What does the crystal ball have in store for talent acquisition professionals? The technology landscape for talent recruitment is growing in complexity. If you're in recruiting today, your job will be very different in 5 years — even if you keep the exact same job title. That’s because the role of recruiting itself is evolving & augmented by technology
Continually evolving expectations around how organizations attract and hire talent, coupled with the need to be agile and respond to wider economic changes, is creating a fundamental shift in the world of talent acquisition. Progressive and agile TA organizations are intelligently leveraging technology to deliver on their vision for TA and the marketplace’s evolution to address these needs.
Over 60% of companies are increasing their investment in recruitment technology and Companies are looking at both traditional providers and startups to help them solve challenges with attracting, recruiting, and hiring talent.
Can you imagine the recruitment process without tech? Probably not – we’ve come a long way from the plain hiring signs, walk-ins, and newspaper ads. Now, recruitment tools are an indispensable part of hiring and the future of talent acquisition (TA).
Nowadays, technology does more than keeping organizations compliant and providing a workflow for moving candidates through the process. As a result, the modern landscape is shifting from a transactional model to a more sophisticated suite of solutions.
Organizations see the following impact from their talent acquisition tech stack:
reduced time to hire (56%),
reduced recruitment costs (35%), and
improved quality of hire (30%)
HR and talent acquisition professionals who have been in the trenches trying to recruit and retain good employees have known for some time that having the right talent is critical to the success of a business. And it appears that the C-suite is beginning to agree.
What’s next then?
You need a strategic approach to manage your talent supply chain for today’s ultra-fast, competitive job market that engages with job seekers in real time, fosters communities of prospective employees, defines sourcing strategies and outlines when to buy, build or borrow talent.
Over the past several years, point solutions have become available to fill the gaps inherent in the
traditional TA technology stack. Multiple point solutions required organizations to integrate and maintain a complex technology ecosystem and users to move between multiple systems to deliver end-to-end recruiting. We’re now seeing vendors push a more comprehensive TA “suite” of solutions.
“TA suites,” a term coined at the forefront of this new era, refers to solutions designed and built to manage the entire recruiting process—from attracting and sourcing through select and onboard. The TA suites aim to provide customers with a way to manage the end-to-end process with a single tool, acting effectively as a “one-stop-shop” for candidates and employers.
DIGGER’s integrated Model was developed with this approach in mind : From first look to first day; & From first day to first Pay
Whether it be a stand-alone applicant tracking system (ATS) provider or HCM platform provider trying to incorporate new sourcing and additional functionality, the consolidation of services promises a better candidate experience and better tools for sourcers and recruiters. Furthermore, this can potentially lead to improved data integrity and analytics capability, culminating in an opportunity for process efficiency and streamlined vendor management.
For companies looking to transition to new talent acquisition technologies, the power of the full-suite solution should not be underestimated. However, companies should consider that the TA suite is not the panacea that solves all their recruiting technology needs.
The future of recruiting process veer between the extremes of totally human attraction, application, selection, offer and onboarding processes – or totally digital ones, or something in between.
Which side organizations land on will depend on the candidate experience they want to create and their target audience (say, critical roles or mass recruiting). A Target Interaction Model (TIM) for HR envisages redesigning talent processes through the eyes of candidates to remove pain points and meet (evolving) expectations, whether with digital tools or a human touch.
In the current climate a digital approach seems desirable, such as AI that can flood the pipeline with remote worker profile matches, or selection based on AI-led interviews. Thirty percent of organisations use algorithms to screen candidates during the recruitment process today, and 40% plan to do so this year.
Automated candidate targeting based on personality and preferences may become more prevalent
At the other end of the spectrum is the human factor. Already 22% of employees say some necessary human interactions have been lost as HR processes have gone online. Yet there may still be a push towards digitalization even in a human-dominated TA function.
With its rapid pivot to virtual recruitment and digital processes during the pandemic, the TA function has shown it can lead the way to broader HR transformation. But the key to finding each organization’s place along the human-digital spectrum in recruitment will be the candidate themselves – listening to what they want and ensuring talent processes meet their expectations
“Online video interviewing, digital assessment, and digital candidate experience strategies were ‘nice to have’ before the crisis.
Every HR and hiring activity from attracting talent, to showcasing employer brand, to sourcing talent, to interviewing, will need to be built to provide a great digital experience for candidates in order to attract top talent.
The top employers will have a candidate communication plan, which will make all relevant information available to candidates about the company, delivering that information with a mobile-first approach. Employers have to show — not tell — what their company is all about.
“The need for a forward-thinking leader to manage your recruiting organization or department has never been greater. In the face of today’s uncertainty, the strongest and steadiest TA professionals must skillfully steer their teams in the right direction.”