 So today we have Simone Taneja who's with McKinsey here and she will be talking about why applying design thinking to talent acquisition and management of the gamechangers. With that I'll hand it over to Simone. And before we get going maybe just a quick introduction, Simone Taneja I am a partner at McKinsey and I am incredibly passionate about broadly digital transformations but most importantly the people and talent aspect of organizations. And what I've found is that organizations that start to think about people and talent management differently are really winning in this war for talent and those that are continuing to do more of the same that they have been doing so far. Wonderful. So today we really just want to talk about why applying design thinking can be a gamechanger. I think you know it's not a new concept that we apply design thinking to building products all the time but really extending the concept of design thinking to a whole new dimension with managing and acquiring talent in an organization. But before I dive into that you know helpful to ground ourselves in a bit of sort of the fact based and what is what are some of the challenges and things organizations are seeing and doing. What I found is those that have a digital ambition or have a digital agenda they have lots of choices to make around org and their people and their talent. Anything from how do you determine what are the skills I have in the organization to what do I need to stand out from competitors or others in the industry on what is it that's different about me and why to come work here. How to successfully source and find the right talent or even you know the most importantly I think the notion of how do I keep talent in my organization especially with what we saw over the last two and a half years with the great attrition the great attraction which is you know now the great reshuffle and it continues. And so with that with that backdrop a little bit of fact grounding right as we we've done some research and interviewed about 850 C sweet executives and asked them what's the hardest thing about your digital transformation or achieving your digital agenda. And you can see here at the top came the notion of how difficult it is to find the talent that is needed to bring that to life. But let's get the stats for a second 60% of these in that the pharmacos CEOs they were concerned about the digital talent shortage 19% of executives are investing in digital capabilities at the moment but let's look at the flip side the typical cut of learning and training budget allocated to digital gets cut by 20% in only 13% of organizations are getting creative on how to fix this problem so that the size of the problem and the attempts people are making to fix them just doesn't add up and it doesn't match up. And while while that's surprising it's actually unfortunately quite quite true. Before I before I maybe go further we'd love to hear a little bit from from you on what are any challenges or specific topics that your organization or your region is seeing as it comes to to digital talent and I'm not sure if everyone can use the annotate feature in zoom if you can maybe put a star or an asterisk or or something on one of these topics and if you're not able to maybe just use the chat feature to type in what is most top of mind either for your organization your region or your team or you specifically when you think about the notion of digital talent I'm just going to give you a minute to do that I'll be above yeah any others give you another another few seconds what I'm finding when I'm talking to to leaders and executives a lot it's very similar to one of the comments in chat it really is it really is a mix of frankly all of the all of the topics that fall under the talent management strategy but I find hiring and attracting rises to the top of the list just given our current landscape and all the shifts that our larger broader context over the three years has put us in professionalism also seeing specific skills remote versus office based workforce yeah the notion of remote and hybrid is certainly certainly top of top of mind wonderful I appreciate that let me move this forward for a second and some of you started to started to point towards this right it's really all of these talent topics are intertwined and as I as I think about the holistic talent strategy it really goes across the four pillars anywhere from talent planning which is knowing what you have in the organization versus what you need hiring and onboarding sourcing people figuring out where to find them how to attract them to the organization having a clear selection and and hiring process like how do you actually test the skills that people have and then once you do hire them and they accept the offer how do you actually onboard and bring them on to the organization and then the right hand side of the page which is when I do have people in the organization how do I actually manage and develop them what do I do about compensation long term how do I think about performance management career path learning development and then underlying all of that as an organization how do I how do I make that data driven so that it's fact-based and I'm making decisions that are helping me improve by thinking about my talent in the organization now you're probably asking well what does all this have to do with design thinking and what I want to do is is tied for you to share that organizations that are winning on the talent front have shifted their thinking from thinking about all those things we looked on the last page as processes to experiences we live in an experiential world today everything from ordering a cup of coffee getting your teeth to going to a theme park to the way the way we do online shopping everything is an experience and so why is it that where the one place where we spend 80 to 90 percent of our time which is enough you know work lives and you know professional setting that all of a sudden the experience actually becomes more process focused and not necessarily experience focused it's all about workflows it's about needing approvals going into the tools and clicking the right thing at the right time it's about tools defining how processes work incredibly focused on efficiency versus really thinking about human centricity in in the notion of people and talent in the case of in the case of hiring and recruiting your customers really are candidates right in the case of talent management and talent development your customer really is your employee so why is it that we are so process focused when it comes to our people versus experience focus and meet people where they where they need organizations to meet them those that are doing this well they're actually innovating they're innovating when it comes to their their talent management they are building cross-functional teams just as we would when we do product development they are pushing the boundaries of what used to be traditional HR to to new ways and new new ideas on how you can actually solve some of the traditional problems that that were solved in more process-oriented ways but now in more human-centric ways I'll take a second and I assume many of you are familiar with design thinking but I'll take a second to talk about design thinking and just ground us in how I think about it because I think it is a human-centered approach to innovation it always always always starts with the human need and the design ability and then certainly the business viability right then you start to layer and well in an ideal experience this is what this is what we want and this is how we would expect things to happen but really is this going to actually move to you know what impact is this really going to have on our business on our people on the way we work and then layering and feasibility like one maybe great great ideas and amazing wishlist has amazing business impact but really is it feasible or not and design thinking comes to help bring those three vectors together like where's the overlap how do we actually make this how do you actually make this feasible possible and in real but really really grounding ourselves in the human-centered approach what I find is when you start this journey of applying design thinking to a topic like people and talent to a topic that is typically considered potentially boring in the HR world design thinking can really really really help but it does it does require one to one to think differently it requires us to have a beginner's mind to be curious to be open to possibilities to question the status quo and remain optimistic it's often easy to find all the problems in the current space but also just having the mindset of innovation and having the mindset of being positive being optimistic about we can find the better answer to it collaborative experimental I think for those of you that are familiar with design thinking you'll know that it really embodies these these guiding principles in the way it brings an experience to life all right let's take it to hiring and let's take it to hiring and recruiting in the context of hiring and recruiting one of the first things we want to do is is actually ground ourselves in the persona and understand the audience and when we do this for products right we do that we do the same exercise and we think about who is our customer we think about what is the segment we think about what the customer needs are we think about how big that customer base is repeat the same exercise of identifying your personas your customer base what their needs are in the context of candidates in the context of a recruiter in the context of a hiring and what I'll do next is actually take you through what a typical persona could look like in the context of the context of hiring so step one create personas this is important because we want to ground ourselves in in the shoes of the people who are trying to hire or bring on into the overnight mission personas for those of you not familiar are not they're not a demographic view of of who you're who you're who you're looking to target they are much more about the archetypes the types of the types of user groups or types of communities that you are that you're trying to understand that you're trying to focus on these help you segment the market to a certain extent they help you get sharper on if you as an organization are looking to hire someone in this case a product manager what are the types of things at the top of mind for product managers today what are they thinking about what will be most helpful for them as as me as an organization try to attract them to come work working to my company and you can see here you know our our fictitious persona talks quite a bit about where she is in in her in her career path in her in her journey both from me what she's looking for in terms of work like balance and ability to have a have a family but also have a career but also what are some of the things that are really really important to her where is she going to look for jobs where is she how is she thinking about how is she thinking about the organization that she that she wants for and wants to work for and what is she like and does not like about the process now this is meant to represent a a set of users or a set of candidates that can then as you think about you're hiring a tracking journey you can tell them targeted to what the pursuit is actually you would do this exercise from a candidate lens you would do this exercise from a recruiting recruiters lens you would also do this exercise from a hiring manager's lens right to understand what each of those personas need from from what would be now a journey not a process on how we attract and bring bring talent into the organization I'll pause for a second and just take a look at chat in case there's any questions and then and then maybe take us to stuff too any questions so far it's a little bit hard to to know because I'm looking at the presentation and I can't see anyone's face it so please please chime in nothing in the chat so far thanks Richard and I was thinking of you and when I was thinking about this persona given your your product manager in real life on things top of mind for typical product managers step two understand the currency journey again if you've done design thinking and journey work for products applying that same concept to to understanding what the currency journey looks like for a candidate for a recruiter for a hiring manager what this typically looks like is saying sitting down with them with a group of either focus group candidates or those that have just joined the organization and saying let's go through phase by phase what did it feel like for you to interview with our organization to go through the process with us so we can understand where what it feels like from your perspective not what the steps were you know you applied then you interviewed then you got a communication from the recruiter then you got an offer didn't get an offer but really let's talk about what did it feel like what was the experience like for you when you did this most of the times I've done this exercise what I find is the current date not looks something like what you're seeing on the the page here what it looks like is depending on the organization's uh the maturity on on the recruiting processes what it typically looks like is the the beginning is excellent there's a high it feels great good communications but as as individuals start to go through the process frustrations come in or disappointments come in or the moments of confusion or moments of lack of transparency and then as we get to get closer to the end of the process in the hiring cycle if the outcome was good there's a peak in in in how they felt and then if they didn't get the offer then there's a drop in how they felt but understanding what the experience feels like from a candidate's point of view can really help understand how to tie the the actual steps with the impact it's having on on the candidates same thing for recruiters I find that often recruiters have a similar experience of I'm I'm dealing with too many requisitions at the same time I'm not sure how to engage hiring managers more closely the market's really tight I'm not sure what creative methods can I use I feel like I can necessarily make the decision I'm not going to ask a lot of people before before I can make the decision and then again from a hiring manager standpoint sometimes often things out here are it takes too long to fill the position I'm not sure why why it's taking so long the the resumes I'm seeing don't meet the bar that I that I set out for the process I'm spending way too much time in the process and I think I should be and when you map these out and you typically map these out with the candidates recruiters and hiring managers there is a level of transparency that elevates the the what's working and what's not working in the journey so step step one create the person who has understand who who who who these archetypes are where they're coming from step two laying out and understanding what the current state journey is and to me the most fun part to watch you know if you can't read all the details of it is to just watch the emojis right and be able to see in in the in the phases and you only see source here but then there's screen then there's interview then there's onboarding then there's learning and development then there's career path you can start to see how people are feeling throughout the journey and what are the moments of delight and where are the moments of frustration so very kind of a visual a very visual way to know how people are how people are feeling and and what's going on step three ideating and you know design thinking really really inspires us to to think about ideation differently to think about ideation and in a way that broadens the aperture and the solution space with how might we and so this isn't you know how do we get this process to be more efficient from well you know today it takes us three hours to do something how do we get to one hour of doing something or today it takes us a week how do we actually shorten that time to half a week or you know a day it really forces you to open the aperture to say how do I think about this problem completely differently if I had a blank slate how might I solve this problem a round of those will will typically the workshop setting generate a ton of ideas that can then be used to form what I'll show you next is the reimagined future state turning and the goal of the goal of kind of reimagining the future state journey is not to make sure that as you're thinking about future state ideas that it is you know peaks at all times that there's just you know all you see is the happy motors all the way across the board the goal is to make sure that a the experience feels feels if I can call it just calm and smooth rather than a bit of the roller coaster really good I'm so confused amazing gotta call not so sure what to do next but really having an experience that is and is consistent and positive most of you know throughout the journey but most importantly there are some moments of delight and moments of delight are essentially the places that organizations can typically use to be distinctive and be kind of the um be the thing that makes you stand out in your particular journey versus someone else's journey and these moments of delights are what um you know sometimes when you're taking when you're when you're taking a flight and you get a you get a text message about you know where your luggage is and that it's landed safely and it's you know on belt number x these are the little things that um in your for example travel journey would um would potentially count as moments of delight of all I didn't know like I could get this information and it's great that like I'm actually getting good news before I need to go find my luggage finding those moments of delight in in the candidate and employee journey um are really important and what you're seeing on the screen is an example of a future state candidate journey that I that I helped those for an organization and what it what it helped them do was not only um not only do that for the candidate also for the recruiting and hiring manager um to be able to then say highly balance this across all personas and not just focus on the candidate because we know recruiters and hiring managers are an important part of important part of this journey as well and making sure that there's synchronization points up and down across the across the journey one thing I'll point out you'll notice um for the sake of example this is um heavily focused on on hiring and recruiting but you can imagine the the the colors on the top that are showing the phases they continue they can keep continuing from a candidate journey to an employee journey so you can imagine it's from sourcing to screening to interviewing to offer uh to pre-onboarding to onboarding to the first you know 30 60 90 days to the performance management cycle to what the learning and development feels like to what we want career paths to feel like etc so you can imagine this journey just continues um all the way to you know to alumni relations if if you want to take it that far um so you know often I get the question great like I understand where I was I understand where I want to be what do I do next um and for those of us that are that are in um in the business of building products we know that um we can define a vision for the product but we took the way to get there is to um to get there and increments and iterations and so the same concept applies to the journeys which is um once you've defined the north star define what the mvp is call it the mvj which is like the the minimal valuable journey that you want to start with and then over time improve improve that journey with uh future generations um what last page and I'd love to open up for questions um so so what so what if an organization goes ahead and does this what are some of the things that feel different or what's the impact that this can that this can drive for organizations um I took some snippets of examples that I've seen from from companies that have done this well and what what it felt like for for individuals or candidates in that in that organization um applying design thinking helped uh helps have some several organizations take their time to fill from 60 to 90 days to less than two weeks less than two weeks to be able to meet a candidate make a decision in less than two weeks because they optimized the the the experience from a candidate standpoint of not taking too long to make a decision um the employee value proposition started showing up differently in job descriptions and interviews in the market because it was much more honest in capturing the the way why behind coming to work for that organization and what does it feel like to be part of it um recruiters were more empowered to make decisions and and and and feel like they're part of they're not just facilitating the process but they are a decision maker in the process breaking silos between different parts between compensation between sourcing between recruiting between the hiring managers and really making it feel like one agility um I think about it as a single kind of agile agile thought um and I think that in terms of in some of some in terms of some of the harder metrics um retention rates go up when you when you think about it differently and in this way cost a higher comes down um because you're doing you're thinking about it more from the standpoint of um the candidate and if candidate satisfaction goes up and hiring manager satisfaction goes up and recruit satisfaction goes up there's wreck linkage with um with cost a higher employee satisfaction imagine meeting your employees where they are when they think about career paths when you think about their learning journey when you think about evaluation policies that are tailored to how people want to be evaluated having want to be thinking about their career paths employee satisfaction certainly goes up and um for me last but not the least it sets it puts the organization in a continuous improvement mindset of how do we think about this as experiences and journeys that are always evolving that are always changing that are always getting better um so it's not the set it and forget it mindset but really more the continuous improvement mindset with that I will pause or for any any questions and comments and thoughts this is trivial for you so someone I think there's a there's a question in the chat and you're asking if you can give more example of minimum viable journey uh yeah great great question um so for example a minimum viable journey let me give an example of what a north star journey might be and then what the minimum minimum viable version of that would look like um so north star journey for example for hiring might look like we can um we can source our candidates using AI and do scraping through linkedin and a bunch of other channels and it actually produces a list of um produces a list of candidates that we can automatically that can be automatically sourced for us and we can then um take we can then screen their profiles on github and other places and be able to actually without even talking to the candidate be able to engage if this person's a good fit for us a minimum viable journey process that might look like um let's make sure that um as we as we think about the candidate pools we're looking at all the right places where we want to be sourcing from as we think about um doing some automation around uh around scraping their github profile to be able to um see if they're a good fit for us or not let's actually just start with recruiters manually looking at the github profile profile or the hiring managers looking at um that the profiles manually at um github before we actually automate the processes so really taking the north star and figuring out what is the smallest increment or progress we can make towards that north star to be able to um to be able to bring that journey to life because as you know for even products the vision's out there but you can't bring it all to life in the first the first release and so it's really just simplifying the journey because one of the smallest steps I can take to be able to get to um get to my north star journey I hope that helps so someone I would like to thank you for the for the session today it was really insightful on how to you know put design thinking in in the recruiting framework I mean especially in in today's environment where we are we are facing you know the resignations all across it's good to uh you know have a different mindset and then apply try applying that and see how it helps so so thanks for those thanks for sharing those those with us