Q&A with Ivan Burrell, Oceania Talent Sourcing Manager, Ernst & Young

We caught up with Ivan Burrell and asked him a few things about sourcing at Ernst & Young and his upcoming session at #sosuau.

Q. What is your role at EY and what sourcing problems are you trying to solve?
I manage the Oceania Talent Sourcing Function, leading the team and developing strategies to find and engage new skill sets as we grow and develop our business.

The main challenges that I tackle are:

• Developing tactical strategies to support new areas of our business
• Deploying an experienced sourcing team to support four service lines, and working with Leadership, HR and Lateral Recruitment to identify and implement sourcing strategies
• Developing strategies to engage and manage talent through process and technology, including management of our CRM system

Q. How has sourcing at EY evolved over the years?
When we initially built the Talent Sourcing team, it was quite small and a key challenge was selling the capability to the business. Since then it has developed in more of an Executive Search model, where we work with the recruitment team and the wider business to take a brief, deliver a longlist and headhunt candidates.

We also plan and execute tactical social media campaigns. The business needs are varied, and using a blended model of exec search and as-needed sourcing for volume recruitment allows us to be flexible and cater to the needs of our internal clients. Essentially our remit is senior, strategic, or hard-to-fill roles – including helping the business to identify where we might source new types of talent.

Q. What sourcing issues are the most pressing for EY?
We have a very large growth target to achieve by 2020, and we are hiring skill sets that we have not hired before. There are a few sourcing challenges to address:

•  Ensuring we use our candidates effectively. Many of our service lines recruit similar skills, so our Talent Pools need to make talent accessible internally and we need to manage our pools of talent effectively
• As we are recruiting new skill sets and types of talent, my team need to develop and measure strategies to support this. This involves research and longlisting but also tactical sourcing campaigns.
• With considerable growth, we can come up against process issues and utilisation of interviewers. My team support different approaches to interviewing and attracting talent, including engaging with universities and relevant associations to support internal assessment days. As a team we need to be flexible, creative and open to change.
• Sourcing for diversity, in line with EY’s ambition to bring different people together to provide a breadth of experience and diversity of thought

Q. What will you tackle at #sosau
How to identify, plan and execute effective talent sourcing strategies for a fast-growing and increasingly diversified business.

Check out www.sosu.com.au