In November, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of jobs.ac.uk at our second annual HE Recruitment conference. We invited a panel of experts to Radcliffe Conference Centre at the University of Warwick, to discuss how universities can evolve to overcome sector-specific challenges. The programme was packed with engaging sessions to stimulate discussion, share best practice and encourage valuable networking opportunities. We gained recruitment insights from the BBC, Advance HE, Ph.Creative and Warwick Employment Group.
The first session was brought to us by Dave Hazlehurst, Director at Ph.Creative. ‘Google Dave’ gave us a look into what he has learned working with global brands, finding out what their secrets are and how to use this when attracting talent. He also provided us with techniques, tactics and approaches that Ph.Creative find best for different kinds of candidates.
Beenu Rudki, Head of Immigration at K2 Corporate Mobility then gave us an insight into what we need to know about Brexit. Beenu navigated through the online application process for EU nationals and their family members to become pre-settled or settled. This session gave us the opportunity to ask specific questions, to understand the implications and address common pitfalls of the process from a UK employer’s perspective.
In a thought-provoking session, we were talked through the tools for promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in recruitment by Ellen Pugh, Senior Advisor at Advance HE. Ellen examined key mechanisms commonly being used in the sector to improve equality during the recruitment processes, including unconscious bias training for panellists, as well as looking at implications for pay gap reporting on recruitment in the future.
Emma Durrant and George Marshall from the Compliance team at Warwick Employment Group then shed some light on how to protect your university from the risk of illegal work, when managing Tier 4 visa restrictions in the workplace.
A session on recruitment trends and challenges was also brought to us by Mervyn Dinnen, HR and Talent Trends Analyst at Two Heads Consulting. Mervyn used exclusive research to show how modern employee expectations are changing, and explained why the ‘new talent journey’ is changing the way we attract, hire, develop and retain the people we need.
Finally, we engaged in an interesting session from the BBC’s HR Director (Resourcing and Talent), Catherine Hearn, who talked us through a selection of key recruitment challenges facing today’s HR professionals. Using her experience at the BBC, Catherine provided original examples, shared lessons learned and best practice, which delegates could then take away with them.
To close off the day’s sessions, everybody got together to celebrate the jobs.ac.uk 20th anniversary with cake and sparkling wine. It was a pleasure to see so many organisations from across the UK engaging with our sessions, speakers and peers from other universities.