How to Create a High-Converting Candidate Journey

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In this episode, I'm joined by Tara O'Brien, who is Recruitment Strategist & Creator of the 'Hiring for Success TA Development Program and Head Of Resourcing at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Tara stresses the significance of having a compelling employer brand that translates into a strong candidate value proposition. She advises putting yourself in the candidate's shoes to understand pain points in the recruitment process and remove unnecessary barriers to entry.

According to Tara, a positive candidate experience begins right from the initial touchpoint, where clear and transparent communication sets the tone. She emphasizes being upfront about the recruitment process, role responsibilities, and organizational culture to attract candidates who are a good fit.

We also cover the importance of developing a structured onboarding program to reinforce the employer brand and get new hires invested in the company mission, and tips on creating an onboarding experience that excites and engages from day one.

Don’t miss Tara’s practical tips and valuable insights on how to optimize the candidate journey for attracting, converting and retaining top talent. Her advice is useful for anyone involved in shaping their organization's recruitment strategy.

Episode Highlights

How to Create a High-Converting Candidate Journey
Tips to create a memorable candidate experience
Her 9-Step Hiring Success Framework
How AI is transforming the talent acquisition process

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🎙️ Automatically generated Podcast Transcript

Tara 0:00

to high converting candidates, you need to give them a really positive experience and take away those barriers to entry along the way. One of the things you typically see is that a candidate will go to apply for a vacancy, you know, perhaps they'll see an adverse, they're really excited by it, they'll go to apply, they'll jump onto the ATS, and they'll attach their CV and then they'll have this massive forum asking them for their inside leg measurements and every other piece of information that is already on their CV, often the really strong candidates are the ones who are being approached and headhunted. So, you know, why would they then spend this amount of time going through that process when you know, they're probably getting 10 calls or 20 emails on LinkedIn a day?

Chris Rainey 0:46

Hi, everyone, welcome back to the HR leaders podcast, and today's episode, I'm joined by Tara O'Brien, who is a recruitment strategist and creator of the hiring success ta development programme, and head of resourcing Oxford NHS Foundation Trust. During episode Tara shares how to create a high converting candidate journey. She shares her tips to create a memorable candidate experience her nine step hiring success framework, and how AI is transforming talent acquisition processes. As always, before we jump into the video, make sure you hit the subscribe button, turn notification bell and follow us on your favourite podcast platform. With that being said, let's jump in. Tara, welcome to the show. How are you?

Tara 1:28

I'm really good. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for inviting me.

Chris Rainey 1:30

So for for context for everyone. Last time we saw each other, we were building a Lego duck together, which sounds like a really random people at once. You joined us at our last HR Innovation Roundtable at Lego. So it's nice to see you again. And thanks for making the trip over.

Tara 1:45

No, it was it was it was amazing. It was one of the best trips this year so far. So loved it loved every minute of it was a great facility and the speakers and the sessions were brilliant as well.

Chris Rainey 1:56

I'm bit jealous that your dark actually looked better than mine, my mouth, I won't even resemble a duck. For everyone listening, we were all given the same set of bricks in the room that we had to create a Lego duck, but with no instructions, important, important parts. So it was really interesting to see people's diversity of thought and creativity and what they came up with, as well. So it was cool. Tell everyone a little bit more about your background and sort of journey to where we are now. Did you choose HR audit? So I have to do along the way. I think I did choose

Tara 2:28

it. But so I so I originally so my background is always in, I guess the talent acquisition side of HR, the resourcing side of HR, initially in recruitment in an agency environment started in that space about probably over 25 years ago now. So that's been my entire career, I always worked I've always worked in resourcing of one form or another. And then about my last my previous company, I was director in a medical devices, pharmaceutical life science, recruitment business. And so we had a lot of connection with the NHS, even though we didn't work directly with the NHS, we work with customers who worked with the NHS. So I had a I guess a desire to get to know that sector a little bit more, also, you know, wants to go a bit broader than than agency recruitment and see the other side and really get deeper into actual HR as opposed to just being on the on the surface, I suppose. And so I made the decision to leave agency and move to the NHS. And that was just over four years ago and literally a couple of about three or four months before the first COVID lockdowns here. So it was a baptism of fire. So I moved to one NHS Trust, which was about 14 and a half 1000 staff. So one of the one of the large ones, Oxford University Hospitals, which is the one connected to Oxford uni. So it was a busy time there because during COVID There was research going on for a vaccine etc. So we were you know, we were not directly involved in the vaccine obviously but but involved in the recruitment to backup and support it.

I was then seconded to Oxford health which is the community and Mental Health Trust about 18 months ago and ended up staying there so I'm I'm there now so I guess, you know, I'm I've got a real passion for trying to help the NHS change the way it brings talent into an organisation. It's my second trust now and I hope to bring some of the knowledge and ideas to other trusts as I move forward as well. What would you say you learn from the agency side that has been really valuable now being in a practitioner role in the organisation? Lots actually, to be honest, when I moved in house first, I didn't know how much knowledge and experience I would bring because, you know, effectively, I'm now part of HR team and one of our heads of HR. So it's quite different. But I think it's those commercial skills. And when I say commercial skills, I don't mean the selling your services to clients. Obviously there is that but the commercial skills in the way you consider and look

had talent and the way you bring it into the organisation and the way you develop relationships and nurture pipelines of prospective candidates for the future, you know, that type of stuff is often not done very well in house. And it's certainly not done very well in the NHS, that I know, there's some big organisations that do it brilliantly, but it's less common, and the NHS almost doesn't do it. And so, you know, one of the things I'm trying to do is, is get us working on talent pools for the future. And when I say talent, I don't mean, you know, a set group of people that have a particular skill, I consider everyone to be a talent, because I just think there's a role for everyone when so when I say talent, I mean, everyone.

Chris Rainey 5:42

Yeah, I love that. Because we again, we spoke offline around ta thinking commercially. What does that look like? In a practical sense, if he was giving an advice to one of your peers about how do you practically tomorrow, you're gonna go in the office, you can do X, how do you practice, you start looking at TA for a commercial lens?

Tara 6:00

Well, one of the key things is to start building those pools of prospective candidates for the future. So, you know, so often really simple thing is a candidate might just be pitched to the post for a role that they've applied for. And actually, that candidate, there might not be another role that's perfect for that person right now. But that doesn't mean that in two months time, there won't be and if you're not, if you don't have a strategy, and and you know, tools to help you, one, retain that person, their skill, the knowledge of their skills, and to keep in touch with them and keep some sort of an open relationship going, you know, you're you're effectively just hoping that that candidate will find an ad reverts, that you happen to put out again in a couple of months time. And I always say to people, hope is not a strategy and recruitment, we can't depend on hope we have to have, you know, we have to have tools in place to allow that person to find us or us to find them and be able to actively target them when we have a vacancy and a couple of months time that sued that person perfectly. Yeah.

Chris Rainey 6:57

Because it's such a waste, you know, you've done so much time. And you put so much time and effort in before that to build that relationship with them to the fact that you just kind of completely just end it there is such a waste of

Tara 7:09

resources for everyone. Yeah, for the hiring manager, that, you know, there's usually in the NHS, there's usually a panel involved of at least three people. So you've you've wasted an hour of three people plus the candidates time, plus the the TA and the recruitment teams time for just to say to them, sorry, you've been picked to the post, and we would have hired you if we had two vacancies. And that just doesn't make any that doesn't make any sense.

Chris Rainey 7:33

Yeah, on that point. Now, you know, why is it so important to create a memorable candidate experience?

Tara 7:39

I think I mentioned to briefly, I spoke at breakfast a couple of weeks ago, and I talked about a journey that I actually experienced myself. And so I talked about making it memorable for the right reasons, when I made the decision to move out of agency and into in house, that was a very measured decision I made to do that. I went to talk to an organisation that had been a previous client of mine, a very large organisation in the medical device sector, had lots of conversations with them, you know, kept being told I was their preferred candidate for this particular senior talent partner role. And I stopped supplying for other things, because I was totally committed and totally bought into this organisation. I liked their values. I liked what they stood for. I liked what they did, and the, you know, the products they developed were really forward thinking. And so I stopped moving forward with my search to then literally about two months later be told that actually, they decided to move forward with another candidate. And so what they've created there is as a member, a candidate experience that was memorable for the wrong reasons. Because even though I was bought in, and I was committed to them that that mutual connection, or mutual commitment wasn't there. And so I now would almost never would never go back to that organisation. If anybody asked me if they should consider a role in that organisation, I would probably say, really think you know about that, because I certainly wouldn't recommend them. Because from my perspective, it felt like they lied to me. And they gave me a really bad experience. So not only will I not go back to them, which for them, they're a big company, that's probably not the end of the world. But I'll also tell people and people are much more likely to tell somebody else about a bad experience than they are about a good experience. So if we can make the candidate journey and the candidate experience memorable for really positive reasons, because the candidate, even if they were rejected, you can still do that in a positive, supportive way you can let them know constructively what they could have done differently. You can give them some really solid feedback to let them actually do something with that next time so that they can go off and develop that skill or that attribute or whatever it is that that you know, effectively let them down at that time.

Chris Rainey 9:46

So in that occasion, they just what they just sent you an email about three

Tara 9:49

months after this process started, so yeah, it was three months

Chris Rainey 9:53

later. Wow. Yeah. You mentioned a few things there. But what are what are some of the other things that they could have done to make it a better exit? aren't for you

Tara 10:00

be honest, was the key thing. You know, I, my background is in recruitment, I know that there may be other candidates in the process, and I have no problem with that. I'd rather they were honest with me and at least then I could have continued to consider other things as well. But what they did was they chose to effectively lock me down for their purposes, to help knowing that I was really bought in and committed stopping me for applying for other things, not that they told me to stop. But because I was committed, I chose to stop. And they knew that they knocked me back three months of looking for other roles. Now, I was in a situation at the time where that wasn't going to be a massive financial impact for me, but another candidate might have been

Chris Rainey 10:39

no, of course. And I know something you're also really passionate about is creating a high converting candidate journey. What does that mean? Could you walk walk us through that.

Tara 10:48

So the candidate journey, you know, effectively starts from when the candidate becomes aware of the organisation, and I always say it ends when they become an employee advocate. So they're working for the organisation, and they're advocating for the organisation, you're there, telling people how great it is, and how good their experience was, and they should come and work for them. So the the journey for me is a lot longer than just application to start date. And so if you can to high convert candidates, you need to give them a really positive experience, and take away those barriers to entry along the way. So one of the things you typically see in application, the application process is that a candidate will go to apply for a vacancy, you know, perhaps they'll see an adverse, they're really excited by it, they'll go to apply, they'll jump onto the ATS, and they'll attach their CV and then they'll have this massive forum, asking them for their inside leg measurements and every other piece of information that is already on their CV. And effectively, what they're doing there is they're creating a barrier to entry. And we all know as soon as you create a barrier to entry, it puts people off and it stops people from applying. And often the really strong candidates are the ones who are being approached and headhunted. So, you know, why would they then spend this amount of time going through that process, when you know, they're probably getting 10 calls or 20 emails on LinkedIn a day, asking them to consider other opportunities where they don't have those barriers to entry. And so what happens is the organisation that puts those barriers in loses candidates, but they don't even know about it. They're not even aware that they've ever lost this, this brilliant candidate. And, you know, another example like that is where people put in video interviewing right at the front end of the process. Now, I'm not a massive fan of video interviewing, but it has a place in volume recruitment, but later in the process, if you put it in as the first step before any engagement, then what happens is there's no there's no commitment, there's no buy in from that candidate. So they're asked to answer these questions to, you know, a one way zoom call effectively, and there's no, there's no, it puts people off. And so, so many candidates I've known who were brilliant for an organisation just refused to apply, because that was the first stage of their process. And so again, the organisation just had no idea of the quality of candidates, they were losing by putting a massive barrier in there in the start. So for me, the high converting journey is about making the barriers to entry as seamless as you know, not necessarily taking them out completely, but making them putting them in for a reason, you know, not putting in a CV and application form, you know, doing one or the other, you know, thinking a little bit more cleverly. And so what that does, is it means you're more likely to get candidates who actually come into the process, and then stay in the process, because it's not got all these blockers and barriers in it. And also to be high converting, you've got to have candidate engagement in there. So you're, you know, you've got to have probably a combination of automation used really well and in the right places, but also human touch points where you're, you're allowing people to build that engagement with the person they're they're working with, whether that's the hiring manager or the team or the recruiter, but there's some opportunity for for human touch points and human interaction builds you know that that trust for the future

Chris Rainey 13:57

you got to have that especially if you're like you said you got to have that before you ask me for a video

Tara 14:04

you know, the amazing companies that just they straightaway somebody applies they go through that horrible application and CV and then they get sent a link saying record these answers to these five questions on this video please before we speak to you,

Chris Rainey 14:16

that's such a like as you said, especially for those those in the high in demand talent they're not going to do that. Yeah. What about the people that have you know, it's alright so it's okay if you're sending it to an introvert and extrovert What about someone who's an introvert you're asking them to immediately go on camera be vulnerable share in a medium that they're not really comfortable with? And they still might not get a reply. Yeah, what companies may perhaps or platforms technology ATS platforms that have you seen that do this best?

Tara 14:45

I have to say I don't know if I've seen any that do it really well. I think ATS is are still little bit lacking in that they're starting to build in CRM functions, politics.

Chris Rainey 14:55

I love it. It's so cute. You just called out from the shelf and I was like, Oh my god. Uh,

Tara 15:00

yeah, ATS is are still a little bit lacking in tools, you know, like that. So a lot of ATS are starting to build in CRM functionality to them, but they're still limited. And so to get the those kinds of results to be able to do things like that really well, you almost have to have bolt on tools, you know, some bolt on CRM systems and, and bolt on onboarding tools and bolt on l&d and things like that. So I don't know if there's any, I don't if there's doing anyone, anyone as yet that's doing it really, really well. There's a few that are moving forward. With us,

Chris Rainey 15:36

what's the process that you've seen work best, though, yourself? You know, in terms of the first three or four stages of that process? You've done it on both sides? You've done it on, you know, inside an organisation? And as an external organisation, what are the first three or four steps that really matter? That you see? Yeah, Chris, this is how we set it up to work to be the highest converting and less drop off and get the right people.

Tara 15:58

So the first step is about having the right employer brands. And that translates into a candidate value proposition. We talk about EVP all the time, I always talk about CVP, which is this, you know, similar, but it's looking at it from an external perspective for the candidate looking into the organisation. So you've got to have that value proposition, your adverts have got to be used as a as an advertising medium and a tool for engagement. I think a lot of the time where people go wrong as they they see their job description as basically an advert. And so they copy and paste a JD on to their, you know, they're their advertising platform. And so it doesn't, it's not an advert, you know, for me, an advert is a piece of marketing, it's a tool to attract people, it's not about giving them every piece of information about the job description, absolutely, by all means attach the job description to it. But the two things are very different functions. So having that candidate value proposition, having really good quality advertising, that speaks to your ideal candidate, you know, if it's not, if it's not speaking to your ideal candidate, you're wasting, you're wasting your time and you're wasting that you know, that money and you're, you're spending that money on that resource on advertising, which is not getting you the return you need. What's

Chris Rainey 17:08

the best way to do that? Do you do bring in the hiring manager the into that conversation with you and the team to make sure you understand the role more candidates? Yeah,

Tara 17:21

yeah, I think it is a combination. It's so it needs it needs the TAs skill and understanding of what we need to know to be able to get the advert out to attract the right people. But it also needs the the knowledge and the functional skill knowledge from the hiring manager, and also, you know, the cultural knowledge from the manager, because, yeah, you know, what, it's like an organisation, yes, there might be an overriding culture that, you know, that is across the organisation, but there's nearly always little micro cultures within every team and not that you're going to change everything entirely. But you've got to understand those micro cultures to be able to get the person who is the best fit for that role. So understanding that ideal candidate profile is really critical. I think without this, you know, you can't identify what platforms to advertise on or to, you know, reach out to candidates on, you know, how do you know, your candidates on LinkedIn, for example? Or are you just going to LinkedIn for everyone? Or actually, are your candidates on Facebook or Twitter or threads? Or, you know, where are they these days? Are they on tick tock? And then how are you speaking to them. And if you don't know, your ideal candidate, again, you can't know how to speak to that person in a way that resonates with them. And they, you know, they hear the message, and they think, yes, that's, that's me that average speaking to me. So you've got to, you've got to get the ideal candidate profile right to, you know, before you do any of those things. I think sometimes hiring managers go wrong there, it's not that they don't believe it, it's just that they don't understand it in the first place. So there's that lack of knowledge. And so that comes all the way through, and if the TA team, don't challenge them, and don't help them and support them to identify that profile, then the TA team, you know, you're just going along, you're not you're not adding value to the process, which is sometimes why tn can get a reputation for, you know, being, you know, reactive and rather than proactive because they're, they're not doing those things to support the hiring managers.

Chris Rainey 19:11

It goes back to your point earlier about to thinking commercially, I think that's a perfect example. Yeah. When it can be more commercial have more impact, as opposed to just wait, wait and be reactive. One of the things I came across on your profile was sort of your nine step hiring success framework. What was that one of those nine steps

Tara 19:29

brands is a big part of that telling your story. So creating your story in the first place of the organisation has a candidate value proposition and a story to tell to get that out there and then you know, part of the nine steps is as a part of it's the visibility part, you know, the advertising recruitment marketing brands, part of us or three parts of it should I say of the of the nine are around tools and functionality and you know, enabling your TA team with the right tools and support that they Need to do the job effectively, and also teaching them to be commercial, you know, teaching them the tools to do those things. It all pulls together to make it an effective team.

Chris Rainey 20:08

One of the struggles I hear from your colleagues is there's so many ta technologies platforms popping up every day, there's like a million. What advice? Or what questions do you ask when you're looking for a new ta platform?

Tara 20:20

And it's a great question. And actually, it's, I'm heading up a project, looking at some our ATS system at the moment and whether you know, whether it's fit for purpose, or whether we should be looking at other options. So we, we will go to market, so it's a great time to ask that question. For me, it's got to, it's got to be user friendly, and the TA team or the team that spent all day every day on it. So generally speaking, even if it's not the most user friendly system at the back end, the ta n, they will learn it. That's not to say that it shouldn't be user friendly, it needs to be but but they will learn it because they're doing it all the time. The problem comes in at the candidate interface and the hiring manager interface. If your system is clunky, at the hiring manager or the candidate interface, then you lose candidates and hiring managers feel like their journey is very difficult, and they feel everything's a struggle, as much as the TA side of things needs to be good. I actually I think the bigger focus for me is on the hiring manager interface. And the candidate interface to make sure that those are user friendly or simple. They make the journey obvious and the person feels like it's a it's a, you know, it's a positive journey. And it's not, it's not they're not going into a system and trying to figure out where to go next, that does not create a positive journey,

Chris Rainey 21:32

what other considerations do you have, whether they

Tara 21:34

have a CRM, or some sort of CRM functionality or where they're up to with developing that, because to keep, you know, to build a talent pool at pool of those prospective candidates, you have to also have a way of keeping in touch with them. And the only way you can do that is using digital marketing tools really well. So you know, bringing them onto your social platforms, and you know, sending them regular information, or podcasts or newsletters or piece of white papers or information about the organisation. Yeah, absolutely, you've got to keep them engaged with content that's relevant to them. And I always talk about when you're building those talent pools to segment them into, let's say, staff groups, I'm going to call them staff groups, because that's what we call them in the NHS. So, for example, you have a segment of group of nurses, and a segment a group of IT professionals, and you're not going to send them the both the same contents, because they'll be interested in very different things. You know, you might send white papers about developments in nursing to the nursing cohorts that you're developing a relationship for the future, you might send the IT people something entirely different, which talks about the developments in it and digital in the in the organisation, because you're trying to keep them engaged on the projects coming up, but you're not going to send them all the same stuff, otherwise, you won't, you won't engage them. So you've got to speak to them in their own language.

Chris Rainey 22:52

So with you on that one, it goes back to your point earlier, if you have had people in the pipeline before that haven't perhaps, you know, they, you know, there wasn't chosen for the role, but you still want to keep them engaged, you need to make sure you're doing that, especially when there's sort of the war on talent, and everyone's fighting for them. You're the organisation that they're seeing as for leaders, you know, upskilling, helping them develop, they're gonna go to you next time, they're looking for a new role, right. And there's a lot of work that goes into it, like you're saying, but it's really, really important. And also, I'm saying that's where the kind of role of AI comes into it as well, you can you can use that. And also, if you do happen to post for a new position in that it can use AI to search for your database and say, Hey, have you thought that Chris Chris could be a good fit for this role, as well? So if you don't have that CRM in place, then you kind of miss all of those things. Yeah, lately seems like an obvious requirements. Like I must have to be honest, I

Tara 23:51

think so wouldn't you but it you know, the markets, slow to adopters.

Chris Rainey 23:56

I'm surprised when you said that. Well, you said your CRM and my first response was done. They all have that. And yeah, no, it's not okay. Okay.

Tara 24:05

Unfortunately, they should, you know, for me, every ATS should have a really well functioning CRM plugged into us.

Chris Rainey 24:13

But you've been in this space for a long time in the TA space, what are some of the misconceptions, you think that people have around TA?

Tara 24:22

I think, sometimes the business doesn't see the role that ta plays in the organisation. That's partly often the fault of TA because they're not aligning what they do with the business, you know, again, you know, goes back to that thinking commercially, they're not always, they're not always thinking, what does the business need from us? And so what can we deliver to the business? And that probably, again, comes back to you know, the the TA leadership of helping their team become commercial and helping them think commercially. I think there's definitely limitations there. Because the business you know, there's a there's a disconnect between the two Um, I think also there's there's issues around training hiring managers and developing those hiring managers because they play such an important part in the recruitment process. And often, you know, they have almost, you know, sometimes they have almost no training, and they're expected to go and interview and select and do that inclusively. And all of this and even right after its, you know, without any training and development or guidance, even on those areas, so I think probably quite fairly, TA is seen as not helping those managers develop. And that's probably quite fair, because I think there's so much more we can do as a function to develop and support our managers.

Chris Rainey 25:37

Yeah, I wish I had that support. When I was a manager. I still struggle with that. Now, she To be honest, as well, I could use all the help. I feel like my go to is now tat GBT help me out of writing job applications and, and during that summer, but I wish I had someone in the TA team in the past that could help me guide me, because that's what something you're trained? Yeah. It's not part of my managerial training or leadership training?

Tara 26:00

No, I think it's pretty typical, you know, in the NHS, you know, typically they get some management training, but very little around recruitment, or how to onboard people and how to do that effectively. And even if they do, it's just the practical skills of these are some example interview questions. This is how you score a candidate. This is how you make an offer, but they don't really go into, again, the engagement side or the nurturing relationship from offer to onboarding, to IE to start date is often one of the biggest times where candidates can get lost, you can lose candidates in the process. Yeah. Because often, you know, the TA function, or the hiring managers just don't keep in touch with them. And of course, that's at the time where they're, you know, they're resigning from their current role. You know, they've got the manager, if they're well regarded, saying, you know, don't leave, stay with us counter offering. And so you've got your family and friends saying, Well, why are you leaving that organisation have really looked after you, you've got your colleagues saying, Don't Don't leave us stay with us. It's so it's such a risky time for losing people, yet. Our onboarding processes are really limited, the person gets their offer, they might get the odd phone call between then and their start date. But actually, that's only if it's a good team. Yeah. 2018?

Chris Rainey 27:13

Where do you see the biggest opportunity for companies or what things that company should be doing to retain? Employees,

Tara 27:21

I guess, first of all, doing what they said they would do, because that's one of the biggest areas, the you know, the where the psychological contract is broken, where the the, in the hiring process, the candidate was told certain things or led to believe certain things, you know, they, those expectations were set. And if those expectations aren't met, in that first, you know, probably six to 12 months, you've got to, you've got to get a disconnect there. And that's where you often have people leave quite quickly. And typically, candidates, you lose more candidates, or should I say, employees in the first 12 months of working for an organisation, and that's often why, you know, the the, the the expectations weren't met, or the job was not what they were sold, you know, so there's usually a breaking expectation there. So if we can change that, and meet those expectations, then we'll probably retain people at least twice past 12 months. And then after that, it's about continuing to develop them and continuing to do what we said we're going to do and have those, you know, performance development meetings and things like that. And, you know, I hate the word performance Development Review, because it implies that it's all about reviewing your performance and what you're doing. And it should be much more about let's talk about your future developments. Yeah,

Chris Rainey 28:36

everyone sees it as a negative conversation. It should be a very exciting positive energising conversation, as well, a lot. I've seen a few articles recently on LinkedIn, around will AI replace recruiters keeps coming up over and over again, what are your thoughts on that?

Tara 28:54

I mean, I think it's hilarious that the questions are being asked because we've had technology for, you know, I mean, we've had technology for years, it's never replaced, yes, because you'll never replace a human. And I think the smart ta functions are the ones who will adopt AI, and tools as quickly as possible in the right way. As I said, you know, there's you can use tools really well or you can use them really badly. So like putting a video interview at the start of the process is a bad way of using it, but put it you know, put a video interview at a different part of the process, it might be a good way of using it. So it's about using AI for the to work in the in the places that it's appropriate. And using it really cleverly, you know, it's it's great for doing things like rewriting an advert to make it more exciting and engaging based on an ideal candidate profile, you know, you can literally ask it to give it give it a job description and I you know, part of my my training programme that I do is around using those kinds of tools. You know, plug in your job description, give it a really good quality prompt to say I want you to write this into a short advert that's going to really inspire this ideal candidate profile. Tell it the profile and it will come about something and it might not be the finished product, but it's saved you probably an hour and you can just tweak it and personalise it.

Chris Rainey 30:06

Yeah, you're right, I feel like it's going to moreso be a tool to empower recruiters, and, and help. Again, it's their, it's their recruiters own copilot, they've kind of got a number two that can go and help them get 7070 70% or 80% of the way. And then you kind of tweak it to the profile. And that allows them to spend more time on on meaningful conversations and work as opposed to the admin side, if that makes sense.

Tara 30:32

When people ask me about it, I explained it as a really good quality assistant. That's very fast, you know, they're really speedy. But actually, you need to check things and you need to send to check it and you need to humanise it. And, and then yes, you so you try and get it to help as much as possible without admin, and you do the functions that need a human, you know, the the conversations, the building relationships, the nurturing that need that human interaction and will never replace that. You know, I think if recruiters are worried about that they're probably not doing the job right in the first place.

Chris Rainey 31:01

It's normally the case, right? So yeah, where do you see the future of TA? You know, it's evolved so much in the time that I've even in short time I've been around doing it. Where do you see it evolving to in the future? Yes, it's hard

Tara 31:16

to it's hard to know is that I think it will become more human interaction, I actually think we're going more down the path where people want to deal with the person. And they don't want to, they don't want to talk to bots, or, you know, they might do it for the practical. So I think we're things like tools like a bot comes in, it's where it's just a practical question, like an FAQ, or you want something quick and fast, then you're happy to speak to a bot. But actually, if it's anything more meaningful, you want to deal with the person. And so I think TA is going to move away from those high volume ATS systems that do everything automated for you. And actually, we use the tools for those practical things, but we we use our people and our human resource where we need human interaction and where we want people to build relationships. And so I think it's going to become more human.

Chris Rainey 32:03

I agree. I think it's going to free us up, as I said, to have more of those meaningful human conversations. Listen, before you go, where can people reach you? Like, where can I reach out to you? You've got some great resources on LinkedIn and other areas I've seen before.

Tara 32:17

Yeah, I try. I try to blog every couple of weeks and try to post useful content as much as possible. But time sometimes gets in the way. LinkedIn is my main platform. That's where I probably hang out if I'm going to be on social.

Chris Rainey 32:30

And the assessment I saw, is that is that on your website? Or is it a link to the assessment directly?

Tara 32:35

It's it's a separate tool. It's a it's a really good surveying tool actually, where people can look at their candidate journey and it will ask you some questions and help you identify the the areas that you can develop in the candidate journey. It's on my LinkedIn profile, and it links to a separate platform.

Chris Rainey 32:52

Amazing. Well, let's send everyone there. Tara so make sure you go and connect with Tara on LinkedIn and also I'll definitely take take time to have a look at the tool as well and give you some practical steps to take from here. But apart from that was great chatting to you. Let's not leave us alone next time. I feel like it was good to see your LinkedIn and and it's great to see you the next event and I wish you all the best of everything and until next week.

Tara 33:13

Thanks, Chris. Yeah, look forward to catching up again.