In the post-pandemic world, the rules of hiring fundamentally changed—along with the expectations for talent acquisition. When businesses struggled to hire during the rebound from the pandemic cutbacks, the star of talent acquisition rose from its historical position as a cost center in many organizations. Talent acquisition had its seat at the proverbial table, but when recession fears took hold, TA lost its place amidst layoffs and hiring freezes at some companies.

Talent needs to be center stage for businesses to adapt and thrive in 2023 and beyond. To do this, talent acquisition needs to maintain its seat at the table—or step up if it hasn’t already. Trends like flexible work, DEIB, and workplace automation have all made employers think differently about who and how they hire. 

A cost center that speaks in the language of speed and efficiency does not offer the strategic perspective organizations need to hire effectively amidst rapidly changing employee and candidate expectations. When talent acquisition earn a seat at the table for strategic talent decisions, businesses are more likely to reach their full potential.

According to the Josh Bersin Company, companies that leverage the right recruiting strategies are

• 5X more likely to delight customers
• 30X more likely to engage and retain employees
• 35X more likely to innovate effectively.

Leveraging the right recruiting strategies is not just the job of talent acquisition teams; it’s a job for the whole organization. 

A Seat at the Table Defined

Allyn Bailey, Executive Director of Hiring Success Services at SmartRecruiters, has spent decades at the forefront of global talent acquisition. In our latest ebook, A Seat at the Table: A Guide to Leading a Strategic Talent Acquisition Function, Allyn says,

“Having a seat at the table means not just being involved in decisions directly related to talent acquisition, it means providing input into all decisions that have a talent lens to them.”

If a talent acquisition leader wants to get a seat at the table, they must move from the perception of their function as a cost center to a strategic function. Allyn says,

 “A strategic TA leader is a trusted partner who can come to the table with information that tells business leaders what’s happening in the market, what’s realistic to assume, and how their decisions will impact the company’s ability to capture and keep talent.” 

The journey to becoming a strategic leader—someone who gets invited to meetings because it’s widely known that they have valuable information and perspective that can help the business make high-priority decisions—is varied and complex. It requires that a leader shift their mindset from being an order-taker to someone who provides data-backed insights.

Leading a strategic talent acquisition function is not always easy. Allyn asked, “If  you don’t have a seat at the table today, why not?” The reasons could be a blend of personal and organizational factors. She recommends that leaders get clear about why they want that seat and what they might do with it once they get there.  

To help leaders along this journey, we spent hours interviewing Allyn and two members of SmartRecruiters’ Hiring Success team: Dave Novak, Engagement Manager, and Jared Best, Regional Practice Leader. In those conversations, we uncovered a path for leaders to become more strategic and get the seat at the table they deserve. Our insights are condensed into the ebook  A Seat at the Table: A Guide to Leading a Strategic Talent Acquisition Function. 

Below we list highlights from key sections of the ebook:

Strategic Talent Acquisition Maturity Model

For each level shown in the maturity model above, the ebook offers example scenarios so that you can assess your company and start forming your own North Star vision. To get a real-world picture of how one organization moved to greater maturity, read The Incremental Journey to Talent Acquisition Transformation at Colliers EMEA.

Know Your Why: Reasons to Build a Strategic TA Function

The benefits of getting a seat at the table fall into three areas: to help your organization, support your team, and grow your own career. We expand on each of these areas and provide reflection activities in the ebook so that you can move ahead with inner confidence.

Know What You’re Signing Up For: Barriers to Becoming More Strategic

In our discovery conversation, Allyn Bailey said, “Leaders need to assess their organization’s ability to absorb them into the conversation.” She spoke of the time it takes for organizations to change and said, “Pay attention to the signals that you’re making traction. People will be asking smarter questions and start to repeat words that you’ve inserted into the conversation and adopting them as their own.”

The ebook lists eight common barriers with potential solutions and includes a reflection activity for your company’s situation. For inspiration, read our success story with KinCare which describes the growth of organizational trust after the implementation of SmartRecruiters.

The Path to Getting a Seat at the Table

Our Hiring Success experts have observed many organizations going through the stages of building a strategic function. We can’t emphasize enough that it’s not just a shift for the individual leader; it’s a shift for the whole organization, and it requires many conversations. This section outlines six stages that you can expect to go through.

The Building Blocks of a Strategic Talent Acquisition Function

A strategic TA leader oversees seven critical components of talent acquisition. Your company may be more invested in some than others. Here you’ll find a list of signs of under-investment and high investment. Looking at the list can help you get clear on where you need to start so that you can generate a small win and develop a plan to address larger issues.

How to Change the Narrative to Become More Strategic

Being perceived differently means talking about different things. In the case of talent acquisition, it means understanding what the business cares about and bringing valuable information to the table. “The biggest thing a leader can do is change the narrative,” said Jared Best. “Move away from talking about transactional data and focus on data that ties back to organizational objectives.” This section offers three strategies to do just that, plus a reflection activity.

People Support for Your Seat at the Table

As a strategic leader, you will need the help of not only your team but also others within the organization. Here you’ll find a list of 10 key roles on your support team and their responsibilities.

Technology Support for Your Seat at the Table

Your recruiting tech stack may or may not be optimally configured to support your strategic priorities. To help you clarify what technology concerns you may need to address, we created an 8-point technology checklist for building a strategic talent acquisition function.

We’d love to say that there’s a magic wand you can wave and have a perfectly functioning TA team that attracts and hires the best candidates, facilitates recruiter productivity, and engages hiring managers—while increasing employee retention and profits. Instead, we live in a complex reality, and we hope this guide will be one resource to help you get to where you want to go.

Good reporting is critical to achieving hiring success. Without a reporting strategy, how can you know if you are attracting, selecting, and hiring the best talent, within budget, and in the most efficient way? But often, reporting for talent acquisition is harder than it sounds. Gathering reports from disparate systems or business units can take up vast amounts of time, and sometimes a lack of data accuracy prevents the reports from being useful.

Why Implement a Reporting Strategy?

A solid reporting strategy can help you and your organization improve hiring outcomes in multiple ways:

• Evaluate real-time progress against goals
• Uncover hiring process roadblocks
• Measure the progress of DEI recruitment efforts
• Track the effectiveness of new strategies so that you can pivot when necessary
• Align TA with other business functions
• Inform stakeholders across the organization 
• Build credibility with executive stakeholders and the C-Suite
• Inform the next steps toward developing a more mature TA function
• Get support for future TA initiatives
• Build effective strategies to stay competitive in the talent marketplace
• Gather career-building win stories

How to Build a Talent Acquisition Reporting Strategy

Whether you’re still pulling reports manually or have some automation already built into your reporting strategy, you can start afresh and rethink your approach. The goal is to meet the needs of talent acquisition today, which may mean adjusting processes that worked in the past. Here’s how to get started:

1. Conduct an Audit

A reporting audit answers these questions.

• What reports are currently being run? At what time intervals?
• Who is responsible for running the reports and distributing them? How much time does it take?
• What reporting tools are available to us? Do we currently leverage our existing dashboards to the fullest?
• Who receives the reports? Are they the right people?
• Who makes decisions based on the reports? How is the success of those decisions being measured?
• Are the current reports effective at measuring what your company needs? Is there information missing that would help with decision-making? Identify the gaps.

2. Understand Business Goals

No reporting strategy can be effective without understanding the needs of the business. This may include differences across business units, locations, role types, etc. Then you need to look closely at your TA processes for each business concern. At SmartRecruiters, we encourage our customers to take the Hiring Success Business Assessment. The assessment helps them define their maturity status across people, processes, and technology in 21 compenents of talent acquisition. These components are grouped into three buckets: Talent Attraction & Engagement, Collaboration & Selection, and Management & Operating Model. 

By looking at the needs of the business against your current hiring practices, you can start to see where accurate reporting will have the most impact as you make improvements.

3. Ensure you Have Clean Data

Talent acquisition systems are designed to deliver good data, but only if they are used properly. Your reporting strategy will be ineffective if data is missing due to poor system adoption or missing links between tools. To ensure accurate data collection, you may need to identify where you need to improve processes or link systems.

4. Determine KPIs and Set Benchmarks

Every business needs KPIs that matter to the specific situation. While benchmarks may differ across different groups, it’s important to have goals in your sight. Then, individuals can be held accountable to reaching those goals. For example, if hiring velocity is a priority and hiring managers routinely slow down processes by taking too long to make decisions, they should be expected to make the necessary adjustments to hire on time. 

5. Establish a Reporting Cadence

Which reports get run weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually? Determine who is responsible for creating and reviewing reports. To level-set teams and build the expectation of accountability, schedule meetings to review results well in advance.

Establishing a structured reporting plan may reveal knowledge gaps among stakeholders. It may be useful to enable data literacy through additional training from an expert. With greater data literacy, stakeholders can learn to ask better questions of the data and answer them on their own. Data literacy sets the stage for continuous improvement. 

6. Set Up Dashboards and Iterate

Developing a good reporting strategy is an iterative process. The first dashboards may not be as useful as you thought once the data starts coming in. It may take some time to start getting clean data, or some individuals may require education to understand all the data points on the dashboards. Over time, your team will become more fluent in reading the reports and discovering insights that can move the business forward.  

An Expert Can Help Guide the Way

Reporting for talent acquisition is a highly specialized function that other business analytics teams may lack the expertise (or bandwidth) to accomplish. Accurate, actionable reporting is essential in your path to hiring success and crucial to unlocking the full potential of your recruiting function.

SmartRecruiters SmartSuccess Talent Strategy & Insights consulting packages help you level up your reporting strategy. Working with an experienced consultant, you’ll dive deep into what’s working and what’s not. Together, you and the consultant will come up with action and success plans tailored specifically to your business needs. You’ll receive:

• Analytics and insights strategy sessions to identify what stories the data can tell you, giving you the ability to translate TA goals to measurable outcomes 
• Monthly insights maintenance and strategy alignment sessions to ensure you have the full picture of your talent organization to make informed business decisions
• Personalized Tableau dashboards that consolidate the most frequently needed data in one place

There’s no reason a sound reporting strategy should stand in the way of Hiring Success. Get in touch with us to learn more about SmartRecruiters and SmartSuccess. And for a deep dive into how you can lead more strategically with data, download our ebook, A Seat at the Table: A Guide to Leading a Strategic Talent Acquisition Function.

You’ve probably heard about hiring for skills, the latest trend in talent acquisition. Companies face a tight job market, high turnover, and widening skills gaps as technology and business needs evolve. In a recent survey, Deloitte found skills to be the number one recruiting strategy concern for CEOs, and second only to inflation on the full list of business concerns. 

Every person that a company misses out on hiring is a missed opportunity to drive bottom line results. Korn Ferry predicts that companies could miss out on $8.5 trillion in global revenue by 2030 due to labor shortages. In this competitive market for talent, it’s clear that organizations need a different approach to hiring.

What is Hiring for Skills and Why Do You Need to Do It?

Hiring for skills is a recruiting strategy that focuses on the candidate’s transferable, real-world skills and competencies rather than an educational pedigree or list of previous roles. For example, consider the vast array of skills a military veteran might acquire during their service that might not directly correlate with a traditional job description. When you build hiring for skills into your candidate selection process, that veteran’s skills won’t be overlooked.

Hiring for skills widens your talent pools and helps you hire more diverse talent faster. In today’s world of work, waiting to move forward with skills-based hiring will keep you from seeing the full potential in candidates. When you hire for skills, flexible talent will grow and shift with your business instead of being stuck in the rigid box of overly-defined job descriptions.

Skills-based hiring includes conducting a skills inventory for key roles, writing skills-based job descriptions, and ensuring that skills-based assessments are incorporated into your candidate selection process.

Adopt the Right Mindset for Skills-Based Hiring

What’s the best way to get started? According to Allyn Bailey, Executive Director, Hiring Success at SmartRecruiters, the place to start is with expectations – your mindset. Any hiring for skills initiative is an exercise in change management. In our new ebook, A Practical Guide to Hiring for Skills, Allyn offers these tips to keep in mind as you take on the challenge: 

1. Hiring for skills isn’t a one-and-done process. Looking at jobs through the lens of skills and developing effective skills-based assessments is a living, breathing process. Don’t be frustrated if it doesn’t operate perfectly out of the gate. Start where you can and then iterate, test, and learn as you go and your organization’s approach to skills evolves.
2. Align, communicate, realign, and then align again. Continual communication among all of your hiring team stakeholders throughout this process will reduce barriers to change, get you searching for the skills you really need, and keep the process going. 
3. Let technology help lift the load. Examine your current tech stack and consider whether you may have any tools that can help you assess candidate skills or structure an unbiased, effective interview. See where your software and tools can automate some of this standardization so you can focus on identifying skills and leading change management. 

Even if you aren’t ready to start skills-based hiring now, you can start by reading our ebook. It offers a map for incorporating skills assessment into every stage of your hiring process, from the job description to the final candidate selection. 

Can an Applicant Tracking System Help You Hire for Skills?

A study by the Harvard Business School noted that 80 percent of business leaders say their applicant tracking systems filter out half of high-skilled candidates due to system parameters like résumé gaps or missing credentials. That doesn’t need to happen when you use a top-notch ATS. 

Using the SmartRecruiters approach to Hiring Success will help your company hire for skills. Features of our talent acquisition suite include:

• Easy-to-configure screening tools expand talent pools by allowing for a skills-based approach rather than filtering people out by irrelevant qualifiers. 
• Candidate scorecards level the playing field by guiding hiring managers on skills-based interviewing. Scorecards make it easy for teams to collaborate, ensuring an efficient and objective hiring process that can help you hire more diverse talent.
• Integrations with leading assessment providers allow interviewers to view assessment results alongside candidate profiles, ensuring that skills are accounted for at every step.

Skills-Based Hiring is Here to Stay

This topic is unlikely to go away – it’s more likely to expand over time as organizations rethink job architecture, career pathways, and hiring practices. As job seekers look for roles that align with their skills and competencies, moving away from hiring by role and resume and into a hiring strategy that focuses on skills, competencies, and whole person assessments helps you stay ahead. 

Start futureproofing your organization today by downloading the ebook, A Practical Guide to Hiring for Skills.

Earlier this year, 87% of respondents in a Leapgen survey said, “attracting, acquiring, and onboarding new talent for our workforce” was a high-priority concern. Only 2% said bringing on new talent was a low priority. The labor shortage is real: In the United States, there are 5 million more job openings than there are unemployed workers to fill them. Digital transformation of talent acquisition is needed to address this gap.

Talent is a direct line to profits: businesses cannot operate at full capacity if they aren’t staffed at full capacity. Companies are investing more in recruiting, but are they doing it in ways that actually attract the most skilled talent? Are they building a selection process that surfaces best-fit candidates? Are they building brand equity by providing a great experience for every candidate, not just the ones they hire?

Transforming the way your organization hires is both a human transformation and a digital transformation. The recent webinar, Going Digital in Talent Acquisition: A Reflection on 2022 Digital Experience Delivery, offers valuable guidance on what organizations can do to transform their TA function. Karin Philippczyk, Hiring Success Transformation Consultant at SmartRecruiters, and Jess Von Bank, Head of Brand Strategy and Vendor Solutions at Leapgen offered these tips and strategies.

1. Start with a vision of what you want to achieve, then get technology to help. Too often, companies look to technology to solve their problems without understanding how their processes need to change. Yes, technology can bring greater efficiency, but without understanding what problems it needs to solve, new systems won’t be adopted.
2. Solve for experiences. The candidate’s experience is directly related to the recruiter’s experience. When you give recruiters tools that are easy to use, they can spend more time making those one-to-one human connections that convince talented candidates to join your organization.
3. Automate repetitive data-based tasks. High-tech, high-touch means applying technology in places with bulk tasks that can be easily automated. Screening, scheduling, and chatbot communications are just a few of the areas where automation will free up recruiter time for more strategic tasks and building relationships with candidates.
4. Build transparency into the hiring process. Recruiting doesn’t need to be a black box. You can build recruiting workflows that manage candidate expectations in a transparent way. Over time, this builds trust – so even if a candidate isn’t selected the first time they apply, they’ll feel good about your organization by the time they get hired.
5. Lead by taking small steps. The SmartRecruiters company value, “CEO of your job,” offers a guidepost for beginning any process transformation. Karin Philippczyk said, “you’re always a mini-CEO of your application process. If you improve a couple of things and show people the results, they will feel more motivated to change and give you more than you ask for because you’re involving them.”

It’s true: a  full-scale talent acquisition transformation starts one step at a time. Once you have your vision in place, get in touch with us. We’d love to help you build better experiences, automate repetitive tasks, and provide greater transparency to candidates — and anything else on your list of ways to improve Hiring Success.

Hiring Success is almost here! February 11th-12th, TA leaders from around the globe will congregate at the Marquis Marriott in San Francisco to shape the future of talent acquisition. Where will you be?

With sessions ranging from social justice to inclusive leadership, social media recruiting, gender equality, cutting edge AI deployment and more, it’s hard to imagine a more inspiring conference than Hiring Success. Over 1,200 attendees will share in the insights of veteran recruiting and talent acquisition leaders from companies like Amazon, Visa, IBM, LinkedIn, Bosch, and more.

Below you’ll find seven profiles of speakers presenting at this year’s conference. A preview of coming attractions! 

Dr Steven Jones: JONES, Traveling Monk

Nationally known as one of “America’s Top Experts on Diversity” (Diversity, Inc., 2005), Dr. Jones’ philosophy is to lead with listening to support clients in finding a strategy and solution that works for them. 

Dr. Jones holds a Bachelor’s in Computer Science, a Master’s in Multicultural Counseling, and a Ph.D. in Industrial/ Organizational Psychology. He is the author of Journey to Excellence, a transformational book helping people define and achieve excellence in their lives.

In the global arena, while he was studying business practices in Chang Mai, Thailand, Dr. Jones became the first person of African descent to be ordained as a Buddhist Monk at a 700 year old monastery called Wat Umong.

Jones will be leading a session on Inclusive Leadership.

Carlos Fernandez: Houston Methodist, Manager of Talent Acquisition

Carlos Fernandez currently oversees talent acquisition strategy, employer branding, and sourcing outreach for a system of eight hotels and a workforce of 23,000+ employees.

Fernandez has over 10 years experience within talent acquisition, project management, learning development, and change management, and has led several technology implementations and processes to enhance the candidate experience. He led the redesign of Houston Methodist’s career site and social media recruitment efforts, increasing overall application volume by 40% since 2016.

Fernandez will be co-leading a roundtable discussion on Candidate Experience.

Gerry Crispin: Principal, CareerXroads

Gerry Crispin founded CareerXroads in 1996 to encourage the transformation of hiring into the 21st century. Today, with his business partner, Chris Hoyt, CareerXroads is in its second decade as a member driven community of Talent leadership teams from 130 major firms who are devoted to learning from and helping one another improve and succeed.

Among other achievements, he has co-authored eight books on the evolution of staffing, and has written hundreds of articles and white papers on similar topics. His career spans fifty years and includes Consulting, Recruitment Advertising, HR leadership positions with Fortune 100 employers, Executive Search and Career Services at the University where he graduated with his BE and in Engineering and IO/Psychology degrees.

Crispin will be leading the following session: What Keeps You Up At Night?

Jonathan Mears: VISA, Head, Global Executive Talent Acquisition

As a global HR and talent executive, Jonathan Mears is known for driving innovation in developing markets. He is currently responsible for Visa’s Global Executive Talent acquisition and delivery across all markets, leading Executive Talent teams to deliver internal and external talent, and Visa’s HR Leadership team.

Mears previously led large cross geographic and functional teams for IBM in 14 countries supporting LATAM, North America, Europe, MEA and Asia Pacific. His areas of expertise include leadership of high performance teams, employment branding and strategic sourcing, contract negotiation, business development, retention, redeployment, and more. 

Mears will be co-leading a roundtable on Interviewing Skills.

Lawrel Aufmuth: Advantage Solutions, Vice President, Talent Acquisition

Lawrel Aufmuth is Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Advantage Solutions. She is an innovator and HR professional with extensive experience in the private and public sector with growth organizations.

Lawrel is well known for delivering measurable results through creative, “out of the box’ solutions that build best in class measurable human capital strategies. Lawrel Aufmuth knows TA in and out, and is an expert in using Artificial Intelligence (RPA & ML & NLP) to bring organizations to new heights. 

Aufmuth will be leading the following session: Turning Recruiting Into a Profit Center.

Sarah Yang: Former Talent Brand & Diversity Lead at Getaround

Sarah Yang is the former Talent Brand & Diversity Lead at Getaround. She crafts and nurtures compelling stories on why Getaround is a wonderful place to work and has over fifteen years of experience in creating videos, blogs, and social media that are critically acclaimed. Yang is the recipient of the prestigious MarCom Platinum Award, which she won for the global recruiting video she co-produced for Workday. 

In addition to being a TA leader, she is a professional drummer, filmmaker, poet, comedian, and improv actor, and a magnetic and animated speaker on creativity (the #1 soft skill according to LinkedIn), diversity, and storytelling to global audiences (i.e. Grace Hopper, Cisco, Workday, Oracle, CoderDojo, Lesbians Who Tech, and Women Who Code).

She will be leading the following session: Convincing Your HMs to Value Diversity Hiring.

Hung Lee: Recruiting Brainfood, Curator

Hung Lee is the founder and CEO of WorkShape.io – the revolutionary recruiting platform for Software engineers and Editor of leading industry newsletter Recruiting Brainfood. He is an industry professional with over 15 years experience as an agency recruiter, recruitment manager, Internal Head of Talent, recruitment trainer and strategic advisor for rapid growth businesses.

Traditional recruitment is in crisis, with many turning to talent acquisition instead. But if talent acquisition is to be more than another corporate buzzword, it’s essential to properly understand the difference between recruitment and talent acquisition.

We’re all familiar with the approach to recruitment in which candidates are sourced, scrutinized, and then passed off to hiring managers. The role of the recruiter usually stops there, and fails to take into consideration what comes next. To a large extent, this explains why the old models of recruitment now offer diminishing returns.

Over two-thirds of HR leaders say that employee onboarding is underutilized in their companies, which can seriously undermine staff retention. Poor management makes employees more likely to quit, and employees who feel under-appreciated are twice as likely to look for employment elsewhere. 

These lapses in workplace judgement, could very well be to blame for phenomena like workplace ghosting, where employees simply fail to turn up at all. Such developments point to a breakdown in the way that employer-employee relations begin, develop, and are handled over time.

What’s the solution? Talk of a new concept called talent acquisition has started to echo through corporate boardrooms worldwide. 

But what exactly is talent acquisition and how is it different from recruitment?

To understand this, we should first refresh our knowledge on what traditional recruitment involves. 

What Is Recruitment?

Recruitment is the process of searching for, evaluating and hiring experienced and qualified people to fill an existing vacancy at a company or organization. It usually follows a specific, pre-defined recruitment process that is highly standardized and typically implemented in periods of expansion or due to staff turnover.

Lots of factors influence the specific rhythms and cycles of recruitment in various workplaces. Staff turnover figures from 2017 show that the events and publishing sector had the highest rates of turnover, while general management and admin had the lowest.

Recruitment is an absolute fundamental of running any business, but it is essentially a short-term process that seeks to fill a company’s immediate needs. So how is talent acquisition different?

What Is Talent Acquisition?

Talent acquisition is similar to recruitment in the sense that it shares the same aim of finding the best people to work for your company. But whereas recruitment tends to be a very standardized, reactive process, talent acquisition is all about the long game of your company. It involves a more flexible and dynamic approach from your recruitment team and a broad understanding of the long-term strategic aims of your business.

What Is the Difference Between the Two?

Recruitment is an action… a tactical process to solve an immediate problem. Talent acquisition is a strategy, an ongoing process of making your company the most attractive place for quality talent, while ensuring you make use of the many avenues through which new talent can be sourced. 

Here are some key ways talent acquisition seeks to expand your recruitment horizons…

Networking: You have to be connected in your industry; attend relevant industry events and networking sessions, build diverse social networks online.

Referrals: Nearly half of businesses report that the most quality hires come from referrals from existing employees, so make sure you have an attractive employee referral program in place.

Career sites and job boards: An oldie, but a goodie. They’re still important to use so take the time to research the best jobs boards for your sector. 

Social media: Ignoring social media and its recruitment potential will lead to your peril.  LinkedIn is still the biggest online recruiting tool after your company website. Sites like Twitter and Facebook are also important. 

Brand marketing. Talent acquisition means you need to make your company the most attractive place for talent to work. Enhancing your brand imaging can help your company secure its reputation as the hot place for talent to be. 

Is Talent Acquisition More Important Than Recruitment?

There are cases where  a traditional recruitment strategy may work for you ,but data has shown that a majority of recruiters struggle to get the best people to fill their vacancies. In the UK, 90% of employers are struggling to fill roles.

Talent acquisition goes far beyond the mere tactical approach of recruitment. Similar to the process of learning how to be a good manager, learning how to implement a talent acquisition strategy is about coming to understand the true value of your employees. 

When you hire, you’re investing in people, but all too often it can be seen as just another costly expense. This can encourage employers to cut corners and see recruitment as a mechanical process that never changes.

Talent acquisition is about being aware of current staffing trends, the state of the workforce, and using that insight to attract vital talent.

For example, research has shown that over half of Americans are quitting their current jobs right now. A talent acquisition strategy would prevent this by anticipating and identifying the reasons employees might be tempted to leave your company, and addressing those issues so that the recruitment team isn’t hiring due to a lack of awareness in foresight in your organization.

Furthermore, most business owners don’t know why their employees leave. The majority of them think that it’s all about money, but it’s not. In fact, only 12% of employees leave because of the money. 

One problem is that employers don’t conduct exit interviews to find out the real reasons why people quit. An effective talent acquisition strategy—one that views the candidate/employee experience holistically—would do so, and pose the following questions in an exit interview.  

• How could we have made your time with our company better?
• What measures can we put into place to keep current and future employees happy?

Your relationship to candidates and potential employees doesn’t end once they sign their contract. As with every relationship, its success is predicated upon empathy, understanding, and an ability to learn from one’s mistakes.

Employers who implement a talent acquisition strategy realize that recruitment is not just about scrutinizing candidates to see if they’re right for your company, it’s also about convincing potential talent that you are the right company to meet their career expectations.

This is the second installment of Common Perceptions in Talent Acquisition That Must Change. Part I addresses the false notion that Talent Acquisition (TA) is an unnecessary source of overhead costs for businesses. The following is another commonly held, but inaccurate belief in the industry.

Hiring (Well) Means “Letting Go”

Relinquishing control and trusting that those around you will do the right thing is not always easy. There are tons of HR executives and TA professionals out there who think that the only people who can execute a TA strategy are recruiters and recruitment leaders.  As business needs are constantly changing and evolving, the concept of forecasting accurate hiring numbers (forget layering in the complexity of attrition) is as nebulous as the flying purple squirrel candidates.

Targets, priorities, and profiles change, and both inbound and outbound sourcing methods take time and energy – which leads to inevitable resource constraints. While it would be nice to say that all of this can be solved with a good CRM strategy, the reality is: there will always be certain roles that we are filling ‘”just in time.”

This means that a completely centralized recruiting function needs to be built for worst case scenario hiring numbers – they need to be prepared for the inevitable “urgent hiring push” that in some businesses is cyclical and in others seems to be completely random. The most amazing thing that TA leaders need to realize is that they have an entire workforce of recruiters – inside their own companies. 

As an industry, we’ve spent too much time making the recruiting process complex and bringing all control and ownership into the department, that we are missing out on using our best asset to our advantage: our people. TA leaders who decentralize their hiring processes (i.e., give both power AND responsibility back to the hiring team – managers, brand ambassadors, executives, department coordinators) have access to a huge pool of resources who are both experienced in interviewing and invested in making a great hire.

Giving access to these resources does come at a price: your ability to control every tiny part of the hiring process. If you want these people to be REALLY invested in hiring, they need to have some semblance of control.  This may mean letting them post their own jobs (gasp!) moving their candidates through the recruitment process, or even making a hiring decision without input from a recruiter.

There are of course certain parts of the process that need controls (you still need a sound approval chain for postings and for offers) and most hiring managers will still want the opinion of someone from your TA team before going to offer on a candidate.

BUT, instead of them having to have your approval or wait for your team to push a button, you become an advisor that they look to for advice, assistance, and support (or sometimes a differing opinion). Ultimately, the hire is theirs to onboard and manage, so why not let them feel that the hiring process is theirs to own too?

Next week we will dive into the last topic of our three part series, which is how delivering true digital transformation within TA is not a lipstick on a pig exercise.

Today’s job seekers are strongly motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and recruiters who make these ideas tangible to top candidates stand to win.

Talent acquisition professionals who understand how top talent thinks are in the best possible position to recruit them to their organization. Today’s job candidates have more opportunities than ever before, and while the majority of them are passive, 90 percent are open to discussing new work opportunities.

With the war for talent at a fever pitch, how can recruiters distinguish their company from competitors? Exceptional hiring teams are beginning to think like marketers, and treating candidates like their customers. To that end, TA professionals are packing job opportunities in a way that puts more focus on candidates’ wants and needs.

Once the money is off the table, candidates are mainly interested in the type of work they will do, the impact it will have, and how it fits into the company’s overall mission. Keeping these factors in mind, recruiters must then frame discussions about new work opportunities around them.

Here’s how to discuss three selling points recruiters often miss in a way that resonates with today’s high-quality talent.

1. The Position

Sure, outlining the role’s responsibilities and expectations feels like a given, but positioning the role in a larger context than the day-to-day grind will help make any position become more attractive to candidates. Explain how the job makes an impact on the company, or potentially the industry as a whole, choosing to focus on purpose rather than compensation or benefits during the first few conversations.

Salary is often the single most deciding factor for candidates to switch jobs, but research suggests greater income brings more happiness only up to about $75,000 per year before it runs out. We quickly acclimatize to greater income, causing it to lose value, which is why intrinsic motivators like company fit and career growth opportunities are crucial.

2. The Company

Candidates want to see culture in action. Think about all the ways your Employer Branding is showcased across different channels. Does your company career page still have stock photos? Over half of all candidates look at company websites for their first line of research before applying, so including photos and video of actual employees sharing their experiences are powerful content. Does your organization’s social media presence and email messaging align with the values that you want to promote? How is the work-life balance among employees? Do the candidate’s interests align with the company’s values?

Top talent often has more than one offer to consider, so recruiters need to demonstrate what makes their company unique from competitors. As brand ambassadors, recruiters are tasked with explaining the company’s mission and vision in a compelling way, so they need to not only have a thorough understanding of what makes the organization’s core product or service it’s strongest selling point, but also how the candidate can directly impact it.

3. Career Growth

Flat hierarchies, project-based work, and the constant demand for new skills have caused many to rethink the traditional career ladder concept, but career growth remains one of the top three reasons why candidates accept offers. What’s more, over 56 percent of candidates choose to stay with their current employers because of opportunities to challenge or improve their skills.

For candidates, a job offer might be a huge life decision, so it’s crucial that they understand the company structure, and know how to locate the services and resources available to them for advancement. Giving new hires the opportunity for growth demonstrates that you want them to succeed in your organization.

Recruiters are increasingly turning to technology solutions to automate certain steps of the hiring process, freeing them up to spend more time on “human” functions like understanding what motivates candidates. When approaching candidates with work opportunities, it’s important that recruiters frame their discussions about the role, its responsibilities, the company, and the candidate’s future around their wants and needs. Not only does this give candidates the best possible experience, but it is the best way to set them up for success.

They know the ins and outs of recruiting great candidates, but does your organization know the best processes for hiring a full-time talent acquisition professional?

Business growth starts and ends with hiring the right people, and as your organization continues to add employees, issues around people management, workflow processes, and legal regulations become more complex. A solid HR foundation is critical to business success, and the bricklayers of people operations are Human Resources professionals. You know this, and so do the candidates applying to your organization’s nascent, or nonexistent, TA team.

Hiring for these roles is difficult for startups that are busy focusing on developing product and honing business objectives, but beware waiting too long. According to renowned Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen, “The number of companies in the Valley that put HR off to the side and decided it wasn’t important and are now dealing with some level of catastrophe—either a public catastrophe or one that’s in the making … and it’s totally unnecessary. If they had taken HR seriously at an earlier point, they probably would have been able to fight a lot of their issues.”

Establishing an effective HR department is critical to growing your business, building company culture, and managing employees. Here’s how to hire a top-quality HR professional at the right time for your company, from crafting a solid job description to what to ask during an interview.

At What Stage Does Your Business Need a Full-Time HR Hire?

The short answer is: the earlier the better. From a legal perspective, organizations with 50 or more employee begin encountering state and federal regulations like the Family and Medical Leave Act. Hiring a HR professional is an absolute must after crossing this threshold.

For smaller startups, tight finances may be the biggest hurdle when launching a Human Resources department, but the greatest success happens when HR is considered early in the process, even before the recognized need for an HR function. For startups with limited financial resources, hiring a full-time HR professional may not be an option, which is why outsourcing the job to a consultant can be a cost-saving alternative. Seasoned advisors bring value and impact to organizations by leveraging strategic TA to drive business growth at any company size.

“It’s about asking what would you like to achieve from the business side—what are the business objectives,” said Anna Brandt, HR Advisor at Backbase and N26. “Then, it’s about asking how do we make sure that the recruitment plan or TA strategy will support the delivery of those objectives?”

Business objectives should also be a consideration when developing a profile for what kind of HR professional your organization needs. For example, if data privacy and compliance are important to your industry, then it’s crucial your HR hire is knowledgeable and experienced in the legal regulations affecting your organization.

Likewise, fast-moving startups will need someone who can multi-task, has high-energy, and is able to switch gears quickly. The ideal candidate for an e-commerce corporation might look very different, so aligning your organization’s HR goals with the ideal candidate profile can help refine the search when it’s time to hire.

Job Descriptions for HR Managers and Recruiters

As with any job posting, you will want to outline the core functions of the role. Key responsibilities for an HR professional may include:

• Organizing departmental planning, including hiring and termination policies
• Overseeing employment and compliance with federal and state regulations
• Implementing performance management and improvement systems
• Managing employee salary, bonus incentives, and other compensation programs
• Managing employee safety, welfare, wellness, and health
• Organizing employee training programs
• Managing employee relations, including fielding complaints, concerns, and feedback
• Offering employee services and counseling

Depending on the size of your organization, it may be important to emphasize how the role could evolve over time as the HR department expands, bringing changes to the role and its responsibilities. But, be careful to avoid clichés like “ad hoc responsibilities”, which can deter great candidates.

Tech Proficiency Matters

Technological innovation like artificial intelligence is advancing exponentially, and the HR industry invests billions of dollars in new tools for recruitment, performance management, engagement, training, inclusion, and analytics. “Recruiting has really been transformed these past years,” said Hessam Lavi, Director of Product at SmartRecruiters. “We’ve seen a shift from HR and recruiting coming from an admin function, or merely a cost center, to much more of a strategic function.”

Today’s HR professionals need a strong understanding of modern HR technology, like automated sourcing tools, talent acquisition suites, and candidate relationship management integrations. That’s why strong HR candidates know how to implement technology to reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks, improve data quality, and free up more time for value-added tasks. This requires an understanding of the HR tech tools available in the market and an ability to pitch business leaders and stakeholders on investments that will yield a high potential return.

Interview Questions for HR Professionals

HR managers and recruiters are expected to be on the front lines of hiring new talent for your organization, which means you need to understand their ability to assess and interview potential candidates. Sample questions for HR professionals may include:

• How will you drive results in your role?
• How do you conduct job terminations?
• What kinds of interview questions do you typically ask?
• Describe a difficult encounter with an employer/manager/colleague and how you handled it.
• Describe a time when you didn’t follow policy or had to deviate from policy.
• How would you deal with an unethical situation? Any examples?
• What kinds of trends do you think will shape the future of HR departments in the coming years?

As with any strong candidate, responses should drive positive conversations, demonstrate thorough research of the company, and reinforce the importance of HR’s role in the company’s overall business growth strategy.

The End Goal

At the end of the day, hiring a HR professional will allow your company to develop better employees and hit your company growth goals. According to Marjorie Adams, President and CEO of Fourlane, “An internal HR person will improve internal processes and development, including tracking vacation time, improving performance review process, helping employees set goals and managing benefits. After all, a business owner doesn’t have the time or talent to take these tasks on, let alone do a good job administering them.”

The second day of the SmartRecruiters first-ever European conference rolled out another full schedule of sessions, assembled a massive “crowd-sourced” band, and crowned another Recruiting Startup of the Year.

Day two began by looking towards the future of SmartRecruiters’ TA suite, in the opening keynote from Rebecca Carr, SmartRecruiters’ VP of Product. “Competition is fierce—we’re living in a talent economy,” she said, speaking to the packed conference hall in a converted warehouse in East Berlin. “It’s important that we deliver to you tools that are going to give you the capabilities to find and nurture talent well before the point of application.”

With many of the upcoming product updates taking years to develop, it’s clear that anticipating and predicting the needs of users is driving future innovation. Along with a design overhaul and new functionality that improves the first-time candidate experience at every stage of the hiring process, SmartRecruiters also revealed its plans to embed more intelligent features into the product, including the robust SmartJobs, which allows hiring teams to take the guesswork out of job advertising, placing your ads in front of the best candidates for the right price.

“SmartRecruiters doesn’t want to be a replica of the old system you used to use,” said Carr. “We want to be thinking farther ahead in terms of what we can be building and developing. We foresaw problems that you may encounter given how the talent economy is changing around us.”

Navigating change often requires the wisdom and insights of those who have already lived it, especially when it comes to achieving hyper-growth for you organization, chief among which is the ability to embrace failure. “In hyper-growth there is no room for perfectionism,” said Noor van Boven, Chief People Officer at online bank, N26. “You need to be able to make decisions quickly. If you are a true perfectionist you will fail.”

And hyper growth isn’t just a concern for company executives, as “being a leader in hyper growth means everyone can have an impact,” said Jeri Doris, Chief People Officer at Delivery Hero. “You’re building a brand, a product, and a company. That’s not just for leaders, but for recruiters—you are part of that company story.”

One of the most creative and surprising moments at Hiring Success Berlin was the participatory jam session, “Synchronicity”, led by Mehmet Baha, founder and senior consultant at Solution Folder. “We’re going to explore diversity and inclusion through music,” said Baha, who is also a percussionist, as he distributed shakers, drums, and other implements to a bewildered crowd. Baha then led the newly formed Hire18 band through a series of musical exercises, drawing parallels to how each has real-world implications in the workplace.

“Active listening is a crucial part of an inclusive work culture,” said Baha, instructing people to close their eyes and hear how each instrument’s unique sound worked together to create a unified composition.

To close out the conference, SmartRecruiters brought five companies on stage to compete for the title of Recruiting Startup of the Year. With only a few minutes to pitch their company to a panel of expert judges, the startup competition is now a central tenet of every Hiring Success conference. Find out which of the five finalists won over the judges and earned the shiny trophy tomorrow on the Hiring Success Journal.

But before we close the book on the first edition of Hiring Success EU we have to celebrate with an authentically Berlin party experience. Conference attendees who still have the energy will move up the banks of the river Spree to Säälchen, on the grounds of the renowned nightclub Kater Blau, where Berlin’s top techno and house DJs will share the stage with a ten-piece pop brass band, spectacular acrobatic performances, and a surprise guest performance.

Check out our day one conference wrap-up to read more about the sessions and speakers you might have missed.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and check back with the Hiring Success Journal for more #Hire18 insights coming soon.