Playa Hotels & Resorts

Kandy Dela Cruz Peralta

Kandy Dela Cruz Peralta is an HR Business Partner with over 12 years of experience driving high-value impact in diverse companies. She specializes in enhancing employee experience and business growth through innovative HR strategies. Kandy has a proven track record in both local and multinational retail and service industries, as well as consulting projects in Talent Development and Organizational Strategy. She is also dedicated to implementing best market practices to achieve outstanding results for companies and their people.

Through this article, Kandy shares her insights on the key strategies and considerations for HR professionals in enhancing talent acquisition, emphasizing the importance of designing positive candidate experiences, reducing biases, fostering internal talent development and embracing innovation in HR practices.

What specific advancements in talent acquisition are projected to have significant implications for fulfilling business needs?

Design, implement and maintain special care and attention to the talent and internal hiring manager for recruitment and selection. To be competitive as a company, nowadays it’s not only about the candidate participating and needing a job, but companies also have a bigger challenge to bring good-qualified professionals that truly want to join the company and, most importantly, stay for a long time.

While it is true that AI is having a good impact on organizations, in people, I still do not perceive that this (by itself) integrates and meets all the needs of the business. At the level of response times, efficiency and other KPIs of the recruiter's role, it may add value for the business to implement them. However, I think beyond the simple fact of achieving effective recruitment: I focus on how loyal and empowered this person enters the company, that he/she values and empowers his/her growth plan and permanence in the company. This has greater value from my point of view and strategy in this pillar of human resources.

Particularly in the last 5 years, I have been investing a lot of effort in adding value to the organizations where I have worked designing high focus on candidate and internal hiring managers. Beyond ensuring that recruitment tools, platforms and policies are in place, working and being updated with a lot of innovation, I can bet that none of this will generate a greater impact than the experience that the process itself generates for the candidate and the internal client (whether positive or not).

We must invest in designing experiences, create real and tangible diversity and inclusion initiatives and dare to break paradigms by profiling candidates for one or another role: who says that a commercial or marketing professional cannot work in a talent attraction or organizational culture/communication position.

Investing in people to build their loyalty, investing in the employer brand and having consulting or mentoring to accompany the leaders, adds a lot to the value proposition that people want to see differentiated and functional to connect with the company.

“Don't judge talent solely by their resume; thousands of individuals carry untold stories and potential beyond what's written on paper—educate, reduce biases and listen to each person's unique narrative.”

And there’s a lot more to bring to the table when talking about innovation and people’s loyalty with real purpose.

What are the key do's and don'ts that you would suggest to HR professionals in similar roles across different companies?

DO’s:

Segment HR has the strong and hard part that executes the operation and raises the results, but also cares for the strategy and designs projects aligned to continuous improvement     and specific needs of the organization. Routine can hurt the value that HR genuinely generates for the organization.

Knowledge of the business, every HR must know and be able to explain to any scenario or audience the WHAT, WHAT FOR and WHY of the business he/she represents. Whether it is part of the onboarding of personnel or a specific training designed for HR, it is critical to know what is happening in the company to be able to make decisions regarding personnel, innovation, processes and continuous improvement based on what is really needed, not necessarily what the manual says or what other companies do.

Recognize and develop, regardless of whether you have a position ready to be filled: HR must always have a person in succession ready. Here goes the point of having segmented who strictly leads the department's strategy and look at this point. Identify opportunities and design upskilling programs to be ready when the opportunity to promote personnel presents itself. And this is not only for HR, but executed in equal measure together with the other departments, accompanying the leaders to understand competencies and who they really have in their team to recruit internally for their next vacancies.

DONT’s

Stop seeing a talent by their resume (there are thousands of people who do not know the real impact of a resume), educate and reduce biases and give out the opportunity to hear the story of each person. Or worse yet, because you see 1 or 2 jobs of less than 1 year, here's the thing, people have the right to say “NO, I don't connect with the company or the role and leave without penalty.”

a. I have the practice of designing tools for my preliminary process where I take the candidates to tell their story focused on what I am looking for very specifically, and it is amazing how there is so much connection in that moment, that I don't necessarily have when I see the resume. Also, situations of people who have their last three experiences with less than 1.5 years and it’s for reasons that, upon hearing it during the interview, I would leave myself after three months, wouldn’t last the whole 1.5 years. In scenarios of ethics or breach of contract or benefits, bias is one of our worst enemies in recruiting.

b. I saw it on LinkedIn Learning and in real life in several recruitments I have been able to work on, and I insist: do not deny yourself the opportunity to hear the story of your candidates, especially from those who have a real interest in your company, which is the most common recruitment and to which I bet the highest probability of permanence.

Avoid killing the ideas and initiatives of the team, over time I have perceived a lot of fear of the idea of: “If I let my team know or see everything I do, they will take away my position and I will be indispensable.” Kill this thought and be open to the most efficient process. Leave behind your legacy, create new ways of doing the job and evolve every chance you get. If your path at one company is over, prepare for the next one (and even better if it's in a different industry than what you already know).

Finally: never leave candidates without closing the process and without thanking them or appreciating the time, energy and information they give you. This hurts the candidate experience and, therefore, the employer brand. We stop making a difference and remain part of the pack.