Senior talent and people leaders from across the IT channel are ganging together to tackle the key challenges facing their profession.
The ‘Recruitment Advisory Board’ will hold its first event on 12 June at LinkedIn’s London HQ.
It aims to unite talent leaders from across the channel to discuss hot topics including retention, attrition and diversity – as well as AI.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Softcat Recruitment Manager Elisha Kirkham said the initiative was sparked by conversations between her and recruitment agency boss Marc Sumner.
“It was one of the lightbulb moments of, ‘how has this not been done before’?,” Kirkham said.
“How have we never, on a large scale, brought all these talent leaders together to talk about all the challenges we see day-to-day in our organisations from a collective standpoint?
“Hopefully, we’ll have a really positive impact on the way we’re approaching all things within that talent space across the channel.
“When you look at the D&I advisory boards across the channel, they’re really having an impact on our ability to collectively tackle some of the key challenges we see there – and I think it could be the same with recruitment.”
“Zero concern” about AI
Open to senior talent experts at vendors, distributors and partners, the event will be repeated annually or even bi-annually – or at least that’s the aspiration – Kirkham said.
AI’s impact on the profession will be a key discussion point for the evening’s panel, which will be in the style of the ‘Channel Chat’ format pioneered by Sumner (see here), she indicated.
“When you’re recruiting at high volumes like we do here at Softcat, AI unquestionably has a positive impact on our ability to provide a positive candidate experience but also deal with the volume that we see,” Kirkham said.
“Then obviously there are question marks for lots of people across not just our industry, but generally, around the impact AI will have on jobs and the industry in general – so I think it’s two-fold.”
Amid headlines about firms including fintech giant Klarna having to back peddle on replacing human staff with AI, Kirkham argued that talent will “always need a human touch”, however.
“It’s still all so uncertain for so many people that they go to the worst-case scenario, which is that it’s going to equal job losses or that every single one of us will be replaced by a robot,” she said.
“This event will really reconnect with the fact that you have to have the human touch to do talent properly.
“AI has a place when it comes to improving efficiencies and streamlining processes and all that great stuff – which we are seeing the benefits of here at Softcat.
“But moving forward I have zero fear or concern around our industry as a whole. Truly connecting with people in the talent space, especially when it comes to improving retention rates, or diversity and inclusion, or creating environments in which people feel they truly belong, can’t be done by AI.
“It can only be done by people.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
