Canva’s Amy Schultz on Designing Better Recruitment Experiences
On this episode of Redefining Work, I’m joined by Amy Schultz, global head of talent acquisition at Canva. We discuss Amy's career journey from LinkedIn to Canva, how Canva uses visual storytelling in its recruiting processes, and Amy's perspective on generative AI in recruiting.
Amy has lived around the world for much of her life, but recently came full circle in returning to live in her hometown of Albury, Australia. Amy’s background in talent acquisition at LinkedIn exposed her to recruiting across the globe, from the APAC region to the Americas, during her “tour of duty” — the networking platform’s novel approach to fostering relationships with employees.
“There's a goal, there's a mission, and potentially, you have the skills to help see that mission through and achieve that goal for the business. And in exchange, you get valuable experiences,” Amy says.
Find out the impact her time at LinkedIn had on Amy’s career, and how it set the tone for her current role as a global talent leader at Canva.
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Applying Old Lessons and Learning New Ones
Amy’s tour of duty with LinkedIn left her forever grateful for the experience and the network she built there — and it’s influenced her approach to employee relationships at Canva. “People want to hold on to their talent, and not sort of encourage them to explore and move elsewhere,” she says. “And that's such a loss — for the individual, potentially, for the hiring manager, and also for the company.”
While Amy hopes that new hires will build their careers at Canva, she’s also clear about investing in their development. “We're helping you be great at Canva, and hope that the skills that you get on this team set you up for whatever’s next,” she tells recruits.
In moving to a startup like Canva, Amy realized that she needed a different approach. She spent her first few months “figuring out what is going to work best for Canva, and not just doing something because it's best practice, or is the playbook that you've brought from your previous company,” she says.
Making Recruiting Memorable
At Canva, Amy’s learned more about the importance of designing a visually compelling and engaging recruiting process. LinkedIn takes the meta approach of using the platform to recruit for its openings; similarly, Amy decided to integrate Canva’s design and presentation capabilities into the company’s recruiting process.
“How can we embed Canva at each key moment of our hiring process to help create peak moments for candidates?” she says. “We use it for our talent, brand and engagement materials we might send a prospect when we reach out. We use Canva docs and presentations for our interview prep material. ... We use it in our offer and onboarding materials.”
By integrating Canva into the hiring process, Amy and her team transform a staid, potentially dull process into a memorable journey for every candidate.
Experimenting With AI to Upgrade Hiring
A recent Canva survey found that 90% of hiring managers believe that candidates can use generative AI, in some form, when applying. Nearly half (45%) of job seekers report using genAI to improve their resumes, with over 70% finding it made building their résumé easier.
As a talent acquisition leader, Amy says generative AI can make the hiring process better for everyone involved, including recruiters. That said, recruiters need to experiment with AI and develop guidelines for its use.
“For TA, what I think we need to take away from these findings is, ‘OK, candidates are starting to use it, hiring managers are OK with it. How are we then using it in our hiring process? How are we guiding candidates to use it?’” she says.
AI shouldn't make talent decisions alone, but it can help HR and TA teams improve processes, Amy says. “I don't yet view generative AI as something that can really help us assess talent, but it can certainly help make the experience better and more efficient, ideally, for recruiters, for candidates and for the hiring managers,” she says. “And it's on us to start experimenting, … finding use cases and having a point of view.”
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