Talent acquisition is one of the biggest challenges organizations face, according to Mercer–Mettl's State of Talent Acquisition 2019 annual report. With technological innovations sweeping the market and more emphasis being placed on skill evaluation, talent assessment is no less than a marathon to grab high potential talent before competitors.
Also, as the hiring process continues to evolve from newspaper ads to social recruiting, the next industry wave is automated recruitment. Organizations have started drifting away from manual hiring to technology driven processes.
Here are three ways technology is changing the talent landscape for the better.
To attract and retain top-quality talent in 2019 and beyond, building a strong employer brand should be a priority of every employer. With more organizations striving to create better workplaces and spend more to drive employee engagement, your brand must create a positive buzz in the market.
A leading LinkedIn Report also suggests that 75% of candidates factor employee branding before joining an organization.1 A positive employee brand can help you attract quality talent, retain them and close multiple requisitions on autopilot through referrals. Such is the power of employee branding.
How can technology make a difference here? State-of-the-art tools, applications and solutions can make a huge difference. Be it a smart career site, robust social media presence or a Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) system, technology can assist organizations in achieving a more refined branding strategy — and bringing in all the benefits that come with it.
When candidates have multiple jobs to choose from, you have to give them a pretty good reason to join your organization, which should be different than a fat paycheck. Providing a gratifying candidate experience can do the job.
The recruitment process is broadly classified into three stages:Sourcing,Screening & Selection, andOnboarding. Your job is to provide a seamless and hassle-free experience in each of these stages, so that the candidate thinks, "This organization has a nicely structured recruitment process. It must be a good place to work." And, you're all set! On the other hand, if there are roadblocks in any of these stages or if candidates get the impression that your recruitment process is haywire, they might look for a better fit elsewhere.
Thanks to recruitment technology, there are plenty of options you can exercise to provide a great candidate experience.
Previously, organizations did not have any standard procedures for evaluation and recruitment. They largely resorted to newspaper ads, walk-ins, unstructured face-to-face interviews or even pen-and-paper tests to fill vacancies. However, with time, they realized that these methods came with drawbacks.
Traditional methods of recruitment were long, complex and biased. They failed in assessing candidates' soft skills or in understanding their weaknesses, since HR did not have any concrete data or framework to base their screening questions on. This ultimately increased candidate back-out and early attrition rates, leaving employers in a dilemma.
Such an unstructured process has given rise to online assessments that now help in shortlisting candidates ideal for a job role, based on the skills they possess.
Additionally, these pre-screening tests also predict a new hire's on-the-job performance and retainability. With top talent typically available in the market for 10 days, on average, companies are increasingly making their talent acquisition process more practical, time-saving and interesting to attract talented candidates.
According to the Mercer-Mettl report, 53% of organizations use competency-based interviews and 40% of organizations use video interviews for hiring top talent. New-age recruitment methods not only increase candidate engagement but also improve quality of hires. In 2017, the use of assessments in the IT/ES industry shot up by 132%, while the Banking Finance Services and Insurance (BFSI) industry experienced an increased assessment usage of 217%.
The adoption of technology for hiring indicates the effectiveness of new-age methods. The tools collect inputs from candidates and compile responses to provide a final report which highlights the positives, negatives and areas in need of improvement. The data-backed results ultimately provide a boost to the employer brand value, improve candidate experience, enhance talent pool quality and help to carry out bulk, as well as niche, hiring in a seamless manner.
1"The Ultimate List of Employer Brand Statistics," LinkedIn Talent Solutions, https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/pdfs/ultimate-list-of-employer-brand-stats.pdf.
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