Transforming Talent Acquisition: Expert Insights with Pam Verhoff

Discover actionable insights into optimizing recruitment strategies in the debut episode of Advancing Talent Acquisition, featuring expert advice from President and CEO Pam Verhoff on attracting top talent, leveraging AI, and aligning hiring with business goals.

Summary

We’re thrilled to launch the debut episode of our podcast, Advancing Talent Acquisition! Hosted by Jenna Hinrichsen, our first episode features an insightful conversation with our President and CEO, Pam Verhoff, on the critical role of talent acquisition in driving organizational success.

Pam shares expertise on attracting and retaining top talent, tackling hiring challenges, and using technology and data to transform recruitment. She highlights the importance of market analyses, AI tools, and personalized communication to enhance the candidate experience. Listeners will gain actionable insights into data-driven hiring, reducing turnover, and aligning recruitment with business goals, along with her career advice on continuous learning, adaptability, and building diverse experiences. 

Whether you’re an HR leader, talent acquisition professional, or simply looking to stay ahead in the evolving hiring landscape, this episode offers actionable insights to help you optimize your recruitment strategies.

Episode 1

Jenna Hinrichsen
Welcome to the Advanced RPO podcast, Advancing Talent Acquisition, where we bring you insights, tips, and trends from top industry experts.

Our very first guest is Pam Verhoff, President and CEO of Advanced RPO. Pam has over 20 years of experience in talent acquisition and RPO, and she’s passionate about impacting client’s bottom line and creating a culture where employee engagement is top of mind. Pam, welcome and thank you for joining us and for helping kick off our very first episode of our podcast.

Pam Verhoff
Thank you, Jenna. I’m thrilled to be here and excited that we are actually, this has been a vision of ours for some time and I’m excited to see it come to fruition. So, thanks for having me.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Yes. Will you share with our listeners what your vision is for the podcast and what they can expect in upcoming episodes?

Pam Verhoff
So, as I think, as we’ve talked about the vision of our podcast, it’s really to educate the world on everything talent acquisition. You know, we’re very fortunate to have a team that has just extensive experience in recruiting and hiring. And we want to share that experience and help organizations meet their goals through TA strategies. So not only will you have access to our immediate team members, but we will have clients and others across our network that will be joining throughout over the next year through this podcast. So just really excited to share and quite frankly educate because I just think there’s tremendous opportunity to continue to evolve talent acquisition for organizations.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Yes, and we want to make it quick bits of information that you can take away and leave the podcast and have actionable items that you can implement on your teams or with your organization. So, let’s spend a little bit of time talking about the current state of talent acquisition and what lies ahead. If you would tell us what you think, why is TA such a critical focus for organizations today?

Pam Verhoff
Well, when I hear that question, my immediate reaction is, know, people are organizations’ greatest asset, right? So therefore, it should be a critical focus. But, you know, as I think about this, you know, organizations that prioritize talent acquisition, they’re ensuring they attract, hire, retain the right talent to drive their business performance and organizational goals. I mean, there’s a direct correlation between the two. Think of talent acquisition directly impacts organization’s ability to meet their strategic goals and maintain competitive edge.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Exactly. Look at online acquisition sometimes as like the front line. think people think often sales or marketing people tend to be the front line, but I think recruiting really is what brings in the people that drive the organization. So not having that as a top priority focus can really impact, as you said, your overall business and your results and your growth, frankly. So yeah.

Pam Verhoff
Right, right. And when it’s done effectively, you minimize your turnover, you minimize your training costs and productivity loss, quite frankly, that could be associated with quote a bad hire. So, it does, it all starts at the strategy around bringing the best talent into the organization.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Yes. Okay, so what hiring challenges are organizations facing today and what do you think they can do to better position themselves for success going forward?

Pam Verhoff
There are so many challenges. I think about so when I hear that, think that, I do think the challenges are different, depending upon, like who you’re hiring, where the majority of your hiring sits, right, whether that be professional hiring or entry level, hourly hiring. So

Jenna Hinrichsen
Do we have five hours?

Pam Verhoff
When I think about, I’ll start with professional hiring, I think the greatest challenge is right now, addressing the skills gap while balancing candidate expectations. And, you know, I’ll elaborate on that a bit in that, you know, technology is really, it’s advancing quickly and it’s outpacing workforce skill development. Therefore, companies need to go out and hire the right talent.

You know, the quote, right talent may not be specifically located in the geography that you want them to be. Their salary expectations may be higher than you expect. now, you when you look at those, you’re balancing three key requirements, skills, location, and salary. So because of this, I think it’s really critical that the TA team conduct an in-depth market analysis prior to launching or even posting a job. And this will give you insights into talent availability and how your total comp package compares with the market. And you know this, Jenna, you do this every day for our customers. Too often people get so far down the path and then get frustrated as a hiring manager because they can’t find the right people when the reality is they may or may not have the right package to be able to attract.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Yeah, I think a lot of times they underestimate the steps that you take up front to really position your brand and your organization as an employer of choice. And I think people often think, well, I work here. It’s a great company. Everyone wants to work there. There are so many great companies. And with social media and technology today, there’s so much information out there for people. And so, you really have to show what is different about working for your organization and don’t take for granted that because you work there, and you know that that everyone will know that.

Yeah. Okay, well, how do you see tech and data shaping the future of recruitment and hiring? This is a big one because this, you know, AI is everywhere.

Pam Verhoff
Right, right. You’re exactly right. So.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, tech and data are really transforming recruiting and hiring, AI streamlines processes like resume screening, candidate matching, chatbot engagement, all of those things to help reduce time to fill and improve efficiency.

Jenna Hinrichsen
On that point, I think companies have to really embrace that technology and so do employees of organizations. It doesn’t mean that jobs are going away. If you really look at like, even our organization at Advanced RPO, we have replaced a lot of steps with technology, but it creates new roles and new ways of working with clients. And so really embracing that and being more consultative, right? Letting the machines do some of the work that can be done and letting us use more of our expertise.

Pam Verhoff
Absolutely, yeah. want the team to be their time spent on the highest value as opposed to just transacting. So, where there are transactions, we can leverage technology to do that. Absolutely. There’s data analytics that help forecast hiring trends and predict candidate success and quite frankly identify potential retention risks.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Yes.

Pam Verhoff
So, enabling us to make data-driven decisions versus just this gut decision, if you will.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Right. And data from multiple sources. think internally that’s really our methodology is looking at multiple sources. There’s a lot of data out there. And so it can be overwhelming for organizations to look at, where do I get my data? What’s accurate? And so working with organizations like Advanced RPO or companies that can provide valuable data that really give you a different perspective, not just government data or just employer driven or employee driven, but really bringing all of that together, I think is what’s going to tell the story and help companies make the best decisions for hiring.

Pam Verhoff
Right, right. There’s also machine learning, you know, machine learning really enables really very tailored communications to candidates and provide feedback to candidates and so on that really enhances the candidate experience. So, you know, I think the way we’ve talked about candidate experience for years it’s always been important, but you know, the technology today makes it quite frankly very easy to do that in a very personalized fashion. And you know, I think candidates expect that.

Jenna Hinrichsen
They do, yeah, they do. And it can make or break. And I think the old school mentality of, well, if they don’t want to take the time to do these things, they’re not the right candidate for us. We really have to look at what they’re evaluating their experience when they’re interviewing and going through the process of what it’s going to be like to work for that organization. So, if it’s not streamlined and easy to follow and candidate-centric, they’re not going to have a very good view of the overall organization to start.

Pam Verhoff
Right, right, right. One comment that I’ll make that we see that I just find very interesting and we navigate it with our customers every day, I think customers expect our PO providers to come to the table with, you know, these are table stakes, these technologies that we’re talking about are table stakes, but it’s also does require, in order to leverage these technologies, in some cases, there needs to be integrations with the ATS or the systems of the company. And we often get some pushback, and some get challenged around that. from a TA leadership perspective, I want you to be thinking about what it really means to bring these technologies to life. They’re incredibly powerful and effective when done correctly.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Yes. And there’s a happy medium. You don’t always have to do it. It doesn’t have to be the extreme, right? You can control what visibility and things. And so, yeah, I think just not having such a hard no, we don’t integrate or just a full yes but really looking at what parts as an organization can you allow a partner to come in and integrate to really give you the best overall experience.

Pam Verhoff
Right, right, right, exactly.

Jenna Hinrichsen
What excites you most about the future of the recruiting industry today? 2024 kicking off 2025.

Pam Verhoff
Well, think, I mean, just the evolution of technology is exciting. I when I look back even over the last five years and how much change has occurred and how we worked so differently today than we did, I’ll say five years ago. That change is going to accelerate faster and faster as we move forward. So that’s exciting. But I think at the core for me personally, what’s most exciting is what’s kept me in this industry for 20 plus years. And that is knowing the immense impact that recruiting has on business outcomes. Yeah, I said it earlier, there’s a direct correlation and I love having the opportunity to consult with our customers and different organizations and helping them build, know, best in class TA programs that really drive business results. You know, we’ve had, we had a client earlier this year just say, they had the highest revenue year ever. And it’s a direct result of the fact that we were able to, we hired the right people on time for them. And there’s just nothing, I mean, from a business perspective, that’s incredibly meaningful to me.

Jenna Hinrichsen
And that goes back to the point that TA is really the front line. So, if your talent acquisition team isn’t top notch and you don’t have the right partners and technology in place, it’s going to impact everything in your organization’s domino effect.

Pam Verhoff
Yes. Right, right, exactly.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Well, I have one last question for you and I’m excited to end every podcast with the same question for each guest. And what we want to do is create a library of tips and expert advice that we can share, obviously in the podcast, but also on the side, if somebody wants to look at what are our top industry experts saying as far as career advice goes. So, what is your top career tip that you’d like to share with our listeners? It’s a loaded question.

Pam Verhoff
Yeah, I guess, I would say just, would say focus on continuous learning and embrace new challenges. I do have children of age – of working age, if you will. And I, and I tell them, you know, oftentimes I think individuals have a very, kind of defined career ladder in their mind. And they, you know, it’s like, I’m going to take step one and then step two and so on. And what I found with my own career is that I’ve, you know, along the way, I just, if there was an opportunity that presented itself, I would say, yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll try that. I’ve not done that before. And, you know, so my, my career path as a result of that isn’t necessarily what I expected it to be, but it was incredibly fulfilling. So, I think it’s okay to take lateral moves throughout your career to expand your experience and knowledge base. Personally, I think knowledge and experience are incredibly valuable and that’s ultimately, in addition to skills that you bring, but that’s ultimately what builds your career.

Jenna Hinrichsen
Yeah, I love that. And I always say, and this is something I’ve done throughout my career is really do a risk analysis. Like before, when you’re making a decision, what’s the worst that can happen? What’s the best that can happen? And what’s the worst that can happen? So, you try something and you don’t like it, then you try something else, right? It’s not, we put such so much weight on these things that oftentimes we miss opportunities because we’re so afraid, like you said, to step outside of the path that we thought we were going to take. But yeah, just do a risk analysis and go forward from there.

Pam Verhoff
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be forever. Right. And that’s, and that’s what I think that is the weight that’s we carry with so many decisions. It’s like, well, if you hate it, then then do or try something different.

Jenna Hinrichsen
No, exactly. Right, right, thank you so much, Pam, for joining us and sharing your insights today. It was great having you to help kick off our very first podcast. And then for our listeners, we have some great guests and topics coming up. So please subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss out on any future insights and tips and trends that are happening in the industry. And if you have a topic that you’re interested in that we have not done a podcast or an episode on, please share in the comments what you’d like us to talk about and we’ll create an episode around that. And then we have a well of information and resources on our website. when you have some free time, head over to advancedrpo.com and browse around. Thank you so much and we’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Pam Verhoff
Thanks for having me. Bye.

About our experts

Jenna Hinrichsen

Jenna develops sourcing strategies for diverse positions across wide geographic areas, leveraging research, networking, and database mining to build a robust, diverse candidate pipeline. As a recruitment leader, she guides direction, forecasting, and decision-making, manages third-party relationships, and supports sales efforts. With a background as a staffing consultant, Jenna combines her expertise in recruitment metrics and delivery processes with a passion for learning about industries and organizations to address complex hiring challenges effectively.

Pam Verhoff

Pam is an executive leader with extensive experience building RPO businesses, driving growth, and fostering high-performing teams. At Advanced RPO, she oversees strategy, operations, and client success, focusing on creating efficient, tailored hiring programs. Pam’s values-driven approach and innovative solutions consistently earn client trust and confidence.