Last week played host to the first big event of 2019 for our community of HR, In-House Resourcing and Talent Leaders. In keeping with previous events, there were plenty of presentations with original and thought-provoking insight. A couple of personal highlights included…

• Maria Onyango, Head of Talent Acquisition at the Telegraph giving a fascinating talk on how the company is repositioning its employer brand. She summed up the D&I challenge perfectly, stating: “Someone with a diverse background joining a group automatically makes it more diverse but not necessarily more inclusive.”

• Carly Perry, Head of Recruitment at Metro Bank, reiterating the importance of trust. She argued that it’s vital to put your faith in people when hiring – advice that is all too often overlooked. She also proved how to be successful without KPIs. Yes, really!

There were many more great moments throughout the day, which always kept coming back to the same question:

How do we keep up?

Whether it’s how to improve D&I, or the deployment of AI to improve the engagement and selection of candidates, the challenge of ‘keeping up’ is relentless.  

Of course, the challenge of keeping up also applies to our own business, TALiNT Partners. It has been apparent to us for a while that the ‘ecosystem’ we operate in is more interdependent than ever, and only set to become more so over time. In-house teams, recruitment agencies, RPOs and HR tech all share the same essential objective: to help organisations find and keep the people they need.

For us, this means being able to provide in-depth content and insight to all of our network. You can imagine, then, just how excited we were to reveal our new brand – a change that will allow us to deliver more consistently to an increasingly interconnected market.  

But keeping up also requires some sort of reference point. Without it you have no real idea of how you’re doing or where you’re going, which is why we have launched our TALiNT Benchmark programme.

The programme – which is already established as the nation’s most rigorous, independent assessment – has been expanded further in 2019 to cover all aspects of an employer’s recruitment and talent acquisition activities. We’ve also introduced both free and premium levels of participation, and the option of a bespoke ‘board style’ report prepared by one of our industry experts. You can find out more about it here.  

It’s hard for employers to keep up in such a connected world. It takes a lot of work – and not to mention a willingness to change – to look in the mirror and acknowledge things could be done better. As difficult as that is, the alternative is even harder…  

Ken Brotherston is Managing Director of TALiNT Partners, home to the largest Talent Acquisition & Recruitment event series in the UK, encompassing the industry-leading event programmes TALiNT In-House Leaders and TALiNT Agency Leaders, the leading publication for the Talent Acquisition and Recruitment Industry, TALiNT International and a wide range of invitation-only dinners, and UK and International awards. We host the European Rec Tech Investor Summit in conjunction with Deloitte, and run the TALiNT Benchmark Programme, a unique, independent assessment programme for Talent Acquisition functions.