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Meeting Details
The fall in-person meeting of i4cp Talent Acquisition Board was held Sept. 18-19, 2024, hosted by Lisa Ashworth at
the PepsiCo Creative Center in NYC. In addition to board members, we had invited guests from RTX and KPMG in attendance, who added their perspectives to the discussions.
The agenda of the meeting was based on survey input gathered from board members in early August with the emerging theme of the Future of Talent Acquisition.
Meeting Highlights
2025 Objectives Roundtable Discussion
Each board member shared their plans and objectives for 2025 (see accompanying PPT deck for examples)—there was rich discussion sparked by each members’ presentation throughout the day. While there was some variety across plans, key themes were:
- continued efforts to upskill TA as a strategic advisory function
- partnering closely with the business to leverage more GenAI solutions and data
- implementing different sourcing models
- leveraging AI
We also discussed refreshing employer brand/EVP since it has been an average two-to-three years since this has been done across member organizations. Internal mobility is also top of mind, which will be covered later.
TA Roles of the Future
We caught a glimpse of what can be in a discussion led by Lisa Ashworth—some with and without AI. Regardless of the personalization enabled by tech, the experience (high-touch engagement, relationship management, and smooth transactions) will be favored over other measures like time-to-fill (TTF). And TA leaders will be focused on proactive programs to make teams more productive and help support closing operational gaps.
Real World AI Use Cases
Mimi Turner was joined by guest Shay Johnson of Compass Group and board member Sarah Tilley of ServiceNow in reviewing highlights of AI in TA case studies (see attached PDF of case examples that were distributed during the meeting). As TA teams are asked to do more with less, they’re turning to AI to increase productivity while enhancing experiences in TA.
Although AI can be leveraged in virtually every stage of the end-to-end hiring process, there are low hanging fruit in areas like candidate engagement, sourcing, and screening.
Leading companies are pushing to be an AI-first TA organization. Regardless of where folks are in the maturity of their adoption of technology, it will be important to bring together key stakeholders (via councils) to discuss and set key philosophies around ethics, bias, governance, and risk.
Upskilling and Internal Mobility
Sarah Tilley and Mitch Schwartz gave us a view into their respective upskill and internal recruiting practices at ServiceNow and U.S. Bank. Both shared how matching of skills and skills intelligence is leveraged at their companies and how their talent ecosystem starts with a common language of skills. We also discussed important practices such as having employees attach their recent performance review (if TA teams don’t have this visibility) and if companies pay market rates when employees make lateral moves.
The discussion also was made livelier as folks shared benchmark internal mobility rates, which will vary given additional context. 40%+ internal mobility rate when things are stagnant (because you’re hiring more from within because you want to move your talent around and retain them vs. hire from outside). 20%+ internal mobility rate when you’re growing (because you’re going to need external talent to feed your growth). A member shared that they would ideally like to see their talent mix at 50/50 internal/external.
i4cp Research Briefing
Lorrie Lykins walked us through two key research topics: (1) Network Effect: building trust and collaboration across teams. Eight in 10 teams underperform due to collaborative dysfunctions, but Leaders of high-performing teams build networks with precision collaboration. (2) Future-Ready Culture – glimpse into soon to be released research that speaks to the link between performance and culture. Although more than a third of those surveyed from large organizations (34%) reported their cultures became more toxic in the previous two years, organizations with healthy cultures continue to outperform.
Candidate Experience
Despite hiring being relatively flat across our Talent Acquisition Board member companies, candidate experience continues to remain very important. After all, when the pendulum swings the other way, folks don’t want to be caught scrambling. We shared top line research findings from Cande and discussed the most important practices that resonated with members.
What’s on Everyone’s Minds and Future Topics for 2025
- Doing more with less and how to fund TA tech with reduction in other spend
- DEIA (partnering with i4cp’s CDO board in future sessions) – what is the impact? Regulation, programs, language
- Campus/UR/early career recruiting (and recruiting at HCBUs – the effectiveness/ROI)
- Fraud—scammers posing as recruiters, advertising fake jobs to entice victims to disclose personal information, bots creating fake job listings, scam texts or emails with nonexistent job offers—often powered by AI, applicants misusing AI to create resumes/CVs, etc.
- Whether companies keep interview notes / forms
- More internal mobility (deep dive into actual program)
- Learning from OFCCP and EEOC audits
- Potential crossover meeting with i4cp’s Future of Work Board
- Forecasting—how the economy will affect both the workforce and demand globally (bring in a guest to speak about this)
- Finance—BU-TA-HR partnership
- AI updates and tool sharing
- What will our function look like three-to- five years out?
- Candidate experience mapping with the CandE Review award winners
- How do orgs keep successful candidates warm until start date? What should preboarding look like? How to counter the high of getting the offer but then silence?
- Skills-based orgs—what are the implications for TA? Who is doing it (well)?
- The EU’s AI Act—liability issues and need for insurance.
- AI education for TA—there are many courses available for HR buy none for TA—they are rare.
Attachments
- TA Board meeting PPT deck
- i4cp: AI Use Case Examples (PDF)
We were hosted by Lisa Ashworth in New York, NY at PepsiCo for our fall in-person meeting. The theme for the meeting was The Future of Talent Acquisition.