Q What attracted you to AIA Worldwide, when it comes to building the future of talent acquisition?
I have been with the parent company in the United States for 18 years and I was initially attracted to the business because of the focus on innovation. Talent is always evolving. People want different types of information across emerging platforms. I am fascinated by the ways in which companies can attract, inform, and convert top talent. We have continuously and consistently driven market-changing initiatives – augmented reality, data-driven recruitment marketing, programmatic advertising, and our TalentBrew SaaS career site platform, to name a few – and we enable contribution and participation from people across the business. Today, we are working to further enrich and enhance our structured dataset of more than 614 million individual candidates to allow us to deliver a meaningful AI tool for our clients leveraging data science and machine learning. This will allow us to better target talent with laser-focused content, contextually relevant jobs, and employer brand storytelling. I know that sounds like a lot of jargon and marketing-speak, but it’s not and I am happy to explain it over a chat if anyone is interested!
Q As the global leader in talent acquisition technologies, what is the strategy of AIA Worldwide in creating and enhancing employer brands?
In our thinking, an EVP is a talent strategy. It’s the basis for creating Employer Brands designed around engaging people, not just attracting them. This means EVPs and Employer Brands should be based on communications, not just marketing. Getting that right means we run Employer Brand projects as stakeholder management projects. That’s because ultimately the best messaging meets the company and the audience expectations while remaining aligned to business goals.
Q What goals or accomplishments has your team / you achieved to-date that you’re particularly proud of?
We have a fantastic team and I could not be prouder to play a small part in our efforts on behalf of our global clients. 2019 has been another phenomenal year of achievements such as winning 56 awards (so far) including the Internet Advertising Awards for Best Employment Website for AT&T, Best Social Media Campaign for Jaguar Land Rover, and Outstanding Website for British Airways. We also captured Webby Awards for career sites for Primark, P&G, and Adecco and the Target Award for Best Student Marketing Campaign for Accenture to name a few.
Additionally, our London office was named “Office of the Year” by our leadership team for their excellence and client commitment across our global footprint.
Finally, we have been in growth mode and have completed four acquisitions in 2019 including Perengo (a programmatic advertising platform), CKR Interactive (advertising) in the US, Maximum (advertising) in the Netherlands, and Carve Consulting (social media consultancy) in the UK. It’s only November so stay tuned! Who knows what else we will accomplish.
Q What is your main focus in terms of talent acquisition?
We help companies solve complex hiring challenges through the use of creative brand storytelling, smart technology, and data and insights. Our goal is to help our clients attract better talent faster, help the talent to understand the reasons to join the company so they can self-select in or out and to drive conversion of those quality candidates to hires. By leveraging our proprietary dataset of more than 614 million job seekers, we can tailor our efforts based on user-behaviour, candidate needs and desires, and knowledge of which platforms and media deliver the best ROI.
Q How do you think people analytics can impact talent acquisition processes?
Analytics and insights are the keys to talent acquisition success going forward. AI-driven recruitment marketing is the future but it can only be delivered successfully if the proper preparatory steps are taken first.
To get to AI, we first need to enable Machine Learning which is itself dependent upon rigorous Data Science to teach the machine. Of course, none of this is possible without a massive amount of structured data. Companies are beginning to better understand the data requirements that will enable true impact on their talent acquisition processes. The future is here, and it’s exciting!
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