How to Compete for Talent (and Win!) with Priyanki Amroliwala

On this Talent Acquisition Talks, listen to returning guest Priyanki Amroliwala, Senior Talent Acquisition Manager from 42 North Dental give us her best strategies for competing for talent in the healthcare industry and beyond during this challenging pandemic talent market, hear why "purple unicorns" no longer exist (so employers need to readjust their expectations), and learn why it takes the help of a village to successfully hire even a single new member to your team.

Watch the full video here or below right now: 

Excerpt Transcript

Joe Matar:

What can a Talent Acquisition team do to fight through the noise, compete for that talent, the little talent that might be there, to do all those things I talked about that an organization wants to do?

Priyanki Amroliwala:

Yeah, so I would... That's a good question, Joe, by the way. I would tell you that number one, it's going to be, and I feel like this should have been done pre-pandemic anyways, but you really should be doing it now, is the recruiters and the Talent Acquisition team really need to figure out a way to become extremely, extremely tight knitted with their executive team, with their hiring managers, with their CEO and all those people, and help them truly, truly understand what that market looks like. This market is definitely what you would mention as a candidate driven market. It's kind of... You call it candidate driven, I always like to compare it to real estate. You know how there's the buyer's market or the seller's market, but even in real estate right now, it's right now the seller's market, right?

Joe Matar:

Oh yeah.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

So same thing. This is very similar to real estate. It is actually the candidate's market. The candidate gets to come in, call the shots on what they want and all that stuff. I feel like Talent Acquisition, number one, needs to educate their hiring managers, their hiring authorities, their executives and all that stuff about what this market really looks like right now, how that market has shifted, and they need to help them understand that the quote, unquote, the purple unicorns, no longer exist. Gone. They're not existing at all, so that they'll have to get over.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

And then number two is, you need to become more open-minded, more flexible, and develop more training programs internally so when you end up hiring someone, they're not going to basically have all the criteria that you're looking for in terms of experience or educational background or specific things that you're looking for, but that you're going to have to hire this individual, and then really develop a more thorough orientation process, a more thorough training process, to get them to where you need to be.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

Essentially you're going to have to do a lot more background stuff internally, versus trying to find that person externally, because when you're trying to find that person externally, they no longer exist. They're just not in existence. So Talent Acquisition needs to work closely with hiring managers to help them understand that, and then hiring managers and HR teams internally need to come up with more programs that are more beefed up around orientations, around how they're going to hire, who they're going to hire, and how they're going to develop those new hires. Am I making sense?

Joe Matar:

Yeah. And I love it. Yeah. I'd like to zoom in on some of the things that you said. As far as communication to hiring managers, what does that look like? For those Talent Acquisition aspiring leaders out there that want to have more of an influence on the hiring managers, is this something where it's just an email to the hiring managers as a hand-to-hand combat, and that's probably the wrong word-

Priyanki Amroliwala:

Yeah.

Joe Matar:

... but getting them in a room, a Zoom room, and really talking through this? Talk us through what that looks like.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

Yeah, Joe, that's a good question. I'm glad that you brought that up. It's going to be literally a mix of everything, and you know, Joe, I guess one email is just not going to do it. It's going to be a very hefty educational process. I know this because I've been in the business for a long, long time, and knowing hiring managers, they have their set ways on specific things and what they want, and so these Talent Acquisition leaders, I would recommend anyone that's watching, is make sure you first communicate to your CEO. I feel like this is going to be a time where Talent Acquisition needs to connect directly with the highest up of the organization. Get their buy-in first. Get the CEO and the executive team to support you and Talent Acquisition and all your things going on, from the beginning, from the get-go, and then once Talent Acquisition and executives and CEO are lined up, Joe, that's when it's easy for it to trickle down into the organization, into upper management, middle level management and stuff like that.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

When there's a direct message from the CEO and the Talent Acquisition team saying that the job market has been probably the worst than... more so than it's ever been, and it's not just in healthcare, it's not just in dental. It's actually even in retail, it's even in restaurant, it's everywhere. Once you have that buy-in, that's when I feel like you can start having the email, the emails coming from the CEO, along with the Talent Acquisition.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

So same thing, getting on these Zoom meetings, doing weekly calls, weekly updates, stuff like that, but it has to be done side by side. This no longer can come from recruiting. It's a problem that's not... you cannot just put on recruiting anymore. It's going to be a team effort.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

Joe, you'll laugh at this. I feel like... I've always said this, even pre-pandemic, but it's more so than ever. It takes a village to hire an individual. It really does.

Joe Matar:

I like that.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

You can't just put it on one individual. It can't just be that one recruitment person. It can't just be one hiring manager. It's going to now take an entire company-wide effort to do this, to do this the right way. And we are now going to be a team more so than we ever have been, Joe. I feel like that's going to work well.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

My other piece of advice is, it has to be an ongoing message. It can't just be one communication. It needs to be a consistent constant reminder. I'm not going to say that you need to do that all day, every day. Every email doesn't need to be about that, but every time you connect with the hiring manager, remind them. Human beings are people that can consistently forget, and especially when all of us were in these busy organizations, we're always moving onto the next thing. We're always thinking about the next thing, so we need consistent reminders.

Priyanki Amroliwala:

Anytime a Talent Acquisition manager, a Talent Acquisition lead, can make sure that they provide that reminder, make sure that they consistently educate them, that will go a long, long way.

Joe Matar:

It's really a multi-faceted, multichannel, very comprehensive plan that you've just outlined, and I love that analogy of "it takes a village to hire." That really is, I think, the bottom line.

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