Career Journeys in Talent Acquisition: Josh Wingate

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 Josh Wingate; if you'd like to be next, please reach out to a TTC Community Manager.

Introduce yourself:

Hi, I’m Josh, a Talent Acquisition professional with a number of years of experience recruiting for some of the fastest-growing tech companies in the UK in a variety of sectors, including ecommerce, digital consultancy and video games!

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?

My first big milestone was making the decision to move to internal recruitment after falling into the industry through agency. The agency was a great grounding for me, helping me learn the essentials of good candidate experience and developing relationships and networking, but I had a passion for growing exciting businesses and agency life was too transactional for me.

I then moved internally when I joined Cinch Cars at the time of its excessive growth and helped establish it as one of the best places to work in tech at the time. I got the chance to develop skills in employer branding, people operations, diversity and inclusion and more! This helped cement my belief in the extensive value we, as talent professionals, can bring to a business outside of simply filling jobs.

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?

I’ve also learned a lot about agile working methods used in modern software development and implemented these into my day-to-day practices. We can take a lot of these and adapt them to recruitment, such as using retrospective sessions to encourage collaborative process improvement both in your teams and with your hiring managers.

You don’t have to be technical, as it’s all about the idea of continuous improvement as your practices and methods will likely never be perfect in such a fast moving market. There are lots of free resources available to learn about agile software development, or if you work with software developers or product professionals, ask them about it and let them help you run these kinds of sessions.

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

For me, the biggest challenge right now is feeling like we have to continue to prove our worth to the businesses we work for outside of simply filling jobs. The recruitment industry has suffered greatly recently, with redundancies and a struggling market, and it’s easy to feel like we’ve chosen the wrong career or like it’s all hopeless and that we’ll always just be there to fill jobs. Especially when reflecting on my own career, I’ve really been lucky in all the value-

added projects and achievements I’ve contributed to, and I’ve been really focusing on those

when I was hit with my own redundancy experience recently. It’s helped me stay motivated and hopeful that my perception of recruiters will get better. My own advice for this would be to keep a “brag-document” to highlight all the things you’ve done that you’re proud of, and add to it as you go, not just when you need to update your CV. Doing this alongside getting involved with as much as you can in different departmental projects can help raise your profile internally and give you a confidence boost that you’re adding value to your business.

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?

When I first got into recruitment, I really struggled to strike the work/life balance, and I think

that’s because in an agency, it’s often expected to work long hours etc., but this led me to really burn out, and I was no good to anybody in that state. Now I really take the time to have open discussions with those I work with about how I best work day-to-day, so my colleagues know my triggers, and how I work best so they understand if I’m not as effective later in the day for example, or how best to communicate with me.

I often do this in a “ways of working with me” style document that I can share with anyone who is curious about my ways of working. Being honest about this upfront leads to better working relationships in my opinion, and has helped me establish and keep my boundaries so that I can look after my mental health and have a better work/life balance. We work most of our lives, never underestimate the importance of this.

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?

Like most, I’ve been really keen to explore the use of artificial intelligence in recruitment. I’m not worried about losing my job to it as a few might be, but I’m interested in how it can be used to streamline some of the more mundane activities that we face, such as job advert writing and using it to assist with certain projects. The important thing to remember is that it’s not perfect, and while it will never replace us, it can free us up to focus on the more important aspects of our roles, such as process improvement, candidate experience, building and fostering hiring manager relationships etc.

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?

I think the most important aspect of keeping up with the industry is to network and collaborate with as many people as you can. It might not be for everyone, but the industry moves at such a rapid pace it’s important to keep talking to others in our industry to understand what challenges are they facing, how are they overcoming them, what are they doing well that you can take away for your own challenges?

Most are very open to talking about these things, even if you’re all competing for the same talent. I’d recommend attending as many networking events as you can (in-person and online) and connecting with others to spark discussions.