12 :: If I was a CINO @ HR Services

Same new year, another new format: if I was a CINO @ x industry. Most of the feedback I received last year was asking for more industry-specific insights. Truth is I’m no expert in any industry and won’t pretend that I am, but I’ll commit to learning about a few every once in a while. I’ll research their business, trends, and needs. Then, I’ll combine it with more general concepts, ideas, frameworks, and technologies and share the outcome in this format. This is the first and it is about HR Services.

It is a talent war out there. It is harder than ever for talent to compete for the best opportunities in the market, but it is definitely not easier for organizations to compete when attracting and retaining the best talent. The context is both terrible and great for innovation: a lot of changes and unknown territories in a space where novelty has been a habitué, difficult to keep up to. New technologies and automation, new job categories, new skills in high demand and low supply, new generational priorities that no previous generations can fully understand.

So, here’s what I’d do if today I was a CINO at an HR Services company

🕵️‍♀️ A trend I would closely follow: Fractional C-Level or C-Level-as-a-Service (CxOaaS)

The C-suite is undergoing a metamorphose-like process and this seems to be one of the major trends behind it. Fractional C-Level or C-Level-as-a-Service is short for hiring (or more like outsourcing) top-management executives part-time or temporarily. It is a model in which organizations benefit from the knowledge, strategic guidance, and leadership of high-level professionals without major overheads and onboarding costs, while those professionals benefit from the flexibility and diversity of experiences this offers.

I believe that, as a trend, it will grow in popularity over the next 5 to 10 years, with the appointment of the first Gen Z C-level executives, and will start becoming more mainstream in 10 to 20. I also believe that whoever delivers the best experience in identifying and connecting the right opportunities for the two sides of this coin early on will lead the way and win a significant part of the market at the right time. This company seems to be inactive (already or still, not sure) but would anyway be my go-to for a benchmark. It has all the right messages, UX, and UI.

💡 An innovative idea I would explore: Careers as a financial asset

I do not have a background in finance nor do I understand asset classes extensively, so it is quite likely that this idea might be as disruptive as non-sense or close to impossible to execute. I find it interesting enough to see it as worth it to invest in a discovery process, though. It basically consists of creating a system that would assess and quantify the future potential of talents and define an investment model with a growth strategy to increase its value over time. A value that could be indexed to the salary or signing bonuses, for example. Think of it as a service playing the part of a football or celebrity agent but for corporate careers.

For benchmarking, I would check Talent Protocol, working on a similar version of this concept in the web3 world. StudentFinance is another startup doing it in a way too, but in a completely different manner and only with students.

⚙️ An innovation engine I would implement: A hackathon with top universities

A hackathon is an event where participants (usually grouped into multidisciplinary teams with engineers, designers, and managers) collaborate intensively within a set timeframe to develop innovative solutions. These solutions typically address a challenge shared by the organizer(s). It is an interesting innovation inflow mechanism for almost all industries, if you ask me, especially with students, but for HR Services it can be a gold mine. It goes beyond the access to ideas or the self-centered employer branding. It is a unique opportunity to identify, build a database of, and earn the trust of the top-talent pipeline of the future at its earliest stages, plus spotting first-hand (and at earliest stages as well) its feelings and behaviors towards the workplace.

You can easily find entities that design and implement hackathons end-to-end, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel on that front, including universities directly. Nova School of Business and Economics with Ageas is a great example and benchmark.

If you work at an HR service provider or know someone who does, please reach out or forward them this issue. I’d love to get feedback and an inside perspective about this analysis.

See you next Tuesday! 👋