Building Talent Pipelines With Internships

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[00:01:20] Hi there. Welcome to episode 604, over a recruiting future with me, Matt Alder. Many employers

[00:01:30] regularly offer internships, but the role of these internships in long-term hiring strategies

[00:01:36] can be pretty tenuous. So what happens when a company puts interns at the centre of his

[00:01:42] hiring strategy and proactively leverages this to build long-term pipelines of valuable talent?

[00:01:48] My guess this week is Leah Borden, VP of talent at Starving and Consulting firm Alku.

[00:01:54] Alku has put internships at the heart of their resourcing strategy for several years.

[00:01:59] In our conversation, Leah shares precisely how they do this and the considerable benefits and

[00:02:05] value that it drives. Hi Leah and welcome to the podcast. Hi Matt, thank you so much for

[00:02:11] having me today. And absolutely pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself

[00:02:16] and tell us what you do? Yes. My name is Leah Borden. I'm the vice president of talent at Alku

[00:02:24] and that means basically I'm responsible for attracting, training, growing and developing

[00:02:30] the internal sales population at the company. Fantastic. Tell us a little bit more about the company

[00:02:36] and what it does. Yes, great question. So Alku is a specialty staffing firm focused on connecting

[00:02:44] highly specialized top tier professionals with leading companies within a few different spaces.

[00:02:50] So IT, life sciences and government staffing industries. Now I think you've been

[00:02:57] with the company for a while or certainly in recruitment for a while. How have you seen

[00:03:02] recruiting evolve over the last few years? Yeah so I've been at Alku for 13 years this month actually

[00:03:10] so that's super exciting and basically I was talking about this last week. It makes me feel

[00:03:17] kind of like a dinosaur to talk about how much has changed since I started and really the thing

[00:03:25] that sticks out the most and really what I think a lot of people are just talking about in general

[00:03:29] these days is the technology. So when I was starting off as a recruiter, I would be dialing the phones.

[00:03:37] My manager would be sitting near me but there was no ability to dial in listening into calls.

[00:03:45] Now we're able to really do that and be able to coach up our recruiter so much quicker

[00:03:51] and easier because we can dial into these calls to listen in. We were operating off pieces of paper

[00:04:00] and now we have all these databases, ways of connecting with resources online just so much has evolved

[00:04:08] with technology. Absolutely I mean to make you feel less of a dinosaur I was talking someone about

[00:04:14] facts machines the other day and how they revolutionized recruitment so that's going back

[00:04:20] going back quite some time. So what's the market like at the moment for recruiting recruiters?

[00:04:26] What are the talent challenges that you're seeing? Yeah so I have definitely seen a lot of

[00:04:31] all over the last you know 10 years especially but recently I really think it's a market for

[00:04:39] it's a talent can't sorry candidate driven market right now, talent driven market. So

[00:04:44] I think that a lot of you know the people that we're recruiting and you know I think we're

[00:04:50] a little bit unique in our recruiting process because we do recruit entry level.

[00:04:58] You know anyone can come work here but we really do focus on entry level talent so we can train

[00:05:05] them up but the candidates are really taking a lot more time and considering all their options.

[00:05:12] I've seen them getting much more input from their mentors, their family members you know

[00:05:19] because we're recruiting people out of school a lot of them rely heavily on the advice of their

[00:05:26] you know professors and advisors as well. They care a lot more about you know the benefits and what

[00:05:34] what's provided you know what work life balance and kind of the extras that companies provide these

[00:05:40] days these days too. Is there an aspect of that about the I kind of the overall reputational brand

[00:05:47] of recruiting as a career path do you think how do you think that kind of sits with the

[00:05:51] teachers, the parents, the mentors that are advising people? I guess you know when I started

[00:05:56] as a recruiter yeah no one really knew what that was or it was like a negative connotation right

[00:06:02] it was like oh your head hunting and now we've seen so much more evolve with especially with the

[00:06:09] colleges that we're working with for sales programs and you know staffing is sales and so

[00:06:17] you know staffing and recruiting the sales and so there is so much more knowledge at that level

[00:06:23] of understanding what the career path is and how it can benefit them and you know people want to

[00:06:30] go into sales more. I mean when I when I got into this job I didn't know what it was and I just knew

[00:06:36] I wanted to make money and like I was really competitive so I felt like I could be good at it

[00:06:43] so yeah but yeah I think it's it's definitely evolved in that way towards more of a positive

[00:06:49] and more of a positive light. Talk to us about your internship program because you know what you do

[00:06:55] is quite unique so why did you launch it? How does it work, what kind of results do you get from it?

[00:07:00] Yeah thank you for asking it's one of our most exciting things I think and something that definitely

[00:07:06] sets us apart so we we've always had you know internship program at our full-time offices right

[00:07:13] during the summer people are looking for internships during winter break and things like that but

[00:07:18] what we realized in what our CEO Mark kind of said one day was hey what if we could train these

[00:07:26] interns year round that was something that we hadn't really considered to be able to do and so

[00:07:34] you know with our biggest living factor to growth it it had always really been attracting hiring

[00:07:40] those hardworking individuals right and so we thought if we have all these interns from these

[00:07:46] colleges can we train them during the school year and so we decided to open training centers

[00:07:55] near college campuses so that we could continue trading throughout the year these interns and then

[00:08:01] hire them full-time and launch them into you know our full-time workforce. How long has that been

[00:08:07] running now? So we launched our first training center in 2016. Wow and what kind of results have

[00:08:15] you seen from it you know if that was if that was sort of eight years ago how how successful has

[00:08:20] it been how people sort of moved through the organization? Yeah so I wish I had the numbers off the

[00:08:26] top of my head but honestly so I started the first training center and I think the second launch

[00:08:33] class that I had the second group of people that I had start at Elk who full-time many of them are

[00:08:40] directors now. So they yeah so they launched became successful and then got into leadership and

[00:08:46] are kind of you know running their own divisions and groups right now which is awesome um you know

[00:08:52] what we have seen is a higher retention rate as full-time people so if you've done the internship

[00:08:58] you have a higher likelihood of sticking around with us full-time they also have a quicker ramp up

[00:09:06] time. So you know they get trained as an intern so that they walk in here on their first day and

[00:09:13] some of them maybe have already closed deals or gotten people to work so they understand the

[00:09:20] the process and its entirety by that time which is amazing and you know a training program training

[00:09:27] new individuals it's costly and so you know we've figured out that we can train interns get them to

[00:09:36] be successful and then start at the company so that you know we're not I think I think I think

[00:09:42] their retention rate speaks a lot there right because we're able to figure out during the internship

[00:09:48] whether or not they're good fits and they do the same they understand from us like

[00:09:53] no you know what I recruiting is not for me or hey I love this yes I want to work full-time so we're

[00:09:59] able to kind of go through that attrition and retention situation in the internship process rather than full-time.

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[00:12:09] how do you sort of hire people into that process what are the particular qualities you look for

[00:12:14] is this this people from college is this people from school how does that work yeah so we do focus on

[00:12:20] college recruitment so we can get those entry level hires it's it's um you know focused around

[00:12:28] places that have sales programs you know working with career centers but honestly

[00:12:34] you don't even have to be wanting um sorry you don't even have to have a special

[00:12:41] major or like a wanting to be necessarily in sales we're looking for people with character traits

[00:12:48] right so people who are motivated people who are hardworking dedicated you know people who are

[00:12:56] really interested in kind of doing that fast pace type of job we definitely recruit based on

[00:13:03] character traits and not necessarily you know what your major is I think that does set us apart

[00:13:08] you know we're not looking at resumes and going to the bottom and figuring out if they were a

[00:13:14] specific major or not we have you know I was a government and women's studies major and I ended up in

[00:13:21] sales there we go and um in terms of the skills that you teach them or develop within them have

[00:13:30] they changed over the eight years that you've been doing this as as recruiting's changed yeah yeah

[00:13:37] definitely um definitely it's it's changed I mean we we kind of figured out that we can train

[00:13:46] interns as we would train full-time people and that took a little bit of time I think you know

[00:13:52] we started training them on pieces of the process at the beginning and then realized we can give

[00:13:58] them more and why not because they're grasping it and they're getting good at it and it's allowing

[00:14:04] them to start with that much more of a background and um they're able to be more successful so

[00:14:11] you know we definitely when we had interns at the start we definitely we gave them a fraction

[00:14:16] of kind of the job but now we're able to really train them on the full process and what advice would

[00:14:21] you give to companies who are looking to grow that talent in this way and you know not just

[00:14:27] kind of recruiting organizations but the any company that wants to take this kind of all year round

[00:14:32] structured internship program to kind of grow their pipeline of talent yeah that's a great question

[00:14:39] I would say do it you um you know you have to really kind of go all in right and we have found

[00:14:49] that we have to treat you know we treat our interns as full-time employees so that means they

[00:14:53] get all the fun stuff too and they're able to be involved in a lot of our culture here at the

[00:14:59] company as well so you know it's really an extension of our full-time base and it takes it takes a lot

[00:15:07] of time and dedication and patience because they are different population but I think you know it's

[00:15:15] been totally worth it for us and um I mean it's been nothing but positive for us which has been great

[00:15:22] and as a final question we talked a bit about how recruiting's changed over the last sort of

[00:15:27] 10 to 13 years what do you think's going to happen over the next five years how is recruitment

[00:15:33] going to evolve even further yeah so I I can't even imagine it's going to exactly change but

[00:15:40] you know again I'm just going to go back to technology right I think that's such a hot topic these days

[00:15:45] and you know specifically AI I was thinking a lot about this over the past you know week or so and

[00:15:53] you know I I think AI is definitely going to be helping us with process efficiency

[00:16:00] and increasing our our abilities with technology you know I'm I'm not afraid of it I think that

[00:16:06] you know we embrace you know we had alku embrace technology as a partner and so I'm very interested

[00:16:13] to see how it can continue to benefit us and how we can kind of figure out how can we do more

[00:16:21] in this recruiting space with technology behind us like that you know and kind of how how is it

[00:16:28] going to really help us increase our efficiency and abilities Leah thank you very much talking

[00:16:34] to me yeah thank you so much it was really fun my thanks to Leah you can follow this podcast on

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[00:17:09] much for listening I'll be back next time and I hope you'll join me

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