Paul Phillips
Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Onboarding, and Business HR
Avanade
Episode 80
Unlocking Talent: How Proactive HR & AI Drive Impact in a Fast Market
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleAugust 4, 2025 · 19:06
Thesis
“Proactive talent creation, strategic leveraging of AI in HR, and a deep focus on candidate experience are essential for navigating a fast-paced talent market, achieving diversity goals, and driving measurable business impact.”
Show notes
Paul Phillips reduced Avanade's time-to-hire by seven days using AI — and then calculated the revenue impact: $35 million. It was, as he puts it, "the easiest business case to get signed off by the CFO for sure." But the more interesting story behind that number is what the team did with the time they saved: they reinvested it in the human parts of recruiting that technology can't do — deeper conversations with candidates, more time with hiring managers, better relationships at every touchpoint. Productivity gains spent on efficiency are one kind of win. Productivity gains spent on people are a fundamentally different one.
Paul leads global HR and talent acquisition at Avanade, a 60,000-person technology services firm, and his most consequential strategic move was recognizing that in a fast-moving market, you can't always hire the talent you need — sometimes you have to create it. The Avanade Academy is the answer to that insight: an internal talent pipeline built from scratch that simultaneously addresses skill shortages and strengthens the company's diversity profile. It's a program that's won multiple industry awards, but what Paul focuses on is the underlying logic — if external talent markets can't give you what you need, the organizations that build their own pipelines will win.
He's also unusually candid about the candidate experience problem — the communication gaps, the wait times, the impersonal interactions that drive talented people away before an offer is ever made. AI has given his team the tools to close those gaps in ways that feel more responsive and more human, not less.
- Building your own talent pipeline — how the Avanade Academy solved a global skill shortage and strengthened diversity simultaneously
- The $35M business case for AI in recruiting — what a 7-day reduction in time-to-hire actually means in revenue terms, and how to make that calculation
- Reinvesting productivity gains in people — the philosophy behind using AI efficiency to create more human touchpoints, not fewer
- Candidate experience as a competitive advantage — where most talent acquisition processes leak candidates and how to fix the communication gaps
- Diversity hiring in complex markets — the strategies Avanade developed for gender parity and inclusion in geographies like Japan where standard approaches don't apply
- Staying true to organizational goals amid changing trends — why clarity of purpose matters more than chasing every new HR innovation
Previ is an employer network that provides private pricing for employees — saving the average employee $2,200/year on essentials like cell phone service and insurance, at no cost to the company.
What you'll take away
- 1In a fast-paced market with skill shortages, proactively creating your own talent pipeline through initiatives like an academy can both meet talent needs and boost diversity.
- 2AI tools can decouple productivity from people, reducing time-to-hire (e.g., by 7 days for a $35M revenue impact) and simultaneously enhancing candidate communication and matching for a better experience.
- 3Reinvest productivity gains from AI tools into the human experience by allowing teams to spend more time on high-value interactions with candidates and hiring managers.
- 4Utilize independent candidate experience surveys (like Candi Awards) to identify pain points and leverage AI for improved communication and matching to significantly uplift engagement scores.
- 5Proactive talent creation, especially for non-traditional profiles, helps shift internal mindsets about who is qualified for specific roles, fostering a more inclusive organizational culture.
What most organizations get wrong
- •AI was a way in which I could decouple productivity and people for the first time at Avanade, indicating a fundamental shift in work structure rather than just automation.
- •How do you take that productivity gain [from AI] and invest it into the human experience? - pushing back against the common assumption that productivity gains solely lead to cost cutting or headcount reduction.
In Paul's words
“we needed to do something different. We couldn't just go out and hire the types of talent that we always needed and wanted on a global basis. And so we decided to actually start creating our own talent pipeline. And we did this through introducing the Avanade Academy.”
Highlights the necessity of internal talent development in a competitive market with skill shortages.
“that means that I was able to generate $35 million of additional revenue through reducing our time to hire by 7 days. It was the easiest business case to get signed off by the CFO for sure.”
Provides a powerful, quantifiable business case for HR tech investment, directly linking HR metrics to revenue.
“But in addition to just numbers, it really kind of helped shift some of the internal mindsets around who is qualified for tech roles. And it's really encouraged leaders to think more broad about more inclusive profiles on an ongoing basis.”
Emphasizes the cultural and mindset shift benefits of diversity initiatives beyond just meeting numerical targets.
“But what does that create? It creates an opportunity for our recruiting team to spend more time with our candidates. It's more time with our hiring managers, more time with our interviewers in terms of prepping them for the interviews. And so it's about how you sometimes utilize that that productivity gain, not just from a reduction in headcount, but how do you take that productivity gain and invest it into the human experience?”
Offers a strategic perspective on leveraging AI's efficiency to enhance human interaction and overall experience.
“I would say don't chase your pets. Chase your passions. I feel sometimes we get dazzled by the new shiny ball that comes into, into view, and we kind of sometimes lose sight of what's really important to our organizations on a more medium to long-term basis. And so my guidance or advice would be, you know, stick to what you truly believe in.”
Provides high-level strategic advice about maintaining focus on core organizational goals amidst distractions.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Difficulty hiring niche tech talent in fast-paced markets, especially in regions with low attrition and strong brand loyalty (e.g., Japan for Microsoft stack skills).
- •Challenges in demonstrating clear ROI for learning and development investments to business stakeholders and CFOs.
- •Resistance to AI adoption in HR due to employee fears of job displacement or discomfort with change.
- •Poor candidate experience, particularly slow or no communication to unsuccessful candidates, leading to negative employer brand perception.
- •Time-consuming, inconsistent, and potentially biased manual processes for HR tasks like creating job postings.
- •Struggling to achieve diversity hiring goals in underrepresented demographics within the tech sector (e.g., female talent in Japan).
- •The need for HR to clearly correlate its initiatives (e.g., L&D, candidate experience) with direct business needs and revenue generation.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Paul Phillips is the Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Onboarding and Business HR
Interviewing Paul Phillips, Head of Talent Acquisition, Onboarding,
Avanade created the Create pillar to help attract, develop and retain talent
Creating a Talent Pipeline with the Avanade Academy
Avanade leveraged AI to improve productivity and time to stream metrics
How Did We Integrate AI into Our HR Processes?
Avanade Academy helps bring in non-traditional tech talent to Microsoft
The Avanade Academy's Impact in Japan
Avanade uses AI to improve candidate experience rather than just focusing on cost cuts
Avanade's Candidate Engagement Strategy
A second AI tool that we've also introduced, was a job posting tool
AI Boosts Recruitment
Paul, what parting advice would you like to share with our community
Paul Walsh on the Built by People Podcast
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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