Episode 113

Christianna on Strategies for Employers and Candidates to handle the Shifts in the Job Market

TIM: We're live on the Objective Hiring Show today. I'm joined by Christianna. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

CHRISTIANNA: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Sounds

TIM: It's great to have you here. And where I'd love to start is where I start with all guests, which is just learning a little bit about yourself, what you're doing at the moment, so we can start to picture who we're talking to today.

CHRISTIANNA: Good. So maybe I'll start with my location. I'm based in Berlin in Germany. I have close to a decade of experience in talent acquisition. And at the moment I'm mostly working with the European tech ecosystem. So I've got a role as a head of talent acquisition at one of the leading European tech companies. And then on the side as well, I have my own coaching business. Where I work with private clients is mostly related to their careers.

TIM: And that's actually the place I'd love to start our conversation today. I'd love to know because you've got this quite broad lens across the hiring market in Germany. And Europe in general, as you said, you've got the coaching side of things. How are you seeing the job market at the moment? Like, what's the kind of lay of the land in Europe? And then from that, if we could get some kind of advice for the hiring teams and also the candidates on the other side as well.

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, that's a great question. So I've definitely noticed some shifts, some massive shifts in the market. In the last, I want to say, two to three years, of course, there's been a lot of global events that have affected this. But yeah, what we're seeing, especially in Germany right now, is that it's become more of an employer's market, not so much a candidate's market anymore. Like in 2021, it was an amazing tech boom. And yeah, it was perfect for candidates, but now that's dramatically shifted. And also from my work as a career coach, I'm seeing a lot of really great, like, talented individuals that are, yeah, struggling more than usual to find their next opportunity. And there's just a lot of talent in the market right now and not a lot of new jobs that have been created recently. That's where we're at as a starting point. And what this means for people is that it is a lot more competitive out there, right? So they have to do more from the applicant side to really stand out. So anything they can do with regards to getting referred. for certain jobs. Yeah, making the most out of their network, but also just customizing CVs and making sure that they're applying more for roles that really suit their experience rather than just mass applying everywhere. And then from the employer's side, what this means is, especially if you've got a strong employer brand, you're getting hundreds of applications. Some of them are really relevant. Some are not so relevant. So it's become a real challenge for businesses, I want to say, to screen through these applications. And so that's, like, what they need to try and adjust for, is just the volume of applications. Yeah, and also just to make sure that they're still keeping the candidate experience. Like nice and friendly, like regardless of the number of applications. I think it's quite easy for employers nowadays to just think, Ah, there's so many great candidates, so we didn't have to treat them that well. And we'll just take the ones we want and won't give feedback and so on. So I think it's really important that they don't fall into this trap. Because it does affect the employer brand long term.

TIM: Yes. As you say, it's this macro yin and yang. Four years ago, the narrative would have been about, Oh my God, we've only got five applicants for this role. We're like, we have to hang on to them for dear life. Let's make the hiring process as short as possible. Don't put any barriers in front of them. The gold star service , but now the equation has changed, but that doesn't mean that companies should reverse that goodwill thinking that it might've had four years ago when they really were thinking about each candidate individually. But.

CHRISTIANNA: Much.

TIM: With the sheer volume of candidates? Probably most companies are going to be thinking about implementing some technology early on in the process that's sometimes a little bit crude. Some might say a little bit, not perfectly humane or human. Is that part of the balancing act as well, probably?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, definitely. I think there's definitely a space here to automate some things, but yeah, there needs to be still some element of human intervention, I would say. So even if you are including some sort of screening tool in the application process. The decision-making behind that still needs to be done by recruiters. So yeah, we'll get more into this later. I'm sure. But with the screening tools, usually like you set the parameters of what good looks like. And then based on that. You get, like, a short list, and you can decide how to move forward or not. And then you can also set up sequences of how to respond to candidates and how to make sure that people still feel that you've taken the time to actually look at their profile or recommend them for other roles that are similar and so on. Yeah, I think there's definitely a way to do it.

TIM: Yes, there's a lot of nuance and a spectrum of how you can implement automation from pretty dreadful to quite good. And it doesn't necessarily, certainly shouldn't be a dehumanizing process at all. I know a lot of the time in recruitment, there's almost like this fear of technology or an assumption that it somehow makes the process worse or less human, but actually a process that's 100 percent manual and you're drowning in 10,000 CVs that you simply can't get back to is not human because at the end of the day, candidates slip through cracks. You don't get feedback, and the whole thing disintegrates. So having good technology, I think, actually makes it better when it's implemented.

CHRISTIANNA: and I would add to that, like, you can actually implement certain metrics to make sure that you are not letting candidates fall through the cracks. So something that my team does, for example, is we have a metric around ghosted candidates, and the idea is that we have zero there. And this is something we track to make sure that we're not letting people down, right? That they always hear back from us. At some point in the process. So if we notice that we haven't gotten back to a candidate for a certain amount of days, that comes up as a flag in our metrics, and then we like to try to act on it. Of course, like, we're not perfect. So sometimes things do fall off. But yeah, there's definitely ways that we can implement metrics and technology and so on to, yeah, help us with this. Okay.

TIM: Yeah, and that's a great example of data for good, I would say, because, yeah, ghosting and no or crap feedback have to be a candidate's single biggest complaint in hiring. And it's been rife in recruitment for so long. But yeah, what gets measured gets managed. At least you're tracking it. Yeah, it's never zero. You want it to be zero. You've got a clear target. But then you must be miles ahead of a company. Unaware of it completely or knows it's a problem but isn't measuring it. They would have no idea what's going on. So the fact you guys are doing that, I've never heard of a company measuring that. So amazing. Who came up with that? Who decided to track ghosted candidates as a metric?

CHRISTIANNA: It was actually my previous manager, but yeah, I thought it was a great idea. We even came up with a ghostbuster committee. who would chase those of us that have, yeah, ghosted candidates and so on. So we gamified it a little bit. Yeah, and I think it's a great way to stay human and keep the kind of experience positive.

TIM: Yeah, for sure. And I, just in case I sound like I'm being too harsh, have definitely ghosted candidates at various points in the past. I'm not immune from this, especially when we've had high-volume roles where there are thousands coming in from different sources, and it's hard to keep track of it all. But yeah, having a metric to measure it is amazing. And that must, yeah. lead to at least a dent in the problem, if not completely eradicating it. So that's kudos to you and your former manager for coming up and driving that one. That's amazing. What about back to the candidates on the other side of the equation? So you mentioned in passing the kind of extra effort they might need to put in to get the job that they want, because, as you say, the competition is rife. They're probably looking at the LinkedIn ad saying, Oh my God, are you joking me? A thousand applicants already in a couple of days. And so they have to put in more work, but you also mentioned something that was subtle there, which is of those thousand applicants. Let's say for the role. A lot of them are completely irrelevant, let's be honest. And so is it a case of also not being deterred by that huge number? If you are, if you think you're the right candidate for the role, you should still apply through the job boards.

CHRISTIANNA: Absolutely. I think there are so many myths around this, especially on LinkedIn. When you see the sheer number of applicants, that number is there because the job ad keeps reposting itself. So it might be that this job has been open for six months and over the lifetime of this role. There's been. There's been. 200 applicants in six months, which actually is not that much if it's been open that long. And then again, as you mentioned, a lot of irrelevant applicants, maybe from different locations or who don't speak the language, or there's a lot of people that have started to use bots to mass supply. So that's another issue that we're seeing. That's a bit of a challenge on the employer's front. But yeah, so I would say definitely qualified applicants should not be deterred just by seeing the number. They should definitely go for it if they have a good profile. Yeah, they are still likely to be discovered or seen. Yeah, if it is a really popular company, a really popular role, and if they can get a referral, that will help, certainly. Yeah. And I would say screening tools actually really help to bring out the more talented candidates than just manual screening, because from the recruiter's side, let's say you're screening CVs for an hour a day manually, and you have a hundred applicants on your ATS; you're probably going to start at the top. And then go one by one, right? By the time you get halfway, if you've already passed 30 applicants to the next stage, and they're all really strong candidates, you might not even continue, right? Because you want to use your time in the most efficient way possible. And this is where a screening tool could really help because they would then rank the most suitable people for the role at the top. And then you only need to look, you need, or you can start there with them and then the ones that are maybe in the wrong location or that are missing key skills would be closer to the bottom. So then you can use your time more efficiently, essentially with screening, and make sure that you are picking out the best people for the role, regardless of when they applied and where they are in the funnel.

TIM: Yes. And I don't know about you, but when I've done resume screening in the past, I'm not sure. I was equally fair across all of those resumes. I'm sure by the time I got to the hundredth, I was like, Oh my God, can I just do something else? They all start to look the same. And then you've got all the other things around, like their name and where they went to school and other bits of irrelevant noise that we really don't need to know about, which I guess in theory, some kind of automated screening tool could solve for. It sounds like you've started to dabble or try out some of these tools yourself.

CHRISTIANNA: I have to be honest, not really like we do have I have seen how it works, but it's surprising how many companies don't make use of this. I think in the candidate market, a lot of people think that everyone's using bots to screen their CVs and a human never sees it, and they just get like an automated rejection. Whereas, like, I've found that the opposite is usually true, right? There's a very small percentage of companies, at least like in my world, that are actually making use of these screening tools. And the rest are still going for manual screening, but it's something I would love to work with. Whether or not it's implemented in my company, like that's a different Yeah, sorry, let's say, but I think more and more companies are open to this and starting to see the benefit, and more ATSs are naturally built in with this feature. So usually it's something you can turn on or off.

TIM: Yeah, it's a weird one, isn't it? Because it was just this strange myth that grew out of, I don't know where, that the ATS was just filtering out all the CVs arbitrarily and unfairly, which was complete bullshit. But now, to be fair, there are CV screening tools that have been built, and yeah, some of the ATSs have implemented some of the features, but of the, I don't know, 150 people I've spoken to in the last three months,

CHRISTIANNA: All right. Two had tried some kind of automated CV screening, and both of them had built it themselves, like in-house. They'd hacked together a pipeline with Claude.

TIM: It wasn't an official kind of HR tech product. So yeah, I think it's a long way from actually being used en masse across the market. at least from what I

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of it is like the whole thing about many people have trialed something similar to this. So we also have a trial version where you can see what it looks like, but it's a feature of the ATS, and it doesn't work super well. So I think because of that, like, it feels, oh, it doesn't work. So maybe we should just not use it. But of course there are tools out there that are a lot more accurate and great to use for this purpose. Silence.

TIM: If you can. If you were going for a new role now, would you be focusing more on leveraging your network and getting, like, a foot in the door that way through a referral kind of process? And how would you do that? And why would you do that?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, absolutely. I would definitely go through my network. I think because of the situation in the market right now, where there's just a lot of competition, a lot of talent, all sorts of tools, and AI and so on being used for applying, there's a lower trust in general. And so I do feel that companies do prioritize referred candidates because there's automatically more trust. Because somebody knows this person, somebody can vouch for them, right? So there's automatically, yeah, an advantage that you know that this person is who they say they are because you don't always know what people put on their CVs, right? People can put anything on their CVs. So I think that's definitely something that I've noticed at least with conversions, that there's definitely higher conversions from, like, the higher source of referrals. So that's basically what I would do. I would definitely leverage my network. But it also depends on how connected you are, right? In your field. Like, I'm someone who likes to network. I like to go to events and round tables and things like that. So I'm fortunate to have a network in this area, but for sure, some people don't make use of that, and so it might be a bit harder.

TIM: Yeah. And it would be especially maybe early on in your career before you've had a chance to really build that up. That would be difficult. And then as you say, yeah, not everyone's into the networking conference, whatever set, but it's probably worth thinking about planning for the future. Like you need your network when you need them. And you don't want to be suddenly stuck in a position where, oh my God, I don't have a job. I'm desperate. I'm just applying en masse. I'm trying to. build a network from scratch. That's almost too late. By that point, it's going to be this more proactive forethought where you think, This, I'm going to build a network. I might not leverage them for 20 years. This is just mutual giving and not transactional. But it will pay off eventually for both of you as you grow your career; is that the way you look at it?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, for sure. And I like to think of a personal brand, right? Like, I'm pretty big on branding as well. And I think that everyone should be building a personal brand, especially if you work in recruitment or marketing or something like this, where you know that there's a lot happening in the space. Things are currently changing, and yeah, new ways of working are being implemented. I think you do need to constantly upskill yourself and have a strong personal brand.

TIM: And for your personal brand, what have you focused on? What would you, if I were to ask a random person who'd met you, almost like three words that they'd remember you by, or three words they'd like to associate you with? I'm not sure if this is too hard a question. What would you hope they say? What are the core elements of your brand that you're trying to position?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, so I would say there's three things that people probably know me for. Talent acquisition is one of them. Coaching, like career coaching and leadership, is one of them. And the other thing would probably be, like, cross-cultural communication, since I have a very international background, I've worked internationally, and I work with several different markets and countries that are somewhat less common, I would say, that people have had experience working in those markets. Yeah, I think those are the three things I would be known for.

TIM: Let's hope so. And when you think about your personal branding, then I'm interested in this now. Like, how do you go about that? Are you prominent on LinkedIn? Are you speaking at conferences? How do you think about building that out for anyone who's listening and wants to do the same thing?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, absolutely. I think the best way to start is with your LinkedIn profile. And just connecting with people. And then I do recommend going to industry events. So there are usually like groups in every field that arrange some sort of events networking events that you could go to where there are speakers and so on, and just connecting with people. And then once you meet them, add them on LinkedIn. So those are good places to start. If you're comfortable with content creation, definitely, like posting on LinkedIn or on other social media, makes sense, but for the professional world, if you were going off to a normal. Career, let's say, like in tech or corporate or whatever. LinkedIn is definitely a platform that I would make use of. Also depending on the market, because there might be differences from market to market. And then, yeah, if you can do speaking engagements, things like this, podcasts using other social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, etc. I think that also works. But yeah, for me personally, I've seen like the highest return on LinkedIn. So almost all of my previous jobs have come through LinkedIn. I even met my boyfriend through LinkedIn. That's a funny story, but anyway, I won't get into that. But yeah, it's all just from being quite active with content creation, connecting with people, and so on. And then I also do some workshops occasionally, like just voluntary things where I give workshops to, like, this institute in Germany that basically helps refugees integrate into the workforce through, like, tech programs. So I generally give like some talks there on like how to use AI in your applications and how to build your personal brand, things like that. So that's some of the stuff I do on the side just because I enjoy it and I want to give back. And I think it's also a nice way to build up my brand.

TIM: Would you consider yourself an introvert or extrovert or somewhere in between?

CHRISTIANNA: I'm actually right in the middle. So my Myers-Briggs personality is ENTJ, which sounds really intense to people that know the MBTI, but actually I would say I'm maybe 51 percent extroverted and 49 percent introverted. About you?

TIM: I'm INTJ if I remember my springs, and yeah, also ambivert in the middle, but definitely I'm sure I'm more introverted than extroverted. And part of the reason I was asking you about that was because some people were listening. Might not be that comfortable and, reaching out or going to conferences or networking, but it's good. You just have to get out of your comfort zone. I can even speak from my experience in starting this business that I run a Luba the. The first thing I did before writing a line of code or building anything was just getting coffee with 50 people in Sydney and Melbourne. Just talk to them about how they did hiring, what their problems were and how they approached it, and how they thought about it. And it's from that that I learned so much about the market to be able to build a product in the first place. And then some of those people ended up becoming our customers because I'd met them and we had a good conversation. And some people also just. Spontaneously help you get to the end of a conversation; you're not asking them for anything. It's not transactional. oh, you should speak to XYZ or I'll put you in touch with blah, blah, blah. And good things will happen when you just speak to people and put yourself out there.

CHRISTIANNA: Absolutely. Yeah. And you don't have to be the loudest person in the room, right? It's just about you can learn certain techniques just to be more interested in other people and to learn to ask good questions and so on. So for those who haven't read it, I really recommend How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. If you feel like it doesn't come naturally to you to connect with people and, yeah, build relationships with strangers, like this is a good starting point. You can even watch a short 20-minute YouTube summary of this, and I think you can learn a lot from that about how to have better conversations and how to naturally connect with people.

TIM: Yeah, I love that book. I first read it. Maybe 12 years ago, and I'd given the copy to someone at work for a company that I left. So I lost that book, but I recently re-bought it in Spanish to try to brush up on my Spanish. So I'm midway through it. It's downstairs now. And yeah, I'm just reminded of how much I love that book and how helpful it was to me all that time ago and still is now as well. So yeah, I can second your recommendation there for. The classic must be like a hundred years old, nearly. Now the book, something like that.

CHRISTIANNA: I don't know.

TIM: Some of the references are a little bit random and out of date, but the content is still really good.

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, for sure. Okay.

TIM: And personal branding and whatnot, and thinking about hiring at this super high scale, ridiculously fast-growing kind of tech environment. Because I feel like it's really interesting. Almost unique. Hiring experience that must be very challenging for anyone involved, people managing the talent team, and the hiring managers themselves. I feel like one of the trade-offs is probably just hiring people fast enough to keep up with the ridiculous demand while still hiring the right people. And I'm really interested in this trade-off. Is it a trade-off? Or do you lean more towards one end of the spectrum? Is there almost like a company view of this? Like, we just need to fill these positions no matter what, or Yeah. What do you think about this problem?

CHRISTIANNA: I think there's always a trade off, right? It's very hard to like, hire top talent in 20 days. So yeah, definitely you have to choose whether it's something that you want to do quickly with high volumes or whether it's something that you want to take your time for and try your best with volume, but just be okay with the higher maybe landing. A little bit later than you planned. And I would say, like, a lot of the companies that I worked for. would go for the latter. So they would choose to rather wait a little bit longer than hire the wrong person. And that's usually like what happens, right? It's like you have a pretty high bar, and you don't want to just settle just because you need to make that higher. And this is always obviously like a bit of tension because from the TA side, you also have certain targets that you need to meet month on month. But we also understand that. Yeah, in order to grow a successful business, you need the right people. And so we try to never settle for just anyone, right? We do want to find the right person. So we do what we can to get the right amount of volumes and so on. Of course, it's challenging, but yeah, the more structure you have in the recruitment process, the easier it becomes.

TIM: I'm interested in hiring quality because you mentioned before a metric around ghosting or not ghosting candidates. Is there a metric internally around hiring quality, hiring accuracy? If so, is that owned by the hiring team, which is actually ultimately making the hiring decision?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, so this is a bit tricky. I would say a lot of companies struggle with this because it's not something that can be owned only by the TA team. In my view, at least, this is also like my personal opinion. I think that it's a metric that needs to be co-owned by the talent acquisition team, by the ATRO team, and by the local. Hiring manager, whoever is managing that team, because without good onboarding. You won't have a successful person, right? So the onboarding by the hiring manager needs to be really great. Yeah, also, like, HR is involved in tracking these metrics on retention, and there might be bigger issues there around comp and so on. All of these things need to come together in order to be able to efficiently track this metric. Until now. We haven't tracked it, but it's something that we definitely want to track. And I think it's something that businesses should be tracking for sure.

TIM: Yes, and I feel like there are a few challenges in tracking it, which is firstly just deciding what success is, because I don't think it's necessarily obvious. So, for example, if you hire a candidate and they stay in the role for a year and then quit and go to another company for a promotion, some hiring managers would argue that's a success because they've helped grow that person to a level where they can get promoted elsewhere. But maybe from the company's perspective. Not great that you've lost talent. You can think of someone who maybe gets made redundant after a year because their team's project shuts down. It's not really their fault. They haven't done anything wrong. And yeah, there are all these kinds of gray areas where I'm not quite sure what the right metric is. Someone who stays in the same job for five years and doesn't get promoted. Is that success or failure? Like they've had stagnation. So I think that must be part of the difficulty, like, what is even the metric to begin with? What is success?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, and I think a lot of companies, just to make it easier, track whether or not candidates have passed their probation. And I also argue whether this is elaborate enough, right? Is there something more we should be tracking? Do they actually, if it's a role that has certain KPIs, meet their KPIs or not? But that adds a layer of complexity that makes it even harder to track. Because when you think about the scale of a lot of businesses, it's very hard to keep track of this, right? So yeah, I guess you need to then look at performance data as well that the people team would own. But a lot of this is quite confidential. So it's a bit difficult to, like, get a hold of this. So yeah, it's a very complex topic. And I wish there was an easier way to measure this. But I think, yeah, a lot of companies would just look at the probation period, whether or not candidates passed.

TIM: Yeah, that's a reasonable proxy. If you have nothing else, as you said, the complexity of doing the other measurements, maybe it's just too much effort. So yeah, past probation. That seems like a reasonable yardstick to me. And then I know in some markets back to the kind of trade-off between speed and accuracy in some markets, because it's quite hard. Let's say you move someone on who you've hired, and you realize you've made a mistake. Does that almost add an extra layer of risk aversion? Because you're like, if we make the wrong hiring decision, this is going to be an absolute nightmare. Like I know. Some of my family work in the government here in Australia. Once you're in the government sector, you are in there for life; no matter what you do, unless you turn out to work naked or something, you cannot be fired. All right. So you've got to really make sure you hire the right person. Have you also seen that in some of these different markets you operate in? Yeah. In the markets where it's harder to get rid of people, you need to be a little bit more careful.

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we do notice that for sure. And also in a lot of markets in Europe, people would have a three-month notice period. When they quit their job. So you would, it's quite an investment, I would say as well, wait for somebody for three plus months and like turn off all of the recruitment and all of that, because a lot can happen in that time. So definitely there is more risk in those cases. And something else I've noticed in my experience is that. Newer hiring managers or new leaders, let's say, are a lot more cautious when it comes to their hiring because they're the most afraid to make mistakes. It was their first time hiring for their team. They're usually a little bit harder to work with because they're a lot more scared of making the wrong decision. Whereas, like more seasoned hiring managers, they've seen a lot, they've experienced a lot, and they know what good looks like. So for them, they're more risk tolerant, let's say.

TIM: That's so interesting because, yeah, if I didn't know that, I would have guessed the exact opposite. In the sense that once you've made a few bad hires, regretted hires. I don't want to say bad because it makes it sound like the person is bad. You hired someone who you shouldn't have in retrospect. Once you've done that a few times, oh my God, you never forget because it's a nightmare. You're like, Oh Jesus, what is, what have I done? And now you have to performance manage people, or you have to have all these endless difficult conversations. You have to eventually fire them, which is dreadful for them. And you know that. And then it's also, unless you're like a very confrontational kind of person, you don't really want to have performance management conversations every day. So yeah, having been scarred by that, I feel like then that would make you more risk averse. You're like, No. I really want to get it right this time. But you're saying That's interesting. Among

CHRISTIANNA: No, I wouldn't say these things are mutually exclusive, right? Definitely if you've been scarred before, yeah, then that might also cause you to be a bit more cautious. But I think these are like two different things, like being newer and then having one or two bad experiences, but mostly positive experiences. Just because of the volume you've hired, you would still be better or faster with your decision-making. Compared to somebody who's only made like one or two decisions about hiring in the past. Silence.

TIM: Work expands to fill the time available to it. I think that's Parkinson's law or something like that. So a bit of that time pressure is good, but also I can feel like. If I look back and think about some of the hires that I made that didn't work out, some of them were time pressure where it was more like, Oh, I just want to hire someone. I'm sick of doing this thing. I want to move on with the rest of my job. And that's almost like a panic hire. I don't think that ever works. Have you seen that as well with some of your hiring managers?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I think when we do look back, then we realize, oh, actually, we were all on the fence, but then we just went ahead anyway, because there was pain.

TIM: Yes.

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah. And if we really thought about it, then it would have probably been a no. So we do try; we do quite a lot of training as well with our hiring teams, and we talk about this a lot. Like, even if we're in pain, we shouldn't settle; if we feel like we're on the fence, it's a no. And then we've also implemented debrief discussions and trained our talent acquisition teams. How to run an effective debrief, right? So getting all the panelists in a room and discussing, like, how did you assess this person? What is your judgment and what is it based on? And then also pulling out a lot of the biases that people have because everyone's got bias, right? Like recruitment is not an unbiased process, unfortunately, as much as we want it to be. We're still humans at the end of the day. And yeah, we do bring our personal biases into our decision-making, so this is when we get together in a debrief, and we try to pull out, Did you make that decision based on a bias? right? If you say somebody is not a culture fit, how did you assess this against what, which criteria? Is it just because of the vibes? Like that you didn't get along with the person and you didn't have anything in common with them? Like they like to throw frisbees, and you don't. So you just felt like it's not a culture fit because nobody else on the team plays frisbee or whatever. So that's where we really uncover a lot of these things. And then we tried to make unbiased decisions on whether to make the hire or not.

TIM: Yeah, that's so important. And you're laughing, but oh my God, how many candidates must have fallen down at some point because of something like that? Yeah, they didn't pass the vibe check, as you say. And it's, yeah, good that you'd have this reflective process. Are people open to that scrutiny of really thinking about their biases and admitting, Yeah, I always want to choose"? So for me, it would be you, the candidate who comes in, who loves football, and we start talking about football for the first five minutes, and we're talking about Man United this and Arsenal that and da, and they're getting all excited about football, which has nothing to do with the job. If I had a candidate like that, I know I'm going to like them more than everyone else. So I at least know that one, and I can admit that one, but is everyone open to admitting their biases?

CHRISTIANNA: Absolutely not. And it's always a very uncomfortable conversation as well going into a debrief. Because once you start probing a lot, like, how did you assess this? What was good about them against which cultural values of the company? Did you actually decide that this person is a great team fit? And then you start to realize, Oh, they didn't actually assess them against any of this criteria. It was just like a nice conversation. Yeah, then we challenge the hiring team a little and say, Okay. Maybe we need to dig a bit deeper and assess everyone fairly because there are also other candidates that would be assessed in a certain way. So we try to also introduce question banks and scorecards and things like that so that there's more of a standardized process across.

TIM: And so with those scorecards, will that be the case that you already know for a particular role you're hiring what the questions are in each interview? That's predetermined, and then the interviewer just picks up their score. Cool, I have to ask these questions. Is that how it works? Or does the interviewer still have some kind of leeway?

CHRISTIANNA: So I would say it's a bit of a combination where you're testing for these things in this interview. Here are some questions that you can use as a guide, but you do have some flexibility in that conversation.

TIM: Okay, so it's still up to them at the end of the day what they ask the candidate, which, yeah, I feel like has some pros and cons. In the sense that I've heard recently a few anecdotes from people that have made me think a little bit differently about structured interviews, which I've always otherwise advocated and said makes it easier to compare candidates. You ask them the same question, you compare their answers; it's easier to compare, but then some people have gone through what I'd describe almost like overly structured interviews. where it was so structured, it was robotically monotone, and someone was going through almost like a checklist of questions, and it didn't allow them to really show themselves at all, because they were just, it's almost like speaking to a robot. that was too far.

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I do think you need to leave some room for, yeah, free expression, let's say, and for a more natural conversation, because then otherwise you also wouldn't really get to know the person. So yeah, usually we recommend competencies. That you should be testing for. And then I like to use two to three competency questions per interview. They also call those behavioral questions, right? Yeah. And just integrate those somehow in the interview, and then the other things you cover, like certain topics, you can decide how you want to cover those. But yeah, definitely not a fan of this script where you're like, Okay, this is what you should say, and this is what you should ask them, and that's

TIM: Yeah, that's a bit too far. Maybe we'll get there in the future with some kind of future AI interviewer, but nah, even then, I think it'll be less robotic than that overly structured process. One thing I feel like is undervalued in some sense is the interviewer's quality. And how big a determinant that can be on the candidate experience on the hiring accuracy. Because the difference between kind of superficially asking someone some questions and really getting to know who they are is huge. What do you think about that? Do you have some kind of interviewer training or certain things you try to encourage interviewers to do or not do?

CHRISTIANNA: Absolutely. So something that I have on my wishlist for recruitment is that everyone should be trained before they conduct any interviews, right? Because it is a job as well. It's a skill. It's not something that you are just born with; not everyone just automatically knows how to interview. So I do think it's like a skill that needs to be learned. And yeah, something that I actually started at my current company is a global interviewer training program where everyone needs to get their license to hire. So if you're a new interviewer, you're not allowed to have interviews or conduct interviews until you've gone through this full day of in-person training. And you've received your digital license to hire. Because yeah, there's definitely like a lot of things that could go wrong. And also, you can completely put off a candidate. You can just not get the right information from them by asking the wrong questions. It can become an interrogation pretty quickly, if you're not a trained interviewer there's also so much room for bias. Also, I like writing the wrong type of feedback. And then there's legal implications for that. So a lot of things could go wrong. starting

TIM: And so they get a license to hire. Do they also need a license to fire to get rid of an underperformer?

CHRISTIANNA: Well, HR takes care of that. I'm not super involved, but yes, yeah, for sure. I would say that they do need to work very closely with HR. to Have those conversations.

TIM: Yeah, but you're the ones who have to ultimately do their dirty work, unfortunately, when it comes to that, aren't you?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, not particularly me. So I'm not doing like the full scope of HR work, just the talent acquisition. Yeah, I just bring in the people, and then what happens to them once they're in is none of my business.

TIM: We've spoken a few times about biases in this conversation. When we caught up recently, you mentioned that you hired across all these different markets, quite varying markets in terms of their cultures and whatnot. How do we evaluate people across these different markets for cultural fit when they just come from such different backgrounds?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, so this is very difficult. And I would say you do need to educate yourself a lot as an interviewer before. Hiring for a new market, because there are definitely nuances, and it's quite easy to dismiss somebody based on Western standards, let's say, just because they directly translated something from their language, for example, that might seem like sexist to you or something. Whereas it's just like a translation of the gendered language, for example, things like that that are just like small cultural nuances that you might not be aware of, that I think shouldn't dismiss candidates in certain markets. But I would say the best way is to just focus on the quality of the candidate. And like the culture fit for the company and not their culture from their country is by somehow assessing for the company's values, right? So values are something that I think is quite universal, whereas culture, I don't know, ways of talking or things that people like to do in their free time, and so on, differ.

TIM: Yes, sure. And thinking back now to even people I've worked with or hired or clients we've dealt with in different markets. And even something like communication style is so vastly different. Anyone would tell you the average Dutch person is a lot more direct than the average Australian, which I've come to really like. I appreciate that directness and almost like bluntness. I think it would come across as rude here. Thank you. But then an Australian in Holland would probably come across as very waffly, and what are you even saying to me? Just say what you mean. Okay, this is what I mean. And so those kinds of things would be, it would be so easy to screen out a candidate accidentally for something that's just inherent to who they are. And so it's about what you're saying, thinking about those almost universal cultural values of the company that don't really matter whether you're from X, Y, or Z country. Is that right?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So are you a team player, for example? And what sort of questions can you ask to assess whether or not this person is a team player? That kind of thing. But yeah, a really good point that you said about communication skills. I'm personally a huge fan of Erin Meyer. I don't know if you know her work, but there's this book called The Culture Map. And yeah, there's also this model; you can go to the website, the culture map, and you can pay for this model that maps out. different communication styles across different cultures and different countries. And I would say for the most part it's pretty accurate. It does generalize a little bit, but I think it's really helpful if you're working with a new market to have some of that information on whether they prefer low-context or high-context communication, whether they prefer more direct or less direct, these kinds of things, like whether they prefer feedback in a confrontational way or more, and a nicer way of giving feedback one-to-one, and so on. These kinds of things are really helpful. I think when you're working with people from cultures different from yours, before starting that collaboration, just so you know what sort of differences could come. up.

TIM: And this being yourself helps; then having worked across so many different markets in seven different countries has certainly given you quite a wide perspective on different cultures and how people live around the world, which is part of your value add when you're working for companies.

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, absolutely. It helps me a lot, for sure. Yeah. And I have noticed some of these things, like sometimes if I'm on a call with somebody, like a new stakeholder from a certain country, and I'm like, wow, this person seems quite rude. And I like look at like the this like model and I'm like, Oh, cause they, the culture that this person's from is very confrontational. So for them, it's normal to be, yeah, to just be, like, a bit more expressive and confrontational and so on. But for me, it's not as normal, so I'm just more tolerant of these.

TIM: You mentioned that book. What about TAs and talent acquisition professionals in general? They're probably looking at the development of AI and these kinds of tools just going so quickly. I think pretty much anyone in any field is thinking the same way. A lot of people are thinking about, what's happening to my skill set? It's almost being eroded away in some ways people might feel. Is there a sense of needing to future-proof their skills and their career? What advice would you have for TA professionals in this area?

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah, definitely. So things are changing rapidly. And. For sure, I think the natural human reaction is to like, panic, that, oh no, am I not, am I going to become redundant? But I think the recruiters who will become redundant are those that don't bring anything new to the recruiter skill stack. So if you don't know how to work with data, if you don't know how to work with AI, then you can assume that your job will become redundant. As controversial as it might sound, I think the best thing that recruiting professionals can do now to future-proof their careers and their skill sets is to learn how to work with AI to make themselves more effective to free up more of their time and to be more strategic. So what are the strategic areas they can get involved in businesses? Apart from just making hires, what else can they contribute to? They should be able to pick up trends from the market and inform businesses on how they can be more effective in either or more competitive in certain ways, or can we offshore talent from somewhere else in order to save costs here and there, like things like that. I feel these are things that TA should be involved with as well. So workforce planning is just being more strategic in general, adding more value to the business apart from just getting butts in seats. The other thing is, yeah, just being able to work with data in different ways. So I would even go as far as to say that they should be able to build their own dashboards. That's maybe like an extra step if you really want to be like amazing in solid acquisition is to be really great at like pulling data, working with data, and making data-informed decisions. Around the cost of hiring, the speed of hiring certain trends and sources, and so on, where to spend money on different channels to attract the right people. Employer branding is another thing that I think makes you recruited more. Holistic, let's say, is knowing how to build an employer brand, what are the things you can do to develop that in certain markets. And then, yeah, with AI, you need to know. which tools could make your job more effective, even if your current company doesn't work with them. I would say just keep your finger on the pulse. Yeah. And just keep an eye on what's happening in general. So that in the future, if you were to change jobs and so on, just to know in general what is trending and how it could help you as a professional.

TIM: Yeah, some great suggestions, and just to second the AI one, even just using ChatGPT or Claude in your day-to-day life, I think you'll naturally start to get a feel for it and start to understand its limitations, its pros, and its cons. I've been using it a lot recently to learn languages. It's like an amazing free language tutor in any language you want, pretty much. And so from that, I could start to say, Oh, cool. It could do a similar thing in this stage of the hiring process. So even if you don't have access to HR tech using AI, you can always upskill in your own time in your own life. And it's, yeah, a groundbreaking technology that we should all get into.

CHRISTIANNA: Yeah. Absolutely. Also for market mapping and talent intelligence, there are already tools like Perplexity where you can get some of this information; without having to invest in expensive tools like Talent Neuron or something like that, you can already get some basic information from these. tools.

TIM: Excellent. AI for the win, and yeah, future-proofing your talent skill set to survive the next five or 10 years. Christianna, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a great conversation. You've shared a lot of really great insights for the audience. So thank you for joining us.

CHRISTIANNA: Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation, Tim.