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Join Pinpoint CEO Tom Hacquoil for quick-fire questions with leading recruiters on Talent Talks. And catch up on previous episodes of The Talent Revolution—a podcast dedicated to talent acquisition specialists, people leaders, and CEOs who want to hire better humans, and build stronger teams.
Know someone who'd be great on Talent Talks? Email us at podcast@pinpointhq.com
Tom Hacquoil: Welcome to Talent Talks. Quick fire questions to get to know leaders in recruitment. I'm Tom, Founder and CEO at Pinpoint, and today I'm joined by Charlotte Williams, Talent Acquisition Manager at Good Energy. They're a brilliant customer of ours and they're actually the only B-Corp Home Energy supplier in the UK with 100 percent renewable energy. They're doing all the things all energy suppliers should be doing, and they're a super exciting company for us to be working with. Charlotte's got loads of experience in this space that we recently saw on stage at IHR Bristol. Her talk was awesome and really excited to dig into that and ask her a whole bunch of questions today.
Charlotte, thanks for joining. You ready for some questions?
Charlotte Williams: Yeah, let's go for it.
Tom Hacquoil: Awesome. So let's start with this. If you weren't in recruitment, what would you be doing?
Charlotte Williams: So at uni I studied Ancient History and Egyptology. So the dream was to go to Egypt and work on dig sites. But some things happened within Egypt at the time, so there were quite a lot of strikes.
So dig sites got closed down, which was how I landed [00:01:00] in recruitment. So I'd like to think if I wasn't in recruitment. I'd be doing something with mummies.
Tom Hacquoil: Nice.
Charlotte Williams: But potentially maybe doing something in coaching and personal development, because I've got a bit of background in that as well.
Tom Hacquoil: Oh yeah, no, that's 'cause you were at EasyJet for a while, right?
And then you moved from there into kind of coaching with OVO and things like that. Is that right?
Charlotte Williams: Yes, it is. Yes. So I was at EasyJet for a couple of years working on the more short haul flights.
Tom Hacquoil: Okay, but you're basically an Indiana Jones is what you'd actually be doing if you weren't doing
Charlotte Williams: Yeah.
Tom Hacquoil: This.
Charlotte Williams: That or Lara Croft I think is a fair way.
Tom Hacquoil: Better analogy. Yeah. Getting the vibes. I like it. Okay, cool. Awesome. So look that sounds amazing. I think nevertheless, what you are doing is some awesome stuff with a really cool company, Good Energy. I guess it'd be great if you could give us a bit of a sort of 60 second quick fire summary of what you are spending your time doing there.
Charlotte Williams: Yeah at Good Energy, I look after everything from the big stuff, like the strategy and the budget and how that feeds into our overall goals within HR as well as the business [00:02:00] objectives. But I also look after day-to-day recruitment. I lead a team, so the team will specialize in a lot of our roles across the business.
And I've got a bit of a focus on the harder to fill roles as well as the more senior roles. So I'm currently spending quite a lot of time within our services field, so that's roles where we are installing solar panels, heat pumps to get them into customer and commercial properties. So I'm working on those 'cause they're a bit more tricky currently.
We also do lots of work with regards to our EVP, so looking at how we can proposition ourselves as an employer because we're not the most well known provider out there. So what we're trying to do is really sell ourselves on our EVP and our culture and ways of working.
Tom Hacquoil: Sure. To be honest, I'd say Pinpoint's kind of much the same, right?
Like the ATS landscape is very frothy. There's hundreds of vendors. We aren't the most well known vendor either, and we really try and sell both to employees and prospective employees, but also to clients on here's how we are different and our EVP forms such an important part of that, even for people buying our software.
I think when you were on stage at [00:03:00] IHR Bristol, you talked a lot about how you leveraged your EVP to help actually attract this awesome talent, I guess would be good to dig into that in a bit more. What is it that really sets Good Energy apart and how are you leveraging that when you think about going out to the market for these tougher hires?
Charlotte Williams: Yeah, for sure. And I do see a lot of Pinpoint in Good Energy. I think that we are quite similar businesses in the way we operate.
Tom Hacquoil: Sure, yeah.
Charlotte Williams: And a big part of Good Energy is that we're really lucky with what we offer. So we've got a great range of benefits. The culture is really fantastic.
Our ways of working and also obviously, our purpose and values as to why we do what we do is really appealing. So for us and one of our main focuses is how we actually leverage that and sell it to our people and potential people as well. And what we found the best way to figure out how we should be doing that is by speaking to our current people.
So I've spent quite a lot of time speaking to our field-based engineers, for example, to find out, how do you find a job, what's important to you from a company. [00:04:00] Do you use job boards? Do you use LinkedIn? Because for our office-based staff, we're a dab hand. We know to go to LinkedIn and source and how to go around that.
But with field-based, it's, a whole new kettle of fish for us. So actually speaking to our people and figuring out how they see jobs and what they want to see, that sort of helped us think about how we proposition ourselves even down to little things like how are our adverts laid out? Or what marketing campaigns should we be doing?
Should we be doing posters? Should we be doing ads on YouTube? Should we be doing more things on socials? We found a lot of those field-based roles have told us word of mouth. So actually, then they aren't on LinkedIn and there isn't much point in doing lots of sourcing through different sites 'cause that isn't necessarily how we're gonna find people.
So we've been looking at our refer a friend scheme and how we make that even more attractive, but also how we can roll that out through social media as well. And reward people for, liking and sharing our social pages so that people feel rewarded and keep [00:05:00] interacting with our content even outside of work.
Tom Hacquoil: Makes perfect sense. And I guess like you talked about a whole bunch of different channels there, right? From the conventional stuff and from the kind of more digital things that like the in-office folks are good and well versed at using all the way through to YouTube ads, which I think is awesome.
Social, refer a friend and other things. You've also spoken in the past about the importance of building like this really diverse direct talent pipeline, right? Is the same approach working for you there? Are you doing anything different as you build this kind of diverse pipeline of talent, or is that kind of all encompassed in the stuff that you've just talked about?
Charlotte Williams: No there's definitely more to that I would say. And a big part of that for us is looking at our job adverts. And I think it's really easy when you are creating a job advert, managers and the TA teams are like, you wanna find this unicorn of a candidate most times. So you are filling your essential list with everything that you think is the most important.
But actually, your essential list should be just that. What is essential. There are some things that you shouldn't need to put in [00:06:00] there, I don't believe. For instance, communication, if that's in your About You section, it doesn't need to be in your essentials, and that should be something you're assessing during the assessment process.
You don't wanna put people off by having a huge list. Being able to tailor it and keep it to if there's actual experience or qualifications or something a bit more tangible. People can go, oh yes, I have that. It's less subjective and, it opens up the pipeline and means that you can get more candidates through.
Another big thing that we do is we show the salary on every single role that we advertise. So we're actually a founding partner with We Show The Salary, which is a new sort of campaign running to encourage employers to do more. Around showing their salary. And that's a huge part. If you wanna build a diverse pipeline and you wanna encourage more of a, gender balance across applications, showing the salary on all roles is a clear win.
We also do a lot around hybrid working, we are based in the very lovely chippenham. However, it [00:07:00] is out of the way for a lot of people. So we utilize hybrid working with people either coming in once a week, month, or quarter based on how far away they are.
And that's helped us to really open up the pipeline and, get more candidates through the door essentially. Also for our field-based roles, we're in the process currently of looking at more apprenticeships and training opportunity. Even if there isn't an apprenticeship we can offer for particular roles, is there a way we can offer on the job training so we can take people in with no experience and train them ourselves?
Again, trying to diversify our pipeline, but also create that loyal talent that is more likely to stay as well.
Tom Hacquoil: Yeah. There's just an absolute treasure trove of advice there. So much appreciated. I think there's so many things people can take from what you've just said and apply to their own businesses, and I totally agree with the kind of, I, I'm hearing a lot of people talking about this kind of buy versus build approach to talent in terms of this apprenticeship scheme, building a loyal base of people, really delivering value upfront beyond just the salary and actually taking people on a journey with [00:08:00] skills development and stuff.
And the impact that's making on retention and engagement moving forward I think is huge. So I couldn't agree with you more on that. I think that's super useful. Thanks. I'd love to dig into sort of data and metrics and how you align on your strategy with the business. I think before we do that, I've just got two wild card questions that I'm gonna throw them at you both at the same time, if that's cool.
One, if you could swap jobs with anybody else at Good Energy for a day, who would it be and why?
Charlotte Williams: So, just for a day as well. Either one of our project managers or proposition managers. So I'd be so curious to know more about how they run new ideas for the business. So whether it's looking at new tariffs or how we bundle together our solar and heat proposition along with our energy proposition, I think that's really interesting and there's so much cool stuff that can be done there, I think that would be really, really cool to find out more about. I don't think I'd be able to help them much because [00:09:00] obviously that's not my bag. But yeah, it'd be great for me.
Tom Hacquoil: No, look, I think it's really cool and obviously it's a bit of a wild card, random question, but I do love the intent of it, right? Like I was just, I've just been speaking to one of our account execs and they're actually gonna go and work in the office of one of our clients for a day and sit behind their prospect and just look over their shoulder and kind of pepper them with questions and just shadow them and understand more about their day and what they do because they think there's so many things you can observe. Like obviously this AE already knows the space very intimately and they understand their customers and things like that.
They understand the value that we're delivering, but it's only when you actually watch somebody use the product and watch somebody go about their day that you identify the hundred ways that we haven't quite appreciated exactly what matters to these people. And so I think actually internally being able to go and stand in someone else's shoes for a day and see what their pain points are and what's going well.
It's super useful. So that was actually genuinely really interesting. I think a complete aside from anything to do with everything else we're gonna talk about, but what is your favorite karaoke [00:10:00] song?
Charlotte Williams: Probably not that appropriate, but I really, I would have to say Cult 45 would probably be my go-to.
Tom Hacquoil: I love that as a choice. It is wildly appropriate. Congratulations on your taste. I think that's fantastic.
Charlotte Williams: Thanks very much.
Tom Hacquoil: Okay, cool. Back to the data and the geeky stuff. So I think you've talked a lot so far about all the various things, and there's a lot of them that you are doing to build EVP, get messaging out there, attract the right talent, build the right talent. What are the data and the metrics that you're using on the back end of all of that stuff to actually measure success.
Charlotte Williams: Yeah, that's a really good question. So I would say that we started off by looking at the very obvious ones that you do within recruitment. Agency versus direct.
Tom Hacquoil: Yeah.
Charlotte Williams: Time to hire. Obviously with D&I data, what we've done since we've had Pinpoint is, we've had the ability, which we didn't have before, to go a bit deeper with that.
So now we look at time in each stage as well. And it's great way when we sort doing our [00:11:00] retros with managers on how the recruitment process went. To reflect on, how quick we were to review candidates and to get them into interviews and get them feedback. We've also done a lot more recently with candidate feedback. It was something we had and we would look at and we would try to implement, but now we hold ourselves a bit more accountable to it.
So we make sure that if there's a suggestion in there, we do proper investigation to see if that's something that we could implement. And that has massively helped. It's helped us develop our interview packs. So prior to an interview, we will send a candidate a pack around what to expect, the different competencies that they might get asked questions on as well as a bit of an overview of all of the different changes we could make to the process to make it more accommodating for them as well around reasonable adjustments.
So that's really helped us look at how we do things a different way. And now from feedback off that again, we're looking at, okay. Can we do interview packs that are videos, so it's us recorded talking to candidates [00:12:00] before the interview.
Tom Hacquoil: No, I love that and I think, look, that what I find interesting and it's such a good reflection of your brand is there's so many things that people could have said and that you could have said in answer to the question about what matters to you and what are the metrics that drive change, and these are that, but the ones that you use were both super candidate focused, right?
It's essentially what are we doing to make the candidate experience better? You talked about candidate experience surveys, and you talked about keeping that feedback loop really tight and then iterating and iterating on that which I love. But then even when you weren't talking about explicitly asking the candidate for things, you're saying, oh, what's the candidate time spent at each stage and where is there a bottleneck and how can we drill in deeper than just times to hire and times to fill and look at where are we slowing things down and how do we make that better?
I think it's great, you can always infer a lot from where people choose to spend their time on a reporting basis. And I think that's awesome. So yeah, thank you for sharing that. As we step back and look at the business more broadly, I think sometimes we often see as like recruitment can be looked at in isolation from the wider business.
And I guess I'm really interested in understanding like obviously [00:13:00] Good Energy as an organization has a big picture kind of company goal and strategy. So how do you go about aligning what you're doing from a recruitment strategy perspective with the kind of bigger goals of the business.
Charlotte Williams: Yeah, that's a really good question.
So we work incredibly closely with our People and Culture team, which is our HR team. Obviously we sit within People and Culture, but we also are very aligned with regards to strategy. So when the company creates their objectives and the strategy for the year, it all filters down. So it goes through to People and Culture.
And then I will work with the wider people and culture team to align that to what the talent acquisition strategy should be. I'm lucky and fortunate enough that I work at a company that is very good at informing us and telling us, what our goals are. And because we are purpose led, we are very focused with regards to achieving those.
So when we make the talent acquisition strategy, it naturally aligns to the business very well 'cause we are so well [00:14:00] informed. Equally our hiring managers, I have catch-ups with them every quarter at least to talk about what their plans are for the next three to six months. So I feel like by making sure we've got that communication always open and the fact that we have such great information from our leaders, Good Energy it's very easy to know what the business objectives are and where our focus is.
Tom Hacquoil: Makes perfect sense. Just having that sort of tight-knit relationship between TA and the rest of the HR function, then from HR to the rest of the business is so important, but I think that connection is often missed. So great that you guys are tackling that so well. Can't have a conversation these days without talking about AI.
What's your take on AI in the context of the TA industry? Like what's the impact it's having and how do you feel about that?
Charlotte Williams: I think AI needs to be embraced in a lot of ways because ultimately candidates are embracing it, so candidates are using it when they apply, so we need to use it as well.
However, I have I think quite strong views. I think that we need to use AI [00:15:00] in what I think of as the right way. So anything that can take away administration or manual elements of the process. So if we can use it to keep candidates more informed of the process or if we can use it for instance, like in Pinpoint with self scheduling interviews, anything like that is useful.
At Good Energy we do use it for some auto rejections, which are around things like location, if they're outside of the UK and we can't offer or sponsor that currently. But other than that, I wouldn't use it to review any applications. Open to using it for interview notes, anything like that.
Anything that takes away an administrative manual element. I think, a huge part of TA that we can't ignore is people. And in order to really understand people, you need people to understand people. You can't ask AI to do that. So I'm all about embracing it, but I think there's a right way to do that.
Tom Hacquoil: Yeah, one of the things you said very early in that response was this idea that we have no choice because candidates are embracing it. And I [00:16:00] think, yeah you're completely right to identify that. I think it's really interesting. I had a call yesterday with one of our very high volume hiring clients in Canada and they're asking for us to put in sort of text message verification now when applying for a job because they're getting so many AI bot applicants for roles.
That they're actually struggling to differentiate whether this is a person who's really looked at the role and considered it and applied for it. And actually we're seeing that as a sort of ATS solution provider that adoption of AI just isn't a choice. And actually we have to think about the second order ramifications of that and start building tools to make sure it's easy for you as a customer to identify who's real and who isn't. Right? Yeah. And yeah I think your approach is quite well considered, to be honest, and that I think I agree with you. As we wrap up.
And yeah, again, really appreciate you, you taking the time to run us through these things with such comprehensive answers today. I guess what's your view on the biggest challenge that we are facing as an industry in 2025. What are the big things that TA has to contend with as we look [00:17:00] through the rest of the year?
Charlotte Williams: From a selfish point of view, at Good Energy, I would say that we are experiencing two very different markets. So for some of our roles, we're seeing an absolute flood of applications, which again, I do think is probably linked to AI. But then also in some areas of the business. So for instance, our engineers and people in the field, there is an absolute to use the opposite drought of applications.
Tom Hacquoil: Yeah.
Charlotte Williams: And there aren't any people. So I think that is gonna be the biggest challenge, is figuring out how we manage the two, how we can get through the flood of applications and make sure people still have a great experience, but also how we can talent pipeline for the difficult-to-fill roles for the future.
Tom Hacquoil: Makes perfect sense.
And I think just to reassure you, we are seeing that problem very widespread across anybody doing anything, as we would call it in the office, in the field, is seeing these kind of very different worlds colliding with each other at the same time. I think your approach makes a great deal of sense.
But yeah, there are real challenges out there and I [00:18:00] think it's interesting when we work with organizations who only do one of those two kind of arenas of recruitment that just don't observe the difference, if that makes sense. They think that the whole world looks like the problem they're contending with, whereas organizations like yours have this different perspective 'cause you have both challenges simultaneously. And I empathize with that, but I'm also very confident you'll handle it swimmingly.
Thanks so much for your time today, Charlotte. It's great to go through the 10 questions. Everybody, you can follow Charlotte on LinkedIn. We'll put links to Charlotte's LinkedIn and to the website for Good Energy so you can learn more about them, see their EVP in the real world and see how they're doing things.
But yeah, Charlotte, thank you so much for joining us today.
Charlotte Williams: Thanks, Tom.
Tom Hacquoil: If you wanna be featured or know somebody who'd be a great fit for Talent Talks, please get in touch, we'd love to speak to them. And have a fantastic day, thank you everybody.