“This is the most volatile and dynamic candidate market that I’ve ever come across in over 20 years. It’s way more candidate-driven than it ever has been before.” Matt Yates, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at abrdn talks about the process shift towards recruitment.
As part of our commitment to support candidates in developing fulfilling careers, we’ve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insights on building a career, the challenges they face and what advice they would share with those hoping to follow their footsteps.
This week, we had a great conversation with Matt Yates, the Global Head of Talent Acquisition for the global investment company abrdn. Matt has spent about 23 years in the HR industry, enriching his knowledge about the different HR processes and theories. But he has found his true calling in recruitment and talent acquisition.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
I would say that 90% of people I’ve ever come across in talent acquisition, in particular, did not get into it by design. In my case, after I finished university, I wasn’t that sure about what to do. I saw an advertisement in a local paper for a recruitment firm. I knew nothing of the recruitment industry and how it was a commercial business.
So I got to the interview and I thought I was interviewing for the position within that firm. It turns out they were trying to see if they could sell my profile to other businesses. I think it was probably halfway through the interview that I finally grasped what was happening. They put my CV into an IT recruitment firm. When I got in, it just spoke to me and I thought that’s something I could do well. I really enjoyed the recruitment sales part of it but after a few years It got me thinking if this was something I can do until my forties and fifties.
I knew how to work with people. I knew how to manage a team. I knew how to track candidates and understand what’s marketable and what businesses need and how recruitment could solve problems. But I didn’t think I had enough breadth. I needed an operational challenge, but also an intellectual challenge as well.
I went back to the university and took my International HR Management masters degree. I thought I’ll be more marketable in that way and would be able to look at a wider sphere of things.
After that, I got a role doing a combined HR and recruitment job. I realised that I really love the recruitment part of it more so than the other bits. And I’ve been in the pure recruitment roles and in-house talent acquisition ever since.
What key challenges have you encountered as the Global Head of Talent Acquisition?
I’d say that this is the most volatile and dynamic candidate market that I’ve ever come across in over 20 years. It’s way more candidate-driven than it ever has been before.
Now, the way to think about recruitment is no different to how organisations should think about customer experience. That means that an increasing level of personalization comes into the mix.
We are here to serve the candidates as the primary set of customers. And that’s something that recruitment often misses because they feel like their customers are the business they work for. The business outcome is what you’re looking for. You can do that by servicing your customer, which is the candidate. They are the people that you need to worry about, impress and engage.
The nature of engagement has changed. Historically, it was focused on the Employee Value Proposition and how it can be translated to the market. That covers attributes such as the work that they do, the benefits they get and the pay scale.
But now, the challenge is how you will translate this globally. How will you translate this message into 40 different countries? It is not about the attributes that you possess as an organisation and what you can offer. It shifts to the emotions that you can elicit from people. How would they feel working there?
There is also the generational thing because that has an even bigger dynamic to it. As the composition of the workforce changes, the need for individual personalization intensifies because there’s more variety at the younger end of the scale of the demographic.
What we have been working on in the organisation for the past two years is transforming what we do so that we have a candidate-centric, transparent process around recruitment. The delivery of the function is still the central transaction of moving people around and hiring new people into the organisation. You just have to build the other stuff around it. So the transaction continually evolves and gets better.
The top priority I have at the moment is energising the internal market in the same way that our external market works. Because people want and deserve opportunity and if you don’t provide it they will look for it elsewhere.. The number one reason that people leave is because of career and skills development. If you can’t offer people a more dynamic internal market and they’ve got access to a really dynamic external market, then that’s the one they engage with more readily. That’s another way of saying you don’t have to leave a job to get new exposure or learn interesting things to utilise the skills that you have. You don’t have to leave a job to do that. You can do that now as part of the job that you do today by accessing short term gigs, projects and other opportunities. Then of course more permanent job moves come in due course but on a more infrequent basis
Can you share some pieces of advice with those who are keen to start an HR career?
What drives progression is a level of curiosity and eagerness, and the ability to get things done while having the courage to do that.
The majority of people will just keep going until they get told there’s something new. But the best people will look at that current ways of working or systems and look at ways to do it differently and more efficiently. Regardless of level, they will ask questions, find solutions, and are keen enough to see them through and make people’s lives better because of it. And that’s how some of the best innovations in history have come about.
That’s the kind of career move that I’ve made. Every job I’ve taken is about going in and building something or changing something and doing it differently. And I really enjoyed that.
Another piece of advice is that aside from just thinking about where you want to work, also put a lot of effort into finding the culture that’s right for you. Where can you do the best work you can possibly do? There’s nothing that can compensate for working in a place that doesn’t feel like it’s the right place for you.
Matt joined abrdn as its Global Head of Talent Acquisition in September 2019. His HR career spanned several industries including global investment, bank and financial services and travel commerce.