The cliché states “Technology changes every 6 months”  As the war for talent continues to expand across the globe organizations are faced with challenges that require well thought and executed processes, response systems and technologies.

Here are take away items from what I felt may have been one of the best sessions I was able to attend at this years HR Tech.

Moderated by Gerry Crispin, the panel included:

• Chris Hoyt, Global Practice Leader, Pepsico
• Maureen Negila, Global Talent and Recruitment, Manulife Financial
• Danielle Monaghan, HR Partner Director, Technology Service, Cisco
• Kent Kirch, Global Director of Talent Acquisition & Mobility, Deloitte

After sitting in on an hour of debate I was able to walk away with 7 key points that I will certainly bring back with me as I plan for 2014.

Here are the 7 key points that got me thinking:

Take away from Chris Hoyt:

Consider placing advertisement / media buys in front of your current employee population with the goal of driving them back into your clients / employers internal portals.

This will allow you to place very meaningful information directly in the path of your current employee population that may or may not visit that same information if communicated internally.  Clearly the messaging won’t disclose the 11 secret ingredients to perfect colonel’s recipe (From KFC) but try to image how this may work in your organization?

I see this potentially serving value to non-employees as well.  Should a non employee click through and land on your page you should have a clear call to action on that page to redirect that person into a lead funnel or another content funnel to serve its purpose.

Take away from Kent:

Co-Create Ideas with the various local level stakeholders in the countries that you are integrating the  new technology. The panel spoke about the unique needs of countries around the globe. It’s impossible for you to understand local level needs for every country that you will include in your integration.

Some of the challenges mentioned:

1. Local recruiting ability
2. Local customs for approaching recruiting best practices
3. Local infrastructure and the ability to effectively use the technology that you are providing to the team
4. Willingness to adopt at the change at the rate you are expecting

Take away from Maureen:

When adding additional solutions that require partnerships in other countries it is important to fully understand the local economy and recruiting best practices.  Partnerships with an RPO or outside recruiting firm may hinder your goal of global expansion for some markets.

Maureen made mention that an RPO lacks the ability to present strong relationship building. Although I list this as a take away I have to disagree with this statement. I am embedded into an RPO and though I can respect where the statement may come from I am confident that I can present a stronger case to show that leading RPO’s present the ability to recruit better candidates, faster and often in closer alignment to the brand position than the corporate recruiters representing the very same brand.

Through a healthy mix of process, automation and nurturing an RPO with the proper tools will increase the candidate experience. Most successful instances I can point to however include a blended approach where the RPO is working alongside the client recruiter.

Take away from Danielle:

When you add technology you run the risk of adding layers of complexity that ultimately create additional steps in the recruiting process. It is important to maintain a level of consistency between the technology and the recruiting team so that you are not adding additional hand offs in an already convoluted process.

I agree with Danielle’s goal in that keeping the recruiters on the phone and out of reporting is crucial. If you are asking your recruiters to run weekly reports on their production than you can amend your process to be better, fast and stronger.

Secondly I agree wholeheartedly that it is vitally important to customize the experience across countries, regions and sometimes even states. Messaging is important and with out capturing your targets interest you are not going to see success.

And last but not least, a celebrity guest audience member sums up the entire conversation in 1 sentence. The honorable mention from the back of the room: 

Integration without adoption is failure.   Elaine Orler, TalentFunction.com