Meet the Exhibitor: Inspired Selection

A Q&A with recruitment specialist and IPG Spring Conference supporter Inspired Selection

1. How can you help independent publishers become better businesses in 2020?

We have been so impressed with how publishers, many IPG members included, have responded to the global pandemic and are here in 2020, as always, to share advice and offer counsel on people practices through lockdown and beyond. We have been blogging and speaking on webinars and the IPG Podcast about virtual interviews, remotely onboarding staff and the skills that are emerging as important for successful working in these times. Additionally, later this year we will be producing a paper on managing the return to work of furloughed staff that will be free for publishers to read. If any IPG member wishes to talk with us on a more direct level about these topics, we would welcome the conversation of course.

Naturally, we are still recruiting for independent publishers, and in finding the right people for your businesses will play our part in helping publishers become better businesses this year. Alongside the more traditional recruitment, we offer our Inspired Temps service so publishers can take on people on hourly rates as they go through periods of transition. Inspired Search, our headhunting service, can support publishers looking for new senior staff as perhaps new roles and structures emerge out of this period. People are what make businesses great, and we are committed to our role in that for you.    

2. Beyond the coronavirus crisis, what is the biggest issue and the biggest opportunity in your part of the publishing world at the moment?

Our part of the publishing world is of course the recruitment aspect. As with everything, the biggest issues are often also the biggest opportunities. In this case, the issues are around shifting the entire recruitment process to be managed remotely. This includes remote ways of getting to know our clients and their vacancies, interviewing candidates, working with clients on their interview processes and onboarding programmes, and of course networking. We have seen some fantastic successes in all these areas as creative and digital solutions are found to overcome the fact that you’re not able to meet in person or ‘get a sense’ of the place in a meeting or interview.

The opportunity this has given us is the chance to reassess practices and processes and what’s really important from each one. For example, with much less travel involved, senior management have been around more to virtually meet new starters at our clients, which has set the tone for engagement and respect for their new working life. Additionally, lockdown has meant that where you are located is now almost irrelevant, and so there is a real opportunity for companies to be hiring people from a more geographically dispersed talent pool—which has been an aim for publishers and IPG members for a long time now.

In such a challenging and difficult time, it’s been an opportunity to ask ‘how would we like this to look?’, ‘how could this look?’ and ‘how will this look?’. The answers, we think, will begin to shape a very exciting new chapter for the way people are recruited and managed in publishing.

3. What are you most looking forward to about the IPG's virtual Spring Conference in June?

We are avid networkers and it will be fantastic to ‘meet-up’ with faces old and new at the conference. We have been missing you all so much! We look forward to hearing how you are, what this period has meant for you and what we can do to be even more supportive to the IPG community.

Visit the Inspired Selection website.