Talent Blog Editors Choose Their Favorite Stories of 2021

As 2021 comes to a close, we here at the Talent blog have been reflecting on another year of producing what we hope are thoughtful, helpful, and sometimes just straight-up fun stories for you, our global audience of recruiters and talent professionals.

This year we published over 200 posts covering a wide range of topics. We touched on everything from navigating the Great Reshuffle and building intersectionality into a hiring strategy, to creating top-notch internal mobility programs, retiring stressful interview questions, and giving recruiters in the trenches a much-deserved shout-out. And we may even have watched a Netflix documentary or two.

You can check out our earlier post covering the top 10 most-read blog posts of 2021, but we also wanted to take a moment to highlight our team’s personal favorites. So without further ado, here are our editor’s picks-of-the-year, with a quick summary of why that particular post found a place in our hearts:

How Your Diversity and Inclusion Plan Can Turn Talk into Action

Bruce Anderson: A year and a half after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others triggered an outpouring of protests and a wave of corporate commitments to do better on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Some companies have become complacent while others, some of which are genuinely committed, struggle to meet the goals and public pronouncements of 2020. For this post, we interviewed five DEI leaders from around the world to hear their insights about how to turn talk into action. They shared many great ideas but my favorite is to link executive compensation to meeting DEI targets. Why? Because it makes sense — and because one study found “increasing correlations between diverse representation at all levels when managers’ and leaders’ compensation are tied to the results.”

Why Skills-Based Hiring Starts with Your Job Descriptions

Greg Lewis: "When you need to hire someone, you care about what they can do — not where they've been." That's the basic idea of skills-based hiring: evaluating candidates by their competencies, not their credentials. Looking for someone from an elite school or big-name employer isn't just an ineffective way to hire — it also excludes capable candidates from underrepresented groups who’ve been shut out from past opportunities. This post details how even small tweaks to your job description (like highlighting “responsibilities” instead of “requirements”) can start to make a difference. After a year that saw many companies fall short of their own diversity pledges amid a tight labor market, assessing candidates by their performance, not their pedigree, should be a top priority.

The Call for a Shorter Workweek Is Trending — and Both Employees and Employers Are Behind It

Lydia Abbot: I think we can all agree that a shorter workweek sounds pretty nice. And lucky for us all, research is showing that it might actually be beneficial. A company in New Zealand found that a four-day workweek can actually boost productivity and Jacinda Ardern, the country’s prime minister, reported that it improves work-life balance. Business leaders everywhere are starting to agree that the 40-hour workweek is so 1940’s and it’s time to rethink how much time we actually need to spend working. From my point of view, just one extra day on the weekend would give so many people enough time to recharge and spend more time focusing on their well-being, their family, or pursuing interests outside of work.

LinkedIn’s COO on Why New Hires Shouldn’t “Hit the Ground Running”

Maria Ignatova: LinkedIn COO Dan Shapero knows how to drop some serious professional wisdom and it’s worth spending the time to read this post. One of the biggest hiring manager clichés that we have all heard is that a “new hire has to hit the ground running.” Dan builds a compelling case that hiring managers should be the ones running away from that mindset. “It just makes me cringe,” Dan says. “Some of the best, most transformative people we’ve hired didn’t necessarily bring all the skills on day one. They weren’t hired for who they are, but for who they could be.” This post not only changed how I think about who I hire, but also how I think about my career and the opportunities I raise my hand for.

How Childcare Benefits and Support for Working Parents Could Change Your Talent Pipeline

Mike Irvine: The past two years have shone a spotlight on the challenges facing working parents. But as our story highlights, “The current pandemic hasn’t created a childcare crisis as much as it has revealed — and profoundly exacerbated — one that already existed.” As a parent myself, this story gives me hope that there are innovative ways that companies can help provide childcare and support parents — and especially working women who still take on the majority of childcare duties.

*Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich from Pexels

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