Mervyn Dinnen  0:09  
The HR Happy Hour Network is proudly supported by Workhuman. We talk a lot on this show about where HR is headed, and one of the most exciting developments I've seen lately is what Workhuman is doing with Future Leaders. Future Leaders is the first talent intelligence tool of its kind, helping companies identify high potential VP plus talent already inside their organization up to four years before they step into the role, and it's not based on gut instinct or on visibility, using real time recognition data and proprietary AI. It reveals who's already influencing and elevating the people around them. Future leaders from Workhuman is setting a new standard for internal development. Learn more at workhuman.com. That's W-O-R-K-H-U-M-A-N.com. Welcome to the HR Means Business podcast, which is part of the HR Happy Hour Network. I'm your host Mervin Dinnen. Today's conversation is a little different, and I think it's a really important one. We talk a lot about talent acquisition from the employer side, hiring strategies, candidate experience, impact of AI on recruitment and what organizations could be doing differently and should be doing differently, but it's just as valuable to hear from someone who knows the industry deeply and is now experiencing the market firsthand as a senior experienced candidate. My bet, my guest today has spent many years in talent acquisition, understands recruitment from the inside out, and currently navigating a search for his next role. It gives him a unique perspective on what the senior job market really feels like right now, how AI is affecting hiring, particularly at leadership level, and what senior professionals may need to do differently to help stand out. What makes this conversation even more interesting for me is that he is also recently qualified as a counselor, so he'll also explore how counseling skills can help shape the way he approaches career transition, resilience, self awareness, and the search for meaningful work. So there's a lot to get into. So, welcome to the HR Means Business podcast to Ken Ward. Ken, how would you like to introduce yourself?

Ken Ward  2:20  
I'll give it a go. Yeah, so 30 years there or thereabouts in talent acquisition. I have kind of worked, but both in recruitment agency, search, permanent desks, contract desks, combined desks. Moved into RPO, RPO into true on site. I had my own embedded talent business for five or six years before they were everywhere, and largely focusing on post seed Series A kind of businesses. Traditionally, where we were handing off to a recruitment team after we'd scaled them to a couple of 100 people, etc. As well, as you said, I've recently finished my counseling course, which is kind of interesting and probably needs a bit of bit of qualification. I'm sure we'll cover it because I don't want everyone to suddenly think that they have to lay down on the couch and talk about the relationship with their mother, etc. It's you'll be. I think your listeners hopefully will be interested to hear that there's more to it than that. But yeah, so lots of themes been running through my head. I think what I have been doing is really acknowledging kind of my fit in the marketplace, or perhaps most important, my my lack of fit, judging by results recently, and we'll go into that in more depth. I've been filling my time both with the counseling course, but also writing, and and we'll cover that in terms of what what senior candidates should do, or anyone on on LinkedIn, etc. and that's that's been an interesting journey. In that my initial intent in writing has actually changed, and I'm still I'm still writing. So my my insightful missives are available every week on on on LinkedIn for those that have a have a spare half an hour to read. But yes, so there's there's there's lots going on. Still looking at the job market. Still doing a lot of thinking, I think, and commenting and trying to understand where we are as a market. And I think the kind of the TLDR of all of that is that there are there are no easy answers. 

Mervyn Dinnen  4:50  
What I mean, with with the background you've got, and obviously the number of years in the industry, what what matters to you most? Do you think in the next role? 

Ken Ward  5:00  
I've become less energized by job title. I think there was one point in the career that there was I was very focused on, and I've heard, and I understand the motivation for doing that, both fiscal and next job focused, etc. Of you know, the next title had to be bigger and everything else. I think a lot of TA people are. I went out for a drink with a friend recently who's switched out of TA into HR because they want to be a CPO. There didn't seem to be a lot of meat beneath that the detail in terms of why they wanted to be a CPO, I think for me the title is less important. It's more actually about how the organization thinks about TA, how they make decisions. That's that's a kind of recurring theme for me, and and also the trust they place upon TA, whether TA is an actual partner, and you'll be relieved to hear I'm not talking about seat at the table or any such nonsense along that line. I think that's the that's the work I really enjoy. If I can get involved in and and on the basis for that, whether that be permanent employee, whether that be advisory, whether that be contracting, etc. I'm not really bothered. I mean, obviously, the permanent hopefully will mean that you're not looking for a new job every six months. Although it depends upon the organization you join. From my own startup experience, it's it's really where recruitment can work, what I describe as upstream. So where you have the capacity to challenge role definitions, questioning assumptions, helping hiring managers make better decisions, often before recruitment's even started. I think that's the kind of that's where TA really is, despite the the obvious enormous time savings that are offered by the introduction of AI tools, that's where we can become actual strategic advisors. So that's the stuff that gets me excited.

Mervyn Dinnen  7:16  
What do you think from the conversations you've had? Obviously, things seem to be a bit tougher, slower. But what do you think the the senior end of the TA market seems to reward right now, as opposed to historically?

Ken Ward  7:34  
I think that's an interesting question. So I'll just give my reflections as a candidate. I think because I think my approach to the job market has been really to okay so how am I how am I going to how am I going to get a job? I suppose which we all do, and you set up your alerts and you go down the application route, and then you might might or might not experience the fact that the application route opens up the door to new phrases like ghosting and all those kind of good things that I'm sure you've spoken about in length previously. Then you there are there's an increasing ecosystem of job search strategists appearing and. and I think one of the benefits of, and I'll talk about it a little perhaps later in terms of how my thinking has changed. Where whereas I used to approach something someone said with "that's clearly rubbish, now I'm a little bit more okay. Why are they saying it in that way? What's their incentive? Incentives are a big thing for me. Whether that be, you know, someone is actually having a brand partnership about a tool, for example, that's a that's a bugbear about about me when that's not clearly clearly represented. But I think some of the times, so I've I've gone down the route. I've gone direct applications. I've gone down referrals. I've gone talking to executive search companies, networking, all those kind of good things. One of the things that I did have to choke back some disdain for that I think I shared with you personally was that one of the accepted recruitment truths is that in order to in order to secure your next role at any level, but particularly at senior level, you should increase your visibility on LinkedIn. Particularly, that was described by one thought leader as "quote serendipity on demand, which caused me considerable sadness. But anyway, I understood the point they were trying to make. That so being visible for the sake of being visible, I think that's how my my thinking kind of somewhat changed. Because I think you, as a content creator and similar, will know that the kind of the the LinkedIn algorithm is a is a is a challenging beast from a distribution perspective. So whereas I started LinkedIn with to get writing to get noticed, I've actually found it quite cathartic in terms of getting my thoughts out there and helping me, I write to think actually, and maybe that's one of the major byproducts of the counseling things is that counseling course is that I am far more comfortable with uncertainty. I think going back to your original question of what. what what what the market is saying that they want from senior candidates, I think we've inevitably seen perhaps a lot of over specification in terms of industry silos is an obvious one. Must have had that exact industry that that in order to be to fit into the new role, so an over specification in my view. I think also what what people are buying, or at least I think they think they're buying, is certainty. I think hiring. My view of hiring is that hiring is always an uncertain exercise, and you know, and we, and sometimes I think we can get dragged into focusing too much on the granularity of that in terms of whether CVs are an evidential document. That's a rabbit hole. Whether ATS tools are you know ATS rejects you. That's a rabbit hole. All these kind of good things. I think essentially a lot what I hope they're buying is judgment. I haven't seen a lot of that in the market. I think. I think what it has reminded me of is perhaps also sometimes I might not come across as to you personally as being a very charitable chap, but really understanding some of the variables that perhaps I don't see. You know, I think when I see, you know, there's what the constant reports being pushed out about the number of ghost jobs and all those kind of good things, which I'm somewhat skeptical of in terms of the when you look at the data source. I also have quite a systems and process thinking kind of brain. So, what how I've changed in terms of how I challenge that, whereas in the past that would have been well clearly that's rubbish. That data you've presented. I will now question: What is the data? How are the questions oriented in that survey, etc. to get to the data that you want? Because I think that's a an influencing factor as well. 

Mervyn Dinnen  12:55  
Well, at the senior level, you know, a lot of a lot of hiring is about judgment. It's about trust, credibility, relationships, things like that. And I'm interested to know where you think or how how how you're finding AI at the moment in terms of a senior job search. I mean, does it add value? Is it falling short? Is it is it is it helping in some way? 

Ken Ward  13:20  
So I think there's two sides of that coin. I think there's one that what you experience of AI as a candidate in the application process, and I think there's how candidates are perceived to be using AI in their job search. I don't subscribe to these, you know, send 3000 applications on your behalf, kind of thing. So I don't use an AI tool to do that. It's very selective apply process when I get involved in those. I think it's quite quite interesting, bearing in mind the the kind of the in the decades of recruitment experience I have, the technological trends that have gone through through our industry. Ultimately, I am optimistic about AI, but I think what the period that we are in at the moment, whether that be described as the adoption stage or or whatever else, is it does feel like AI is like a hammer looking for a nail. Continually, I think it's kind of how can we automate that? How can we automate that? And I think, and that's an interesting relabeling I think as well. But again, I've seen because often what we're describing as AI isn't AI; it's automation. You know, it might come as a come as a revelation to younger viewers that you can use macros in Excel spreadsheets, which technically are automation, but that's not AI. Maybe I'm getting too caught up on the definitions because I think AI also the the label Itself has a certain sexiness about it. I think I'm also. I mentioned earlier about one of the things that I do explore when I consider when I consider an argument is well, what are the incentives that someone has to write? What's motivated them to write in that way? Even down to why they're motivated to write the job spec in that way, I think the use of AI, and we've seen it through various cycles previously. That you know things like big data come to mind, and cloud, which were kind of these really kind of sexy terms back in the day. Arguably, perhaps AI is more impactful, but often it's it's now applied too liberally and inaccurately, in my view. Whether that's now important or not is possibly not the issue. The conversation often starts as where can we use AI. I think actually what it should be, in my view, both from a candidate and an employer perspective, is further upstream. Let's get our decision-making process. Let's get our system designed properly. Let's get clearer decision making, or simply removing unnecessary steps. That will add far more value than whether or not we need to have a new sexy sourcing tool or whatever else. So, big data, digital transformation, employer branding, skills-based hiring-they've all gone through these kind of cycles of adoption and people getting excited about them, and you see them in job specs, etc. AI has just replaced that at the moment. The technology matters, but the judgment behind its application to me matters much more. I don't. I don't think judgment competes with AI. I think judgment determines whether AI creates value. If judgment is good, AI amplifies it, and the and the the reverse of that is also true. You know, I've seen the phrase, and I quite like the phrase of AI. You know, we used to call it crap in, crap out from a database perspective, but it's I think also we're in industrializing mess with AI often with with processes that should have been ripped up before the AI got anywhere near it.

Mervyn Dinnen  17:18  
Okay, is I mean historically, if we were having this conversation a few years ago, it would be about how strong is your CV, what kind of places have you worked, what kind of projects. Is is that enough anymore? Do you think? I mean, how important now? I mean, you mentioned about kind of posting on LinkedIn and things. Yeah, how important is visibility, thought leadership, personal reputation, as opposed to maybe, I suppose the the the back history.

Ken Ward  17:45  
I think there's still an element of the the authority bias implied by where you've worked historically. So, and that's you see that in people that will still say, "I'm ex Google, I'm ex whatever. As as that gives them implied authority, whether it does or not is another issue. We can certainly go down that rabbit hole. I think also it's whether I one of things I did discover interestingly. Once one thing I did discover during the counseling course, and they were talking to me, and I'm not going to bore you with which which particular counseling authority that particularly triggered me, but it was we talk about often and there in terms of behavior manipulation, and I instantly react really negatively to that phrase, and I react really negatively to that side to the phrase thought leadership as well. I think for me, no one, no one, I approach someone who writes interestingly anew each time, it might determine the frequency with when with with which I revisit what they write, but it doesn't doesn't give them a consistency of thought leadership for me. At least I will challenge that based upon evidence. I'm quite I'm very evidence based and always have been as a recruiter. I think in terms of also when you think about the distribution algorithm, you know, you see an awful lot of chasing chasing the algorithm. You know, in terms of what and no one knows for sure what AI what LinkedIn distributes, but I have a, I think my personal network, I don't know, 11 and a half 1000, something like that. And you know, I write each week, and it's good stuff, Merv. And yet, of course it is. Of course it is. But. The impressions that it gets are sub 1000 and it probably reaches about 500 LinkedIn members. Now, is is that a failure or not? Well discussed, and I think it comes back to what is your intent in writing in the first place. You know, I'm writing perhaps for a certain audience, people who would my kind of thinking, etc. They would see an advantage in including that. You know, someone in to act as a catalyst for change in decision making, etc. and judgment. If I if I was running, you know, if I was running, I I've started to think about it. If I was rather than being disappointed by the vanity metrics, if I look at look at the who actually reads it, who comments, and if I'd set up an event that 500 people turned up to, would I be pleased or not? It's a bit of an artificial comparison, but that's that's kind of maybe I'm just kind of trying to, trying to, trying to calm down my my burn at the at my failure of manipulating the LinkedIn algorithm. I think also perhaps because I've only been writing for a certain period of time, really, because LinkedIn writing had always seemed to me to be something of a vanity play. I would. I'd always wondered. Well, why have you got the time to write on LinkedIn? All this kind of stuff. If you've got a day job, I haven't got a day job at the moment, so I don't have that excuse. And so, hence why I'm writing. But equally, I don't think that senior level organizations are really buying your content. They're buying your judgment. Social media can help people discover you. Do the rest of the work for you.

Mervyn Dinnen  21:49  
As you've gone through the process, we're talking, I suppose, a lot about how you position yourself and things. But in terms of the way you're approaching possibly new roles and looking for new roles, have you found yourself becoming more more targeted, more intentional about how you present yourself, more selective? What what kind of you know? How are you seeing it? I suppose from your side.

Ken Ward  22:11  
It's challenging, and I would say humbling actually as well. I think you know if if the question is what's the best strategy for senior job seekers, I'm not sure there is one. I think, in much the same way, I suppose I could draw comparisons, you know, to those processes, and you're saying what's the best recruitment strategy. Well, the answer is obviously, to me, it depends in terms of what your criteria and what good looks like, and all those kind of good things. So, different approaches work for different people in different circumstances, and I'm very skeptical of anyone claiming they've discovered the formula. Essentially, and perhaps this is where my skepticism does come to rise to the surface, because if someone tells you there's one secret, they usually have something to sell. For myself, I look at who's advertising from an application perspective. Who's advertising the role? Do I know people within that organization, etc. You know, try and leverage the referrals. That's just common sense. But my own experience of referrals, etc. as well, which somewhat contradicts the received truth. I had one role where I was referred into a senior tech recruiting leadership role by the CTO of that organization, and I got a boilerplate rejection because I wasn't what they were looking for. I didn't even get a phone call. I had another where someone I've known for 15 years was effectively backfilling themselves as they moved to a wider role within the organization, and their boss didn't want to talk to me at all, not even a phone call, etc. As well, despite the personal referral, so I always challenge rather than jumping to the first conclusion that I might have done once once upon a time, and the way that I challenge that is perhaps it's. I suppose one could be it could be the quality of my network, quite frankly, and who's making the referrals and how trusted they are within their organizations as to whether they're listened to, and all of the things that affect that in terms of you know recency in terms of politics and hierarchy and all that kind of good stuff. So it's challenging, I think. So it's be select for me. It's be selective. I I also commented on a LinkedIn post the other day where someone was talking about lying on your CV and all those kind of good things, and how AI has industrialized the ability to lie on your CV. I don't think it has. I think you could always lie on your CV. I think I think it's just polished that. If you think and you and I both know of people who have invented careers largely on the space on the basis of what they've done historically. That we know for a fact they haven't, but that then becomes the truth. So I don't think AI even has accepted that. Yes, all CVs look the same, but we, as a TA industry, created that. We demanded that every CV should have it should be a bullet points of achievements. I increased this by 30% which is always unverifiable. Yeah, there's a top tip, and I've saved X pounds and all those kind of things. And then, hey, guess what? These that's what the LLMs like learn from in terms of what a good CV looks like, and then we're complaining that all you know that we're we're we're we're all the CVs look the same, so we're layering on more tools in terms of actually trying to sort the mess that arguably we've created. I think that answers the question. I did did tend to go off on a bit of a rabbit hole there.

Mervyn Dinnen  26:00  
No. not to worry, not to worry at all. I mean, obviously, as I mentioned earlier, you've also recently qualified as a counselor, which I think is is is both interesting and fascinating. Addition to the professional story, what I suppose I'm I'm interested to know what what led you to do that? I know curiosity, growth, broader purpose, and and how is it maybe changing how you think about work and identity and leadership? 

Ken Ward  26:30  
And I think there are a couple of things that really the jump out. So I didn't go into counseling training, so I don't think technically I can call myself a counselor because I'm only level three before the counseling police kind of raid my house, but I've been studying that since last September. I think initially the motivation because I was a Samaritans volunteer, and we only go up to a certain point with Samaritans because you're a listening volunteer, so therefore you listen, but you don't cover the next bit and actually ask questions, etc. And that was the bit that I thought was potentially more interesting. So I think it was curiosity. I've always been interested in understanding people, and I think what I was surprised by by the whole counseling training experience was how much it challenged my own thinking. When I think about us in TA, we are rewarded. I think about everything almost in terms of incentives and what good looks like in our industry. We reward certainty. We reward reaching conclusions. The flip side of that is that counseling rewards delaying conclusions, which I guess some people might suddenly roll their eyes at in terms of oh, so suddenly every process gets three times longer. That's not what I mean by that. What it has done is made me, and I suppose this has been really helpful, more comfortable with uncertainty. I've always thought of myself as quite analytical, but I was always analyzing to come to a solution. I've never been in counseling either, but and my reason for not being in counseling was why would I need counseling? Because I've sorted my own problems out in my head already. Quite an arrogant thing to say, arguably, but actually becoming more comfortable with uncertainty rather than immediate explaining someone's behavior has probably made me a better recruiter. I think undoubtedly, it's also one of the things that you know I had a role, an eye roll when I saw some elements in the in the curriculum where they were talking about open questions and active listening, and I was biased and all this kind of things, and I was kind of there. I've got this because I've had 30 years of training on this. But actually, what I've learned to focus on is that often in recruitment, we we ask open questions, but we define that as a question that can't be answered yes or no. When we ask when we ask an open question, we actually have an intent. We're looking for someone to flash up a keyword or a behavior or whatever it is to answer our question, so that we can tick tick a box in poorly designed systems, I think what open questions mean in a counseling context, which I think does impact upon how recruiters should behave, is just genuine curiosity, not just going down rabbit holes for the sake of it, but actually asking open questions just to understand why some truly understand why someone's doing that to scrape through the the buzz phrases and everything else that people have been trained to use, and I think probably the final thing, and this sounds very counselly, so I won't make apologies for it. I will tell you a quick story as well. Is the biggest thing the impact upon me is. Is it's almost industrializing the act of reflection. So that's that's really altered my kind of lens. It's both given me a vocabulary and a framework to, if if someone's written something, I will try to understand why they've written. It doesn't make me any less skeptical. I, you know, I've always will come to a a primary conclusion, but the reflection part is challenging myself also in terms of okay, so I think this is rubbish. Why do I think it's rubbish? Is that my bias, or you know, we would all also argue that in TA, particularly when you've been in it for a while, it's pattern recognition or whatever. But is that always the case? It's it's actually double verifying the the why you've come to that decision, etc. Why did I ask that question? Why did I make that assumption and all those kind of good things? That's definitely helped me more than any individual counseling skill, I think. But the story was one of the ways that the counseling says, and I did, I did get told off a counseling club when they one of the ways to self reflect that they tried to impose was daily journaling and those kind of good things. I'm sure it works for some people. It really didn't work for me, and it made me quite angry because I think I thought it was just a stage too far of being self-absorbed, etc. And I use a I used a swear word in college for which I got a I got a yellow card for. So I didn't so I didn't have so I haven't turned full councilor, Merv. You'll be relieved to hear. There's there's still a Ken hiding in there somewhere. 

Mervyn Dinnen  31:46  
Is it, is it something you'd recommend? I mean, a senior person, I suppose, on the job market, maybe you know needs to display, as you know, you know, a broader range, should we say, of skills, you know, consultative and things like that. Is it something that you would say, you know, to people who are on the job market, who are maybe more experienced, more senior level, that there are things they they can learn from some of the approaches to do with counseling, which which could help as a better leader.

Ken Ward  32:19  
I think there is an extreme impact from that. You know, I'm not suddenly going to go full counselor. Everyone should be a counselor and a counseling course evangelist. And in the interests of transparency, I get no fees for referring people onto onto counseling courses. But what I do think is that using this kind of thinking and frameworks, etc. will make people better people, better humans, and that's quite a grandiose statement. It will make you a better partner in your relationships. It will make you a better friend. You have to learn when to turn it off and all those kind of things, of course, because otherwise, oh, he's off again. He's reflecting. Ken's reflecting, and those kind of things, but I think you don't have to. I I think it's broadened broadened my approach. Whether the market has an appetite for that and whether it's still rewarding the certainty, you know, if you think about the the focus that we have as a market on AI. That's of that's often evidenced by not whether someone has familiarity with AI tools. I actually use ChatGPT most as, and this this you'll love this phrase. You might have to Google it afterwards as a Socratic reflection tool. I.e. why the hell did I think that? Why, why, why have I got angry with that and those kind of things? I'm going down that question funnel, and that's actually quite useful from that after you've trained it, etc. Rather than just to, you know, give you a hug all the time. But I think from whether the market has an appetite for judgment, which I think these kind of these kind of structures and frameworks gives you the tools to come to judgment. The market should actually appreciate that, but whether it does and it's approaching kind of you know where where have you wherever you built an AI you know an AI agent to do your laundry or whatever as being greater evidence of success or not. I hope not, but yes, I would definitely recommend people do this kind of thinking.

Mervyn Dinnen  34:34  
Okay, Ken, it's been fascinating to talk to you and to get your take, you know, on the market at the moment and things. One one thing I'm interested to know is this this period of I suppose doing the counseling and also job hunting. What would you say it's taught you about you know recruitment, about yourself, about I suppose what good work really means?

Ken Ward  34:56  
I think when I look back because I am now a professional reflector, as I mentioned, I think that what the last year has taught me, or over the last year, is that experience shouldn't make us more certain. It should make us more questioning. It should make us more curious. I were, I haven't been asked this. Well, I haven't had an interview for a while, but I haven't been asked this question for a long while. It used to be very fashionable to say what people's personal values are, and then you could Google that, and you know, much like one could argue the same process is done with corporate values, but that's another rabbit hole. I think mine used mine used to be and still are authenticity and integrity. I think actually, what I would add to that piece now is curiosity. That's very much part of how I think and what I want to understand, etc. As well, whether that be talking about AI, talking about recruitment, counseling, or whatever, the most valuable conversations usually begin when we're prepared to question our own assumptions. That's my biggest takeaway, I think, over last year. Resilience wise, it's always a difficult one. I won't suddenly say that I have this kind of assumed this Buddhist-like calm and and contentment, because of course you have hella bad days and and those kind of good things. Life is unfair and all those kind of good things. Yes, it is, but reflect and focus and onwards. I think it does help you if you understand that you know the whatever level, whether it be senior or otherwise, is that I was almost going to love going to the phrase. It's not it's not personal, which maybe arguably sometimes is, but I think that's to keep mindful my in mind. 

Mervyn Dinnen  36:57  
Okay, if people want to connect with you, how do they get hold of you? But I think you're pretty open about that on LinkedIn.

Ken Ward  37:05  
 Yeah, and on so my what do they call it? The the bit after the slash is K Ward 69. Ken Ward on LinkedIn.

Mervyn Dinnen  37:18  
Ken. Well, I wish you lots of luck in the future, and it's been great to talk. And look forward to catching up again.

Ken Ward  37:25  
Been a pleasure.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai