Introduction 

Most talent acquisition leaders know their hiring process needs an overhaul. Fewer know how to actually make it happen. Especially inside a regulated, 160-year-old organisation where risk aversion runs deep and hiring managers cling to the comfort of a CV.

Euan McNair, Talent Acquisition, Employer Brand and Inclusion Director at Aegon UK, is one of the few who has done it. When he joined the Dutch-owned insurance group in 2022, the organisation was spending £2.5 million a year on agency fees. Time to offer sat at 100 days. Every single call centre hire came from competitors. Recruiter engagement was just 41%.

Three years later, agency spend had dropped to £100,000 — a saving of £2.4 million. Average time to offer fell to 32 days. Forty percent of hires now come from outside financial services entirely. And recruiter engagement hit a market-leading 96%.

On the TA Disruptors podcast, Euan shared the full story of how he built trust internally, redesigned the recruitment process from end to end, and created a hiring model centred on potential rather than pedigree. Here is what TA leaders can learn from his approach.

Why did Aegon UK need a recruitment process redesign?

When Euan arrived at Aegon UK, he inherited what he describes as "traditional recruitment": high agency reliance, inconsistent job adverts, no salary transparency, and a process that was slow, expensive, and failing to diversify the talent pipeline. His ambition was to shift the function from reactive recruitment to data-led, inclusive talent acquisition.

But the problems ran deeper than process. The organisation had cycled through several TA leaders. The team's engagement was low. Hiring managers had built up frustrations — one senior leader had compiled a dossier of everything she felt was broken. And with application volumes about to increase by 135% year on year (from around 8,000 to 35,000), the cracks were only going to widen.

Euan's first move was diagnostic: spending his initial hundred days auditing the external employer brand, gathering stakeholder feedback, and identifying the data points that would matter most. Rather than arriving with a finished strategy, he brought a deliberately incomplete one to his first team offsite — leaving gaps for the people who knew the organisation best to fill. Co-creation, he argues, is non-negotiable when you are asking people to change how they work.

How do you build trust before asking for change?

This is the question that separates TA leaders who talk about transformation from those who deliver it. Euan's answer is disarmingly simple: prove you can deliver within the current process before you try to change it.

He broke the transformation into three chapters. Year one was about moving from recruitment to talent acquisition — fixing basics, building reporting, and demonstrating results. When the team filled senior roles that would previously have gone to agencies, hiring managers started paying attention. That momentum built trust, and trust became the currency Euan needed for everything that followed.

His advice to TA leaders in a similar position is to seek out your three biggest supporters and your three biggest critics. Buy the critics a coffee. Get curious about what frustrates them. One of those conversations gave Euan what he calls a "blueprint" of everything that needed fixing — and a stakeholder who eventually became an advocate.

He also reframed how the function was measured. Time to hire, he argued, was the wrong metric — TA cannot control a candidate's notice period or holiday timing. Time to offer, on the other hand, was something his team could own and improve. Changing the metric changed the narrative, and the narrative changed how leadership perceived the function's value.

What does hiring for potential actually look like in practice?

With trust established, Euan moved into chapter two: introducing new tools and redesigning the assessment process around potential rather than past experience.

The shift started with a pilot — a word Euan uses deliberately because, as he puts it, "a pilot can fail." For a set of entry-level roles, the team removed CVs entirely from the hiring manager's view. Candidates were assessed using Arctic Shores' task-based psychometric assessment, which measures how people think, learn, and interact rather than relying on self-reported answers. Hiring managers then interviewed shortlisted candidates without knowing their employment history.

The reveal was powerful. Hiring managers selected candidates they would never have considered under the old process — people from retail, hospitality, a chef seeking better work-life balance, a semi-retired senior professional re-entering the workforce, and even a nail technician and a motorway maintenance worker. When the hiring managers learned where these candidates came from, it challenged their assumptions about what "good" looks like in financial services.

This is the essence of hiring for potential: replacing the subjective filter of a CV with an evidence-based measure of capability, and letting the results speak for themselves.

How did scrapping the CV improve outcomes across the board?

The metrics from Aegon UK's transformation are striking, and they span all three of Euan's stakeholder groups — recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates.

Recruiter time saved was significant: 37 days of recruiter effort were recovered by removing the manual CV sift and embedding the new assessment process. That time was reinvested into value-adding activities — the "moments that matter" that Euan believes define a great TA function.

No-show rates for assessment days dropped from 25% to zero over a seven-month period. Pass rates at interview increased from 41% to 86%, meaning hiring managers were spending almost all of their interview time with candidates who were genuinely right for the role. Offer acceptance climbed from 73% to 98%.

Perhaps the most telling piece of feedback came from a candidate who said they forgot they were being assessed, and that they felt seen — knowing their past did not matter and only their potential did. For an organisation that was previously rejecting tens of thousands of applicants with no personalised feedback, this represented a fundamental shift in candidate experience.

New joiner satisfaction reached 92%, achieved during a year when Aegon UK hired more people than ever before. 

Why does the recruiter experience unlock everything else?

One of Euan's most distinctive insights is his hierarchy of experiences. Rather than trying to optimise the candidate experience and hiring manager experience separately, he focuses first on the recruiter experience — on the logic that if recruiters are engaged, enabled, and operating as trusted advisors, both candidate and hiring manager experiences improve as a natural consequence.

This philosophy shaped how he evaluated every potential change. Each new tool or process had to satisfy a simple test: does it improve at least two of the three experiences? If yes, move forward. If not, reconsider.

He also brought a cross-functional lens to the TA role, viewing recruitment through three disciplines: psychology (changing perceptions and reinforcing positive decisions throughout the hiring journey), marketing (using employer brand to attract and influence), and service (doing what you say you will do — even if that means phoning a candidate on Friday to say you have no update yet, rather than leaving them in silence over the weekend).

This framework elevated the recruiter from order-taker to consultative partner. As Euan told his team: an agency takes a brief, searches the market, and comes back with candidates — and hiring managers make time for that conversation. The in-house team should command the same respect, with the same tools and the same time commitment. 

What role does intentional friction play in better hiring?

In an industry obsessed with removing friction from the candidate journey, Euan makes a counterintuitive argument: some friction is not only acceptable, it is essential.

When Aegon UK introduced a more immersive in-person assessment — an escape-room-style exercise where candidates work as a team to solve an art heist scenario — some hiring managers initially pushed back, noting it took longer than the old process. Euan's response was direct: that is intentional friction. A hiring decision affects someone's life. It should require genuine effort and thoughtful evaluation, not a tick-box exercise.

The payoff of that friction is better data. When candidates are asked to demonstrate real behaviours under realistic conditions rather than answer competency questions, the insight available to hiring managers and recruiters is richer and more reliable. Feedback conversations become easier. Decision-making becomes more confident. And the quality of hire improves.

This principle extends to Euan's thinking about AI and automation. His team made a deliberate decision not to automate interview scheduling, because the human touchpoint allowed them to gauge candidate engagement, make reasonable adjustments quickly, and maintain the service standard they had built. Not every process that can be automated should be.

Key takeaways

• Build trust before you build the business case. Deliver results within the current process first. Trust is the currency that funds transformation — without it, even the best strategy and biggest budget will stall.
  
• Use pilots to prove the concept. Removing CVs is a big ask. Running a small, contained pilot with willing hiring managers lets the results do the persuading. When hiring managers see quality candidates they would never have found through a CV, the argument makes itself.
  
• Fix the recruiter experience first. If your recruiters are disengaged or operating as order-takers, improving candidate or hiring manager experience in isolation will not stick. Elevate the recruiter to a trusted advisor and the rest follows.
  
• Reframe how your function is measured. Metrics shape narratives. If you are being judged on time to hire when you cannot control notice periods, change the conversation to time to offer — a metric your team can own and improve.
  
• Introduce intentional friction where it adds value. Not all friction is bad. Assessment stages that require genuine effort from candidates and hiring managers produce better data, better hires, and better feedback — even if they take slightly longer.
  

Listen now 👇

Euan McNair's full conversation with Robert Newry covers even more detail on how Aegon UK built its transformation in phases, the immersive assessment experience, and Euan's perspective on where AI fits (and does not fit) in recruitment.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube.

If you are exploring how to redesign your hiring process for potential rather than pedigree, get in touch with Arctic Shores to start the conversation.

Transcript:

Robert: Welcome to the TA Disruptors podcast. I'm Robert Newry, Co-Founder and Chief Explorer at Arctic Shores, the task-based psychometric assessment company that helps organisations uncover potential and see more in people. And in this episode, we'll be talking about how you can scrap the CV, one of my favourite topics - as many of you will know, and hire for potential. And I'm very excited to be talking to someone who has done exactly that and saved over two-million in agency fees in the process.

Euan McNair is Talent Acquisition Employer Brand and Inclusion Director at Agon UK. Agon UK is part of the Global Dutch Insurance Group and was previously, as many listeners may be familiar with, Scottish Equitable. Euan joined the organisation three years ago having previously held senior TA positions through Alexander Mann, Barclays, Royal London, and directly at Aberdeen.

When he joined Aegon in 2022, it was spending two and a half million pounds on agency fees. There were roles where the time to offer was 100 days. 100% of the call centre hires came from competitors and recruiter engagement was a lowly 41%. So Euan initiated a recruitment transformation programme anchored around skills-based hiring, which has been very much the talk of the industry over the last few years, and focused on potential. Three years later, agency spend had been reduced to £100,000, a massive saving of £2.4 million. Average time to offer is 32 days. So nearly a 70% reduction. And 40% of hires now come from outside of the sector. And just as importantly, recruiter engagement is a market-leading 96%. And this is all the more impressive when you consider that this was an organisation steeped in 160-year history and is regulated, both of which meant there was a recruitment mindset that was very traditional as well as risk-averse.

Furthermore, Euan's TA function, like many across the country and globally, was challenged to reduce capacity despite applicant volumes starting to rapidly increase. So through this episode, you'll get some insights into how Euan was able to persuade the senior leadership team and hiring managers to pilot scrapping the CV and focusing on potential. And you'll leave with several great tips you can use if you're trying to revamp your hiring approach.

Welcome to the TA Disruptors podcast.

Euan: Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to get into this.

Robert: Brilliant. Well, it's going to be a great session as much as anything, because you know that I'm passionate about scrapping the CV and it's wonderful coming across people like yourself, who have taken a similar philosophy, but also done the more challenging thing, which I think needs to be recognised. It's one thing to talk about scrapping the CV. It's quite another to actually do it.

Furthermore, if I was going to do it, the last place I would start is 160 year old organisation that was risk averse. So you well and truly threw yourself into the lions den on that one. So let's start with what did hiring look like when you arrived?

Euan: Yeah, best place to start, I guess, if I was to break that down quite simplistically, I look at talent acquisition through a few different lenses. It was traditional recruitment and where I wanted to take it and where we wanted to take it as a business was to data-led inclusive talent acquisition.

So I always liken this and make it very simplistic of rugby and football. Football on grass spectators, different sport entirely. So quite simplistically, that's what we wanted to go from A to B, if you like. You touched on some of the key headlines there and I think part of the transformation was understanding where we were. So guess that was my first hundred days.

Robert: And you probably didn't have any data or not much data or pockets.

Euan: pockets. And I think, you know, you make such a good point of people listening to this, there'll be organisations that are data rich and poor. We were, I would say, probably somewhere in the middle, but it started off as poor. How do we get to the middle and how do we get more rich? And I think as well with data, you could get bogged down in it. think it's about understanding these moments that matter in key data points. So where were we? And how do we influence those data points, quite importantly, to get to where we want to be? So you touched on some of them. I mean, from a cost perspective, was high spend.

Robert: really high.

Robert: Yeah, very high spend.

Euan: I think...

Robert: And was that, sorry, just on that point, because you'd come from some other big organisation, so you knew what high spend looked like.

Euan: Yeah, course. And I guess where I had seen high spend before, was to your point, was in larger organisations. So there was always a percentage of agency reliance and this was too high. So there was high cost and I think part of the proposition would have been, you're going to need some investment over the next two to three years, but let's build a more sustainable talent acquisition model that would leave behind something that anybody could pick up in its award-winning, et cetera.

Robert: And that must have been quite hard when, so you've got pockets of data in all of this. You've identified you've got high agency spend. But a lot of the reasons for that are because there's an urgency, we were in a skills crisis, attrition is high. And so these are indicators really of other things that weren't really working. But incredibly hard to change, it's like being mid-flight and saying, right, we know that we've got the wrong engine. Let's, we start, you know, doing a little bit of maintenance while we're in the air and everybody's going, no, no, that's a happening. So, how, how did you start trying to kind of warm up the organisation as it were that this, this level of change needs to happen? And actually there's a bit more and how do we do that?

Euan: My rice, my own you use that kind of aeroplane analogy. I remember I my findings back 100 days down the road. And at the bottom of one of the slides was the runway in an airplane. We're building it as we're trying to fly. It's super interesting. I think for me it was good stakeholder management and getting around the business pretty quick to understand the view of talent acquisition, good, bad and indifferent.

So that was key. So understanding, but stakeholder view, that voice, the customer. Yes. And we ran that, I guess, as a smaller project, I joined to understand. And we ran that as a people function as well to understand the perception of our HR function.

Robert: Really good, because talent acquisition isn't isolated. It's part of, you know, much bigger process of an employee life cycle.

Euan: 100% and I joined not long after our new CPO joined. So there was real impetus behind, well, we need to actually go, similar to my thinking of go from recruitment to talent acquisition, our lead in our CPO said we need to go from HR to people. So there was that momentum, if you like, that I could leverage as well, which was key. So understanding, I guess, stakeholder feedback and sentiment. I did do an audit on the way in. How do we show up externally and how consistent?

Robert: That's a good idea and to actually show because that's the best way is to say this is what good looks like in the sector absolutely and I think you know it wasn't disingenuous but it was before joining and I would play it back to the recruiters when I joined to see this is how we show up externally

Robert: and that's super important and that was probably did that reveal some things that… were probably a little bit uncomfortable. I assume?

Euan: yeah, absolutely. But I think you know you touched on the engagement score. I think it showed for me. I didn't know the engagement score at the time. But when you look at things that are as simple as a job ad, now I think you should take great pride in the delivery of a job ad's first impression.

Everybody remembers when they've seen a job ad and they get really excited and they imagine themself in that. So why would you not take pride in putting that out as a first impression? And making it as good as it could be. as it can be and also as authentic as it can be and as transparent. And again, one of the things that was highlighted pretty early on was we didn't display salaries on adverts.

Robert: Right. That's such an interesting one isn't it because it's quite controversial as to whether you do or don't.

Euan: So basic though.

Robert: But it is. It's interesting. I think most people have come round to it but there's still some people who think that that's not the right thing to do. Yeah. that's not your...

Euan: Yeah, I mean I would say in the last three years we've had handful that there's been an exception for one reason or another. But for me putting a salary on an advert, well the stats would say you get 30% more qualified individuals would apply for the role. People know where to pitch. From an inclusion perspective, you typically would find, and again, research behind all of this, males would put themselves in right at the top and females at the bottom. Whereas if you show the band, it allows people to actually take their time and position and understand and perhaps ask questions about how do I move through that band. And I think that would help with gender pay gap, et cetera.

But yeah, there was some uncomfortable moments at the start of playing back, you know, there's a real opportunity to take more pride in our delivery and how we show up. And I believe if we do that and show up differently for candidates, we'll do that for hiring managers. And this will come together.

Robert: That's interesting, actually. A lot of people don't think about it in that way. There tends to be a bit more of a focus on candidate experience and then there is hiring managers really are our customers on this they don't think about candidates as customers and we've had some examples in the past, Virgin was one of them where somebody you know showed that most of the people applying or a good chunk of them were likely to be customers, so you have to change the mindset but we seem to have lost that a bit and, but I it must be the same surely in insurance that some of the people that you thought you were putting through the recruitment process may well be Agon home insurance customers.

Euan: Yeah, mean, for us, that was the mindset that we had to adopt very quickly. And I don't believe that that was there until this transformation project, if you like, took place. But when you start to then see, and you touched on it earlier, know, the application volume start to rise and then you reframe your thinking a little bit, and change the narrative. You could pat yourself on the back and say, we increased our applications by 135% year on year. Aren't we great? Or you reframe that and say, well, we rejected the most amount of people. Let's not lose sight of people, human beings, that this organisation has ever rejected. So we increased our application volumes to 35,000 one year. We hired 729 of them.

Robert: So you increase it from 35, and how would it be, 7 or 8,000 part of that?

Euan: About 8,000 to 35,000.

Robert: That's a massive increase.

Euan: Huge. And then to your point about the experiences, you need to look at again, for me when we entered into this, there were three experiences for me that we had to heighten, but also align and be very clear on roles and responsibilities. And be very clear sometimes on the sort of that hierarchy of needs, you like, for me.

If you improve the recruiter experience, the hiring manager and the candidate experience will improve anyway. So let's focus on that. And I think the team that I inherited, I think that needed some focus anyway, if you improve the recruiter experience, you improve the candidate experience and the hiring manager experience, kind of utopia. So we got to a point, I guess, as a team when it was put everything out on the table and you look at all the solutions that could fix them. Does that improve two out of the three? Yes, no. Yes. You move it forward if it does, yeah.

Robert: Nice, nice, I really like that.

Euan: And I guess the other element for me, so those three experiences, but then there's three elements that, for me, I've always looked at recruitment or talent acquisition, and three different lenses, if you like, which is psychology, marketing, and service. So when you weave the six of these elements together, it’s quite strong and tight. So psychology, you're trying to change somebody's perception of an organisation and their behaviour. You want them to sit down and apply and in psychology again you're trying to reinforce positively they made the right decision to do that all the way through the hiring process but also when they join…

Robert: You can't just suddenly say that there is a cut off now, chuck them over the wall…

Euan: good experience and they've joined and they lied to me doesn't it? And then they use marketing techniques, use employer brand to influence and change and shape.

And in service for me again, those three experiences, do what you say you're gonna do. Very simplistically, Robert, I said I would phone you on Friday to give you an update. I phone and tell you, I actually have no update. I couldn't catch up with Sarah. X, Y, and Z has happened. It'll probably be Monday. Now you go into the weekend knowing, well, I heard back, rather than trying to automate and send an email, pick up the phone, call her, it's easier.

Robert: I really like that and it's a nice way for us to transition now into how you made the change, because you've articulated really well the challenges that were in the process. And that's true of many organisations. There's been a little bit of tweaking here, a little bit of improvement there, largely trying to put out fires around all of this. But actually, if you're really going to address the problems, you've got to look at the whole thing again and actually look at it as a process in its entirety rather than just little bits.

And I especially haven't heard that before. I've often said that what's required of a talent acquisition person today is significant in terms of skills, significantly different than what it used to be. But I really like your point about, well, but there's things that we can learn from other departments, whether that's psychology, whether it's service, and whether it's marketing. And I think that's an interesting set of skills that you can bring then to, how are we going to look and redefine this process?

So let's dig into that bit a bit, because you talked about the job ad. And for me the job ad is an output from the job description and the role definition. So was that something that you felt you had to kind of start with? Is that where you would see the start of the process here?

Euan: Such a good point because they're two different things. They have different needs. And then you can go a step further of, you know, back to that marketing. How do you position it on a LinkedIn or a candidate brochure and do direct outreach via LinkedIn?

I think one of the key areas that we heightened was that I'm the recruiter, you're the hiring manager. The job description says this. What does your advert say? Thanks very much, Robert. That's a wish list. You're never going to get 100% of that. So let's work between that 70 to 90 % and let's take some elements out and make it broaden out and make it more inclusive if you like.

Robert: And that's quite important because that's changing. It’s the recruiter hiring manager dynamic a bit, isn't it? Because it's rather than just a, here you go, recruiter, do what I tell you to do. It's not quite usually as blunt as that, but the intention is there, opposed to, hang on, I'm a trusted advisor here, let's just work this through together so that we end up with a better outcome.

Euan: Those are the two words that we used. We to become a consultative trusted advisor. And you know, I guess, I'm big on there's opportunity anywhere and everywhere you look. And again, if you look back to again, the earlier in career and some of the team had experienced this as well, having worked in agency, we're able to use that to advantage to spend this to hiring managers. Robert, actually, you do realise what an agency does, right? You take a brief from you and you have your time to go and search the market and advertise it. And they come to you with CVs. We would do exactly the same.

So I know you might be very busy. Your team is incredibly busy. You don't have time to sit down, but you find the time to sit down with an agency. So I'm saying, give us the same time. And if we go embark on this process, give us two weeks to advertise, shortlist and come back to you. If it doesn't work, that's the lever that we pull.

And again, this isn't my outlook on the word versus agency. There is a time and a place, of course there is. We have partners, but we can add significant value, and we have a team of individuals who are, believe, and what they've demonstrated over the last three years, incredibly talented. And that's when we brought in new tools to give us the same tools that an agency might have. So why wouldn't you deal with us when we are your in-house agents? Again, it was that reframing.

Robert: It is, and it's trusting in your expertise around that. So what changes did you have to bring about in the role definition as a starting point on that?

Euan: I think that started genuinely with the immediate team of they had been through a number of TA leaders that sat in that seat. And I wanted to assure them that this would be different. I remember our first offsite, if you like, we got some time together and mapped out what that would look like and brought a strategy slide to that session that deliberately had big gaps on it because I don't know at all.

There's a number of you around the table. I know this organisation better than I do. There's an individual I work with, Rebecca, who's incredible, who's been at the organisation 12 years. I've been there 12 weeks. I don't know.

Euan: Leverage the people who've got the knowledge and the insight, talent and different perspective. So again, for me, it wasn't, you know, come in and take over with this outlook on the world. Co-creation, I think, is so important.

Robert: So you were changing the role of the recruiter as well as the job role itself, well, the way that you defined roles from hiring managers as well.

Euan: And the value that we could then add and how do we position that. And I think the momentum, again, for change, the momentum came when we started to get these direct results. Wait a minute, we filled a ‘Head of’ role, previously, that would have been, you know, by an agency or a headhunter, what else? All right, okay, there's momentum here. And I think that had amount for me in terms of any change or any transformation as that storytelling.

So we as a team really leaned in on reporting, monthly reporting and packs would go out and we would tell a story and we'd have focus areas. And then for me again, taking over, was fine to our three people that would be very honest about what they liked and then find the three biggest critics in the organisation and go and buy them a coffee. And get curious as to

Robert: why are you so upset or why do you disengage?

Euan: And I sat down with one a hiring manager, part of our senior leadership team. And she had essentially had a dossier of all the things that she believed could be better and had went wrong.

Robert: A dossier?

Euan: Yeah, long list. It was huge.

Robert: I'm sure it probably was.

Euan: It was, again, when I go back three years, it was an incredible meeting. It was fantastic. And it gave me a blueprint for all

Robert: these things you've got to go look at.

Euan: And one of the things that was on that was about time to hire. And I know we touched on that at start. And in the organisation, especially at a senior level, that's what we talked about, it time to hire. So I knew that was one of the elements we had to change the narrative on to say, you can't judge talent acquisition on time to hire, you can judge it on time to offer. But I cannot influence the fact that Robert's got a three month notice period. Or Robert got the offer the day that he went on three week holiday and didn't fill out the paperwork. If you judge us on this metric, me and the team will lean in. And we will reduce that. So it's changing, I guess what we should be judged on and the value that we could add.

Robert: Yes. And I think that's so important starting to, I think, to look through the eyes of the hiring managers as well. So, you know, why is time to offer so important? Well, if it is taking over 100 days to do that, that's 100 days that the business does not have somebody in the role and therefore is not able to hit its own targets and fonts on that.

But I know one of the other things that you did when we talked earlier on this, which I really like too, part of being the trusted advisor is bringing something new to it. And I came into the psychometric industry from outside. And I think when you come in, to a new organisation, you can bring some different thinking. I loved, maybe you can share a bit more of the story that you told me about how, well, why don't we, if we've got a contact centre and a lot of that is dealing with people putting in claims and much of what, I'm sure, Agon UK does is pension support, why would we not have people who are nearing pension, or thinking about pensions and taking a little bit of that mindset of what kind of people do we want in the role, not just here's a job description.

Euan: Yeah, of course. think that seed was planted, if you like, on my way into the organisation. I met our Chief Service Officer. Had a great conversation and the timing of that and how quickly he was keen to share. Why don't we tap into different demographics? And actually, you know, what would you say are the key elements that we need to improve for volume hiring? And luckily, I guess for me, in terms of timing, the role that had at AMS - Alexander Man solutions, I had been consulting with a number of organisations during the pandemic and then off the back of that, know, Great Resignate, etc. How do we actually positively disrupt the market with a proposition that everybody's saying the same thing at the same time and the same geography?

So there was an opportunity there, guess, I guess, leverage that to benefit talent acquisition, to benefit people function, but the business as well. So to do that and tap into these different demographics of talent, we need to do something different. And it is not about catching up to fill the gap. It's about overtaking.

Robert: I love that, yes. Yeah. Your ambition wasn't given you know, the metrics that you had, you'd been perfectly entitled to say, well, let's just get up to what best practice looks like, let alone try and exceed it.

Euan: Yeah. And I think I was lucky, guess, in a way that that was the that narrative was in the business already and was starting to grow, which was again, as an organisation, we're trying to simplify the business, how we operate. And I guess there's three key parts of the agron strategy that we latched onto, which is basics, simplify and grow.

So actually under these three pillars, if you like, what were the basics that we're gonna go after? Hygiene factors, non-negotiable. These key touch points, moments that matter, et cetera. What were they then gonna simplify those ways of working that go back to those experiences? And then what does growth look like? And I think being able to talk to the business in the language that they understand about a topic that might seem a bit, but quite different, guess, when we were talking about removing CV, when we were talking about taking employer brand out and having different conversations on different platforms. This was quite a transformation from where they were. But I guess the backdrop of organisational change, I think if anybody listening to this, if you can use your organisation's people strategy and organisational strategy.

Robert: To link it in.

Euan: So it's not seen as something that's It's not obscure off to the side. By doing this, I truly believe that we have an organisational purpose by delivering these elements and heightening these propositions, I think we had that purpose or to your point Robert is, or we just take it to that's good. But I think what again advice I would give to anybody listening is think big and act small. So have the audacious goal, but then what's the incremental steps?

Robert: I think that's very interesting, isn't it? Yeah, that you know that you've got some big things to deal with, can't change it all in a day. You have to little baby steps. But you've got to have that vision of where you're aiming for as opposed to just plugging leaks in a bucket as it were, as they come up. There has to be something a bit more as to, okay, the analogy I often give is, you know, how do you switch from a bucket to a cocktail glass on all of this? Because the volumes are so big and we've got to keep costs sensible on this. we've got to get that funnel of when we're doing the moments that matter. And I love your point about that.

But they're expensive, the moments that matter. So you have to very quickly be able to, you know, get that number down to a sensible amount of moments that matter around that.

Euan: Exactly. I think there's there's some thinking there for me in terms of, again, that big number of that big increase 135% increase in applications. Again, it was thinking about that number differently rather than again, 35,000, but it's also customers, but also think about the engagement of that pipeline. How many people have just applied to a role and not really given it much thought? So if you could get to the point, and again, the team have been exceptional at this of how engaged is that pipeline of talent? And that's where Arctic Shores plays a key role in that.

So again, thinking differently about the pipeline and then thinking differently about human potential. I think for me, he's been paramount. Look, I've been, there's a personal element in this and it wasn't about necessarily me, but I had feedback and career at different points to say, you cannot do X because you've only done Y or you couldn't go and do this part over here because you haven't been exposed to this and I don't think you could.

Now that wasn't, you know, I don't, not bringing in different propositions because of me, but that did make me wonder if I'm lucky enough to be privy to that and hear that, think of the hundreds of thousands of people that don't hear that. And how do we change our mindset and talent acquisition to focus on potential rather than a piece of paper? Because that piece of paper, again, was at Da Vinci that was cited.

Robert: It was, exactly, when you think it's like six centuries old now

Euan: as a way talent acquisition that we are bit outdated, have we still flawed? How do we change our thinking? And again, anybody listening would challenge anybody to challenge their own thinking around talent acquisition? How do we do it differently?

Robert: So I think that's the important point here. And I think particularly now, you know, if you're really going to be ambitious about this, it's not about tinkering. You're going to have to really redesign the process.

So you really you did all of that, you redesigned the process, you looked at roles, started to think about what type of people, what type of skills, let's think about potential because we're gonna train them up. And once you've done that, once you've changed the job description, then you have to change the process. And then, I'm assuming because you're not getting any more people, you're then gonna have to get some new tools in to help that.

How, for many people, that feels like the impossible task, which is I've got to do all this transformation. We're at a time where I'm being told I'm not going to get any extra money. And yet for me to deliver on this vision, I'm going to need some extra money. So how did you make that transition from process redesign? We're going to scrap the CV, but to do it, I'm gonna need some money to invest in some tools and then we'll talk about what those tools were.

Euan: It's interesting, I thought about this on the flight here, I think for me, I don't believe money solves all problems in life full stop. I think what was good in our transformation journey is we had the right investment at the right time for the right things. So again, not making business cases to solve all of it, because you can't.

Robert: Just looking in the small steps to start with.

Euan: So actually what are the key areas that we needed to go after? And again, if I break our journey down into three chapters, so year one was talent acquisition, transformation, again that was from recruitment to talent acquisition, and being able to deliver all that built trust.

Robert: So important then, so now you've kind of got the stripes as it were that says, okay, I can trust Euan to make things happen.

Euan: And the wider team and function as well. We had that trust as a function, which really helped. So when you have that backdrop and you have that trust, think, go and ask for money and you don't have that. It's not gonna work. But more so it was, there's investment in these areas, but I'm gonna need you as the executive committee or a senior leadership team to lean into the change. So again, I could have had five times the budget…

Robert: But if they're not supporting the change, then it will be lost.

Euan: But 10% of the mindset. again, for me, it's… Life's about balance, I guess it was positioning, I view these two or three areas for chapter two, year two, as areas that we need to remedy. And if we do that, the hypothesis would be A, B and C.

Robert: And I assume the A, B and C included reducing agency fees. So you had a number to kind of grab executive attention on all this saying, if you support me to do this, I can take this number significantly down.

Euan: Exactly that. So it's a simple kind of analogy, guess, or way of positioning it. You were spending two and a half million pounds in two years and you covered that in the intro and you're one part of this transformation, was we have spent some, but we turned off a tap. It was incredible delivery from the team. Say, now do you want to go back to those days or do want to sustain this and continue on the journey to your point of… Do we take it to here or I think the ceiling is here.

So that was the journey that we embarked on. I guess year two for us, key propositions and tools. So the propositions for us, fully embedding Arctic Shores, understand how engaged our pipeline is, more diverse talent. And the bit we love about that as a tool as well, we mentioned about customers, everybody having a report.

Robert: So every candidate getting a feedback report, which wasn't happening before, it?

Euan: No, especially with that huge increase.

Robert: How do you go from 8,000 to 30,000?

Euan: So being able to candidates to get a report if they're successful with us fantastic or go off on their career but they have insight. For me an incredible composition.

Robert: And just on that too I suppose one of the other things as well when you're saying to the organisation we're going to scrap the CV that's a comfort blanket so you have to give them a different comfort blanket you have to give them something else to say well if you rip away the CV… I don't want to be the emperor with no clothes suddenly now.

Euan: I think the comfort blanket or the incentive if you like was time. So, what again, and part of that diagnostic I guess and that we label it entry careers so early careers plus into our operations, as an entry it's a talent pipeline for us. But what we heard time and time again was it takes too long too hire. It takes too long for me to review CVs before I green light who to assess. You go okay well that's why you're time to offer in this area is at the start of the year, 42 days. I reckon we could take 10 out of that and we did.

But for a year, 18 months, we've displayed that we can get good people for you. Do you agree?

Robert: So, you've got the trust then?

Euan: You agree? Yes. And I think the tipping point for us was a pilot and I love using the word pilot because it can fail. But pilot, let's do a couple of assessments where you do not see the CVs that you trust as a team, we know what you're looking for. And they come in and they still do your old school traditional, tell me about a time, not fit for purpose conversation, if you like.

We do all the other elements that you're comfortable with back to your comfort blanket. Let's do this bit different. Let's just test it. And then you do the wall shopping. We like all these individuals. We should offer them. It's interesting that because they're from retail. They're from hospitality. That individual's just graduated.

Old world… you would not have hired them.

Robert: Good point, okay. So then you can't have that So those little pilots, you put them through the Arctic shores, just on potential. Just on potential. And then you gave them the candidates were put in front of them. They could ask whatever questions, but they didn't get the CV too. they had no...

Euan: No.

Robert: Wow.

Euan: So test proved the point to your part. think everything that, the main thing that underpins all this for me is that you trust. So we had that. And once you prove it works, well actually we've been able to look at this through a few different lenses. again, once Arctic Shores were fully embedded in the new assessment, in-person assessment, fully embedded and we ran the data, we saved 37 days of recruiter time. What's that? For each hiring manager? So we're giving the commodity of time back to recruiters.

Robert: Which they all need and want.

Euan: Which they need, so again, back to these free experiences. What's happened to the candidate experience? It was quicker. Okay. So it's utopia, right? So that's the new proposition. And we're all behind that. And I think when you go through any change and any transformation, the hardest part is the people aspect. This is new and it's different. What does it mean for me as a hiring manager? I don't feel like I know the candidate as well. I challenge that thinking.

Robert: And everybody says, oh, you've got to turn things upside down and challenge. to be able to do that, you've got to have the trust and show that you can deliver. And I think that's such an important point around all of this. A lot of people want to come about, change before they get the trust. And then also with the pilot, you probably ended up with some hires from outside the industry that you didn't expect. And that… must feel a little bit risky, but can you share where did some of the people come from? Did you come across some unexpected talent?

Euan: Yeah, we absolutely, we did. A number of them are still in the organisation doing great things. And I think that's been really crucial for us as, again, talent acquisition for me is such an opportunity to impact organisational health and beyond. We are tracking individuals that have now come through the new assessment and where are they and all of that good, good stuff.

But yeah, I guess some of the metrics to probably share that 40%, we had about 100% of our hires were coming through FS and where we are now is about 40% come from outwith. So we've hired.

Robert: Which is a big big shift.

Euan: Big shift. Which again I think is needed and I think that's part of the you know that think big, act small, that audacious goal. As much as this again a byproduct would be filling jobs at Aegon UK, but entering into this, was a want to change the perception of financial services. Now, we are a small organisation within that and again I would love it if anybody that's listening to this in FS or beyond reach out.

If we all think differently like that, I think we can change the perception of any sector. So that was kind of the aim and the big…

Robert: So you've got people coming into financial services.

Euan: Yeah, from Nail technicians.

Robert: Nail technicians.

Euan: Hairdressers, motorway maintenance.

Robert: Goodness me.

Euan: We hired a chef who wanted to, and again, what's amazing about this for me is it's not just the job title, it's the rationale. So we had a chef who wanted more work-life balance, family, et cetera. And then to your point earlier on about different demographics, we hired an individual that had nearly retired or had semi-retired and thought, no, I want to come back into the world of work. It was a previous, very, very senior role. I just thought, I want to come and work. And the team shared some insight on that particular day. And again, different age demographic in the room. This individual who incredibly senior at one point during the immersive assessment has got his arms around individuals encouraging people to step forward. And you made a good point in the discussion. You don't get that. You don't get that from a traditional advert screening call. And Robert tell me about a time where you. Yes. Right.

So this was tapping into skills, human potential, and all the skills required to map into that role and be a success in it and be a success in Aegon and align to our behaviors. So again…

Robert: I love that. YAnd I think the behaviors align to your behaviors, align to your values. You did it at the assessment. You mentioned just now about an immersive assessment in-person piece. So, tell me a bit more about that because that's another area where to tap into behaviors, you need to get people to do things. But you wanted 40% of the people to be outside financial services, so it couldn't be something that was role specific on large. So how did you go about that? What did you do?

Euan: I think, again, going back to the elements of chapter two, if you like, designing some of this to embed into year three, if we were going to… truly heightened the experience, use Arctic Shores to help us do that. Then what came next was really important. Again, it couldn't be, you know, up and down. had to be...

Robert: It had to be consistent, didn't it?

Euan: It had to be very consistent, quite aspirational. And again, we wanted it to feel quite different to what you would get. Again, not even just in financial services, just different full stop and then be quite different. Because I guess you can saturate a market. And again, if you're always hiring for the same type of roles.

Robert: that's right. It's going to be a bit tedious.

Euan: Exactly. So we wanted to get to a point where Arctic Shores first, quick screening call, again we take the time out for the recruiter, real value add moment, before you come along this is what to expect. And then our immersive assessment, so again that was like, know, take the CV out, but then rip up what traditional assessment looks like. And essentially if you come along to Aegon UK for any of these roles, it's essentially an escape room.

Robert: An escape room?

Euan: Yes, so no tell me about a no competency. You work as a team to stop an art heist.

Robert: An art heist? So not just any escape room?

Euan: Quite different, you join a...

Robert: It's an insurance company!

Euan: Yeah, no, it's not what you'd expect.

Robert: That really is turning it on.

Euan: It's great, and think to be able to get the... You talked about trusted advisor. We wouldn't be able to do that without the hard yards, I feel like, in chapter one. So, yeah, it's incredibly different. You're invited along by an actor, an assessment to join craft.

Robert: Are you actually phoned?

Euan: Yes, there's a video that comes out. And you're invited along and join craft and can you help us?

Robert: And craft is this organisation that is trying to catch the art heist.

Euan: And then some of the, again, when you put that together with immersive assessment fallen on from Arctic Shores and the deep care that our acquisition team have and you look at the stats that we've got, I think it probably even exceeded our expectations some of the stats and data.

Robert: Yes, what work can you share some of those?

Euan: Yeah, no, So I mentioned earlier on about the 37 days of recruiter time. So if you can take that out, what are all the moments that matter, the value add that recruiters can go after. And again, this was part of the change and the adoption into this area of the business. We pulled all the data. This doesn't look great. And the hypothesis would be we do these two elements Arctic Shores and Immersive Assessment.

And I think drastically so where we got to again the 37 days our new no-show rate was 25%, so quarter of people invited then

Robert: we're not turning up that's huge

Euan: as a hiring manager I'm so frustrated yeah I'm gonna sit in this room all day and I might not get a single higher so no show rate 25 % to zero.

Robert: to zero?!

Euan: To zero for that seven month period, we've had a couple since, which is human nature, but this particular period 25 to zero, which was incredible. Our pass rate increased from 41% to 86%. So again, human potential and skills.

Robert: And just the, yeah, I mean, it's good for hiring managers at that point. It's good for the individuals. The efficiency of that is. So having to interview two and a half, three people to get one hire, you're now doing virtually one-on-one.

Euan: That ratio dramatically impacted, which was huge for us. Offer acceptance, 73% to 98% very few people rejecting our job because it's been slick and it's been fun. And when we asked Candidates for feedback on that, the best quote that we got, and again, as a team, we sort of sat and read it on the screen one day and we all, it quite a seminal moment, quite a proud moment, was from a candidate that said, I forgot I was being assessed - jackpot, and I feel seen. I know you haven't looked at my CV and I know that my past doesn't matter, it's about my potential.

Robert: I love that bit being seen again and you know, and that's incredible. And that's exactly very much the philosophy of Arctic Shores. See more in people and you can do it. You can see more in people. You just have to give them the opportunity,

Euan: then the right set up and the opportunity and remove barriers that sort of goal in all of this. And so to see that feedback was great. And then our new joiner, we've rolled out a new joiner experience. Again, we had five journeys within that, some automation, some changes within there. But our new joiner satisfaction was 92% in a year where we hired the most amount of people the organisation had ever hired.

So all of this change that we've talked about is incredible, but it's for nothing if you can't deliver. And the team continually delivered on that. And then as you say, 40% of the hires came from outwith FS. So quite a shift in terms of the quantitative and qualitative data that we got out of the back as well.

Robert: Yeah, no, thanks for sharing that, as a sort of final point, we'll dig a little bit into data. What's been so fascinating by what you've shared is that you have delivered great business benefits in there, massive savings, two million pounds in agency fees plus being reduced. And at the same time, you've created a hiring process now that makes everybody happy. And I love your little triangulation of hiring managers, candidates and recruiters, and quite often the process pleases one and upsets the other two.

And actually to get all three happy feels for many people an impossible task, but it shows you if you really think about it, pilot it, and learn from that get good feedback, get good data, then comes back to your earlier point is you get it right and then all the things suddenly all the leaks start going away because you've actually just got a process that's yeah fit for purpose.

Euan: And you touch on such an important aspect from your feedback talent acquisition you hear a lot you can see a lot on LinkedIn about recruiters giving feedback or hiring managers giving feedback yes you can't give feedback to everyone but if they come for an assessment, and beyond I believe we've got a duty of care to that individual again that back to that service.

Now with rolling out new assessment from Arctic Shores to then Immersive or on our specialist, again we've got segmentation, we think about hiring in two different ways. In our specialist hiring, we rolled out new assessment in that area as well. And what's interesting I guess in the specialist area, initially we had some hiring managers saying, it takes longer, this part takes longer, to which our provocation, good, it's intentional friction. You're gonna make a hire that should come and join this organisation and add value, they're gonna make a decision that impacts their life em and let's not underplay that in any way. It should be a little bit hard. It should be a good conversation rather than it really easy to take some boxes on a form and make an offer to Robert and he rocks up.

Robert: I love that term, intentional friction.

Euan: Yeah, absolutely.

Robert: And we've kind of lost that a bit.

Euan: Yeah, a little bit.

Robert: In I think in that the world got so obsessed with the skills shortage and the sort of Amazon one-click, let's remove friction in all of this that we've lost sight that actually friction isn't always bad. And if it's intentional, and that's the key thing, then it can be good.

Euan: Yeah. And I think that was part of, it was an opportunity to educate. So you're not hired in this organisation. This is going to take a commitment of time, but here's why. And what that's then enabled is hiring managers and recruiters to get better feedback. So again, this part might be a bit more time consuming, not by much in any stretch of imagination. This might be a bit harder. So when you go to get feedback, it'll be much easier. And this is the part where...

Robert: And that's the benefit.

Euan: That's the benefit. As long as we understand the roles that we play and why, why are we changing something and why is there friction to your point? Then value add at the end.

Robert: Yes. And that's how you change minds and get get by.

Well, Euan, it's been fantastic just listening to how you've gone about this and the results that you got and I think those there's so many useful things that you've shared with us there but some of the things that I've taken away really is the importance of of data the importance of trust showing that you can deliver think big start small, all of those are really important building blocks.

But one question I'm sure a few listeners are thinking about and I must ask you is, okay, now that you've done the transformation, and AI has been thrown into the mix, where are you, because you're clearly somebody very process driven, very technology driven, what's your perspective on AI and have you got any plans in the next quarter, 12 months of how you use it?

Euan: I think for us, my view on this is, AI is great in one way and again automation in general. What I would say having been through this three year transformation there's some times where you need to back to the basic simplifying ground, fix the basics before you bolt on something new and shiny. Understand you know conduct that audit that I did at the start, understand current state before we start building, because actually the best of intentions you might bolt on a platform and it derails everything else, it makes it worse rather than better.

Robert: Well that's right, you just scale a bad process.

Euan: Exactly, so the hygiene factors fix the problems and I think a big example of that for us was our joining experience, I mentioned those five journeys, everything from raising a requisition to being inducted into the business, and again problem statements that sat under each.

Robert: Yes, I like that point about problem statements… we don't look at it. What's the problem we're trying to solve?

Euan: Yeah, we're we're big on two things in our function is that as as in to be design you tell us what's wrong and we'll fix it. But what we need back from you to help us fix it is this kind of commitment, and then human center design. So I could design a process and I'm very process focused that I think is exceptional. But I don't have the input from a recruiter, hiring manager or a candor that it's null and void.

So that human centered design is paramount for us. But in terms of AI, automation, what's to come, again, I think of it slightly differently. One of the areas that we looked at and explored, and I had worked in this environment before, was to arrange interviews. We made the conscious decision, actually no, we have an individual on our team, Megan, she's exceptional, that organises interviews em rather than a bot.

Because what I'd seen in previous organisations was it became, there was much more friction, but it wasn't intentional. It all came down to how you manage your inbox and your diary. So we have an individual, as I say, Megan, that organises interviews and we can find out how engaged are you. I had to phone Robert six times as he truly engaged. Robert needs some reasonable adjustments. How do we make that? How do we make that quickly?

Robert: We can overlook some of these things in our drive for efficiency, can't we?

Euan: So what is, again, moments that matter? Is it efficiency for efficiency's sake or is there value add that we're missing? For me has been paramount and we made conscious decisions not to automate certain parts.

What might come next I guess we've tested but we've brought in platforms like Arctic Shores, we've brought in Horsefly from an analytics, a market intelligence perspective. This year we will deploy Poetry which is a recruiter enablement tool. Again, does it improve recruiter hiring manager candidate experience? the answer is yes, we move forward.

But we're not doing too much. And I think the balance is key. And again, advice to anyone would be fix what's broken and understand what's broken before you

Robert: before you then go out and…

Euan: yeah, absolutely. And to your point on solution there, you might think it's the solution, but test on other people to see if it's right. I think that's that's key. I think where AI is going to add value again, what I would say is anybody listening again, we made some decisions and I made some decisions that were right for that organisation.

At that time, either culturally or size and shape of team, other people might think, well no, we don't get 35,000 applications. When I was at Barclays, it was about 120,000 a month. So do you use AI to do some matching and pipeline management? Yeah, of course. I don't think talent acquisition should just fight AI with AI, because we're getting lots of applications through these platforms that might apply to 100 jobs at the one time. Let's try and upscale and educate candidates on how to use AI safely.

And their application process because we witnessed applications and phone candidates and they had no idea that they'd applied to the organisation because they'd used one of these tools.

Robert: It's a waste of time for everybody at that point.

Euan: Exactly, how do we educate? And then fundamentally, there's bias in AI. There's bias in humans, right? There's bias in AI. How are we aware of that? Are we aware of that? And the environmental challenges. So let's not, I guess my provocation would be let's not just try and bolt on and automate everything, because there's a price to pay potentially.

And then again from a skills perspective, this conversation has been about skills and potential. What is the future TA proposition that we leave behind for the leaders of tomorrow? Is that a proposition that's fully automated, with no moments that matter and no...

Robert: Which would be sad. Yeah, would be incredibly sad. And I miss the point of...

Euan: And wrong, think, yeah, completely. Some skills that I have now as an HR professional and as a leader that I got from of processes that might be automated in the future. And some of came from interviewing. So some models, recruiters don't sit in the room. When I worked at Glasgow 2014, I was there for three years. I sat in thousands of interviews. I screened every candidate and then interviewed them with the item manager. That helped me be incredible at intentional listening and picking up on certain parts. Probing questions and asking good questions. I think recruiters can learn a lot.

Where's the intentional friction TA leaders need to put in, in their processes to upskill the TA leaders of tomorrow? I would challenge people to think about that rather than just automating it for ease.

Robert: That's brilliant. And a great final thought, I think, for people to reflect on. Euan, it's been fascinating talking to you. Thanks very I knew it would be. So many great insights and I know a lot of people will take in a lot of value from this discussion, so thank you so much.

Euan: No, thank you for having me, and like if anybody wants to reach out directly I'll buy anyone a coffee. That's a different viewpoint because it's all learning. But yeah, thank you so much Robert, a really brief year of time.

Robert: Thank you.

__________

Thank you for listening to the TA Disruptors podcast and I'm sure you will agree that that episode with Euan was full of great insights and tips.

And Euan shared a story that is one that many TA leaders are challenged with at the moment, which is how do you change a process that isn't working in the way that it should do and deliver change with less resources? Where do you find the money? How do you make the shift? And for me, Euan gave six really good thoughts on some of the key building blocks to achieve that.

The first was think big, start small. A very simple and in some ways sort of obvious thought, but I really liked the way that he shared of finding pilots, but finding pilots where they will have the maximum business impact.

Then, the second one I really liked his point about building trust, it's by showing that you can deliver even within the current process before you make any change, you build confidence in your key stakeholders that you are somebody that can be trusted to get something done. And when you say something needs to change, it is on the back of that trust that you've built up.

The next and third point that I really like from him is data and rather than just having pockets of data, really thinking about a dashboard and how you pull all those things together and that your big vision will be one that is demonstrated through various different improvements and you need the data to demonstrate those improvements.

The fourth one that I found fascinating was the skills he brought into the talent acquisition function. And taking that sort of different perspective as to how talent acquisition can deliver value, he talked about psychology and how you bring about behavioral change and stakeholder change management, which I thought was brilliant. I really liked how you could bring in a marketing perspective into recruitment as well and think about candidates and hiring in a slightly different way.

And then his last point about services and how you deliver a service and what it means to deliver a service. The fifth point that he made that I also really liked was around the triangle of stakeholders. So recruiters, hiring managers and candidates and often that you satisfy one but not all three. And if you go about when you're making the change saying are we satisfying the needs of all three of those rather than just one, you change the way that you try and address the problem statement and also the way that you go about solving it.

And then the last point that he made was around his time to introduce intentional friction back into the recruitment process. Very much we've ended up in a mindset where friction fundamentally was seen as bad in the recruitment process, as somehow preventing candidates from having a good experience. And that if you have intentional friction, that can, if done in the right way, be a good thing for the recruitment practice.

So lots of really great thoughts. I'm sure there's probably more that others may take from it. But that's a summary of the ones that I thought really jumped out from me. think if you are looking about making a uh similar change in your organisation, check out the free playbook that we've got on skills-based hiring. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes.

And please remember whether you're listening to this on an Apple podcast or Spotify or watching on YouTube, if you can like and if you did like it, share with us that you did, subscribe to the podcast if you found it helpful too, because the more support that we get and feedback on it, the more TA disruptors like you will find us.

Thank you for listening.