Understand the practices keeping your department stuck in a reactive-hiring hamster wheel.

In the countryside of Geneva lives the largest scientific experiment humans have ever undertaken. Born from the rubble of WWII, The European Council for Nuclear Research, commonly known as CERN, operates on the principles of peace, transparency, and cross-cultural cooperation. The 27-kilometer facility is home to 10,000+ scientists of over 100 nationalities, all working to deepen humanity’s understanding of our world through particle physics.

Every second on CERN’s campus marks another 11,000 protons colliding at 99.999…percent the speed of light in the world’s largest particle accelerator. But it can’t happen without the people. And that’s what worried James Purvis, Head of HR at CERN when he entered recruitment at the lab 12 years ago – no one was applying.

He realized quickly that CERN would have to level up on candidate experience to start seeing an influx of candidates but there was another crucial element missing from their strategy – they needed to lay a talent pipeline in order to keep pace with the company’s roadmap – a plan stretching 35 years into the future.

After considering the company prospectus and turn-over/average-employee-tenure data, and comparing that information to labor trends, it became clear vocational workers in the form of maintenance technicians, not high-level scientists, would become the most difficult roles to source in the future. In response, CERN launched a comprehensive training program with an advertising campaign targeting recent high school graduates (see video below of James speaking at Hiring Success 18 – Berlin Edition).

This targeted campaign was extremely successful, and CERN now has a deep bench of technicians waiting to come into the ranks!

So what can you, as a recruiter, take from CERN’s journey to hiring success?

Yes, it’s true that this organization is exceptional, yet their methods for building their candidate pipeline are largely universal.

Looking to these scientific pioneers, recruiters can accelerate out of reactive recruiting and into proactive talent acquisition (TA.) To get you started, we’ve outlined some of the most common errors recruiters make when building and maintaining a candidate pipeline, as well as what to do instead.

1.

Not using your data…

Data analytics sounds like scary, esoteric stuff. So, think of it as getting to know your company. Talk to department heads about the reqs they foresee for the next quarter or next year. Look into the records to learn the yearly rollover rate and average employee tenure.

Armed with these simple data points, you can start predicting the personnel needs for the coming year and organizing a recruiting strategy.

2.

Making plans for tomorrow based on the reality of today…

You can’t use a fixed-model to forecast a TA strategy. That is to say, just because you don’t have a shortage of ‘sales associates’ today doesn’t mean you should ignore that pipeline. No candidate pool is guaranteed. Economic fluctuations, tech innovations, and legislative changes will inevitably affect whom you hire, how you hire them, and what you hire them for. Most of these economic/tech/job trends can be foreseen and planned for today. As we learned from CERN,  it’s a matter of paying attention.

3.

Forgetting about internal talent…

Once an employee is onboarded, it’s easy to forget about them as potential talent. However, internal candidates should always be part of your bench. Internal mobility is a great strategy for both retention and attracting new talent. Fifty-six percent of candidates choose to stay with their current employers because of growth opportunities, and “career growth” is one of the top three reasons why candidates accept offers.

Start simple. Create an internal career site that informs current employees about open opportunities. Then, take your strategy to the next level by using AI to identify relevantly skilled workers for you to contact.

4.

Skimping on learning and development (L&D)…

L&D programming directly influences functions like internal mobility. A recent LinkedIn study found that 27 percent of organizations in North America increased their L&D budgets in 2017. This kind of investment makes sense considering the predicted talent shortage, which will impact the technology and financial sectors the most, costing the global economy an estimated $1.31 trillion in lost economic output over the next 12 years.

5.

Reading resumes for job titles instead of skills…

Reviewing resumes from internal candidates is key to L&D/ internal mobility programs, but don’t get distracted by headlines. You must read the fine print to identify employees who have transferable skills and a good knowledge base to be upskilled into open roles.

Similarly, for outside hires, candidates shouldn’t be knocked out because they hail from a disparate industry or job title – it’s all about having the skills to execute the job.

6.

Falling out of touch…

It’s hard to prioritize future hires when you have reqs to fill today. However, if you spend the time building quality talent pools, it’s a shame to see that work go to waste by neglecting them. Nurturing these communities is a key aspect of recruitment marketing.

So, how do you find time for this? It’s not magic, it’s tech! Most TA teams use candidate relationship management systems (CRM) to automate and scale communication, including drip campaigns and branded landing pages.

It’s important to remember recruitment marketing programs are a two-way street. Don’t just push information to potential applicants, make sure they are updating their information and engaging with you as well.

7.

Not using freelancers…

Upwork estimates that 36 percent of the US workforce already freelance, and projects that number will reach 50 percent by 2027, so why not get ahead of the trend?

An active community of contract workers ensures that no project stalls out due to missing talent. These temporary hires can buttress a department while recruiters seek a full-time team member, or they can provide specialized skills that may be too expensive for your company to employ full time.

The following article was originally published on the Human Capital Institute website and is authored by Head of People at SmartRecruiters Sarah Wilson. Join Sarah in the future of recruiting – a future which is actually happening right now! Robots, technology, and the land of tomorrow. How can we harness all the recent advancements in HR Tech to make everyone’s lives easier from candidates to hiring managers?

Anyone who visited Walt Disney World during the 1980s and 90s likely has a solid memory of the Tomorrowland attraction.

I remember getting onto the ride that took you through history – all the way back to the dinosaurs (the tar pit scene still haunts me) – and then into the future.  It was the near future.  The air smelled cleaner (and faintly of oranges) as if we’d solved ozone layer and global warming issues, people dressed in white, cars flew and there were robots EVERYWHERE. They looked like metal people with blank expressions and they were doing all kinds of tasks – they mowed the lawn, dusted the shelves and took out the trash.

Compare this vision to today. It seems completely in the future, completely out of reach. Cars are still on the ground. I don’t know where you live, but where I live, there is definitely still pollution, carbon fuel, and the air does not smell faintly of oranges.  The people around me are not dressed exclusively in white (aside from the Diner en Blanc annual event). Everything about the vision of Tomorrowland seems like a funny upside-down version of the future.

“Nonetheless, there ARE robots EVERYWHERE.  They may not look like a traditional robot stereotype, but they are present in so many parts of my daily routine.”

Nonetheless, there ARE robots EVERYWHERE.  They may not look like a traditional robot stereotype, but they are present in so many parts of my daily routine.  An app tells me the best way to drive into work, my watch tells me when to pause and take a moment to breathe, the fancy coffee maker at my office calculates the water temperature for a perfect cappuccino, and my phone covers everything else I could need in a regular day.

For as long as I have been in this industry, I have heard that recruiters are frustrated about the overwhelming effort needed to find the perfect candidate, that hiring managers are flaky or change their minds too often, and that candidates apply for roles that are not a bad fit.

“Recruiters often say they have too many tasks and not enough time, and that the business doesn’t understand what takes them so long.”

Recruiters often say they have too many tasks and not enough time, and that the business doesn’t understand what takes them so long. Recruiters say the senior leadership team thinks there are too many recruiters for how few people the company is hiring, and they need technology to make things more efficient and help get end results.

Recruiters say automation is the answer.

As Head of People at SmartRecruiters, I responded to recruiters’ need by creating the applicant tracking system – an automation tool that would reduce the likelihood of candidates receiving a personal response to their applications.

When this didn’t solve our time and resourcing issues, we layered in more technology: ‘knock out’ screening questions that stopped an application dead in its tracks; artificial intelligence (AI) that prioritized which candidate to call first, video interviewing that allowed quicker assessments and that saved the precious time the recruiter was spending on the phone with unqualified applicants.

“Here’s the thing about super smart computers: they aren’t always right.”

Here’s the thing about super smart computers: they aren’t always right. To be fair, I’m not always right, either. I’ve let my past decisions and their repercussions impact my future decisions. I’ve let my surroundings and mindset cloud my judgment. I’ve learned from my successes and my failures.

These tech-based systems weren’t infallible. That era of recruiting technology made the job search process impersonal, robotic, and lonely for candidates.  Sending out countless resumes in hopes that maybe a human will someday read it is daunting, frustrating and ultimately depressing. The void got wider. We’d arrived at the tar pit for candidates.

“The best recruiting solutions are Talent Acquisition Suites that encourage the actual hiring managers and executives to get involved directly with applicants.”

So where does this leave us? Emerging technology in the recruiting space seeks to connect candidates to jobs in the most efficient way possible. The best recruiting solutions are Talent Acquisition Suites that encourage the actual hiring managers and executives to get involved directly with applicants – sending messages, reviewing resumes, and providing real feedback (in real-time) about a candidate’s application status.  We are starting to see more and more recruiting teams acting like sales people, building communities of talent and nurturing them so they know exactly who they want to chase when an opening comes up within their companies.

Let’s fast forward to the Tomorrowland of recruiting. The applicant tracking system is replaced by a true talent acquisition suite of tools designed to be inclusive, personal and easy to use.  Candidates will see in real-time whether a recruiter has looked at their resumes, and they can directly interact with a prospective employer to learn more about what it’s really like to work there.

AI is used for candidate discovery and job matching to increase the likelihood that you apply for the right job on the first try. It is also used to rediscover a candidate who may have applied months (or years) ago to another job, but whose profile now perfectly fits with an open position.

Video Interviewing gives candidates a chance to tell companies why they should take a chance and give them a call, and allows them to provide what isn’t on their resumes.

“Realize that recruiting really is a team sport.”

Most importantly, we harness the collective power of our organizations and realize that recruiting really is a team sport.

Hiring managers can contact a candidate directly and they can even (gasp) deliver an offer to someone they want on their teams.

Recruiters can spend time getting to know a candidate on a deeper and more meaningful level because the tools and technology they use will help them with the technical assessments of skill and ability.

Maybe cars don’t yet fly – but we’ve cleared the air.

In a digital world where you can have any piece of information available to you at the swipe of your thumb; we need to focus on using technology to help us create more intimate relationships with our candidates – not divide us further.

Here’s the wildest thing about this idea – this future world is here.  These technologies exist and the companies who built them want to help you figure out the best thing for you and for your candidates. The key to remaining human is to use your intuition.  If you think like your applicants for a moment, you can find a way to balance efficiency and intimacy.