Career Journeys in Talent Acquisition: Becca Collis

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 Becca Collis. If you'd like to be next, please reach out to a TTC Community Manager.

Introduce yourself:

Becca Collis is a highly experienced Talent Professional, a leader who enjoys bringing order to chaos with a solutions-first approach and a passion for inspiring others to identify and pursue their dreams.

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 work in retail management proved to be the springboard that opened the door to recruitment for me. However, I soon found that working a temp desk was not the best fit. After a rather twisty career, I knew that I wanted a career in recruitment. I have been lucky to work in such a wide range of roles, from contractors for defence, to military intelligence soldiers and RPO, from TA to Training and Development. My fascination with leadership, selection, and all things talent have presented some brilliant opportunities.

One that comes to mind was when I moved to AMS. I had completed the final interview for a role that went internal but I was also convinced that the leader who has interviewed me would be an amazing mentor for me, and so when I emailed her to tell her so after being pipped to the post, I didn’t expect an email just a couple of weeks later because she wanted to talk about a new role that she was considering pulling under her structure for which she wanted a ‘disruptor’.

Working under her was an amazing experience that genuinely transformed me as a leader in the TA space. She is someone who always created a safe space for me to discuss challenges and my left-of-field ideas. She would also help me to redirect my boundless energy when I was in danger of getting too far ahead of myself. Having a brilliant leader, mentor, and coach is an amazing experience, and for me, working with someone like that was more important to me than the day-to-day work that I did because I was able to learn so much.

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 love to learn, within the last 6 years I have completed a CIPD level 5 diploma, a Nutrition and Lifestyle coaching Level 4, and all but the end project for a level 5 Apprenticeship in Transformational Leadership. I ask for book recommendations, which I then invest time in reading. I attend industry events (both in person and online), and I pick up calls with strangers in my industry (especially new connections). I also highly recommend taking secondments, getting involved with projects outside of your regular role, and applying for roles that lie to the outer limits and beyond your current experience. Use these as catalysts to study the new areas, dive in, and learn all that you can.

Finally, a really important one for me, create an environment for feedback, not a mirror reflection but genuine, sometimes awkward and/or painful feedback. Get used to asking for it, gratefully receiving it, assessing your actions in light of it and providing it, Radical Candor is my favoured model to use as a start point, if you haven’t read the book or watched the videos available, find some time it has been a game changer for my personal growth.

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?

I chose to take a career break to spend time with my only focus being the raising of my small people. I didn’t know whether I would choose to return to work, but when I did, so much had changed in such a short time that I struggled to know how and where to pitch myself. I was lucky; a recruiter saw my plight and set up a call with me. He listened as I told him that I had been expecting that I should take a lower salary than I had been on at the MoD, owing to the break, and so I had been applying for entry-level roles. He was direct and straight to the point, “you are highly unlikely to land a transactional recruitment role and if you do, you will not find it easy because you are a strategic leader now, your skillset is different”, “you also left on a civil servant salary, aim higher, much higher and pitch yourself like you’re Key Skill Selling (KSS) a candidate, you have the skills so why aren’t you using them”. Weeks later, I was offered the role that saw me through my first year back in full-time work.

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?

I have always been an advocate of prioritisation of workplace wellness not just because it’s a nice thing to do but because it creates the best environment to build winning cultures and high-performing teams. I have so many things that I do to create balance, so I will select a few today. Wherever I work and whether my lunch break is 30 minutes or an hour, I will put an hour in my diary, this enables me to routinely get out for a 15 minute walk around the block without screens or communications interrupting and also provides a buffer for email, Teams and Slack responses even when my day is back to back with meetings. I am an early bird, so I tend to start work early and generally finish on time, prioritising my endorphin gym rat fix. If my team need me, they have to WhatsApp me. I don’t have work emails or Teams on my personal mobile, this way, if someone chooses to contact me, it is because they need to reach me urgently, otherwise, I will address any emails in the morning.

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?

There have been so many, but currently, AI is the elephant in the room here, but it isn’t the only one. Video interviewing is another trend that has emerged. With candidates now more able than ever to create compelling CVs and cover letters for jobs that they have no experience and TA teams reduced to lean skeletal systems, I have witnessed a swing away from a focus on candidate journey, seeing age related questions be mandated and degree qualifications become the minimum standard as well as a move towards requests for up front salary requirements coupled with verbose, protracted selection processes that frustrate all involved with them. I have long advocated that we need a more comprehensive approach to selection, that doesn’t lean purely on a CV.

The advent of mainstream availability of AI tools does seem to be forcing the agenda on this now, I am excited about some of the approaches and products that are being created to tackle this. I feel that as TA leaders, we need to be looking at how we solve the problem of drowning teams and excessively verbose interview processes by leveraging AI, and certainly, I am seeing many more people using tools in this arena. I do also think that whilst we need to embrace technology, we need to do so with caution, when you consider that 80% of all data is unstructured, we are a very long way from being able to trust the returns of AI as best practice, but we do need to upskill our teams to understand how they work with AI tools, as enablers rather than blockers or complete solutions to human problems.

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?

Education is your friend, dive into the area of interest and critically asses the skills that you already have, connect with people that work where you might like to or in roles you feel that would be a fit and ask if they will pick up a coffee chat with you so that you can pick their brain.