The talent industry is facing a major shift to reinvent itself. We are moving to a new era where companies need to work and operate with increased speed and agility, along with more efficiency, to predict solutions for problems before they occur.
Upgrading the abilities of talent teams and enabling the use of new recruiting technologies requires a host of new skills, capabilities, roles, and processes that are action-oriented and talent-centric. Reinventing the talent acquisition function is critical to sustaining a competitive advantage and driving maximum value to the ever-changing needs of both the business and new era of consumer grade, candidate experiences.
Despite the lockdown, despite the restrictions, the world of recruitment like the business world it serves is incredibly busy. We continue to see massive changes in the workplace, innovations & new launches in recruitment technology, the rise & fall of major employers & new start-ups.
In this fiercely challenging time, talent will win out. Finding & placing the right people in the right companies has never been more critical. This is true of the recruitment industry’s clients but it is also true of the recruitment industry itself. As we enter the cognitive and digital era, we will all work differently. 100% of roles will change in the future. To support the changing needs of businesses and candidates, talent acquisition teams must expand the role of traditional recruiters. This means recruiters must embrace 21st century recruiting skills & software that focus on driving business value and outcomes rather than acting as an administrative function to fill open requisitions. In a market so candidate driven, it is undeniably time for the recruitment industry to rethink from within. When faced with new roles to fill in a market that favours the candidates over the recruiters, it’s undeniably time for recruiters to make a change. However, almost a year into the pandemic, it’s no longer viable to only implement short-term reactions at the expense of future growth. In fact, while companies & processes are in a constant state of evolution, the time has never been better to radically reinvent for the future.
Our research also shows that recruiting is broken in most companies. Recruitment teams and their external supply chains have not kept up with changing organisational needs, consumer-grade user experiences and globalisation. Recruiting systems have been locked into the mindset of processing applications and managing administration.
At the same time, the supply of potential candidates is evaporating, and expectations of potential employees are rising. All the while, the tolerance of applicants for bad user interfaces, poor company or job information, or inability to submit in one click from their smartphone are becoming untenable.
Note: this priority for recruiting systems change is reflected in HR’s investment priorities. From our latest data, 53% of companies are looking to increase investment in recruiting systems. Onboarding and recruiting systems are also number one and number two on the intention to change list. 56% of companies intend to change onboarding systems, and 51% intend to change recruiting / talent acquisition systems within two years.
Historically dominated by application tracking systems and job boards, following the rise of LinkedIn and other disruptive technology providers, recruitment technology has been changing rapidly; expanding beyond the traditional hiring administration processes to encompass candidate relationships and marketing, interviewing, assessment and validation and a whole gamut of related areas. Recruiting technology is now typically called Talent Acquisition, and it is an ecosystem of interconnecting needs and technologies, almost all of which are now deployed in the Cloud.
Still run in many companies as a silo process, disconnected from other talent management and development activities, talent acquisition technology has probably had the fastest innovation of any of the markets .
The potential to transform corporate recruiting and onboarding processes is enormous, but it needs radical surgery. As our research shows, the time is now!
Recruiting from within a small and focussed team can provide the opportunity to really sell a business brand beyond a bulleted list of responsibilities and perks. Break down your priorities and build a standout EVP from the ground up that doesn’t just tick the recruitment boxes on a performative level, but actually has its roots in the board-level values of the business.