We investigate recruitment focused on staff growth and relationships at L&D
Sweetrush’s recruitment manager, Ann Cathers, has a background in both the learning and development and recruitment industry. After a brief stint as a stay-at-home mom, she decided to merge the two and began recruiting at L&D Fields. Anne is always grateful for her value in treating others with attention and compassion, and for having a career in which she can apply her love to help others through career advice, or to promote exciting and logical next steps. Anne jokes that she will be paid to talk all day long, and she cherishes great conversations with top talents around the world. “It’s a great career for people who help others, create situations that are beneficial to both sides, and are genuine in their approach,” explains Anne. “I always think of myself as a relationship-based recruiter and transaction recruiter. That’s about finding the right fit at the right time and stuffing square pegs into round holes and placing them.”
Anne has been with Sweetrush for eight years and currently manages a team of four incredible Talent Solutions consultants. She is delighted to manage this high-performing team and find great opportunities for outstanding candidates. Some notable projects include managed service engagement for self-driving car companies (over 40 people) and staffing four separate learning teams (over 50 people) of EdTech clients within a few weeks.
In this Q&A, Anne talks with us about the importance of relationship-based recruitment and the fact that AI has not taken over recruitment jobs.
Could you tell me a little more about relationship-based recruitment, especially in the L&D field?
I realized long ago that the type of adoption I practice is relationship-based, not transactional. I think you will be much more successful in the long term when you care about the individual and develop a long-term relationship with that person. On the one hand, it’s who I am as a person. On the other hand, this type of adoption has a strong positive business case, which is also a recruitment philosophy that is consistent with the sweet rush culture. I don’t want to stuff square pegs into round holes to place because it doesn’t help anyone, not clients, agencies, candidates. For me, it’s all about finding the right opportunities for the right candidates and depends on where they are on their career journey.
It’s a small industry when it comes to L&D recruitment. Over the years, I have been able to fill my position very quickly in one day as a result of this relationship-based recruitment.
Another consequence of this recruitment philosophy is that it is frequently referred by experts in our network. They trust us and send trustworthy colleagues to Sweetrush. They do this for our value of compassion and mutual respect, and for the candidate experience they had here.
AI is one of the hottest topics at the moment. What role does talent solutions have? Do you think you are taking over the recruitment job?
My team and I are embracing AI and are tapping to assist with repetitive processes and administrative tasks. I am not planning on using AI to perform AI bot screening. The human element is too important for Sweetrush and my team of recruitment consultants. Using AI to generate an initial draft of job descriptions or create interview questions will save you time and be more efficient, but always reviewed and changed, so it’s AI-Human Collaboration. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It also uses AI to analyze recruitment metrics, for example. It’s a huge time savings and helps me find trends and focus quickly on areas of improvement.
Many people fear this new technology, but I consider it a tool in my toolbox and replace me. My team feels the same way. We have all helped each other to move forward with a variety of AI tools quickly. But when you play around with it and see the surprising impact on efficiency, you can’t ignore it. The possibilities of AI are endless. Create a recruitment strategy or ask them to help you write difficult emails. Take part in our free AI webinar. Start small and see where it takes you.
Based on your experience, what is one of the most common misconceptions and misconceptions surrounding staff augmentation? How can your organization help to grow available resources and leverage external expertise?
I think the general misconception about staffing is that it is expensive and it takes too long for consultants to ramp up to be effective. Clients think it’s more expensive than hiring someone full-time and tend to ignore all the “hidden” costs associated with hiring full-time employees. Costs related to employee benefits typically hover around 30% of a person’s salary.
Later, we share successful engagement that puts these assumptions into testing. The ROI of this client was impressive and the performance of their learners was greatly boosted. The success stories of these types of staff augmentation speak for themselves.
The bottom line is that our specialization and focus is hiring top-notch L&D professionals who can reach running. This is what Sweetrush does to make a living and does it for others through staffing or providing managed services.
What is one of your most memorable managed service engagement staff success stories?
My most memorable and successful engagement was when our autonomous vehicle clients significantly improved the capabilities of our L&D team and the ability to innovate through our partnerships with us. Faced with a lack of in-house education design expertise due to an ambitious training strategy, clients have strengthened their team of 23 education designers (IDs) using 40 Sweetrush IDs, effectively tripling their L&D teams overnight. This strengthening of their team allowed them to manage larger workloads and meet growing business demands.
The key to this success was a careful talent matching process that ensured that teams met their skills gaps, in addition to placing candidates tailored to their culture. Sweetrush also helped mature the client’s team. As the director before the operational training observed, her ID “started to reach a level naturally as I finally saw what it looked like from an educational design perspective.”
The approach focused on relationships characterized by daily communication and close contact through engagement has encouraged strong collaboration between Sweetrush candidates and the in-house L&D team. The collaboration culminated in field L&D events that united both teams for brainstorming and best practice sharing, resulting in rapid prototyping and execution of team ideas.
This partnership has achieved impressive results, including 155% ROI in one learning programme with innovative story-based modules and team “Missions”. The coaching-centric onboarding program dramatically reduced the time to competency and classroom time by more than 50% each. Additionally, yet another programme developed jointly by the client and the Sweet Trash team has increased learner performance by 140%.
This engagement demonstrates how by combining professional skills, capabilities development and a collaborative environment through staff growth, it demonstrates how innovation can be promoted and deliver excellent L&D results.
What qualities are you looking for when recruiting L&D candidates? Which position does Sweetrush focus primarily on?
We will hire freelance learning experience designers and senior LXDs. As the industry is in the midst of major changes due to technology, it is becoming increasingly important that LXD has experience working with AI. Ideally, I would like to see some kind of AI certified or examples of how they utilize AI. Are they embraced this technology? Which AI tools are you using? What did you know they were game changers? How did you make them more efficient?
On another note, I always find it whenever LXD candidates don’t have an online portfolio to share. Clients may request people with solid LXD skills and are well versed in e-learning development and multimedia authoring tools. In these cases, we are looking for candidates who can create visually appealing learning assets and beautiful and attractive videos, but their learning solutions should also be educationally sound.
Finally, are there any projects or initiatives you would like your readers to know?
There are two things I would like to share about Sweetrush. One is that Sweetrush is a full-service learning and performance strategic provider, changing the way organizations and individuals achieve success. We are more than just content providers. We are strategic partners. We offer customized learning solutions, including managed services with top-notch talent and staff enhancement. We purposefully built a pool of highly skilled consulting talent to deepen our client relationships and deliver excellent results. Whether you are a client looking for an effective end-to-end learning strategy or a passionate performance consultant, we are your trusted partner to achieve your business goals and navigate the future of your work.
Second, there is a bench of AI consultants to support AI governance, AI data analysis and insights, AI engineering and development, and learning design and development. We help our clients navigate the new opportunities AI presents and help them move towards safe and proactive AI adoption.
I’ll summarize
Thank you to Uncather for keeping our questions and providing her valuable insights. If you would like to learn more about Sweetrush’s staffing augmentation services, check out our Talent Solutions to see which placements are most popular and get in touch. We also want to congratulate Sweetrush on being the number one provider in the e-learning industry for top-learning staff enhancement services on this year’s top list.
