Hiring and recruitment made better - Cynthia Trivella [Interview]

About Cynthia Trivella 

Cynthia Trivella is a managing partner at TalentCulture - World of Work. She is a Recruitment Influencer, Talent Sourcing Strategist, and a Marketing Communications Professional. Her interests include Employer Branding, Retention Strategies, and Sourcing Strategies for talent acquisition. She's the author of the eBook ‘How Strategic HR Communications Influence Hiring Practices’. Bringing with her an experience of over 20 years in the field of human resources, she is the right person to talk to us about all things HR. 

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Vanessa Rose

We have the pleasure of welcoming Cynthia Trivella today to our interview series. I am Vanessa Rose from the peopleHum team. Let’s begin with just a quick introduction of peopleHum. peopleHum is an end-to-end, one-view, integrated human capital management automation platform, the winner of the 2019 global Codie Award for HCM that is specifically built for crafted employee experiences and the future of work.

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We run the peopleHum blog and video channel which receives upwards of 200,000 visitors a year and publish around 2 interviews with well-known names globally, every month.

Vanessa

Welcome, Cynthia. We’re thrilled to have you.

Cynthia

Well, thank you very much for having me. I see you. 

Vanessa

Thank you. So the first question I had for you Cynthia was,

Could you tell us a little bit about your work at TalentCulture?

Cynthia

Sure. So I'm the managing partner at TalentCulture and TalentCulture is a media outlet and a marketing consultancy. So we work with brands, helping them to enhance their marketing strategies and gain sales leads, visibility. We have the longest-running and most well-known podcast on Twitter chat event in the world and that happens every week for us.

And we have fascinating guests from all walks of work-life telling us about the latest trends, what the future is going to hold for the world of work and just interesting, very timely topics that everybody wants to know right now. 

Vanessa

That's very interesting. 

So Cynthia, what is your idea about brand building through employees and making brand ambassadors out of them? 

Cynthia

That's one of the best things that any organization can do. When you have a culture that propagates goodwill and an inclusive environment that allows people to embrace the organization, they're more likely to go out and talk about that organization to other people, and nothing says endorsement like somebody saying, 'I work for XYZ company and I love it there. And here are the reasons why I love it there. And here's what our environment is like. And if that seems like it's something that appeals to you, this would be a great place for you to work.' 

Vanessa 

Yeah, it's all about inclusivity and bringing the organization together as one. 

Cynthia

Absolutely, yes. 

Vanessa

How do you believe the workplace is going to change, going to evolve in the future? And what should organizations focus on in what has been termed as the ‘Future Of Work’? 

Cynthia

Yeah, well, this year is an anomaly. It's kind of thrown a monkey wrench into things. At one point, I believe that the world of work was going on a trajectory of more and more gig workers. More and more people working from home.

The pandemic has created more opportunities for people to work from home, no doubt, and based on surveys that we had conducted here at TalentCulture, it appears that people are enjoying working at home. And they want to continue to at least work some amount of time from home, even after the mandates for being able to go back to work are open. So I think it has altered businesses to realize how vulnerable they are and to support their employees, how very important it's going to be.

I believe that as companies begin to hire again, interviews are going to have a very different tenor to them. Interviewees are going to be asking, 'How did you handle the pandemic? How did you handle managing your employees? What provisions did you make? Did you have a disaster plan already in place? Were you able to pivot very quickly and very easily and get people working from home productively? What kind of support did you provide to them while they were working at home? What kind of communication lines were available? What kind of collaboration tools were available? Did you furlough them? Did you fire them? How did you bring them back into your workplace? 

Those are the kinds of questions that are going to be happening, I believe, as companies begin to do full-fledged hiring again, so preparing now and understanding this is what's coming down the pipe is really going to help position those companies that are getting ready for the future. 

In addition, a lot of individuals are realizing that maybe I don't need to work within an organization. Maybe I could work for myself. I evidently can be very productive. I’m organized. I can get things done. I understand deadlines, And I've always wanted to do XYZ. I've been thinking about it for a while and now might just be the right time. 

Also, as companies are hiring people back, not all positions are going to need to be refilled, because now we've learned a lot from this pandemic. It's shown us a lot. It's shown us that maybe we had some positions that were unnecessary. But it's also going to show us that we have some positions that need to be better developed because we need those positions to be pivotal and key within organizations. 

So companies are going to need to understand that we need to start planning for the future in that way too. Thinking about, Okay, if this were to ever happen again, which is probably unlikely, but it's better to have a disaster plan in place. Always. That's proactive. So understanding that, thinking about what are those positions that we're going to need most? What are the tools and the technologies that we're going to need most in those conditions? And can those tools and technologies be very adaptable for people not only working from home but also as they come back into the workforce, into our buildings? Are they functional? Are they flexible? Could they pivot to our business needs? Those are the types of things that companies need to think about.

Those companies need to think about that and employees need to think about, 'Do I want to go back into the office? Do I want to continue to work from home? Do I want to split my time? Do I want to go off and try that opportunity that I've been thinking about and now might be just the right time to do that?' 

So, right now we all have a lot to think about. There's a lot of things that are still up in the air, but we're going to come out of this and when we do, it's best if we all have a game plan in place, whether we're their employer or the employee. 

Vanessa

Yeah. That’s very true. Every aspect of the organization has to be rethought.

Cynthia

Yeah.

Vanessa

And because of this, I think the concept of gig workers has come to light again.

So how do you believe the gig economy is going to evolve, especially when you consider the growing ranks of millennials in our workforce? 

Cynthia

Well, the millennials, they grew up in the technology era, so they are very expert of technology. They are very comfortable with technology. I believe that this situation, our current situation, and the global situation have perhaps opened up some doors for new ideas.

So, people who perhaps want to work on their own as a gig worker and experiencing what we're experiencing right now, they might be seeing opportunities to do things. They may see where there's a technology that's missing and there's an opportunity there for them to pursue that technology, developing it. 

That's a good possibility, and doing it in a way that it's their own business, it's something that they are creating on their own, it's a technology they're very comfortable in that space and as it is, I see a lot of new technologies because of TalentCulture and our ability to keep our finger on the pulse of technology. That's very important to us. It's always at the center of everything that we talk about. 

And I see a lot of new technologies coming onto the market every day, and they're generally developed by young talent. So they see the need, they are in their comfort zone, they're very familiar with technology, so I think we're going to see even more of this happening in the future than we already see happening now. And trust me, there are dozens of new technologies coming to the forefront every day, especially in the HR technology space. 

It is an extremely crowded area. There are close to 300 applicant tracking systems alone, and that's just applicant tracking systems. So lots of opportunities to keep building better collaboration tools, which, of course, we need whether we're working from home or working in an office and opportunities for people to access information that maybe they couldn't access before.

We know that employees want to access their benefits packages. They don't want to have to call human resources and ask for this and that. Can you tell me what my current distribution is? They want to be able to access that information on their own. 

So lots of opportunities are going to start opening up. And I think companies are beginning to realize that and beginning to better empower employees with access to the technologies so employees could be more self-provisioning. 

Employees want to be able to access their information on their own. And companies are beginning to realize that and are beginning to better empower employees with access to the technologies so employees could be more self-provisioning.

Vanessa

And with the recent outbreak of the virus, how do you think we make our way of life? And what will change once we come to this crisis?  

Cynthia 

I think attitudinally, we're going to be more circumspect about our abilities to collaborate, to be more empathetic, to be more open, to understand that being vulnerable is sometimes a good thing because it opens up that opportunity to allow other people to come in, which allows for collaboration and camaraderie. I think businesses are going to understand that they need to be better at empowering their employees and providing them access to information and tools.

And I would like to think that we're going to continue that, that those opportunities continue to be more collaborative and empathetic, to be more sensitive, to be more emotionally intelligent. Because now we've all experienced something that has been relatively overwhelming for most people and knowing that we've all gone through this together, we now share common ground, right?

It's no longer people there and the people here. We're all experiencing this, and we all understand what it's like and the difficulties that it has presented to all of us. So it's easier I believe now for us to understand what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes because we're walking in those same shoes.

It's no longer people there and the people here. We're all experiencing this, and we all understand what it's like and the difficulties that it has presented to all of us. So it's easier now for us to understand what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes because we're walking in those same shoes.

Vanessa

Yeah, I think the smallest things are going to matter now and people have already started. 

Cynthia

Yeah, I agree. I do. I just hope that we continue it for the long term. 

Vanessa

Cynthia, do you have any last soundbites you would like to share with our audience? 

Cynthia 

Oh, I would say, let's remain positive. Let's stay focused. We will get through this. We always do, right? If you see it, you'll be it.

So be positive, look to the future, knowing that this was an opportunity for us to become circumspect, to look at our own behaviors and attitudes. And how we view work, and how important other things in life are besides work. We just continue to focus on those things, we’re gonna be okay. 

Vanessa

That's really positive advice, Cynthia. Thank you so much. 

Cynthia

You’re welcome.

Vanessa

I had a wonderful time speaking to you.

Cynthia

Yes, you too. Thank you so much for the opportunity.