Recruiting Future with Matt Alder - What's Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?

Ep 632: Attracting, Retaining, and Empowering Gen Z Talent

Get my free whitepaper "10 Ways AI Will Transform Talent Acquisition" – Download Now Transform Talent Acquisition – Find out how my digital course will help you shape the future of talent acquisition in your organization – Click Here A whole new generation is entering the workforce at a time when work is changing for everyone. Getting the right talent is hard enough, but there are also considerable challenges in retaining talent and providing the right skills development to deal with the current speed of change in business and technology. So, how can employers take a holistic approach to talent acquisition, talent management, and L&D that resonates with a Gen Z audience and engages the wider workforce? My guest this week is Dilek Çilingir, Global Assurance Talent Leader at EY. EY has intensely focused on changing outdated perceptions around auditing as a career to bring new talent into the business. This is part of an overarching talent strategy that also focuses on upskilling and retention. In the interview, we discuss: The talent market challenges facing the audit profession An increasingly complex work environment Busting stereotypes and marketing auditing as an attractive career Flexibility and Well-Being How attitudes to work are changing Job hopping versus role hopping The importance of ongoing skills development On-demand tech-driven learning How AI is changing things What will the future look like from a talent perspective? Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Duration:: 24m
Broadcast on:: 08 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Get my free whitepaper "10 Ways AI Will Transform Talent Acquisition" – Download Now

Transform Talent Acquisition – Find out how my digital course will help you shape the future of talent acquisition in your organization – Click Here

A whole new generation is entering the workforce at a time when work is changing for everyone. Getting the right talent is hard enough, but there are also considerable challenges in retaining talent and providing the right skills development to deal with the current speed of change in business and technology.

So, how can employers take a holistic approach to talent acquisition, talent management, and L&D that resonates with a Gen Z audience and engages the wider workforce?

My guest this week is Dilek Çilingir, Global Assurance Talent Leader at EY. EY has intensely focused on changing outdated perceptions around auditing as a career to bring new talent into the business. This is part of an overarching talent strategy that also focuses on upskilling and retention.

In the interview, we discuss:

The talent market challenges facing the audit profession

An increasingly complex work environment

Busting stereotypes and marketing auditing as an attractive career

Flexibility and Well-Being

How attitudes to work are changing

Job hopping versus role hopping

The importance of ongoing skills development

On-demand tech-driven learning

How AI is changing things

What will the future look like from a talent perspective?

Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

support for this podcast comes from smart recruiters smart recruiters is your all-in-one platform but faster smarter hiring making recruiting easy and effortless smart recruiters are making some big changes revamping their user experience adding AI features and refreshing the UI i know from experience that they truly are a company that really values the recruiter and the practitioner they understand the intricacies of the recruiting business and this has always been reflected in their functionality and customer support so it's exciting to hear that they're making a bunch of updates if you're ready to be part of the future of talent acquisition head over to smart recruiters.com and find out what they're up to trust me your team and your future hires will thank you there's been more of scientific discovery more of technical advancement and material progress in your lifetime and mind and all the ages of history hi there welcome to episode 632 of recruiting future with me mat alder our new generation is entering the workforce at a time when work is changing for everyone getting the right talent is hard enough but there's also considerable challenges in retaining talent and providing the right type of skills development to deal with the current speed of change in business and technology so how could employers take an holistic approach to talent acquisition talent management and lmd that resonates with a gen z audience and also engages with the wider workforce my guess this week is dalek chillinger global assurance talent leader at ey ey has had a strong focus on changing outdated perceptions around auditing as a career in order to bring new talent into their business this is part of an overarching talent strategy that also focuses on upskilling and retention hi dalek and welcome to the podcast hi mat thanks for having me today it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show please could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do great sure my name is dalek chillinger i'm the global assurance talent leader which means i'm an advocate for the 130 000 plus assurance people in more than 140 countries at ey on a day to day basis i oversee talent engagement strategies and the implementation working together with the business to develop tomorrow's workforce of ey assurance and we're trying to help them to thrive in an increasingly complex environment right now in addition to that i just want to briefly talk to you about my background i started in auditing as actually i wanted to understand how businesses work and i thought auditing is a quick way to do this so as a junior auditor i gained a lot of insight and experience into how companies operate scale and uniform a transform and i had some international experiences as well and some other roles um mostly in risk and forensics practice so i don't have a traditional talent background but my experience means i have learned how to lead a practice or or a function and influence others amazing stuff and as you say it is such a interesting time in the in the world of work at the moment new generations come into the workforce everything is changing what are the sort of the main challenges that you're you're seeing in the talent market at the moment if you're talking about our profession specifically the audit profession the main challenge for us is attraction to the profession um historically i would have included retention as well but at the moment at ey the the current retention rates are at the highest level they've been in several years even higher than pre-pandemic levels obviously at ey as anywhere we really work hard to to retain our talent but going back to the audit attraction um let me actually frame the problem in a simple way so matt if you google auditor and click images tell me what you see okay so hang on so order sir um order and google images let's have a look what have we got i have predominantly people in seats and wearing ties um they're mostly male they're all wearing glasses for some reason and they are mainly just shuffling huge stacks of paper yes and do you see like a 80 style cast your calculator yes actually yes in almost every picture there is a calculator the like of which i've not seen since since i started my career yeah and even in even actually in in some of these pictures we i think i saw a magnifying glass that several magnifying glasses actually yeah that's the other and some of them got a big sign saying order sir just to be clear on what and who looks at that and thinks oh wow that's cool right and and i recently even seen some ai tools generate images as well and they're basically the same because of the bias in the system so you can see now why there's an image problem so unless we address that coolness deficit we can't really expect anything to change no absolutely and why why are people still thinking like that auditing as a profession and how are you sort of responding to this as a challenge to to make it more attractive to people and and get people into your business we have been spending a lot of time working on this exact question and i say there are six factors and let me summarize them really quickly first is as you just saw the image problem also created by some of the incorrect narratives is the first and a major one the second problem is the reward the remuneration as there is a perception that the profession is underpaying compared to the other sectors the third one is well-being as audited is viewed as a long hours profession the fourth one is ecosystem and external factors including a really regulated industry which makes it difficult and includes the sorry which which actually then brings pressure and and a bit of risk the fifth one is the changing workforce demands i guess and the sixth one is access issues which means that it's not easy really to obtain the relevant qualifications to be an auditor so you know there are several issues and we are working together currently as a profession with all the other companies to find solutions but at ey currently we are focusing on two things the first one is as i said this image problem because i think the profession needs to talk more about the relevance and value of an audit and to explain about trust and the confidence it provides and also play on that um for the for the purpose and work that gen Z desires and also i think we need to give a better understanding of the breadth of the possible career opportunities that actually start from a foundation accounting or auditing so if you look at you know the fortune 500 CFOs currently you can see that at least 50 to 60 of them have have an audit background so it's it's a great foundation to have so also there are lots of complex issues at the moment in the business environment and auditors are first ones to kind of go in and understand and increase their knowledge about all these business issues so um you know there are lots of positives that we are not talking about at the moment so that's something that we are working on and the second one is well-being so when you talk with gen Z and we're gonna i think discuss that a bit later probably the people would like to have flexibility when when we ask them what they mean as well being they say flexibility and in our audit profession in the work we we are able to provide a lot of flexibility to to our people and we just want to make sure that it's it's globally that way and of course we're also able to you know we support our people on mental health when when they have a lot of pressure we provide support as well so there are many things we're doing and we we would like to focus actually more going forward you mentioned gen Z there and i think it would be good to get into a conversation about that and look at how attitudes to work are changing all those kind of things just before we do that though what what is it that you do to understand your target audience a bit better so you know what what kind of research do you do how do you kind of understand the needs the things that are going to help persuade people to join the organization sure our company if you look at the every day of the people working at our company it's can you make a guess maybe Matt let me put you on now you've put me on the spot haven't you i'm terrible averages i'm gonna say 35 can you go right down the middle no it's actually 27 wow yeah so you know we really need to understand gen Z to be able to have this uh you know suck have a successful business and successful uh company so but what we've done is we we did something very simple we listen to them we give them the opportunity to share their views and take actions so they see that they're being taken seriously one of the initiatives i established and i'm extremely proud of this we call it global voices so i established this 200 strong employee forum representative of the global assurance practice that helps shape our business strategy so it's a really impactful group and we listened to their insights and ideas they're a really diverse pool of talent and we basically work on the strategy together so when we come up with something we go back to them and get their views we tested with them currently actually it's not only using global assurance but the like eva overall started using them as well so it's really simple we just listen to them and try to understand them better include them in our decisions so that's how we understand them currently met tell us more about how attitudes to work are different from from previous generations what is it that's changing what you know what are the most important things to this this cohort of people that are coming into organizations and coming up through organizations at the moment i'm not really sold on the idea that gen Z is hugely different but there are definitely some different attitudes shaped as a result of them having different experiences to previous generations so for example the pandemic was an unbelievable experience for this generation that shaped a lot of things and you know many emerged from the isolation with it clear focus on health and well-being and also an expectation of flexible and remote work so like many workers or even many of us gen Z also have enjoyed the time and money saved on you know commuting the ability to work more flexible hours and and even the health benefits that this hybrid work hybrid work has yielded so even my experience tells me now wherever i go in globally at T Y the offices are much quieter on a Monday and a Friday and two days working from home each week is the expectation now so they have that but it's coming from the experience of the pandemic gen Z also places a strong emphasis on diversity equity and inclusion for them belonging is a minimum requirement so business leaders who understand and embrace this can actually create more inclusive work environments which is very important for them so that's that's another big one so gen Z also see careers that have a purpose making a positive positive impact on the world i think they're more motivated with with the purpose so the work they see as relevant to that is actually more of their choice another one which is interesting i think gen Z is believed to job hop so i think people think that they really would like to change jobs quickly but talking with these people and asking them i don't think that's exactly true what they really want is broader and diverse experiences and if they can get it in their current job they would rather roll hop but not job hop so it's only about like getting these these you know broader diverse experiences and maybe lastly is as they're the first cohort to have access to the internet through their smartphones from an early age they have a you know learning advantage and they're motivated to learn because they want to develop themselves and be more productive but they have a different approach to it so they learn differently than than us they value practical active hands-on experiences you know they want to learn from their phones they would like to turn their turn to their phones they value quality user experience they learn they expect learning to be technology driven they want to learn as needed anywhere anytime with you know small bytes of information so i think the way they learn are different than the way i used to learn so we need to recognize this and respond to their needs yeah i think that's a really interesting point and it's um it's good to hear organizations you know recognizing that and also harnessing it for um for the good of everyone really and i suppose that brings me on to my next question you mentioned right at the start that you've you've currently got sort of record levels of retention how do you kind of ensure that that you keep that but also you know i suppose bring into that is this element of skills development because you know all jobs are changing you know very very quickly and i presume that's kind of part of this kind of role hopping skill development is that sort of a big part of the the way that you seek to retain people yes exactly we know that people actually are drawn to us because of skills development and learning so it's a big focus of us as a company as well so we have many different learning programs so we launched for example the evitek MBA by HALT triple accredited and one of the world's top international business schools so so we have that our people would be able to get the evitek MBA we also have evi masters in business analytics and in sustainability and we all we have these evi badges programs which are open to all evi employees as well so they have a lot to choose from in terms of of learning we also have leadership development we really focus on that we have several different learning programs for that and we also provide coaching and mentoring so which is very important for us as well and the other things obviously the experiences we provide as a multidisciplinary firm with several different services we provide we're also able to give our people the opportunity to do different things so they can work as an auditor for for some time but then they can actually go and work on sustainability if they want to go on work on technology consulting they can do that as well so it's an advantage for us so we'll be able to help them roll hop and keep them rather than losing them so these are all the things we're doing fantastic stuff so we've got this far in the conversation we I would only mention the words AI at all yet and in in any podcast these days you have to talk about AI at some point it's the it's the law what about AI and how it's sort of changing things and and making things possible what what's the role of of AI within kind of all of this lots of conversations about AI as as expected I actually was in a in a session like 10 days ago in New York we were talking about it of course Odita has always been being at the forefront of adopting new technologies coming to AI this has already been broadly adopted across not only in our firm but I would believe the profession with document intelligence knowledge delivery providing insights about some potential risks etc but going forward AI will help auditors with reviewing documents contracts invoices conducting predictive analysis being able to really test all the population of of the information rather than samples etc so AI will help auditors do a lot so as a result and we receive a lot of question whether you know then the auditors will not have a lot to do or enough to do the answer is no auditors will still have a lot to do because AI will obviously help with some of actually the boring stuff the repetitive stuff that the auditors are doing now but in addition now the auditors will also need to do more work because they will need to make sure the these AI technologies at the companies are working properly as well so in addition to the work they're doing now they will start looking into that so although some of the work will be gone there will be more work coming in as well as a result so AI isn't really interesting and very you know at the moment exciting for our people because when you ask this these gen Z again this cohort that I've been talking to you about they're really excited because they believe some of the work not some of the great work they're doing now will be eliminated but they also believe that they will do a more value-added work going forward so so we're really excited about it actually and and at TUI we're all we have already invested like a one billion dollar in the next generation assurance technology platform including AI so we're looking forward to the future fantastic and I suppose this is a final question just give us a little bit on your vision for the future what do you think things will will be in terms of talent and work what will they sort of be like in in two or three years time sure as I just talked about there's so much going on especially in our profession and in business so AI we just talked about is big and there's also now sustainability which is obviously really really important so going forward you know some of the roles that we have as auditors will evolve so we'll need to have the relevant proficiency to do those to like to provide these services so our people will need to not have the skills they have now as auditors but they'll need to have skills in technology in AI skills in sustainability so they'll need to upskill themselves really going forward probably not only that but also you know communication being able to work in a hybrid environment adaptability creativity so many new skills that they'll need to to work on so I think that's something that will be coming so you know we always say now or when we're recruiting people we always look at one skill now it's called the skill the curiosity so one thing which will be important going forward is actually staying curious to be able to adapt to this changing and complex business environment going forward Matt so I that's that's actually what I'm thinking you know things will continue to change and will need to continue to adapt to those changes no absolutely I could not agree with you more delec thank you very much for talking to me thanks so much Matt for having me my thanks to delec you can follow this podcast on Apple podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice please also subscribe to our YouTube channel by going to mattalder.tv you can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site you can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter recruiting future feast and get the inside track about everything that's coming up on the show thanks very much for listening I'll be back next time and I hope you'll join me this is my show you [BLANK_AUDIO]