Career Journeys in Talent Acquisition: Bevin Baby

Thanks for reading! This series is designed to shine a spotlight on Talent Acquisition professionals and highlight their career journeys and learnings so far. Today, we're joined by Bevin Baby. If you'd like to be next, please reach out to a TTC Community Manager.

Introduce yourself:

I'm a performance driven sourcing recruiter with hands-on agency and in-house experience across geographies like Europe, US & India in Tech & Product Recruitment.

Can you walk us through the key milestones in your career in the talent acquisition space? What were some pivotal moments or decisions that shaped your journey?

Moving to the UK to pursue Masters in Data Analytics & HRM from University of Leeds and joining McKinsey & Company right after graduation as a Sourcing Recruiter was a career defining moment for me.

Some notable achievements from my entire career that I am proud of are:

1. Driving total revenue to £650K+ while at agency recruitment achieving over 166% revenue targets.

2. Filled hard to close job roles like Director of Engineering (Diversity), Director of Product, Senior Engineering Manager, Chief Architect, Senior Computer Scientist and Machine Learning Engineer.

3. Worked with some of the best clients / hiring managers like Google, AMEX, PayPal, Amazon, Walmart, Uber, Adobe, E&Y, and start-ups series E+ Unicorns.

4. Working with McKinsey & Company to build the Business Change & Transformation teams + Digital Cloud & Software Engineering teams, successfully hiring an Associate in the short time I was employed.

In this rapidly evolving industry, what strategies or practices have you adopted to continuously enhance your skills and stay ahead of the curve? Do you have any resources or learning methods you'd recommend to others?

Some strategies I have used to always have a competitive advantage as a recruiter:

1. Using social media platforms to hire niche talent. For example, if I am hiring for a machine learning engineer, I tap into talent from data science communities such as Kaggle, and software engineering platforms like GitHub, Stack Overflow etc.

2. Hiring diversity profiles has always been a challenge for recruiters. I have used AI-powered talent search engines like SeekOut. SeekOut's key features include a custom Boolean search for precise results, powerful filters for complex searches, and supports blind hiring to reduce unconscious bias by hiding candidate photos and names from recruiters.

3. Communities: I have recently joined The Talent Community and Higher, and I find these communities immensely helpful while applying for talent positions.

4. Podcasts and long form content: I am hooked on to this podcast “WTF is” by Nikhil Kamath, and it covers a broad range of topics including technology, venture capital, climate change etc. I would highly recommend watching this for intellectually stimulating long form conversations.

What has been the most challenging aspect of your career in talent acquisition, especially when you were actively seeking work? How did you overcome it, and what advice would you offer to others facing similar hurdles?

My current situation has been the toughest and most challenging situation so far. Not having a job in the current market is difficult, but perseverance and resilience is key.

One of the major challenges I am facing as an immigrant from India is having the need for visa sponsored jobs in the UK. I have used the help of International Hustlers, a community started by Farhoon Asim helping international students and graduates land a job in the UK with the power of community.

My advice to someone in a similar situation is to not lose hope, not to take rejections personally, move to the next application immediately and understand that there is a timing for everything.  Hold on, be strong and stay true to yourself. Everything will work out in the end. There will be a moment in the future you look back at this situation and see how far you’ve come.

The recruiting world can be fast-paced and demanding. How do you strike a balance between your professional commitments and personal life? Are there specific routines or rituals you follow?

Work life balance as a recruiter can be challenging. Here are some of the strategies I use:

1. Always planning the week ahead and maintaining a capacity tracker of the work I am supposed to do for the week. This makes sure that I am successfully managing multiple roles, multiple projects, and responsibilities, often with tight deadlines and high expectations.

2. Adding buffer time between meetings and automating it by setting the option on Microsoft Bookings has helped me. The buffer period of 5 to 10 minutes between the next meeting helps me to relax and get my thoughts together for the next meeting and not feel stressed out.

3. Setting Boundaries: Defining work hours and taking regular breaks during the work hours is important. Also updating my slack status is something I do to keep my team members informed.

4. Time Management: Prioritising tasks in recruitment is important considering the job involves the pressure to fill positions, however learning to prioritise projects based on importance and urgency can significantly improve work life balance.

5. I use my weekends travelling places, enjoying time with friends, and investing in self-care.

As someone involved in talent acquisition, you've likely witnessed various technology and trend shifts. Which technologies or trends do you believe have had the most significant impact on the industry, and how have they influenced your role?

Some recent trends in recruitment that have caught my attention are:

1. Generative AI: Prompt Engineering is becoming the next “hot job” in the market. Major consulting firms like Accenture and PWC are investing billions in developing AI capabilities. A recruiter who is well versed with using generative AI will have a competitive edge in the market.

2. The 2024 LinkedIn Recruiter release will have several key areas of innovation: AI assisted candidate discovery, smarter suggestion, simplified candidate outreach, actionable data and insights, AI-Assisted Projects and Conversational Search, AI-Assisted Messaging, Automated follow-ups, suggested actions, Video Connect, Hiring Manager Collaborations, AI assisted job targeting etc.

These trends have already influenced my role in a significant way. I have started using AI powered search tools like SeekOut to filter diversity profiles from LinkedIn. My master’s degree in people analytics has played a huge role in up-skilling me for the future.

For those entering the talent acquisition space or those looking to pivot within it, what's the one piece of practical advice you'd give to help them thrive, especially if they are actively job-seeking?

If you are looking for a career in talent acquisition start first with agency recruitment, as you can work with multiple clients and solve different problem statements. No one day is like another, each tomorrow has different challenges and getting hands-on and working within tight deadlines and quarterly targets will give you better learnings of the market and a feel for recruitment in general.

Make sure you get into recruitment for the right reasons. “Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles" – Steve Jobs. The reason I love recruitment is because I truly believe in changing people’s lives one profile at a time. If you want some inspirations, my suggestion would be to watch movies like Jerry Maguire & Money Ball which are related to recruitment in the sense that they offer valuable insights into the world of business and relationships, which can be applied to recruitment practices.