The age of AI has brought a new set of pressures for TA teams:

• Applications are pouring in faster than ever
• Candidate quality is harder to judge
• And recruiters are being told to “find efficiencies” — which usually means “do more with less.”

Why TA teams need enablement thinking

Most recruiters spend their days firefighting: urgent reqs, back-to-back screens, hiring manager pings, and overflowing inboxes. Strategic thinking — like evaluating tools or fixing process gaps — gets pushed to “when there’s time,” which is never.

That’s risky in an AI-driven hiring landscape where:

• Candidate use of AI is changing the game at every stage
• Leaders are asking for automation yesterday
• Vendors are pitching solutions faster than teams can evaluate them

TA Enablement provides the breathing space to step back, define the real problem, and choose tech that actually solves it.

How to bring TA Enablement principles into any team

Even if you don’t have an enablement lead, you can still adopt the same mindset. Emi’s playbook:

1️⃣ Start with the business problem
Is your challenge volume, quality, bias, or candidate experience? Nail this down first — it stops you chasing shiny tools that don’t fit.

2️⃣ Make vendors prove it
Ask for relevant case studies, real data, and an explanation of how the tool works. If you can’t explain it to your stakeholders, you can’t justify the spend.

3️⃣ Get leadership buy-in early
As Emi explains at the 32-minute mark, aligning your project to leadership priorities from day one means you’ll have support when you need it most — not just when you’re asking for budget.

The bottom line

TA Enablement might just be the most important role in talent acquisition right now — but you don’t need the title to embrace its value.

By thinking like an enablement pro, you can:

✅ Stop firefighting and start fixing root causes

✅ Introduce AI in ways that actually deliver value

✅ Keep your team focused on the hires that matter most

Listen now 👇

Transcript:

Robert: Welcome to the TA Disruptors podcast. I'm Robert Neury, co-founder and chief explorer at Arctic Shores,  the task-based psychometric company that uncovers potential.

and helps organisations see more in people. And in this series, we're going to be looking at the impact of AI and the huge change in upheaval it is bringing to the world of recruitment.  And we'll be talking to various TA leaders and thought leaders about how they are approaching this huge level of change.

Today I am very excited to be welcoming somebody who is highly qualified and very insightful on this topic of technology and the impact of change that it's going to make.  And we have the wonderful  Emi Beredugo,  who is senior recruitment manager for recruiting enablement at Elastic. 

Elastic is an AI Enterprise  Search Company based in San Francisco.  We'll come to this a bit later, but I imagine that the access to technology  and technical expertise that you have as a TA  leader is probably second to none,  and particularly from the heart of  Silicon Valley.

Now you've been a TA professional for more than 15 years, leading TA transformation in multiple countries, in multiple sectors.  And you've also become a bit of a celebrity, I think. It's a TA celebrity in the  last 12 months or so, because  I keep seeing you and you keep popping up at conferences and podcasts and conference awards. I think you've also actually been on one of my  favorite  TA  and  HR tech podcasts,  the infamous Chad and Cheese, are of co-hosts you're very familiar with this podcast  format. Also, I suppose, you know, what's going on  in the industry too.

You're also a non-exec at an HR tech startup, Poetry.  You're a judge at the IHR awards,  but you're also a keen athlete and that has led you to be a non-exec at England Touch Rugby.

Welcome to the TA Disruptors.

Emi: Thank you very much. I don't think I've had an introduction like that before, but thank you. 

Robert: I think it's always interesting for people to know the backgrounds and different perspectives that people bring.  And I'm very confident that we're going to have a super interesting discussion now around the role of technology and the change that is causing for recruiting.

But let's start with your job title,  recruiting enablement. Now I love that term. had, I've come across sales enablement before,  but not recruiting enablement. So tell us about that job and was it one that you'd done before? And did you know what you were applying for when you took it on?  

Emi: I'm not going to lie didn't really know what I was applying for. I was like you, I've never heard of Recruiting Enablement before.  My background was all in heading up recruitment teams, that's what I knew, that's what I thought my career path was going to be.  And it just so happened that when I was job hunting,  I saw this job title, Senior Manager Recruiting Enablement.  And in all honesty, it looked like all the fun parts of my job without having to do recruitment delivery. 

Robert: I think a lot of people like that idea. 

Emi: Absolutely. you know, don't get me wrong, I love the field of recruitment, but I had been doing it for almost 20 years.  And what I came to realise was that I enjoyed the  TA transformation side. I enjoyed doing recruitment projects. I enjoyed the impactful change that I was making.  And I just assumed  that was the part of someone who headed up recruitment teams. And then I saw this job description. was like, oh my God, this is amazing.

You know, so for people who don't know what recruiting enablement is,  and perhaps I've only heard of sales enablement before. It is a slightly different function. So when you look at sales enablement, that role is primarily learning and development. It's helping sales professionals from a learning and development perspective to do their jobs better, equipping them with the same tools.  

Now, don't get me wrong. That is an element of my job.  We are responsible for upskilling the organisation in terms of best practices in terms of recruitment, in terms of how to recruit in a more efficient manner, in terms of why we recruit in a certain manner; that is a big part of our job. And when I say the organisation, I'm not just talking about hiring managers and interviewers, which is where I think most people's mind. people think that it's, that's what the enablement is about. Hiring managers don't know how to interview. Interviewers don't do this as their day job. But at the end of the day, recruiters also need to continuously upskill themselves.

They need to understand that the market is changing. The role that I had when I first came into the recruitment market is very different to the role I had 10, 15 years later. 

Robert:Well, exactly. I mean, this must be the greatest level of change that you've seen. 

Emi: Absolutely. So we're responsible for upskilling people in that way.  So that's one element of my job.  The other side is looking at data.

So everybody talks about how recruiters need to be more data-driven. need to introduce data into their jobs to influence hiring managers, make better hiring decisions,  recruit in a more efficient manner. But the reality is there aren't many tools or resources or people out there who actually can upskill people in that way.  Yeah, there might be reports out there, but how do you know in what scenarios to use this, for example? So that is where our job comes in from not from a people analytics side, but specifically recruiting analytics. 

Robert: Yes. And I that's really interesting because that's different I don't, people tend to talk about data analytics and it's all fairly straightforward. 

Emi: might go to people analytics but not recruiting analytics. So don't funnel down that far.  So that's another element of my job.  And then the third element is looking at technology. So when I talk about technology, I'm not, I'm talking about tools beyond the ATS.

Robert: Okay, which is what people immediately think about when they're going to recruit. oh, I need to recruit, I need to ATS. 

Emi: But what else is out there? The market has changed. There's so many tools being introduced. And our job is to look at the marketplace, look at the tools which are out there, see if they're actually aligned with our recruiting goals, see if they align with our business goals. And if they do, bring them on board.

Now when we bring them on board, ordinarily organizations will pass that over to IT.

Robert: Exactly, that's what I was going to say. That doesn't really usually sit in the TA function.

Emi: I've never had it. I've always partnered with IT.  Now I have that functionality in my team.  So my teams are the people responsible from once contract is signed,  how do we then implement it within our organisation? How do we make sure it fits into our workflows?  And then how do we perform manage that vendor? Because just because you bring someone on board. It doesn't mean that they're going to...

Robert: Suddenly, the silver bullet has arrived. 

Emi: Absolutely not. You have to evolve. They have to make sure that they're still hitting their SLAs, for example.  And if they are, great. And if they're not, how do we manage that vendor?  And when do we make the decision to continue with that vendor or say, look, let's call it a day? It's not working.  Businesses change or you're just not performing.

Robert: Yes. And we'll come back to that. Obviously as a vendor, I am both fascinated and slightly perturbed by the way that I'm going to be put under scrutiny in the future, but I think it's the right thing to do. But how interesting that you've got upskilling, you've got data and you've got tech. And a lot of TA leaders feel, yeah, that is part of my job, but that's almost the secondary part of the job because then I've got to run the whole recruitment process. I've got to fill the roles. 

So do you, in your organisation then, you have  a TA who manages the actual job requisitions and the process around that.  And then you're working alongside that person in order to make sure that those things, tech, data and upskilling?

Emi: 100%. So the way our organisation works is that we have quite a large recruitment team, actually, as I said, recruiting delivery team rather, and they're the people responsible for filling the requisitions, filling the roles.  So within our organisation, we have different departments, we have directors or senior directors of each one of those departments who have a team of recruiters underneath them.  So my team, the recruiting and enable team will work alongside them.

But at the same time, we also have another role, which I've never had in any other organisation,  which is recruiting operations.  So recruiting operations in our organisation is looking after things like interview scheduling, for example,  making sure the offers that go out are correct, making sure that people comply, because whereas my team may set the strategy in terms of this is how to recruit.

We're not necessarily following it through in terms of compliance. So we will hand that off to the Recruiting Operations Team, whose job is to make sure you are doing things as per our hiring process, for example.

Robert: I love that. So, because one of the things that I feel is that technology has both been an enabler for HR, but also it's been a huge learning curve and in some ways a burden on the TA teams as well because nobody 10 years ago was putting in the job description that you need to be a technology expert. You need to be a data expert. Employer brand expert. had all these things that suddenly now you're expected to know. And actually, what we haven't really done before and possibly AI will come to that in a moment, is accelerating; it's starting to unpick that role.

We've done it in sales, we seem to have done it in marketing, we've done it in other areas. But the poor old TA teams have just been expected to suddenly learn all these things rather than, hang on, we need some people who are actually doing the recruiting, we need others to make sure they're looking at the operations and the process. And then we need others who are making sure that we've got the technology and the data to drive all of that. 

So I think that's so interesting and we probably, hopefully, will see more people following your example. 

Emi: I actually do think so. Yeah, there's not many of us in the world, and I know because when I joined my organisation I was like, oh LinkedIn, who else has my title? And know, sent connections to every single person. And the good thing is that we have formed a community with some, or I have formed a community with some of those people so we can share practices.  But I think that now people are slowly understanding the importance of that, understanding the importance of separating those roles, because the reality is I've done enablement as part of my roles, part of my previous roles.  

I had to deliver on the requisitions, but I also had to implement new technology. I also had to use data to inform new hiring processes. I also had to look at new ways to make my hiring process more inclusive.  But that juggling act  of  filling the requisitions, versus all the other strategic stuff was hard. And when things were busy at the end of the day, the priority was you had to fill the roles. 

Robert: Yeah, exactly. And that's true for so many people. with so let's just look at the impact of technology now, because that is for many people that are going, I've got to sort of fill these roles. Technology is being thrown at me left, right and center. 

And you being working for a technology company, San Francisco, Silicon Valley based. I assume you have every piece of technology you could ever wish for. Was that a blessing or a curse? 

Emi: I mean, to be honest, when I remember going through the interview process with my current company, I was like, what is this? Okay, so you have an ATS and you have this tool and you have this tool and you have this tool. was like, what? What is this? I've never experienced that in my life.

In my 12 years,  I used to live in the Middle East, I lived in Dubai. I never worked in tech, I never had access to that large of a rec tech stack. And then when I came back to the UK, I joined a charity. So obviously everything is all around conserving budget and looking at where you actually spending people's money.  So going through this interview process, I oh my God, what am I supposed to do with this? like hitting a candy shop - it was fantastic.

In the back of my mind, I was also thinking, well, this is interesting. Are all these tools actually integrated because they're all different vendors?  So I started to think about the potential challenges that could actually bring if I  were to get the role.  And those are some of  the challenges that I'm still facing.  Do we need all the technology that's out there?  Because it's easy to look at it go, oh my God, that's a great new shining tool. We need that, we need this, we need that.

Robert: Well, that's right. And people must be coming to you the whole time saying, oh, I've just seen this is amazing. You must look at that. 

Emi: Get people internally, get people externally. And I think  that's one of the challenges that we face is not getting derailed by the next new shining tool that's out there and being able to decide and think critically about,  yes, this tool is great, but is it great for my organisation? Is it actually helping me to progress on our hiring goals and our business goals?  

Robert: Yes, and I suspect that...I like that, that you've got two things for me when you're thinking about tech on this,  is how does it help you achieve your goals?  And of course you'll have a lot of vendors coming forward with excellent proposals on that, telling you how they can solve all your issues, problems. And that really is the second part of it though, What's the problem that's being solved here?

So what have you, in your first 12 months, have you had to, I suppose, remove and de-stack your tech stack, as it were, because you had too much tech and you had to really look at what were the problems that trying to be solved as opposed to what was shining and new.

Emi: Yeah, and I think you're exactly right. I mean, as a tech organisation, we,  like I said, have been blessed. I have,  in the past, been able to,  you know, I inherited a great tech stack.

And it was fantastic. And was like, okay, this is amazing.  But then, when we actually dug deeper,  and when I say dug deeper, I'm talking about looked at the data that the tools actually provided.  We actually realised that maybe some of these tools aren't great for us.  And when I talk about data, I'm talking about things like tool utilization data.

Robert: Right, because most people are just looking at logins. 

Emi: Absolutely. They can look at logins. Oh yeah, this many people are logging into the system. That's great. You can log into the system. But how long are you logging in for?  If you're logging in and then logging back out, that doesn't tell me that you've adopted a tool. That doesn't tell me that you've added value or the tools adding value rather. When you're logging into the system and it's not actually resulting in quality hires,  more, a faster time to hire, for example, making it easier to unearth diverse candidates. 

Robert: So you're tying back that data to the outcomes.  

Emi: I'm tying it back to our recruiting goals. I'm tying it back to our goals as an organisation.  And if that tool wasn't actually directly or indirectly correlating to those recruiting goals or business goals,  then what I said to my team is that we now need to question whether or not we need this tool. Yes. 

Robert: Because there must be a challenge around that too that, I mean, know, a lot of us use tools  that we only use 1 % of their capability of them.  And so somebody comes along and says, oh, you've got this problem. Here's another tool as opposed to, well, could I just use it from my existing tool? So there probably is an element of,  we fully utilising the core of what we  

Emi: And don't get me wrong, I'm the same. I've had an iPhone for ages. I always use iPhone. New features come out all the time. like, I've got nothing what this means,  know, the WhatsApp feature has a new ring, I've got no idea what that is. 

So I get it, I get that people could do the same in a workplace, I could get that people could do the same with a new piece of recruiting technology,  but that's now falls underneath my area. Because my job is yes to deliver value,  but also to deliver it in a cost-efficient manner. So  yeah, you have a new tool, but if you only use an X percent of the actual available features is that a great tool for you? 

So we will go that deep. We will actually analyse whether or not, okay, is it actually adding value? What value do we want it to bring?  If you're having a challenge, do we realise the full capabilities of this tool?  And maybe it's because we haven't communicated the full capabilities of the tool and that's fine. We'll go back, we'll then communicate it, we'll show how it actually benefits people in their day-to-day lives.  And then we'll then evaluate the adoption.  Because if people aren't using it after we communicate the benefits, maybe those benefits are great for another organisation,  but not so great for us. 

Robert: Yes. And it's having the time and the data to do that. Because  I can imagine a lot of  TA people going, yes. That all sounds straightforward, but it's behind the time, which is why I think that TA enablement role is so, important. And what's the impact of AI for you on this too, because we've got our ATSs, and everybody must be coming to you with,  oh, you can add this AI tool and that AI tool. What are you seeing as the impact of  AI on the 

Emi: Well? What I would say is that I actually think the impact is positive. And that's despite headlines out there saying, you know, AI is going to take over your job. lot of people are worried about. There's going to be no recruitment function in the future. And I would actually disagree with that. You know, I don't think AI is going to take away the job of a recruiter or a recruiting professional or someone like me in a, you know, recruiting enablement role. I just don't believe that to be the case.

But what I do believe is that AI will change jobs. 

Robert: Yes. And you think it'll change jobs because it will enable recruiters to go back to what they're doing best,  or it will change jobs because some people will be better suited to the new type of jobs. Because I think that's what people are really worried about, aren't Yeah. 

Emi: I think it's an element of both, If you look at, let's take a recruitment a typical recruiter who does a recruitment delivery role and their job is to primarily fill requisitions. So when you're busy and everyone is busy, everyone is talking about doing more with less. 

Robert: That's been the stock phrase at the moment. 

Emi: 100%. Everyone is talking about doing more with less. And what does that mean?  It means that you still have to deliver. You can still go to give like, you know, deliver the same outcomes to the organisation, but now you have less time.

Now you have less people, now you have less resources, now you have less technology, now you may have less budget, but they still expect you to deliver. So when you're a recruiter and you're faced with X number of requisitions, hiring managers down your back, and you need to fill this role, so many more applicants applying for your role and you have got to go through all of that, the reality is that the recruiter needs to prioritise. 

And they're going to prioritise just the tactical filling the role,  getting almost bums on seats.  And all the strategic stuff,  all the strategic thinking about how to make your process more efficient, how to make your process more inclusive, for example,  that will go to the wayside because you don't have time.  So the impact that I see of technology or AI specifically is that it's going to give people time.  

It's going to automate the tedious tasks, which are important. Interview scheduling, for example, is important, but that is not a real value added task. A value added task for a recruiter is speaking to hiring managers, advising them on the best practices, advising them where they need to recruit, advising them how to get a more diverse range of candidates. And if they're not on board in that, explaining the benefits of why they have to, like they should consider bringing in a more diverse range of candidates. That is where they add value.

They speak to candidates all the time. That human interaction of how do you convince a candidate to take your job when they are interviewing at three other places,  a human can only do that,  not a robot, not AI. But AI can take away all those other tedious, repetitive manual tasks.  So that's why I say that it frees people up time to focus on those value-added tasks.  But like I said, it also changes roles.

So if you look at, for example, like I said, 10 years ago, even five years ago, I don't think you find many people with a recruiter enablement role. I don't think you find many people with a recruiting operations role, but AI has now allowed people or organisations to look at their function and go, right, okay, well, we can allow people to concentrate more on this particular area because it's freeing up more time. We can now allow people to use technology to enable them to deliver in this area. 

So for example, you know, if I want to look at where is the best region to recruit a particular role, right? And let's say we're going into a new market. I can get data from all my different tools because I have a large tech stack,  but the time it takes to analyse that data,  aggregate that data for those different sources can take a while. Absolutely allows me to aggregate that data and very quickly come up with an analysis, which will help me to, help the recruiters to inform the hiring managers on the best hiring strategy. 

Robert: And if, if you, you're just using AI features within your tech stack to do that, or have you brought in something that enables you to do that kind of analysis? 

Emi: So we've brought in other tools as well. So during our time or during my time of being in the organisation, I've retired tools, but I've also brought in new tools as well, depending on what the organisation. 

Robert: Got an example that you can share.

Emi: Yeah, sure. So one example was that just in conversations, we're speaking to the recruiting team. So we try to do that a lot.  And it's tougher now because I'm not a recruiter. And I don't head up recruiting delivery people. So, a lot of my feedback comes from actual conversations, whether it's one-to-one or focus groups.  And what came up in conversation was that,  oh my God, it's so hard sometimes you go into LinkedIn, you find that kind of unicorn candidate,  but you send them a LinkedIn email and they don't respond.

And I was like, oh my God, yeah, I remember what that was like. Yes, so annoying. You're like, please, you are the candidate.  And then they said, wouldn't it be great if there was a tool out there that did that? 

Robert: Right, that wrote the email for you and took the outreach. 

Emi: Well, actually, actually found a way to get in contact with that candidate who wasn't responding to your LinkedIn email.  There are tools. There's a tool. There are many tools out there which are contact-finding tools,  which will actually give you the email addresses,  which give you the telephone numbers of people who have consented to give those details. 

So when you actually find that unicorn candidate and have a response to your LinkedIn email, no worries, go onto these tools, and they actually go, here's a telephone number, here's an email address for them. 

Robert: And so- That would have been days or hours of research to pick that up. 

Emi: Because I remember all the little tricks I used to do when I worked in agency, I like, do I risk calling the organisation? Yes. Yeah. Now you don't need to do that. They're consented, they're given their details, they're happy for people to reach out to them.

And they're more likely to respond to their personal email than a LinkedIn email. 

Robert: A LinkedIn one. Interesting. And so I get that bit about how I can see AI be incredibly helpful to reducing the administrative tasks as well. Do you see risk in other areas of AI? So would you, a lot of people are talking about, oh, know, one of the things I really loathe doing as a recruiter is looking through CVs. 

And somebody has come along and said, oh, I can scan in CVs and it will stack rank them for me. So is that an area that you're looking at or you would consider or not consider?

Emi: Yeah, because I think that when you bring in technology, and like I said, I'm a massive fan of technology. I'm a massive fan of AI. I use it every single day in my job.  But you do have to be aware of the risks and then our risk. This is an emerging area.  So the responsibility is on recruiting professionals to keep up to date with that.  So, bias is a key area.  Whilst you cannot,  whilst it will automate the process, while making it more efficient, what you can't do is solely rely on technology to make decisions for you. In fact, you shouldn't. Yeah, you shouldn't at all. 

Robert: I think a lot of laws are trying to.  

Emi: And I think it can be easy for busy recruiting professionals who default and they go, right, you know, this tool has stat ranked their applications.  And so I'm just gonna speak to these people. 

Robert: Exactly, because it's effectively making a decision at that point. It's deciding who you should speak to and who you shouldn't. you've not made 

Emi: you haven't gone through. But what it does do is go, okay, based on your job description, based on your criteria, this is what we believe to be the closest match.  But you can't just take off the shelf tool and not configure it, not tailor it to your organisation, not make sure that it actually fits  your decision-making criteria. That's what you have to do. think too many organisations just go, oh no, just take it off the shelf. No, you can't do that.  You have to make sure that as close as possible it matches your decision-making capabilities. 

But even if like we take the tools which rack and stack candidates, fantastic, but that doesn't mean that you ignore everybody else in that pool.  It's just helping you to go, right, these are the CVs that based on your criteria and keywords, because that's essentially what it's doing, it's just going on keywords,  matches what you're looking for.  But if you haven't tailored that tool, if you haven't put in the right search string, for example, into that tool,  you may be missing out on candidates who have transferable skills.  

So maybe from a different country, they use a different terminology in their CVs.  If you're not taking that into account, you will miss out on good candidates. So people have to bear that in mind. They need to not rely on the tools to just make decisions for them.  And they also need to like just wider ethical and data privacy considerations. They need to take that into account as well.  So how is that data being stored?  What is the language, machine language that the tools actually being trained on?  It's the responsibility of the recruiting team or whoever's implementing that tool to ask those questions and really scrutinise other people. 

And  if you're lucky, you'll be like me, you have people you can lean on,  like my employment legal team, my data privacy team, who has helped me to upskill in those areas so we can ask the right questions.  But if you're not lucky and you're an organisation that perhaps doesn't have people who are subject matter experts in that area, that doesn't mean that you rest on the laurels.

You speak to other organisations, you find out what they do, you go to conferences, you listen to podcasts, you do your research to make sure that you are asking those questions and you're not introducing bias or data privacy risk into your hiring process. 

Robert: That's great advice and it's probably one of the hardest elements, I think, for TA teams at the moment,  which is,  as we were talking about earlier,  life is so busy being deluged with applications, got to do more with less. And I know I've got problems, and there are solutions out there.  And the temptation is to go out and grab the first solution that comes along that sounds almost too good to be true. And it probably is too good to be true at that point.  And  your advice, which I think is really sensible on that, one is do your research ask the right questions. And I also particularly like  your other point too,  which we haven't traditionally done in TAs is to lean on the expertise of others. You can lean on your legal counsel, data protection. There are people out there who can help you think about what the right questions and are probably really important.  Great, great advice on that.

So it's one thing then to, so we've got the impact of AI, and everybody's thinking about it.  And how  are you using that to introduce change into hiring managers? And because it's one thing for us to be adopting tech, it's quite another for the people who are doing the final interview there too.  

So a lot about the success of technologies in change management. How do you go about that? And what are some of the biggest challenges you've had in trying to introduce new tech into organisations? 

Emi: I'll say there are a lot of challenges. I did not realise, you know, I think it's very easy for a recruiting professional to get really excited and go, oh my God, look at this new technology is going to revolutionise the way that we recruit or look at this new process recruiting this way because why it's going to have X, Y, Z results.  And you expect that because you've designed the change,  it's very natural. And I get it for you to expect that other people are going to adopt that change. They'll see the benefits somehow. You're like, God, of course they'll get it. But it's not true. you know, people are change resistant. People are they like the norm. They like what's familiar.

And even if you tell them that, you can get these benefits by changing the way that you work or adopting a new piece of technology,  it doesn't mean that they're always going to be on board.  And that is the reality of, you know, kind of a modern-day tier professional is the reality of my job.  And it's something that my team and I have had to constantly look at  because a lot of my role involves introducing change. So we've had to look at the best ways to get people to… adopt the change. 

Robert: Right. And what are some of those tips and techniques that you develop? 

Emi: So, other people don't learn from it, you know, don't make mistakes I made. What I would say, it starts from getting leadership buying. 

Robert: Yes. Yeah. So important. 

Emi: Yeah, absolutely. Because at the end of the day, your leaders should be the people within the organisation that people look to for direction, look to advice, look to to tell them that this is actually OK.

So if they're behind you saying, oh, okay, advocating for you, openly advocating, saying that this is a good thing, this is actually going to benefit you, get on board, I'm getting on board as well, look at me, we'll learn how to do this together. Other people are gonna go, oh, okay, well, if they're up for it,  maybe I should be a little bit more open-minded too.  So I hundred percent  say that you start from there, you get your leaders on board.

And think about the right leaders. Yeah, think about who exactly should be the advocates for you. 

Robert: And just on that, you, I, one of the things that I think a lot of people struggle with is that it's, they say, oh yeah, we've got to get TA sponsorship from executive leadership. And you go, okay, brilliant. And somebody says, yeah, of course, I mean, go and implement that. Yeah. But.

Are you given the freedom to fail in this or not? Because that,  I think, holds a lot of people back. seems in IT,  they are given the freedom to experiment and fail in a controlled way. And I'm not sure in TA  we've traditionally had that freedom, but I can't see how you can adopt change and learn and we've all made mistakes from it, but we have to be allowed to make those mistakes, don't we? 

Emi: Absolutely, and I think it's a mentality.  I don't necessarily think that we haven't been given the freedom to fail.  I think it's also, there's an element of that, but I think it's also the fact that people in TA,  because they are learning new skills, because their role is evolving beyond just recruiting and filling roles when they have to do new things like bring on technology,  they feel like, oh, okay, this is not my subject matter area of expertise.  So I will have an element of fear. I don't know if I'm actually doing this in the right way. I don't know what I don't know.  And that is a mindset that people need to get over.  

And it's like, you have to fail,  you know, in order to succeed.  You're going to muck things up. And that's okay. Just fail fast and then say, fail fast, learn fast. You know, I truly believe in that philosophy.  As long as you're not going to fail and then wallow and stay there.  Yeah.  And you're actually going to be proactive and go, okay, this approach didn't work.  But what I do know for next time or the next iteration is that I'm going to do this. Yep. And that's the same with being my change communication approach. You know, I have failed.

Like I had been that person going, oh my God, this is amazing. Everybody's going to adopt this. And it's like, oh God, that didn't work.  So, you know, I, that's why I said start.

Start with your leadership, start with the leadership, get them on board, then go out to the actual team who are going to be implemented, affected by that change and tell them about the change but not in a way that you're directing people and saying, have to do this in the future, because that doesn't work. Directing people, just ordering people to do some work, and then I'll, you know, my mum tried that with me when I was younger, and I was like, uh-uh, no. 

Just saying, yeah. You've got to sort of them to buy into. Yeah, exactly, tell me why, tell me what's in it for me, tell me that the tool is going to save me two hours of work per week, tell me that I no longer have to, you know, get reports and data from, all these disparate tools, are all over the place. And then it's actually going to aggregate that data and visualise that data for me so I can quickly make data driven positions.  Tell me those benefits. So, and then they're more likely to be on board. So that, that's what I'll say is the second part of the,  I suppose the change management cycle.  And then when you're telling them about the change that's going to come up in the future,  then talk about, or then go down approach of bringing them in to design the solution. So you haven't rolled out the change yet. Let's say you haven't rolled out the technology. We go, right, this is the technology that we're thinking about bringing in. This is how we think it's actually gonna benefit you. But we wanna make sure you as an end user are actually getting the most benefit out of this. 

So help us to design this process, this new technology, and implement this technology. And the reason why I say that, and like I said, I've learned through trial and error to bring people on board and help them to get them to help us to design a solution is because people then have a sense of ownership. People have a vested interest. 

Robert: And they've been part of it. 

Emit: Exactly. Rather than the change being forced upon them, they were actually now part of that change.  And if they're part of that change, they have a vested interest in making it succeed. So that's how, again, it increases adoption, increases the likelihood that people accept the change.  And then when you get to the stage of implementation, give them support, so ongoing support, not just instruction manuals and how this is step-by-step what to do,  but let them know that, again, they can fail and they will fail. They won't know straight away how to use this new process or use this new technology because it's not what they used before.  

And it's okay to make mistakes, but there are people around you who are gonna help you. There are people around you who you can go to and find some support.  There are maybe early adopters that you can use to help showcase their wins and how it actually bettered their job.  Use all those people to show that they have ongoing support.  But ultimately,  I'll say that in change management, one of the most important pieces of advice I give my team and remind myself is just be patient. Know that you're not gonna change people's minds not gonna happen straight away. 

Robert: No, some You may not change everybody's mind. Absolutely not. 

Emi: And that's okay. In the ideal world, you want everyone to be on board, but they won't be on board the first time.  So be open,  listen to their grievances, address their grievances,  and just keep coming back,  repeat what you've said, maybe iterate how you've said it. And then over time, that change, that new way of working, will just become the normal way of working.

Robert: Great advice, Emmy. I really like that you've got to get leadership on board.  Then you've got to sort of communicate the benefits before you involve them in the design.  So that when they're coming to the design bit, they already understand the benefits they're going to get. Then you're going to support them through that initial period of trying something out.  And then above all, you're being patient around all of that may get it wrong to start with. They may have to adjust and adapt. But if you do all of those things in a controlled way,  you've got a much higher chance of long-term success. And that's ultimately what we're trying to achieve here. So  really great advice on that. 

We're coming to the end of the podcast, and it's been sort of fascinating just really getting your thoughts on how to implement technology and the change management that's required to achieve success around that. So looking forward then, what are you thinking about for the next 12 months? What are the things that are exciting you and that you're interested in adopting or you have set up already to implement? 

Emi: Okay, so we're still looking at technology, but we're looking at our existing tech stack to think about how we can realise more value. So I'll give an example. One of the things that we are looking at is how we use technology to help us not only to produce better, engaging, more inclusive job descriptions, but then how we can then use those job descriptions to generate interview questions? 

Robert: Oh, really nice. Yeah. Linking the two, because quite often they're not linked at all. Oh, no. The job description is sort of pull out of a draw. Here you go, Amy. Go and source somebody for that and then when you bring somebody in,  it's a completely different interview.

Emi: Oh, absolutely. Or people don't even have interview questions that they're to ask.  And the reason why we're looking at that is because a large part of our focus is looking at inclusive hiring. We want to make sure the process is fairer.  One of the elements of inclusive hiring is bringing in a structured process. Yes. Part of a structured process is having interview questions, asking the same interview questions, or least the main questions, to all candidates. 

So you're know, leveling the playing field. You're not giving anyone an  easier set of questions or harder set of questions.  But we also hear the challenge of hiring managers because hiring managers are busy. So when  ou need them to produce interview questions, they may not prioritise that because they've got other things to do. But you're, as a recruiter, going, look, I need this.

Robert: Of course, you do it at the beginning, back to your point about designing with them, saying, here's the job description, that's this fit your requirements. And by the way, these are the interview questions. Are you happy with them? You've got that all agreed up front, so it becomes less of a that is the…

Emi: I suppose in the near future, that's one of the things we're looking at. So how we're using technology to enable our hiring managers and interviewers to, like I said, generate more inclusive, better engaging job descriptions and then result in interview questions. So we have our own, for example, GPT internally. We have a manual bank of interview questions, but we want to automate that. We want to link it to our competency framework.  So again, we're making sure that we're not just thinking near term. We're not just thinking about, okay, this is what the job description says, but we're looking for people who are going to stay with the organisation and display the behavioural competencies. And link to the values and competencies. 

So that's one of the things we're using AI and technology to help us automate but that's part of a wider or broader project of inclusive hiring.  So that is going to be a multi-month project where we're going to bring in technology to help us to have been more inclusive,  upskill people on things like language that you're using. For example, you can talk to a candidate. So your job description may be fantastic and as inclusive possible,  but if you talk to the candidate and use inappropriate language or inclusive language, you've undone your hard work.  

So from a training perspective. We are rolling out training around that language, how to use the tips and how to make the process more inclusive and using data. So we're trying to upskill primarily the recruiting organisation to be more data-driven, to know what reports are out there, but even more important, how to use those reports to influence other people to make better decisions, to make the right decisions.  So those are the key focus areas. 

Robert: I love all of that. You've got a really interesting dynamic that's going on there, which is that we know the interview is inconsistent. it's not related to the original job description or the job requisition.  So there's just an improvement and an efficiency piece on that, but you're giving it a higher level reason for doing that is that we want to improve inclusivity on all of this. 

And I'm sure many organisations, you know, buy into that. And it's one of the interesting things. You can go and put a job advert out there and send anybody can apply. And then it comes to the interview and suddenly the language being used and the way people are being questioned rule out some categories of people. 

And so you've got that high-level purpose and then you're using the data underneath all of that to determine the effectiveness of it. And that strikes me as being a really interesting way to introduce a piece of tech in all of this. It's not just oh, I think I can make things a bit more efficient.  There has to be a broader purpose. Why would I get the senior leadership team involved in that? So a wonderful example, I think, about how you can introduce that change, but change that's related to giving better business outcomes. And we know that diversity of thought,  diversity of demographics, improves an organisation's performance. yeah. Emi, it's been wonderful speaking to you. Thank you for sharing all your thoughts.  And  I'm sure many people will have taken away a lot  f. good ideas and confidence about how to introduce technology and change in this very fast-shifting world that we live in. Thank you.

Emi:  No problems at all. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.