Shahrzad Flanagan – How to be the best talent partner to your business

Shahrzad (Shaz) Flanagan, Global Talent Acquisition Manager at CMSPI, talked us through how she typically “fell” into recruitment as we all do. She cut her teeth in agency recruitment with Robert Walters before moving to an internal role, intrigued at the prospect of working for a global business. She admits this was without researching what internal recruitment entailed, and she quickly had to adapt and utilise her agency skills with challenging hiring managers. Now, with a global title and a small recruitment team, Shaz’s primary interest lies in recruiting unique talent and early career development, striving to support hiring managers in making the best hires.

 The move into internal recruitment can present different challenges, and Shaz shared her top three tips for becoming a successful Talent Partner to hiring managers. Firstly, Shaz highlighted the importance of shadowing each team in action to understand how they work and interact. Additionally, making friends with Finance and educating yourself on the terminology can be a great way to make yourself credible. 70% of most businesses’ bottom line is salaries – so the importance of budgets, profitability and leveraging of data is where your recruitment knowledge needs to take a step up. Finally, the ability to re-prioritise and communicate internally will transform your company’s reputation in the market, candidate experience and hiring manager’s ability to interview effectively.

 In an era where Equality, Diversity & Inclusion is a hot topic, it’s now more important than ever to be aware of unconscious bias and how this restricts hiring processes. Shaz highlighted the importance of informal training and coaching of hiring managers to empower them to be ambassadors for the business. We discussed the Predictive Index and how this has been a positive influence at CMSPI when recruiting and learning how current employees work and approach different situations. There is no final destination for ED&I, but all these elements contribute to a business’ longevity.

 Our attendees delivered an abundance of questions to which Shaz gave incredibly in-depth and knowledgeable answers. We had to cut our time short and put a halt to the questions, much to everyone’s dismay. So much so that we are hosting a round-table next week to round off this enlightening Q&A session. This truly shows how much value people find in these events, not to mention the amazing opportunity to network with like-minded individuals and form new relationships over post-event drinks!

 We would like to express our immense gratitude to Shaz for being an excellent first speaker for our OP Academy North events. Also, thank you to all who attended and shared feedback with us. We hope to see you again at future events!

 Our next OP Academy North event will be in October and will have an HR focus – stay tuned for further information on our speaker and their chosen topic. We look forward to expanding our guest network and making each event bigger and better than before. Please get in touch with Frankie Glarvey below if you would like to receive an invitation to our future events.