Talent Intelligence Collective Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome to Episode 32 of the Talent Intelligence Collective podcast! Join hosts Alan Walker, Alison Ettridge, and Toby Culshaw as they welcome Lou Griffiths, Senior Manager of Talent Intelligence at EY UK, who shares her remarkable journey in building and scaling talent intelligence capabilities.

Toby kicks off with an engaging news segment, covering the cooling UK labour market, the increasing trend of older workers in the workforce, and Japan's concerns about AI monopolies - particularly Nvidia's 80% semiconductor market share. The discussion also touches on Google's innovative "reverse aquahire" strategy, sparking an interesting debate about the future of tech talent acquisition.

In the main interview, Lou shares her fascinating transition from scientific recruitment to establishing EY UK's Talent Intelligence function. She discusses her innovative "Talent Screen" tool, which has captured over 5,000 recruiter conversations and 200,000 data points, providing valuable insights into candidate sentiment and market trends.

Lou delves into how her small but mighty team delivered 35 strategic talent intelligence projects in the past year, working on everything from location strategy to competitive intelligence. She emphasises the importance of transforming recruiters into "intelligence-led" professionals and shares practical approaches to embedding data-driven decision-making in talent acquisition.

The conversation explores EY's shift from role-based to skills-based talent strategies and the challenges of centralising talent intelligence in a global organisation. Lou's passion for proactive, strategic talent intelligence shines through as she discusses the future of the function and the importance of delivering what stakeholders need, not just what they want.

Throughout the episode, listeners will gain valuable insights into building and scaling talent intelligence functions, making data actionable for recruiters, and driving strategic value in a professional services environment.

Until next time, stay intelligent, and don't forget to connect with Lou on LinkedIn to learn more about her innovative work in talent intelligence!

Welcome back to another enlightening episode of the Talent Intelligence Collective podcast! In episode 31, your hosts Alan Walker, Alison Ettridge, and Toby Culshaw are joined by the insightful Patrick Coolen, a seasoned HR analytics expert and Partner at Kennedy Fitch.

Toby starts the show with a thought-provoking news segment, discussing topics such as the UK's reliance on foreign workers, the challenges of upskilling the workforce, and the World Economic Forum's take on combating STEM talent shortages. The conversation sparks a lively debate on the societal and political factors influencing talent strategies and the importance of evidence-based decision-making.

In the interview, Patrick shares his fascinating journey in HR analytics, spanning over two decades at ABN AMRO. He delves into the evolution of people analytics, the challenges organizations face in adopting and institutionalizing advanced analytics, and the factors that drive success in this field.

Patrick emphasizes the importance of aligning people analytics initiatives with strategic business goals and integrating various evidence-based HR services to effectively answer critical workforce questions. He highlights the need to balance data science with behavioral science expertise and the significance of proper data management.

The discussion also touches on the future of people analytics, with Patrick sharing his insights on the potential of machine learning and AI in democratizing intelligence for end-users. He stresses the importance of governance and the trend towards enterprise-wide analytics practices that share data and skills across departments.

Throughout the conversation, Patrick's passion for evidence-based HR shines through, leaving listeners with valuable advice on starting and scaling people analytics functions. His unique perspective, shaped by his extensive research and practical experience, offers a fresh understanding of how talent intelligence can drive strategic workforce decisions.

Until next time, stay intelligent, and don't forget to connect with Patrick on LinkedIn to learn more about his "10 Golden Rules of People Analytics"!

** Don't forget to say hi to our wonderful sponsors → ⁠⁠⁠Stratigens⁠⁠⁠! **

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!

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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.