Identifying the value of Talent Leadership — an interview with Jon Hull

A great TA team should be collaborative, sharing and communicating openly.

Promoting the Value of In-house Recruitment with Jon Hull, Group Head of Resourcing at Carillion

All CEOs talk about how talent is the organisation’s most important asset. Yet how many key decision makers merely pay lip service to the acquisition of great talent?

Far too many in-house recruitment teams do not receive the support or the budget they need to bring the right people into the business which is why we are on a crusade to raise the credibility and visibility of In-house Resourcing teams.

Jon Hull is an HR and Talent Management leader with 18 years of international experience and a track record of managing change and diverse teams from roles including Manager for Capita Plc, Acting Head of HR APAC and Global Head of Recruitment for RS Components, and Head of Resourcing UK and Ireland at Sodexo.

Jon was named as one of the Top 11 Influencers in In House Recruitment 2014, and is shortlisted for In House Recruitment Leader of the Year 2016 for Recruiter Magazine.

In a recent interview with Jon we asked a series of questions to find out more about his views of the role of Talent Acquisition.

What makes a great Talent Acquisition Team?

Curiosity is important, that the team have an interest in the business and are commercially focused therefore understanding what the business needs. Process is important too but the team shouldn’t be a slave to it, process works best when you don’t realise it’s there.

A great TA team should be collaborative, sharing and communicating openly. Working in silos is not the way forward and stakeholder management is key. They should also be comfortable with data in order to drive innovation and different thinking in recruiters and hiring managers.

The team should be either closely aligned to or part of the HR department and have the complete trust of the HRD. Finally I believe that Specialism is important — gone are the days of the 360 degree recruiter for large employers.

What’s the key element of very successful cultures within Talent Acquisition Teams?

As I’ve said before, a key element is that the team are not slaves to process. A great example of this is how we run our team meetings at Carillion — they are not about process but about behaviour, culture, values, comms and looking at how we can improve, the same as a sales environment.

An in-housing resourcing team should be at the front end of the business building relationships with suppliers and having partnerships throughout the company, that way they are in a position to review what is right and wrong about the whole organisation.

Behaviour, personalisation and commercial intelligence are key in good TA professionals. Those with past agency experience often show great initiative, they are curious, disciplined and not afraid to pick up the phone and call managers if necessary.

What would you say have been some of your biggest successes in your career so far?

At RS Components I would say my biggest success was moving the company away from agencies, decreasing the reliance down to 10% which in turn resulted in a decrease in hiring, turnover of staff and pointless hires.

At Carillion I’ve instigated a campaign approach to the different facilities in the construction world, and the business is now in control of its workforce planning.

I am a massive fan of technology, it leads to great efficiency despite the fact that it can be impersonal, and I advocate utilising the full functionality of an ATS in particular to target silver medalists, the second-choice candidates who were interviewed previously.

What are the biggest challenges, opportunities the industry faces over the next 3 years?

The challenges come from the managers who are stuck in their ways. The Talent Acquisition team needs to come out of the shadows and shout about how valuable it is to the business. Stakeholder management is key, find your advocates and work with them. If you are fire fighting you are always on the back foot, so identify the terrorists, prove the concept and use advocates to influence them.

So much money is wasted on external searches and it could be saved if the different parts of the business talked to each other more. This is something which TA needs to facilitate and encourage. Also talent management, succession planning and recruitment should be more integrated.

There are great opportunities for businesses which become smarter at understanding data and smarter at assessment, realising that behaviour and culture fit is more important than experience. Ultimately if you get the management recruitment right then everything else follows.

You can connect with Jon via LinkedIn