing the category out.
Steve Lewis: But but we're not by no means, we haven't cracked the code on a lot of this.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: It's okay.
Steve Lewis: You hired Joey.
Steve Lewis: Fine.
Steve Lewis: You hired Joey, and Joey really performed.
Steve Lewis: But we can see with your interviews that you allowed Joey to tell stories of how the transferable skills would work.
Steve Lewis: All of that data and insight usually is sent up on the floor.
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: Or,
Steve Lewis: actually, you interviewed, but what you said, we're not gonna redact it, but we're gonna say you shouldn't ask that type of question.
Amelia Dowty: Yes.
Steve Lewis: That's outlined in policy.
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: So do you think we're gonna get to a point and we're we're kinda coming up to the end of our time, so I want us to zoom out a little bit.
Steve Lewis: We're gonna get to the point where the candidates will say, I didn't get the job.
Steve Lewis: Show me the workings out.
Steve Lewis: I wanna see the video recording.
Steve Lewis: I wanna see that I've dealt with fairly.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: And when we're gonna get to the point where as a business partner, trusted adviser, you can say, these are great interviewers because and you've got data driven assessment to show that.
Steve Lewis: Can you tell me what the next kind of three to five years in TA looks like, not just within WTW, within your experience, but thinking about how you harness that type of tech and insight?
Amelia Dowty: Well, I mean, there's there's an element to this already, isn't there?
Amelia Dowty: You know, a candidate can ask for interview notes and, oh, yeah, data protection.
Amelia Dowty: You can have anything that's that's recorded about you.
Amelia Dowty: So I think we kind of already live in that world.
Amelia Dowty: It just comes in a different format.
Amelia Dowty: So if we're Yeah.
Amelia Dowty: Going to moving to a place with Copilot, taking interview notes or whatever technology you're using or, you know, Hire Guide Indeed, you know, helping out with all of those kind of transcriptions and information and and helping build that profile of an individual.
Amelia Dowty: We're on the same journey.
Amelia Dowty: It's the same trajectory.
Amelia Dowty: I think that, you know, we do need to embrace the technology.
Amelia Dowty: But from a candidate experience, you know, there is always a sense of, okay, what am I losing from a personal interaction once the technology starts to play more of a role in it?
Amelia Dowty: So it's still a human process, and I think, you know, not to lose that element of it.
Amelia Dowty: But I was having a very similar conversation again about this yesterday.
Steve Lewis: You went to Cambridge yesterday.
Amelia Dowty: I went
Claire Lewis: to Cambridge yesterday.
Claire Lewis: Did did I tell you?
Claire Lewis: I don't think she quite mentions you went to Cambridge yesterday.
Amelia Dowty: Such a great day.
Amelia Dowty: But, you know, from a hiring manager experience, they are so keen to be in a position where they don't want to leave any question unanswered.
Amelia Dowty: They don't wanna leave a candidate to leave the room, without having opportunity having had that opportunity to be able to, you know, be their best self and give everything.
Amelia Dowty: And I I I asked them the question, hey.
Amelia Dowty: How are you closing this interview?
Amelia Dowty: Why how are you making sure that person leaves with with a smile on their face regardless of the outcome?
Amelia Dowty: And they also you know, there's some scratch scratching of heads, but not for long.
Amelia Dowty: And, actually, a lot of people volunteered some great stuff about I always ask, for example.
Amelia Dowty: Is there anything I didn't ask you or should have asked you?
Amelia Dowty: You know, just really just making and that's one kind of flippant example.
Amelia Dowty: But Yeah.
Steve Lewis: That's good.
Amelia Dowty: It's it's it's nice, and it's it's genuine, and it's authentic.
Amelia Dowty: And I think, no amount of technology is going to take away that that piece that a human hiring manager brings, but it will only enhance it.
Steve Lewis: Not sure.
Steve Lewis: As you said, mentioned Copilot, something that augments and enhance the human expert in the loop to make the right decision.
Steve Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: And standing across that, that that's that's, I I believe, where we're seeing that come through to.
Steve Lewis: What what are your thoughts, Skye?
Claire Lewis: I think, you know and and I I attended a Gartner HR conference last year, which I think, for me, really resonated the fact that a lot of people at the moment almost overwhelmed by technology.
Claire Lewis: And so it's it's almost about how do we go back to basics Yeah.
Claire Lewis: So that we don't lose the experience, but use technology and AI to help make the parts that can be automated quicker.
Claire Lewis: So That's right.
Claire Lewis: The application process, the moving from step, the analytics.
Claire Lewis: So that that then frees us up to spend more time talking to people and engaging them.
Claire Lewis: But I think we all, regardless of the generation, feel quite overwhelmed by all the technology around us.
Steve Lewis: I'll be so.
Claire Lewis: And so I think it is.
Claire Lewis: It's about finding that balance.
Claire Lewis: So Yeah.
Claire Lewis: That's the journey we're on is how do we use AI to help us be more streamlined and effective, but how do we keep the fact that people like working for us?
Claire Lewis: How do we keep that at the heart of the experience?
Steve Lewis: That's very, very, very true.
Steve Lewis: Don't compromise on that and and be you wanna be tech forward, but it shouldn't be leading with it to the detriment of the human being part of that decision.
Claire Lewis: Absolutely.
Steve Lewis: Great.
Steve Lewis: Well, I've really enjoyed our conversation.
Steve Lewis: If you were gonna leave us with and I'm starting a new tradition now, so let's see if it works.
Steve Lewis: If you were gonna leave us with one or two, ideas that you'd like us to ask the next person, in this, process with, higher kind podcasts, what would WTW want the next person to be asked at your level in your in your industry?
Steve Lewis: What's a a good question, a good challenge for TA in the moment?
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Claire Lewis: It's it's a really good question.
Claire Lewis: And I think for me is is is it doesn't feel like anybody's found the the silver bullet, if that's the word, in terms of how to use AI to the maximum while keeping the candidate experience.
Steve Lewis: So Yeah.
Claire Lewis: It it is it is trying to understand.
Claire Lewis: And, you know, we we we've got governments changing.
Claire Lewis: We've got policies changing.
Claire Lewis: So how how do how do they factor in what good looks like in five years from now knowing that the talent we hire today may not be the talent we're gonna be hiring in five years from now?
Claire Lewis: So how are they planning for that?
Claire Lewis: I think that's the part that kinda keeps me awake at night.
Steve Lewis: And let us know once they crack that code.
Claire Lewis: Well, there we go.
Claire Lewis: That's a call a friend, and I will, you know, buy you the coffee.
Steve Lewis: That sounds good.
Steve Lewis: So following off of what Claire said there, if you were gonna ask a question of who's next in that seat within the TA industry, what would it be?
Amelia Dowty: It's not necessarily topical, but we've talked a lot about candidate and hiring manager experience today.
Amelia Dowty: So I'd be curious as to know what other people are doing about recruiter experience.
Steve Lewis: Oh, as in you give the tools to enable them
Claire Lewis: Yeah.
Steve Lewis: But, actually, the experience of being a recruiter Yeah.
Steve Lewis: Often ignored.
Steve Lewis: Completely.
Steve Lewis: Okay.
Amelia Dowty: Great.
Amelia Dowty: I
Claire Lewis: love that because, you know, you talk about tools and stuff and, you know, we have to learn how to use these tools to use them.
Claire Lewis: So, yeah, how how are they how are they educating and elevating their yes.
Claire Lewis: That's a great question.
Steve Lewis: Thanks.
Steve Lewis: Thank you both.
Steve Lewis: I appreciate it.
Claire Lewis: Alright.
Claire Lewis: Thank you so much.
