Navigating the Remote Workforce: Nicola (Nicky) Hancock Of AMS, Americas On Strategies for Growing a Geographically Dispersed Organization

An Interview With Rachel Kline

Embrace data, but don’t marry it: Talent intelligence will become increasingly crucial for shaping jobs, identifying skill gaps, and finding the right people. That said, talent is the business of finding the right fits for the job and culture. Data is a tool, not a decision-maker. Use it to inform your actions, but don’t allow it to become your only metric because it will remove the human aspect of an organization, especially in hybrid working models where we see each other face-to-face far less.

An increasing number of organizations are tapping into the global talent market and building semi or fully-remote workforces distributed far and wide. While harnessing diverse talent can be a boon for innovation, this operational model is not without its challenges. In this series we ask seasoned HR and operations professionals and leaders about what it takes to run a geographically dispersed organization. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Nicola (Nicky) Hancock.

Nicola (Nicky) Hancock is Regional Managing Director at AMS, Americas — a global talent acquisition/management advisory group and recruitment processing outsourcer. At AMS, Nicky is responsible for all global staff and clients in the Investment Banking sector and the Americas region. She ensures that AMS builds a strong understanding of its clients’ businesses and translates this into solutions, delivering services that meet their strategic objectives. She has over 15 years’ experience in resourcing. During her 12+ years with AMS, she has led a number of key clients globally including RBS, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and BAML and has built extensive experience and understanding of financial services and the challenges and opportunities this brings to talent acquisition and management. Prior to AMS, Nicola’s experiences included consulting directly for a number of blue-chip organizations.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Before we drive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I was born in the UK and grew up there with my family just outside of London. My parents divorced when I was a teenager and I moved out of my home and was independent from the age of 17. Unfortunately, my sister passed away when I was 23 which changes everything, but also gives you a huge amount of perspective and resilience, given your life is never the same. I have huge respect for the strength my mum showed and continues to show and that will always stay with me. Our family was never the same, but we did become closer.

I worked in London from the age of 21 and then moved to the US in my late 30s when my son was 6 months old. We lived in New York for 3 years and then Orlando, Florida during the pandemic and now in Atlanta, Georgia. I am a big believer in making the most of the opportunities you have.

While I didn’t plan on leaving home or even considered how hard it was moving to New York with a baby and no friends or family, these are the experiences you learn from.

All of these lessons in compassion and resilience greatly shaped starting my career and the work I do today. Understanding individual team members’ backstories can teach you a lot about who they are and what they need to be successful.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I am not sure it’s funny, but I did learn that it is not always best to try and manage a difficult or challenging situation on your own the hard way. Raising awareness and asking others for help is a huge strength and not a sign of failure.

If I had done this at times, the situation would have resulted in a better outcome for my team, business and me. I now look at this as a sign of strength in my leaders — knowing to recognize when there is a challenging situation, that others need to help and provide support for us to be successful as a team.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

There are many, the CEO and leaders at my previous company and many of my colleagues and the leaders at AMS. There are individuals who I have learned a huge amount from through exposure, experience, and the time they have taken to invest in me.

There are many who advocated and supported me, even in the most challenging times when my role was changing rapidly, and I think this is what you value the most — those who recognize that there are always periods of success and failure, but recognizing your potential and taking the time to sponsor you.

That makes a significant difference and not something you forget, but also something we should all recognize is part of our role as leaders. If we really want to maximize the talent we have, we have to recognize the responsibility we have and always remember those who did it for us — we have to pay that back.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill

• I am a great believer in the importance of not only learning from mistakes or challenges, but also finding the strength to move forward and not let setbacks define you.
• Both personally and professionally, I believe this mentality is a ‘super power’ and helps you maximize the impact you can have, both on yourself and others. It gives you a sense of optimism and strength to know you will move forward and things will get better — at some point, given we can all be certain that nothing ever stays the same.

Thinking back on your own career, what would you tell your younger self?

• Just be yourself. I think when you set out your career and become a manager or leader, you spend a lot of time thinking about how you ‘should react’, ‘should respond’, what is ‘professional’, what others will think of you and how you compare.
• You then realize the huge value you can bring by just being your authentic self — someone others can relate to and the strength in being comfortable being yourself. While obviously recognizing that doesn’t mean you are perfect, but you accept yourself and are willing to recognize and share when you make mistakes.
• There is a huge strength in that — given we are all human and being the leader doesn’t make you perfect, actually far from it. I am very lucky to work in a culture and environment at AMS which values being your authentic self and enables everyone to be the best they can be.

Let’s now move to the central part of our interview. What are your “Top Five Strategies for Growing a Geographically Dispersed Organization”?

• Adapt, don’t dwell: The pandemic created shifting workforce demands, stemming from peaks of recovery hiring to valleys of layoffs or hiring freezes. However, sporadic market conditions have taught companies and talent professionals how to be agile and flexible. The days where an entire department sat within 100 feet of each other are gone — we must embrace the distances often separating teams.
• A total-talent perspective: On that same note, in the face of challenges like inflation, hybrid work models, and a long-term labor shortage, always remember hiring alone won’t fix everything. Forward-thinking companies are taking a systemic approach to talent, that integrates recruiting, retention, development, compensation, goal-setting, and management into a comprehensive talent strategy that addresses the big picture. Companies that do this well have significantly reduced talent acquisition costs, boosted engagement, and enhanced the company’s ability to identify crucial skills by expanding the candidate pool considerably.
• To find the solution, look within: Bringing in external candidates can be up to 18% more expensive than promoting from within. Surprisingly, our research reveals that less than a quarter of companies are good at tapping into their internal talent pool, and in the first half of 2023, nearly every sector shows declining rates of internal hiring. It’s time to break down the barriers. Think about the paperwork & processing, acclimation, integration and learning curves a new hire goes through. Internal mobility won’t completely eliminate these factors, but it can significantly reduce them. These mitigations add up, little by little, to dollars saved.
• Hire a person, not a resume: What makes someone a “good” candidate, regardless of if they’re internal or external? Many say experience, but is experience really what we’re measuring, or are we measuring the skills behind that experience, such as leadership, financial acumen, fluency with certain tech tools and more? For decades, we’ve focused on hiring the resume, not the person. I work with organizations everyday to break this habit and concentrate on skills-based hiring — does the candidate possess the skills needed to do this job well? Do they possess related skills that translate well? Or, do they show strong potential for acquiring the needed skills? Especially for geographically dispersed teams, effectiveness boils down to the skills possessed.
• Embrace data, but don’t marry it: Talent intelligence will become increasingly crucial for shaping jobs, identifying skill gaps, and finding the right people. That said, talent is the business of finding the right fits for the job and culture. Data is a tool, not a decision-maker. Use it to inform your actions, but don’t allow it to become your only metric because it will remove the human aspect of an organization, especially in hybrid working models where we see each other face-to-face far less.

Tell us a bit about your workforce, where are your people based?

Our team is a diverse and global workforce, with over 10,000 experts located across 120+ countries and collectively proficient in more than 50 languages, giving us a strong international reach and ability to meet our clients’ needs across all sectors.

Why did you decide on a remote model, how has it benefitted your organization?

Flexibility in hiring has become crucial for many organizations, regardless of sector. Also, AMS is on the frontline of finding the right talent and skills for our clients, so we hear firsthand everyday what candidates want from a new role. It provides us unparalleled insight into how we can always make sure our people feel fulfilled and rewarded in their roles.

What are the main challenges of operating a remote workforce and what strategies do you use to overcome them?

• In today’s ever-evolving talent landscape, organizations worldwide are collectively facing a set of challenges that transcend geographical boundaries.
• Two main obstacles we have seen are talent attraction and navigating talent technology.
• Even organizations with strong brands are finding it difficult to stand out in a highly competitive talent market. Pre-pandemic, big brands could count on talent coming to them. Today, that’s not the case as highly skilled candidates shop around their choices. As a result, brands are increasingly going on the offensive to seek out strong talent instead.
• On technology, there are thousands of tools a company can use. Which tools they should use is the big question. AMS built AMS Verified, an online portal where we’ve done the legwork for companies — they can sort by their needs to find tools and our assessment of performance.
• Finding the right tools to use, in what combination and with what teams, can be incredibly difficult. If put together haphazardly, it ends up adding more layers to the conversation, not breaking down barriers and streamlining the process.

Which tools do you utilize to help run a remote company?

We have several tools that help us meet the evolving needs or operating a hybrid company. Three that stick out to me are AMS One, AMS Verified, and AMS Responsible AI — helping us navigate a technology-enabled workforce.

• AMS One is our proprietary recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) operating system built to optimize the delivery of talent solutions and offer an end-to-end experience, revolutionizing sourcing, selection, hiring, and talent management processes. This helps us navigate complex talent pools across regions, accessing data-backed insights for hiring and talent decisions.
• AMS Verified enables us and our clients to search for and compare talent technology solutions which are “Verified” by AMS experts. With over 175 vendors and nearing 600 members, this growing community is supporting talent teams across with the globe to the right talent technology stack for their businesses. This helps us determine which technology can best suit our clients’ evolving needs, and how they can more efficiently implement them.
• AMS Responsible AI is our auditing tool aimed at ensuring organizations understand how their AI technology is being used and brought to bear on decision making, across their talent technology stack and in their sourcing and hiring activities. As the digital age progresses, it’s vital that we ensure we’re using technology in an ethical way.

What strategies do you use to find, attract, and hire remote talent?

• Skills-based hiring is critical in a remote or hybrid environment and what many savvy organizations are adopting to stay ahead of the extremely competitive labor market.
• Posting job openings listing the core skills required, and then matching with candidates that possess those skills or adjacent skills, is making the recruitment process quicker and overall ensuring the professionals slotted into new roles are good fits.
• We’ve found that this is one of the most effective ways to improve your hiring strategy and it’s one of the most important things we advise and guide companies on every day.

What are your 3 main tips for leaders who want to build a geographically dispersed workforce?

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a sudden shift in how organizations operate, leading to the rapid adoption of remote work and digital recruitment. It emphasized the need for acquiring essential digital skills to support the evolving work environment. There was an unprecedented adoption of technologically practices enabling remote and flexible work practices, and in turn, accelerated global companies’ ability to manage a geographically dispersed workforce.

My three main tips for building a geographically dispersed workforce are:

• Invest in Internal Mobility and Reskilling — When working across time zones, countries or state lines, the importance of strategic workforce planning cannot be underestimated. Internal talent is not limited to the current role; always look inward for a solution before seeking external solutions. Companies should reexamine how they repurpose and redeploy internal talent to meet shifting demands, and how to invest in reskilling and upskilling is essential for long-term resilience. In fact, AMS’ most recent Talent Climate report found that only 25% of roles are filled internally worldwide — holding companies back from reaching their full potential.
• Emphasis on Branding: Companies need to strategically present their values, mission, vision, and employee value proposition to stand out. When managing a large workforce, there is an increased importance on employer branding so candidates can envision themselves as part of the collective, to see how they would fit in. This includes having remote or flexible working options processing in place that are apparent even beginning at the interview process.
• Leverage Contingent Labor: Not every problem needs a permanent solution. The market is filled with highly capable, contingent workers seeking new, contractual opportunities. For specific projects, you may not need a permanent hire; hiring a team of contingent specialists for six months might be the ideal strategy. If they have a good experience, they may come back to help you with future needs, too. We work with companies daily to help to plan out these strategies and plug in contingent players, internal capabilities and external hiring.

We are very blessed to have some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this.

Well, I would never be forgiven by my 7-year-old son, Jack, if I didn’t say Lionel Messi — he is absolutely obsessed with Messi and soccer in general. It’s funny to see him watching the soccer games, the same that my family and I used to watch as a child, especially World Cups. Obviously, Lionel Messi now plays for Miami, so hopefully one day I can take him to watch a game. He and his best friend Lucas (whose Dad is Argentinian) talk about nothing else. There are many others who I think would have importance and significance, but I would probably say Michelle Obama — successful in her own right, a mother and a wife. I saw her at a conference a couple of years ago and she was authentic, funny (a great storyteller) and inspiring — all things I admire.

How can our readers further follow your work?

You can catch up with all things AMS at our website: www.weareams.com. Here you can find more about our talent acquisition solutions and services, digital offerings, and talent lab.

Or, reach out on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicola-hancock-6653941/

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!