EP68: Wayfair - How to Accommodate TA Community Using AI

All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment Podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned for our weekly episodes. I’m your host, Lydia, and with us today is Andreea Lungulescu of Wayfair. Welcome, Andreea. Thank you for joining us today.

Andreea: Hey, Lydia, thanks for having me. It's great to get to know you and be here.

Lydia: Absolutely. So Andreea, tell us about your current role at Wayfair, and what's been keeping you in the talent space on this one.

Andreea’s Experience in Talent Acquisition

Andreea: Overall, I think what’s keeping me here is a true passion for my job. My role is a Principal Talent Acquisition Partner, meaning I serve as a strategic right hand to talent acquisition leaders or executives. I do 360 recruitment as well, but mainly for leadership roles across Europe. I’ve also led many projects and initiatives for Talent Acquisition topics across Wayfair, especially in Europe and India. I’ve been engaged in community building both internally and externally, and acting as a mentor overall. We call it a ‘multiplier.’ So, my role is a bit of a multiplier, helping the talent acquisition department in the company to evolve and upskill. I hope this gives you an overview of what I do.

Lydia: So, you might be working with different stakeholders in this role, right? Who are they?

Andreea: Yes, I work with many different stakeholders, which makes the role interesting. But mainly, I work with C-suite, SVP, and senior director levels. They are my stakeholders and hiring usually happens for leadership roles, senior managers, managers, etc. In the past, I used to hire for everything and anything in the technology space, from junior engineers to senior heads. This also covers anything that has to do with technology including engineering, product, and data science.

Lydia: I’m curious, how is this role different from HR business? Is there any overlap, for instance?

Andreea: There is an overlap in my experience. I’ve been doing it for quite several years now. There is the operational aspect of it, which means that I actively recruit. So I hire people, I source, I do marketing insights, talent intelligence, anything that has to do with recruitment end to end. However, it adds a strategic layer to it.

I do work with my business stakeholders when it comes to succession planning. So, I collaborate with them and advise them on strategic approaches to succession planning in their teams. Also, I work with my stakeholders on internal movements, mapping skill sets internally in their teams and seeing if there can be mobility that we can look at.

Other aspects of my job would go heavy in the improvement process, development and deployment, and project management. And I think this is what makes the job so beautiful and extremely complex. However, it is not an HR business partner role for sure because I don’t get involved in discussions about performance or succession planning when it comes to someone exiting the company or any improvement plans. Those things are not on my desk at all.

Key Challenges in Recruiting for the Tech Industry

Lydia: In terms of tech companies, I understand that in your current role, you’re looking at a specific level and above, mostly the senior level. What are some key challenges that you’ve faced or observed when it comes to recruiting these talents for the tech industry today?

Andreea: Hiring for leadership has its own set of challenges. But I think if I look at it from a bird’s eye view, the tech industry is still growing rapidly. Even with all the layoffs that we’ve seen over the last one and a half years, the numbers were tremendously high. However, there is a projected tech employment of around 9.4 million in the upcoming years. And at the moment, I remember in the US, they were talking about around 280,000 open roles. And that’s just the US, I’m not talking about Europe.

Now, if I look over the last couple of years, we faced hiring freezes, layoffs, economic downturns, and so on. And I think what stood out for me the most is the emphasis on digital transformation. I’m not only talking about us as a tech company, we put tech out into the world one way or another. But internally, the tech transformation, the fact that individuals have to be very innovative in how they do things inside to be very effective. We see emerging technologies. So, when speaking to individuals, we have to assess not only their readiness for the job but also their readiness for expansion, for innovation, for what they will bring to our organization to drive strategies, which will evolve the company and will draw people with them.

Then we see educational and skill gaps, which lead to difficulties in balancing diversity and inclusion in companies. And in my capacity, hiring more for leadership roles is a challenge. There are just fewer people out there to begin with. So, it is tremendously difficult at times to find the right talent and to make sure that we have this gap in mind and that we try various ways to fill the gap.

You might imagine we have a growing talent pool because of the layoffs. But it’s not quite like that. People are now questioning multiple times before moving. And individuals who have been through layoffs are questioning what they want to do with their careers. So, this adds another layer of unknown and another layer of delay when it comes to actually engaging with the talent that you want to engage with.

Criteria for Recruiting the Right Talent

Lydia: You’ve made an interesting observation that despite a perceived availability of talent, because of the layoffs and freezes, you still see a scarcity because they don’t quite meet exactly what you need to fulfill the needs of a growing or transformational digital business. So, in that sense, what are some of the criteria you look for when it comes to looking for talent, executive talent, and senior talent? What is the mindset that is needed to be suitable for a transformational role?

Andreea: I think I can speak about our experience in India, where we were fortunate enough to build a tech development center from the ground up. I was part of the project and I led the hiring foundations. I also hired for their leadership roles over there, not the executives though.

Things that we paid attention to were, obviously, their experiences. It was very relevant for us to find individuals who had done similar roles previously, as we were setting up something completely new. We needed to have some faith or trust that they would be able to use their previous knowledge and help us get things up and running quickly.

However, given the global circumstances, we also cared a lot about their strategic and critical thinking and their way of thinking about global strategies. Working in a global organization, we needed to be very mindful of things such as cultural appropriation, global collaboration, and expansion. How would they foster this culture of collaboration globally? How would they enable that skill set in their upcoming teams? How would they consider expanding the Bangalore site in correlation with the US headquarters and the tech development centers in Europe? How would they support the rest of the leadership globally and grow their organization at the same time?

And of course, technical literacy was also important. At some points, they were the only people there without the engineers, so we needed to make sure that they were technically literate and still very much hands-on. This was not easy to find.

I found that primarily in India, there was a separation between the leadership track and the individual contributor track. In Europe, you could find strong leaders with individual contributor traits, but in India, we struggled to find people who embodied both.

I think these are the main ones that come to mind.

Starting a Talent Acquisition Community

Lydia: You have made an interesting observation about the diverse nature of different parts of the world. This must be challenging when you want to grow or launch a business in one area and keep it aligned and on par with the businesses in other areas. I also know that you have founded a talent acquisition community. How is that working out for you?

Andreea: That reminds me of Berlin. The community aspect is very important to me. We all have experienced the pandemic and how it affected our social lives. I had a flash of inspiration to start a Talent Acquisition community in Berlin, where we have a lot of professionals, startups, scale-ups, and corporations. We used to be very active in the scene, especially when I was at Zalando, which was a leader in the community space. But then it died down.

So, after the pandemic was over, and we could go outside and meet people again, I felt a strong need to reconnect and do something for the Talent Acquisition profession in Berlin. That’s how this community was born. I would say it’s going well. We are not the only community in Berlin, but we are one of the most active ones. We are only on LinkedIn for now, and we mainly meet at real-life events that we organize as a community. We started in April or May 2023, and now we have around 900 members. I hope to reach 1000 members by the end of the year. We have some events coming up, which is great.

The community is doing well, and I’m very happy about it. I’m also trying to collaborate more with other communities because that’s what communities should do. I think people enjoy the in-person events and the topics we cover. We had a big event that I called an ‘Accidental Conference.’ We had 450 people signed up, and the topic was ‘The Importance of Communities.’ We had some amazing panelists who shared their insights and experiences. It was very humbling and rewarding. So, thank you for asking. You can see I am very pumped up about this.

Lydia: You look very passionate when you talk about this. It shows. As the founder of the community, you have to foster a culture of knowledge sharing and relationship building. You have to nurture them and take them forward to give some benefits back to the community. What are some of the immediate benefits you have seen so far from creating such a community?

Andreea: There is one immediate benefit I can share with you. I mentioned earlier that we are only on LinkedIn at the moment since we can’t create a Slack channel or moderate it. It’s just us doing this on top of our jobs and lives. However, we noticed some job posts for Talent Acquisition professionals in Berlin, and we reposted them on our community page. At our last event, someone approached me and told me that they found the person they hired through our community page. That person applied for the job after seeing our post. I thought that was amazing. If we can impact the life of one human being, that’s more than enough.

Another benefit is the opportunity for learning and connecting. As you know, our industry has been severely impacted by layoffs. I have many friends and acquaintances who are out of a job. So, we use these networking events as ways to connect, not only on a professional level but also on a personal level. We share our experiences and challenges during this period. Sometimes, we use networking events to find jobs or refer each other. So, it brings a benefit there as well.

The third and probably the biggest benefit is the sharing of knowledge. Keeping up to date in an environment like the one we live in today is not easy.

There is a lot of information out there, but it may be too much or too scattered. So, we try to narrow it down and focus on the most relevant and useful topics. We try to get to the essence of everything and then share it back to the community without overwhelming them with everything that’s out there.

It’s a good platform to allow individuals to further develop their skills and knowledge.

Lydia: And this community is based in Berlin, with practitioners who are based in Berlin as well. Are there any members from outside of the space?

Andreea: Yes, there is. So, when I started the TA Crunch, I wanted to make it the TA community for Berlin. But then we started seeing interest from people outside of Berlin, mainly from Germany, but also from other countries. A nice story is that at our last event, the big one, we had people who traveled from Poland just to attend our event. They came and went back on the same day, just to be part of our community. That was fantastic.

We are also considering expanding beyond Berlin, but we have to be mindful of what we want to offer our community. We don’t want to stretch ourselves too thin and compromise the quality and value of our events. It would be great if we could expand to other cities like Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Munich, and so on. But I want us to be realistic and deliver what we can. For now, we are focused on Berlin.

Arising Challenges Amongst the Community

Lydia: I have a question about the community and the knowledge-sharing aspect. I noticed that some people came from Poland just to attend a one-day conference and go back. That shows a lot of interest and dedication. What are some of the common concerns or challenges that HR and Talent Acquisition professionals in this community face? What are the topics that they want to learn more about?

Andreea: That’s a thought-provoking question. Thank you for asking. I think one of the main concerns that looms over our profession is Artificial Intelligence. We may or may not say it out loud, but it’s a big question mark. How will it affect our role and our future?

Another concern is that we have been severely hit by the layoffs. Many of us are struggling with existential questions like, ‘What do I want to do next? Am I motivated by this career path? Should I stay employed or go solo?’ These are personal questions that affect our well-being and happiness.

A third concern is how to establish the role of Talent Acquisition in organizations and showcase the value that we bring. How do we convince the executives that our profession and domain are not only highly relevant but also strategically important for the success of the company? How do we prove our impact and contribution to the bottom line?

These are probably the three or four big things that we face. I think the community helps a lot with the more personal aspect because we realize we are not alone. We can share our experiences and support each other. On the professional side, I think the community also helps us learn new things and best practices that we can apply in our work. We can go back to our companies and say, ‘I have learned something valuable, let me put it into practice and show you the results.’

AI: the Game Changer

Lydia: You brought up an interesting point about automation and AI. We are seeing how they are transforming various industries, including Talent Acquisition and recruitment. Depending on the perspective, they could be seen as disruptive or elevating for the profession. Do you have an opinion on how automation and AI are changing the game in Talent Acquisition? You must have some insights into how professionals are adapting and coping with that.

Andreea: I hope I have some insight into this topic. I am a huge fan of Artificial Intelligence. I am amazed by the abundance of tools, APIs, extensions, and so on that can enhance our job as recruiters. But I also want to raise some caution.

We have to get on board with AI and become familiar with it. The more we delay, the harder it will be to catch up, because it is advancing so fast.

There are many tools that we can use for different aspects of Talent Acquisition. For example, some tools help us with interviewing, taking notes, and streamlining the information for us. These are very helpful for assessing skills and capabilities. Some tools help us with sourcing, building outreach messages, and finding relevant content to share with our candidates. These are important for engaging and attracting talent. Other tools help us with building and nurturing our candidate community, which is essential for any recruiter. We can use AI or NLP to generate topics and messages that appeal to our talent pool.

Another area where AI can help us is scheduling. There are tons of tools that help us automate scheduling, which is very important for speeding up our processes. AI can also help us optimize our job postings, screen resumes, and rank candidates. And one very important thing that I want to mention is using AI to understand the behavior of our candidates through our sourcing channels. How do they interact with our content? How likely are they to respond or apply? This is more of a predictive and analytical use of AI, but it can give us valuable insights and improve our outcomes.

Some tools are readily available, like ChatGPT, but they have limited use cases. However, there are also things that we can start doing manually, and then leverage the expertise of our data science and machine learning engineers. We can use the engines that they have built for our end customers, and adapt them for the benefit of Talent Acquisition. I think companies that have this capability internally can take advantage of it. This is what we are trying to do at Wayfair.

Lydia: That’s an interesting one. I like that there is a push towards using AI and looking at the behavior of prospective candidates, even before they become a candidate. What is the actual climate going on there in terms of branding and the reaction or reception towards the brand? And I think it’s really interesting to explore it. But in your opinion, dealing with the communities and looking into the various types of professionals you have, how can smaller companies or even startups with limited resources leverage automation and AI to compete for top talent against larger tech giants, for instance?

Andreea: Some of the things I would consider are; first, I would be cautious about the compliance and legality issues. Being in Europe and under GDPR rules, we have to make sure that we do not put our companies at risk. So, before we use any available free tool, we have to check if it is safe and secure. We should not use our company’s details without proper verification. I think this is something that we should be aware of.

Second, I would take advantage of the free trials that many startups offer for their products. The benefit of being a smaller organization is that we can test a lot of these tools without going through a long and complicated approval process. We can see which ones are effective, efficient, and useful for our needs. We can also learn from them and do some things on our own.

For example, we can use generative AI platforms like Perplexity or Anthropic or ChatGPT to create content. This content can help us build our personality and employer’s brand, and attract more talent. We can also use tools like Zapier to automate workflows and tasks. For instance, we can feed some LinkedIn posts into a tool, and then use ChatGPT to generate a summary with 10 points. Then, we can use Zapier to send an email to 10 people that we have targeted, and also create another post for LinkedIn. Learning how to use these automation chains is important and helpful.

Another example is to use automation for administrative tasks, such as scheduling, screening, and ranking. We can use tools that help us automate these tasks, or even use simple things like reminders from Google Calendar or Outlook. These can save us time and energy, and improve our productivity and efficiency. We can also use the features of our ATS, if we have one, that has some Artificial Intelligence embedded. We can make sure that we use all the benefits of our ATS to optimize our hiring process.

Finally, for the owners or founders of the companies, I would suggest that they consider allocating some budget for the implementation of Artificial Intelligence tools in their Talent Acquisition practices, and not only there. AI can help us in many areas, such as sourcing, engaging, assessing, hiring, and retaining talent. It can also help us with analytics, insights, and strategy. AI can give us a competitive edge and help us achieve our goals.

Andreea’s Advice to New Recruiters and TA Professionals

Lydia: You are right. The landscape of recruitment today has changed a lot with what AI can bring to the table. It has evolved the industry in many ways. On that note, what advice would you give someone who is starting in Talent Acquisition, recruitment, or being a talent partner?

Andreea: I think I would start by advising them to aim to become a talent partner or a talent advisor. We usually start as a recruiter, a junior recruiter, or a sourcer. But if we aim to become a partner, it means that we then automatically develop the skills that make us a partner or advisor.

I would also advise them to embrace continuous learning and stay up-to-date as much as possible. I know there is a lot of information out there, and it can be overwhelming and repetitive. So, make sure you go online and select a few reputable sources, such as newsletters, podcasts, blogs, and so on. Subscribe to them and have them come to you. Block some time every week to curate the content and learn from it.

They also need to improve their communication skills and stakeholder management. You need to be able to build confidence, not arrogance, through your communication skills with your stakeholders. You also need to be able to adapt your communication style to different situations and audiences. You may speak with your colleagues, your leaders, or your business partners. They may have different expectations and preferences. Understand the various types of communication styles and be flexible.

I would advise them to leverage Artificial Intelligence. We just talked about it, but I want to emphasize it. We are in a prime time to get on board with AI and become familiar with it. Many tools and platforms can help us with different aspects of talent acquisition. Learn how to use them and benefit from them.

Furthermore, they need to nurture their candidate pools and build community.

Build a strong relationship with your candidates and connect with them on various platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, or others. Go to their networking events and make yourself known. Publish things that are relevant and valuable for them. You don’t have to ask them for anything, just give them something for free. Nurturing these relationships will help you in the long run, because you will always have a network to draw from.

You may need to hire someone or refer someone, and you can ask them for help. This will help you build your brand, your reputation, and your network. Not to mention that it’s nice to see people that you connected with and reconnect with them years later. I strongly encourage you to develop the skill of networking and relationship building.

Lydia: Those are excellent pieces of advice, I can see how they can all come together and bring benefit to someone who is starting in terms of charting out or plotting out their growth in a specific role.

So, thank you very much for your time and insights and thank you so much for joining us today. And for those listening in, I'm sure some of them would want to pick a conversation forward with you. So, drop us your contact details so the audience can connect with you.

Andreea: Thank you for having me. I’m glad we had this conversation about topics I am passionate about. If anyone wants to get in touch with me, they can look me up on LinkedIn or email me at andreea@theprincipalrecruiter.com.

Lydia: Thank you again, Andreea, for your insights and your generous sharing of this knowledge. We have been in conversation with Andreea Lungulescu of Wayfair. Thank you for joining us and remember to subscribe for more weekly episodes of All-In Recruitment.