Talent Acquisition Week had it all this year. During the last week of January, the TA community came together for a virtual event that focused on reinventing talent acquisition to move forward in 2022. From strategic budgeting, employer branding, candidate experience, and technology optimization to the essential focus on DEI initiatives and the importance of talent data, intelligence, and analytics, this year’s week-long focus inspired talent professionals to leverage innovative strategies, tools, and technology to reimagine hiring and attraction.
Here we will examine some of the biggest themes from Talent Acquisition Week alongside other recent thought leadership from Jobvite and industry insights to give you key takeaways for improving your own recruiting strategies in 2022:
Lesson #1: Addressing the Growing Disconnect Between Business Leaders and Talent Acquisition Professionals
This year, more than ever, it’s clear that the gap is widening between recruiters and business leaders. In fact, recent Aptitude Research found that nearly 73% of recruiters say it’s hard to find candidates, while only 39% of leadership at those same organizations have the same feeling. This could explain why despite additional investment on technology, sourcing applications, and services, many recruitment professionals have found it challenging to expand their overall budgets.
Connecting with business leaders requires meeting them where they are. Peggy Anderson, Head of Talent Acquisition at Shutterfly, suggests leveraging The EVOLVE Talent Acquisition Framework to:
- Identify how mature your recruiting processes are
- Develop a clear goal for where you need to be
- Request a well-informed increase in recruitment spend
This sentiment is further supported by Lori Sylvia, Founder and CEO of Rally Recruitment Marketing, and a recent presenter at Talent Acquisition Week. She provides a committed, uncommitted, contingency budgetary framework for how TA teams can prioritize recruitment marketing in 2022.
Lesson #2: Optimizing Talent Acquisition Technology
Getting the most out of your talent acquisition technology — no matter the size of your organization — requires careful planning and adoption of your recruiting tech stack based on available resources. Again, according to Aptitude Research, only three percent of companies leverage all the functionality in their ATS and just two percent of their recruitment marketing platforms.
For smaller organizations trying to make the most out of a few good tools, Kristal Shropshire, Director of Talent Acquisition at Achievement Network, recommends looking at which aspects of your TA tech stack have delivered best historically and then maximizing how those tools can help you streamline your hiring process. For example, she references the use of video screening by paring it down from a full screen to just three key questions.
For larger organizations, leaning into AI-powered tools may make the most sense in optimizing your tech stack. Josh Jones, Manager of Talent Acquisition at Jobvite, recommends organizations take advantage of award-winning Zero-Click Intelligent Sourcing from Jobvite, which automates sourcing efforts when a job requisition is first opened. This solution saves valuable time, up to 30%, providing a full list of candidates who fit new jobs as they open up and the perfect starting point to connect with candidates.
Lesson #3: Enhancing the Talent Acquisition Process
Once you have developed a strong sense of how to best use your talent acquisition technology, you will want to apply it across your hiring process. Another takeaway for 2022 is to enhance your TA processes by leveraging appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs). This will give you an accurate picture of where you are succeeding and where you can improve.
A recent Jobvite panel shared their priority KPIs:
- Diversity of Finalist Candidate Pool: With DEI serving as the central focus to many organizations, keep a close watch on this metric to ensure your processes are inclusive.
- Pipeline Flow: Watch for the average time a candidate may spend in each stage of your recruitment cycle to identify the bottlenecks and roadblocks in your hiring process.
- Time-to-Fill/Close: While it may be the most contentious KPI, ensure you are self-aware of how long it takes to fill or close a requisition. Make sure to measure against industry benchmarks rather than internal records and ensure you don’t focus on this metric exclusively, especially at the expense of DEI efforts.
Lesson #4: Continuously Improving the Candidate Experience
Humanizing the recruiting process is one of the most important takeaways from Talent Acquisition Week. This was especially apparent during the session presented by Jacqueline Ricciardi, Solutions Engineer at Jobvite. Her spotlight session on Candidate Centered Communications reinforced how technology should augment human ability and seek to deliver a better experience for candidates.
Recruitment marketing is a powerful tool. Targeted messaging to candidates helps meet them where they are and then guide them to your career site, where you have more control over your employer brand. Once there, you can even create custom landing pages with information relevant to selected roles that will give a great first impression to candidates. In combination with human touch along the candidate journey and an empowering onboarding experience, you will be ready to compete with the best in a competitive recruiting space this year.
Remember, whether a candidate is ultimately accepted for a position or not, it is our duty as TA professionals to ensure the experience is as positive as it can be. One great way to start moving in the right direction is to send out candidate surveys to both new hires and rejected candidates. This can be very enlightening for your team, and it will provide areas within the candidate’s journey that were either enjoyable or painful.
Lesson #5: Focusing on Improving the Employee Experience
Last, but not least, focus on the employee experience in relation to internal mobility. Encourage current employees to make both lateral and vertical moves throughout the organization. This will not only improve retention rates for hard-won new hires but also serve to improve overall morale as recruiters can share success stories with candidates and leaders can see the growth potential within their teams.
Start Moving Your Talent Acquisition Strategy Forward
Gone are the days of just competing for customers. Now you have to go after candidates with just as much intensity. With the lessons provided in this blog, you are primed and ready to keep the momentum of 2022. Take the next step and see what makes Jobvite one of the most loved and best HR products around by watching our product tour. Or you can view our resource library or subscribe to our blog to stay up to date on the latest in TA tech.