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.