Australasian Talent Conference Round-Up: The Big Topics and Trends

There were a few overriding themes at the ATC last week. The two days focused on talent acquisition were kickstarted by Canva talking about creativity, which is very dear to my heart. From Canva’s perspective, it's not only about making visual presentations super creative but also about engaging and enabling hiring managers. They need help to talk about the teams they're hiring and how proud they are to work in an organisation. If I put that into the context of the world we live in, where storytelling is at the heart of what we do, then I wholeheartedly agree.

Then there was Katrina Collier, HR and recruitment author, facilitator and speaker. What I loved was her honesty, because she talked about the fact we have come through two or three years of working through the pandemic, working remotely, working more hours, dealing with health issues and emotional turmoil. Basically, everyone is exhausted.

To that end, when we talk about talent acquisition and what we do as vendors, our goal is to help make people's life easier throughout the entire talent journey, from talent acquisition to retention. There was a lot of discussion about tech being a critical enabler to support human relationships, and that really ties in with my excitement about what we're doing at The Martec in terms of AI storytelling.

A challenging market requires innovative solutions

A key topic of discussion, including during the CBA session, was the fact that interest rates are rising globally and salaries can't keep going up to match. Organisations are not going to be able to compete on money alone anymore in this market, which means they've got to compete on the job role, their organisation, the culture, the leadership, the team, the journey and the opportunity.

This is where we fit in at The Martec because we can help organisations do this at scale and in all the different markets. We can tell the authentic stories of an organisation's culture, regardless of what happens at a macro level. 

In an environment where candidate engagement is at an all-time low, how do you capture people’s attention? For us, it’s about tapping into the fact that people want to be human again, and they want that human connection. Even enboarder talked about how they're building that connection innovation within their platform to help people buddy up and engage. People fundamentally changed their lives during the pandemic, and I think we have a responsibility as tech innovators to provide solutions that help people connect with one another again.

Our very own Brie Mason and Clint Williams from Lion also did a session on EVPs. We all know that EVP is not a silver bullet, but some organisations still think it is. What I loved about the session was that it was all about the importance of bringing people on the journey. It’s not just about talent acquisition but about getting all the business stakeholders involved, and applying the employer brand lens at all touchpoints of the talent journey.

Trends for 2023

Last but certainly not least was the amazing Kevin Wheeler, HR futurist and one of the OGs of the ATC. One of the key takeaways from his presentation was his prediction that everyone will be expanding and diversifying their workforce to incorporate full-time, part-time, consultant, contractor, temporary, avatars and robots. The workforce is going to look super different and organisations will be building up talent in areas that are currently underrepresented, including people with divergent ideas, physical or mental challenges and the mature generation.

Kevin also talked about the growing importance of employer marketing and branding. CMOs in global organisations are starting to see employer brands in their KPIs and are really learning from product marketing, with more varied and targeted attraction strategies including targeted marketing, sponsored job ads, focused media, social media, strong referral networks, relevant content, podcasts and video.

But Kevin’s biggest prediction for 2023 is the use of generative AI in talent. I almost hugged him when he spoke about its capability to free up capacity and allow recruiters, TAs and sourcers to be more strategic at their jobs. The Martec is the only generative AI platform for talent in the world, and there’s so much potential to maximise impact by automatically generating content marketing messages and job descriptions using only a few words as a prompt. Needless to say, I am going to be working a lot more with the wonderful Kevin on generative AI for talent!

Going back to my earlier point about human connection, I think this really sums up that AI is less about taking jobs away from people and more about allowing them to be better and more efficient at their roles – so they can focus on the things that matter.

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