The past twelve months have been volatile for the labor market. From the COVID hiring boom to the gradual rationalization of labor demand across industries, you wouldn’t be wrong to assume that we’re amid a recession.

However, the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data paints a vastly different picture. The US economy added a whopping 517,000 jobs in January 2023, beating market estimates. The unemployment rate fell to the lowest level since May 1969.

While we witnessed massive layoffs across tech, industries like hospitality and leisure, government, business services, and healthcare, amongst others, added a significant number of jobs.

At a time when organizations are exploring new ways to unlock growth, talent acquisition (TA) can play a pivotal role in enabling businesses to navigate an increasingly unpredictable economic environment.

Focusing on the strategic side of talent acquisition brings enormous benefits to businesses, especially when talent teams are not consumed with tactical hiring activities. With the new talent available for hire, organizations can access a larger pool of qualified candidates. In addition, prioritizing TA during this time can help organizations develop their competitive advantage when it comes to improving the hiring experience – for both candidates and recruiters.

As TA takes on a more strategic role within organizations, it’s a great time to assess your recruiting technology stack to determine if your technology, processes, and people are ready to meet your organization’s near-future and longer-term talent needs.

From the technology demos and success stories that have been shared with me, here are my takeaways on some of the solutions making an impact in 2023.

The Modern Recruitment Technology Ecosystem

Today’s recruiting technology ecosystem is much more diverse, and with good reason. A decade back, it wouldn’t be surprising to see an organization relying on a single-suite solution to orchestrate its entire hiring process. Your typical HRIS or HCM would tackle everything from sourcing to offer management, albeit with limited functionalities and customizability.

Fast forward a few years, and we see an explosion of best-of-breed solutions designed to address specific needs at different stages of the recruitment funnel. There has been a massive shift in how organizations think about leveraging and managing such solutions.

So, top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) activities go beyond the capabilities of a traditional ATS. For instance, there’s programmatic job advertising, with players like Joveo bringing data science and behavioral advertising to enable organizations to reach a much larger pool of qualified candidates. Similarly, we see players like Qualifi, GoodTime, and Metaview delivering better interview experiences (mid-funnel) for both candidates and recruiters.

The thought of developing a future-proof recruitment stack can be daunting but it doesn’t have to be. Despite the large vendor ecosystem out there, identifying a good fit comes down to clarity in what you seek to achieve with your point solutions.

We’ve deconstructed the hiring funnel to examine how some vendors in 2023 are addressing a number of the biggest challenges in talent acquisition.

Top-of-the-Funnel (TOFU)

As the skills landscape continues to evolve, sourcing and recruitment marketing remain key priorities for organizations. A new study by Mercer found that 98% of companies still report significant skills gaps. While HR and TA look at new ways to address the growing skills divide, a large section (37%)  believe skills acquisition through hiring is the best way forward.

Here are some of the companies you should have on your radar if you’re looking to bolster your TOFU capabilities:

• PitchMe: The solution offers a great way to supercharge your candidate database, automatically updating candidate profiles in your existing database, allowing you to operationalize your candidate data like never before. Pitchme scans over 35 digital sources to update work experience, contact information, and enrich candidate profiles with verified skills missing from their resumes. It also suggests new candidates from outside of your current database.
  Why consider it? Save on valuable time by automating database enrichment and saving the hiring budget purchasing new candidates.
• Fetcher: A platform that addresses both – top and mid funnel recruiting needs by delivering candidates right to recruiters’ inboxes and offering a host of candidate relationship management (CRM) features to help you improve engagement with sourced candidates. Fetcher takes a unique approach to identifying great-fit candidates by steering away from traditional databases and using talent intelligence and matching to curate batches of qualified candidates based on requisition criteria. You can also use it to automate email follow-ups and interview scheduling.
  Why consider it? A fresh approach to sourcing and focus on DEI metrics makes it a powerful tool for organizations looking to match with candidates in high-competition industries.
• Datapeople: Simplifies job posting by automating compliance requirements for pay transparency by location and offering real time recommendations for job descriptions using language analytics. Datapeople also features an intuitive recruiting dashboard that offers insight into your job description language and content. The solution “humanizes” candidate outreach and supports your DEI efforts right from the start, i.e., job descriptions.
  Why consider it? The easiest way to audit recruiting content for job descriptions and outreach for better DEI and conversions. Also offers integrations with all major ATS.
• Brazen: A virtual career events platform for organizations hiring from both college and non-college alternatives. Brazen also offers a host of candidate engagement features and microsites designed to provide experiential/interactive communication to drive candidates down the recruiting funnel.
  Why consider it? Brazen provides a seamless engagement experience – allowing recruiters to transition from text-based chat to voice and video, all in a branded environment. The platform also offers comprehensive event tools – covering everything from event promotions to an analytics dashboard for measuring event performance.
• Retrain: Match the right people to the right roles with Retain’s intelligent candidate profiling. The solution helps you discover candidates’ skills and aptitudes and connect them to suitable roles in your organization while reducing bias. Retrain’s responsible AI supports your DEI goals by breaking down candidate profiles into skills while masking titles, degrees, or other factors that can introduce potential bias.
  Why consider it? Leverage talent intelligence to bridge your skills gap and support your DEI efforts.
• Paradox: A mobile-first, conversational recruiting platform that automates screening and scheduling. Paradox’s AI assistant, Olivia, is an intuitive conversational interface that reduces application drop-off rates by making applications as easy as texting.
  Why consider it? Job application flow has remained virtually unchanged since the early job boards. Olivia makes applying to jobs a lot more engaging and easy.
• JobSync: A platform for recruitment marketing that automates the integration of ATS’s and job sites. The solution helps connect all parts of a TA tech stack. It also removes friction by simplifying the application process to create a better candidate experience.
  Why consider it? Integrate the application process from the job site to ATS to save time and increase ROI.
• PandoLogic: A recruiting marketing and conversational AI platform that does everything from job advertising to candidate experience and analysis. It simplifies the hiring process by automatically posting jobs to recruitment sites, search engines, and social media. Its AI-enabled talent acquisition platform helps get job postings in front of more qualified candidates.
  Why consider it? Save time leveraging candidate data while reducing bias, and continuously redefine hiring strategy based on your needs

Mid-Funnel (MOFU)

Candidate engagement and interviews typically dominate mid-funnel recruitment efforts. Over the past two years, this segment has witnessed a massive transformation in the way MOFU activities are carried out. The pandemic accelerated the shift to a digital-first interviewing experience and the rise of communication automation. Vendors have been adding intelligent layers to their candidate engagement and CRM platforms to drive personalized messaging. However, CX as a whole is still evolving and many organizations are yet to begin thinking about engagement as a strategic candidate acquisition enabler. A 2022 report found that nearly 53% of candidates abandoned the recruiting process because of poor communication from the employer.

On the interviews and assessment front, there have been interesting developments since the move to digital. Overall, organizations reported a 44% increase in the number of interviews from 2018 to 2021. A part of this spike could be attributed to the fact that organizations added custom interview stages to their recruitment processes (for technical and leadership positions). On the other hand, the total time spent with prospective hires in the interview process fell 14% during the same time period. While organizations are able to operationalize their interview feedback faster, the candidate journey is a lot more non-linear. This signals an ongoing evolution in the way talent teams interact with candidates through the hiring funnel.

Vendors making moves in 2023 include (but are not limited to):

• Shine Interview: The platform offers one-way and live interviewing capabilities in addition to video introductions. It can facilitate candidate attraction and interview scheduling as well. Shine Interview helps you seamlessly add highlights and notes to interviews, making cross-team and cross-organizational collaboration seamless.
  Why consider it? Create a single unified view of the candidate from the initial attraction phase to interviewing in a shareable digital profile.
• Pillar: An interview intelligence platform, Pillar helps you speed up the hiring process by transcribing interviews for easy collaboration. The platform also offers interviewer coaching and question recommendations based on job profiles. However, the standout feature is the platform’s ability to let interviewers curate highlights, post-interview recaps to responses, cutting the failure rate in half. In addition, the offering allows for side-by-side candidate comparison to combat regency bias.
  Why consider it? Pillar’s AI-generated skills based highlight reels make hiring more objective and the question guidance feature helps you weed out any bias from the interviewing process to improve your DEI outcomes.
• Fama: The company takes a novel approach to helping organizations build a more productive and tolerant workforce by helping them identify problematic behavior before it becomes a problem. Fama offers background screening focused on uncovering intolerant behavior on social media. Its compliant and consent-based screening empowers organizations and hiring teams to make a more informed decision when hiring. With a marked increase in the use of social media post COVID-19, and an associated increase in participation online on topics such as racial justice, politics, and gender equity, Fama can help you mitigate risks associated with incivility, ostracism, bullying, and harassment in the workplace. The product also takes out the possibility of introducing bias that comes with manual screening.
  Why consider it? Discrimination is expensive. In addition to potential legal costs, the cost to replace employees can be anywhere from one-half to two times their salary. For organizations looking to build a healthy and productive culture, identifying and addressing intolerance at the hiring stage could save hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• Glider: The skills intelligence platform helps organizations assess talent quality across multiple stages – screening, assessments, and interviews, via AI chatbots and proctoring. It offers both technical and non-technical skill assessment features making it a potent tool for businesses across industries.
  Why consider it? Save valuable SME time by automating phone screening with Glider’s AI-guided phone conversations.
• SourceWhale: A solution that brings consumer-grade personalization to talent acquisition, SourceWhale offers hyper-personalization to engage and drive candidates down the recruiting funnel. Its handy chrome extension allows you to pull in personalized content mid-sequence and edit variables on the fly, allowing recruiters to create a white-glove experience for candidates. SourceWhale also features reporting and automation along with ATS integrations, making it one of the easiest “bolt-on” candidate experience solutions out there.
  Why consider it? Drive personalization at scale with content. Leverage A/B testing, gamification, and DEI analytics to improve your recruiting outcomes.
• Calendly: A scheduling automation tool that helps reduce time to hire and improve employee productivity. The solution can help teams coordinate multi-step interviews with various formats in a singular location. It also manages interviewer workload, attributes and time-zone to build balanced schedules.
  Why consider it? Increase your candidate pipeline while reducing the time it takes to fill a position. Also decreases interviewer burnout by managing the work across an entire team.
• Metaview: Makes interviewing more engaging for both interviewers and candidates. Metaview automates notetaking so interviewers can focus on high-quality conversations with candidates. It also offers AI-generated summaries of interviews. Solutions like these put the spotlight back on human interactions in an increasingly automated world. It enriches itself from other data sources like ATS to synthesize the highlights of the interview – making life easier for recruiters and hiring managers.
  Why consider it? Improve the quality and speed of your hiring process by uncovering insights into the rigor and consistency of your interviews.
• GoodTime: Simplify interview scheduling and bring down your time to hire with smart automation. GoodTime’s meeting optimization engine ensures candidates get matching times on their interviewers’ calendars as soon as they give their availability. It addresses common scheduling problems like manual emails and panel interview slot matching. It’s a great solution for companies with high-volume hiring needs as well as organizations with multiple interview stages for white-collar roles.
  Why consider it? Scale your interviewer pool with shadow training and develop new subject matter experts within your organization.
• Qualifi: Reduce candidate ghosting and scheduling conflicts with on-demand interviewing. Qualifi allows you to pre-record your interview questions that candidates can respond to and complete within 20 hours, making phone screening a breeze. In addition, a transcript is created which identifies keywords that match the role requirements. Pre-recorded interviews significantly bring down your time-to-hire.
  Why consider it? Qualifi’s interviewing platform allows you to bulk-send interviews to candidates, avoiding the back-and-forth burden of scheduling. Interviews are just a link or QR code away and can be reviewed like a podcast in 1.5 or 2x speed.
• HireMojo: A new product category within CRM, MojoHire offers a wide range of functionalities, from sourcing to hiring. The platform features a database of job descriptions and interview questions that are further matched to your requisition via AI to help you find the top candidates. MojoHire also identifies the best job posting channels for your open roles using predictive analytics and real-time behavioral data. Finally, automated screening allows recruiters to focus on high-value tasks rather than resume screening.
  Why consider it? Achieve more with your ATS by tapping into intelligent layers and talent rediscovery.

Bottom-of-the-Funnel (BOFU)

As the organizations continue to scrutinize their quality-of-hire, skill assessment platforms have become a staple in the selection stage for organizations. Post pandemic, technical assessments have become more immersive thanks to interactive experiences via problem-solving simulations and conversational intelligence. Vendors in this space are now expanding their capabilities to support more of the recruitment process from sourcing to selection, similar to what we’ve observed over the last two years in the video interviewing segment.

In addition to skills, behavioral assessment and psychological profiling remain relevant today despite scepticism from a scientific validation standpoint. However, we’ve observed a marked departure from game-based psychometric assessments to more holistic job simulation assessments that measure both behavioral and domain skills.

Some assessment solutions to watch out for in 2023:

• Filtered: A unique approach to technical assessments that does not rely on coding tests or screening. You can instead evaluate candidates with short, comprehensive job simulations that objectively assess the skills you are hiring for. Filtered can help you create real-world simulations tailored to a role and seniority level, while empowering candidates to explain their work.
  Why consider it? Make assessments more impactful and objective to predict candidate performance on the job.
• Highmatch: Mobile-first assessments that measure the success factors for on-the-job performance. Highmatch offers domain, personality, cognitive aptitude, and situational judgment assessments, making it a 360-degree assessment platform for organizations in all industries and of all sizes.
  Why consider it? Personalize assessment to the candidate and their experiences to get a complete view of their ability to succeed in a role.

Conclusion

Slowing growth and a highly competitive labor market make for an interesting paradox. And the recruiting technology ecosystem is rising to the occasion by developing solutions based on deep-domain expertise and leaning on talent intelligence. With more recruiting tools becoming ATS and HCM agnostic, TA teams have an opportunity to tap into a much larger solutions ecosystem with bespoke capabilities for each stage of the hiring funnel.

Going forward, TA teams will need even more education, support, and consulting expertise to navigate candidate expectations and achieve business goals in 2023. As all these challenges take form, we will be here to guide you.

We hope this resource helps you get started re-envisioning how you address your most pressing challenges with technology.

The post Spotlight: Succeeding with Recruiting Solutions in 2023 appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

And, recruiting is no exception – from creating interview questions and job ad templates to following up with candidates, ChatGPT has many potential applications in the field. However, it would be a mistake to treat the technology as a silver bullet. Seriously!

ChatGPT is undeniably impressive as a dynamic language model, but it also has a habit of getting basic questions wrong, providing nonsensical interpretations, and presenting these mistakes in a convincing way to users who aren’t familiar with the subject matter at all. Don’t believe me? Just go down a reddit hole.

Now, don’t get me wrong. These problems certainly don’t make ChatGPT useless for recruiters, but they provide ample cause for caution. ChatGPT can complement the recruiting process in many ways, but hiring professionals need to figure out how to integrate it without relying on it. As AI rapidly becomes more powerful, recruiters will have to continually reassess which AI-powered tools they’re using and how to fully leverage those tools without taking unnecessary risks.

The Shift Toward AI in Recruiting

Recruiters were focused on the role of AI in their field long before the arrival of ChatGPT. AI has the potential to help recruiters source talent, reduce hiring mistakes, improve diversity, and accomplish many other goals. For example, at a time when the labor market remains hot and companies are finding it difficult to fill open roles, AI-powered talent rediscovery can give them a competitive edge by quickly searching through and surfacing previous applicants who meet a specific set of hiring criteria.

An Oracle survey found that significant majorities of HR professionals would like to use AI for many elements of talent acquisition: identifying candidates with the right competencies (66 percent), spending less time sifting through resumes (64 percent), filling open positions more quickly (58 percent), and improving the candidate experience (55 percent). The same survey found that HR professionals expected to use AI much more heavily in the coming years, though just 12 percent strongly agreed that they’re knowledgeable about using AI for talent acquisition.

As recruiters cast increasingly wide nets in search of talent and remote platforms make it easier to hire and onboard employees from anywhere in the world, AI will play a larger role in all aspects of talent acquisition. Still, there are good reasons why this role will likely continue to be supplemental rather than central to the most effective recruitment strategies.

The Liabilities of ChatGPT

Consider one of the most commonly-cited problems with ChatGPT as it currently exists: its answers are often incorrect. There are proliferating accounts of how ChatGPT misstates historical facts, makes programming mistakes, and even gets basic arithmetic wrong. This problem isn’t limited to ChatGPT – Alphabet shares recently plummeted when Google’s new Bard chatbot presented inaccurate information in a high-profile ad. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s new Bing chatbot (powered by OpenAI software) has proven to be bizarrely moody, frequently and stubbornly incorrect, and even emotionally manipulative.

Although ChatGPT is a powerful platform that offers a glimpse into the future of AI-enabled work, its tendency to make mistakes should be a big red flag for recruiters. For example, recruiters may attempt to answer candidate questions more efficiently with ChatGPT and end up providing erroneous information. This is particularly problematic when it comes to issues around diversity and inclusion, disabilities and accessibility, and compliance with relevant laws and regulations. There are many reports of bias in ChatGPT’s answers, which isn’t surprising as the model is built on real-world associations where biases are pervasive.

ChatGPT will continue to improve, and there are plenty of ways for recruiters to use the technology productively. But this should always be done with the full awareness of the platform’s shortcomings and the risks of over-reliance on AI in the hiring process.

Taking full advantage of ChatGPT and other AI platforms

ChatGPT is among the most powerful language models and information aggregators available, and its reach is growing all the time. As the platform continues to gather data from millions of users (and now that Microsoft is incorporating ChatGPT into Bing), we should expect to see the amount and quality of information increase along with the number of users. Meanwhile, other major companies, startups, and labs will pursue their own generative language models.

How can recruiters benefit from these developments? ChatGPT is capable of providing job descriptions, candidate pitches, and interview questions. It can create boolean strings to help recruiters widen or narrow their search parameters. It can immediately generate overviews of market research. However, beyond the fact that recruiters should be wary of many of ChatGPT’s “answers” for the reasons outlined above (bias, unreliability, etc.), they should also use the platform as more of a jumping-off point than as an end in itself.

Recruiters are still the ones who know what type of culture they’re trying to build, what unique advantages and constraints their companies face, and what they’re looking for in a candidate. These are all reasons they should remember that, while ChatGPT offers an answer for certain recruiting challenges, it isn’t the answer.

The post ChatGPT Won’t Revolutionize Recruiting Anytime Soon appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Let’s take a look at a few of the tools recruiters are using to secure talent at a time when companies are in need of a competitive edge in the talent market.

Market Intelligence on Salary and Benefits

One of recruiters’ most critical mistakes in the hiring process is failing to disclose a proposed salary or providing such a wide salary range that it’s meaningless to job-seekers. A 2022 survey found that the majority of candidates think “salary transparency should be employers’ number one priority on postings.” One of the top pain points job-seekers cite in the application process is a lack of clarity on salary.

Companies like WTW provide customized solutions that generate competitive market data on geography, size, industry, etc., which allows recruiters to offer salaries and benefits that stand the best chance of attracting and securing talent. HR teams can use these solutions in conjunction with the data they gather on individual candidates (from structured interviews, pre-employment assessments, and other methods of evaluation) to make informed decisions on which salaries and benefits they should offer. Companies can also provide flexible benefits to meet candidates’ unique needs.

Compensation Management and Insights

When a company doesn’t offer salary information, almost one-third of candidates assume it’s hiding something, and 31 percent think the company’s pay structure is biased. While 90 percent of C-suite leaders think they provide sufficient salary information, a 2022 survey found that “just 68 percent of entry-level workers, 60 percent of associate/analyst-level employees, and 60 percent of managers said the same.”

Candidates and employees don’t just want context-free salary numbers – they also want to know how salary decisions are made. Compensation management software offered by companies like Salary.com is designed to help companies make informed pay decisions that take internal and external factors into consideration, account for equity issues, and provide visibility into their salary structures.

Meanwhile, platforms such as Compa synthesize compensation information, keep track of offers and expectations, and establish pay ranges (both external and internal) for all candidates under consideration. HR teams can use this data to craft offers that outline the full range of benefits future employees will receive and present these benefits in an attractive and digestible offer.

Performance Tracking and Professional Development

Employees don’t want their roles to be fixed and static. Professional development and talent mobility have become top employee priorities, which is why HR teams that offer superior internal mobility are in a much stronger position to retain employees than their peers who struggle with it.

HR management platforms such as Cegid Talentsoft make it easier for companies to offer development opportunities by allowing companies to objectively evaluate skills and goals, provide personalized suggestions, and facilitate internal mobility. This will show candidates that your company is serious about providing growth and advancement opportunities for all employees.

It has never been more important for recruiters to have reliable compensation data and the ability to leverage that data in the hiring process. As the competition for talent remains intense, there will be a parallel competition among the platforms that provide recruiters with the tools they need to make predictive hiring decisions and improve the candidate experience.

The post How Innovative Compensation Tools are Helping Companies Acquire Talent appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Hiring managers and HR professionals might be surprised at the relevance of NFL hiring for their own recruitment strategies.

Individual Performance and Qualifications Have to be Placed in the Context of a Larger System

Owners, coaches, and other leaders are focused on finding the right fit for the type of organization they’re trying to build. If a team runs an innovative and explosive offense (like the Kansas City Chiefs, for instance), it wouldn’t make sense to hire a staid offensive coordinator who doesn’t want to experiment or take risks. It’s also vital to hire coaches that fill a gap in the staff and add value. If you already have an excellent running back coach and your ground game is stellar – while you’re struggling to put the ball in the air – it might not make sense to hire an offensive coordinator with extensive experience coaching running backs.

Of course, there are exceptions – the offensive coordinator might be a great pick for other reasons. But the overarching point still holds: a new hire has to be a good fit in terms of skills, experience, and temperament. The same principle applies to any hiring process – by ensuring that a new employee is synchronized with the rest of your team, you’ll amplify the team’s strengths while reducing the likelihood of conflict. At a time when two-thirds of company leaders say the organization’s culture is even more important than its strategy or operating model, finding people who complement your existing workforce and share your values is critical.

Assess Candidates Systematically and Fairly

Belichick found himself at the center of a major controversy about representation among head coaches in the NFL last year. On January 24, 2022, Belichick texted Brian Flores (the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins) to congratulate him for landing a job as head coach of the New York Giants. There were just two problems: First, Flores hadn’t, in fact, been selected for the job (which was going to Brian Daboll, hence the confusion). But even more disconcertingly, Belichick texted Flores two days before he was scheduled to interview. When Flores sued the NFL for racial discrimination, these messages were part of the lawsuit, as they suggested that the Giants were only interviewing him to avoid falling afoul of the Rooney Rule – which requires teams to interview at least one diverse candidate.

Fairness and objectivity should be integral to any organization’s hiring process, especially at a time when DEI has never been more important. Beyond the fact that the perception of fairness and representation is crucial – three-quarters of candidates report that a diverse workforce is a key factor when evaluating job offers – companies should never make hiring decisions on the basis of limited information. Every candidate’s application should be given equal weight and selections should be made on the basis of their likelihood to succeed in the role.

Objective tools such as pre-employment assessments can mitigate the bias that often creeps into conventional approaches to hiring (such as resumes and unstructured interviews), while a consistent set of criteria for all candidates will hold everyone to the same standard. No matter what strategies and resources you use, respect candidates’ time and focus on providing an excellent hiring experience. This is what the Giants failed to do when Flores interviewed for a job he knew he wasn’t going to get.

Make Your Hiring Process as Holistic and Data-Driven as Possible

One of the most significant resources NFL coaches have is access to a vast amount of data. For a potential defensive coordinator, teams can analyze everything from points and yards given up to turnovers to fourth down stops. For an offensive coordinator, they can examine total passing and rushing yards, red zone success percentage, points scored, and countless other indicators of performance. But the most incisive analysts go beyond top-line numbers and consider potential coaches holistically, which means asking questions such as: what injuries did they have to work around? How difficult was their schedule? How did their numbers improve or deteriorate over the season (or over longer time horizons)?

Like NFL coaches, hiring managers have never had more access to data about candidates. But data by itself only gets you so far – you have to be capable of extracting the signal from the noise and determining how well candidates will perform on the job. In some cases, this means balancing a sparse resume with impressive performance on certain projects or assessments. In others, it means taking a close look at how unique skills could transfer from industry to industry. Every candidate should be evaluated as an individual.

Final Thoughts

The most successful hires in the NFL will be the coaches who build on an organization’s existing strengths, provide skills and perspectives that are missing or underemphasized on the sidelines, and have a record of adaptability and success in the League. These are all fundamental characteristics that hiring managers in any industry should be focused on.

The post What Hiring Professionals Can Learn From the NFL appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

A critical element of any DEI platform is developing an inclusive company culture, but this doesn’t mean putting up a few posters around the office and telling candidates that you value diversity. It means making your commitment to DEI integral to your company’s daily operations and building the infrastructure of support necessary to address the unique needs and concerns of all your employees – from recruitment to onboarding and beyond.

1. Make the Hiring Process Fair

Traditional hiring methods are notoriously prone to bias, which is why some diverse candidates even remove indicators of their race and background on resumes to secure interviews. HR teams can address this problem by making the hiring process more rigorous and fair with objective pre-employment assessments, structured interviews, and other effective hiring tools designed to mitigate bias. A 2021 survey found that the companies which provide the highest-rated candidate experiences conduct structured interviews almost 15 percent more often than average.

A commitment to fair hiring won’t just inspire confidence among diverse job-seekers – it will also help companies make more predictive hiring decisions.

The same principle applies to internal talent mobility, which is pivotal for employee retention. HR teams can use impartial assessments to determine which roles are available to employees, and they should encourage all employees to be advocates for themselves and welcome discussions about professional development and advancement. At a time when just 57 percent of women feel comfortable asking for a raise and many diverse employees believe double standards apply to them, recruiters and HR teams have to address concerns about equity directly.

Considering the fact that candidates are 74 percent more likely to refer others when they perceive the hiring process as fair, it’s clear that this should be a central focus for recruiters.

2. Meeting the Needs of a Diverse Workforce

The American workforce has never been more diverse, which is one of many reasons employees are placing a premium on flexibility. Diverse employees have their own unique priorities and challenges, and HR teams should provide benefits that are as personalized as possible. For example, most companies offer some form of PTO, but a 2021 survey found that there are significant racial, gender, and socioeconomic gaps in whether vacation time is used.

It’s no surprise that 81 percent of executives are adjusting policies to offer greater flexibility to their workforces. But what does this look like in practice? To take one of the most salient examples, companies should offer benefits that meet diverse employees’ individual needs. PTO is among the most common benefits companies offer, but some employees get more use out of it than others. For example, nonwhite employees report that they’re 19 percent less likely than their white colleagues to take all their vacation time in a given year.

HR teams should address these discrepancies by having an open, ongoing discussion with employees about the benefits that make the most sense for them.

Be Upfront with Candidates About Diversity

A Glassdoor survey found that over three-quarters of job-seekers regard diversity as an important factor when considering job offers. Diverse candidates are significantly less likely to apply to companies that lack diversity in their workforces, which means companies that are falling short on DEI are putting themselves in a weaker position to compete.

Just as recruiters should be upfront about the salary and benefits they offer, they should also be willing to have honest conversations with candidates about their DEI efforts. This will establish trust, demonstrate that your company takes DEI seriously, and show job-seekers that their opinions will count at work – a key component of employee engagement.

HR professionals have a responsibility to facilitate open dialogue about DEI issues across the organization, provide benefits and professional development opportunities that diverse employees embrace, and build hiring and onboarding processes with diversity in mind. These inclusive practices won’t just make all employees feel welcome at your company – they’ll also help you attract qualified candidates and improve retention.

The post The Top Three Practices Recruiters Can Use to Drive DEI Uptake appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

This represents a major opportunity for proactive hiring professionals who are looking to gain an edge amid fierce competition for talent. There are millions of overlooked Americans who aren’t included in the official unemployment rate of 3.5 percent because they aren’t currently searching for a job or they fall outside the DOL’s time window. But this doesn’t mean these people are unreachable – if companies expand their efforts to identify and recruit candidates, they’ll discover future employees who aren’t showing up in government statistics. This won’t just connect companies with the talent they desperately need – it will also help to draw workers out of the shadows. 

There’s a lot of talk about the strong labor market today, but these conversations need to consider the entire economic picture instead of the deceptively low unemployment rate. When HR teams focus on the millions of available workers who aren’t technically classified as unemployed, they’ll alleviate their talent shortages while contributing to a healthier labor force more broadly. 

Real Unemployment is Higher Than You Think

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the labor force participation rate collapsed as the unemployment rate surged. But as the latter returned to pre-pandemic levels, the former has remained depressed – from 63.3 percent in February 2020 to 62.3 percent in December 2022. This rate is critical because it captures a reality that the unemployment rate misses. As the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics explains: “All persons who are without jobs and are actively seeking and available to work are included among the unemployed.” This leaves many people out. 

While early retirements, a legal immigration slowdown, and other factors have contributed to the shrinking labor market, a February 2022 working paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that a lower willingness to work was also having an impact. This should come as no surprise – the quit rate remains high as employees continue to demand more flexibility on the job, better benefits and compensation, and greater opportunities for professional development and talent mobility. Meanwhile, we’re in the middle of an employee engagement crisis – Gallup reports that just 21 percent of employees say they’re engaged at work, which can lead to turnover, cultural problems, and lower productivity. 

Even when employees stick around, their lack of engagement and frustration with the status quo can lead to quiet quitting (a term I loathe, but that’s an article for another day), which refers to workers becoming less invested in their jobs and doing the absolute minimum necessary to remain employed. Is it any wonder that many of the workers who’ve dropped out of the labor force are feeling similarly disenchanted about their prospects? Just as many employees are merely going through the motions at their jobs, many would-be employees don’t see a compelling reason to rush back to work in the first place. 

How Companies Can Reach Overlooked Workers

While the labor force participation rate has remained stubbornly low over the past two years, this doesn’t mean companies should write off millions of potential employees who aren’t lining up to go back to work. In many cases, these apprehensive former workers are experienced professionals who would make a great addition to your team. They’re just deterred by the frustrating process of reentering the workforce, anxious about shifting workplace demands and environments, or in the process of reassessing their professional lives. 

But before hiring managers and HR teams even think about how to convince these professionals to return, they have to be capable of finding and contacting people who are no longer classified as “actively seeking” work. This is where talent rediscovery can be a powerful tool. Hiring managers are increasingly scanning their records to resurface potential employees who have previously applied for positions at their companies, as these candidates are more likely to suit their needs, and they’ve already expressed interest in a position. There are also great tools that seek to operationalize this process like Retrain. These candidates’ former applications will provide invaluable information for personalized outreach, and this level of engagement may be enough to bring them back into the labor force. 

There are many other strategies hiring managers can explore to identify overlooked workers. They can forge relationships with educational institutions, community groups, and other organizations where former workers may be active. They can reach out to part-time gig workers who were full-time employees before the pandemic. At a time when there are still many more jobs than workers, hiring managers will have to get creative about expanding their networks and finding talent where their competitors forgot to look.

Meeting Potential Employees Where They Are

As the quit rate soared over the past several years, the “Great Resignation” quickly became part of the lexicon for many HR professionals. But some in the industry prefer alternative terms like the “Great Reevaluation” to capture the fact that the social and economic turmoil caused by COVID-19 convinced many employees to take a hard look at what they want out of their careers. Employees are increasingly demanding remote work options, more robust financial support, a wider range of benefits such as mental health coverage, professional development opportunities, and greater flexibility.

HR teams are attempting to meet these emerging demands and expectations, which will lead to long-overdue changes in their relationships with employees. These changes may also appeal to former employees who dropped out of the labor force, and the companies that want to attract these potential workers should make it clear that they take employees’ shifting concerns and priorities seriously. At a time when household debt is surging – including a 15 percent year-over-year increase in credit card balances, which is a two-decade high – and the personal savings rate has collapsed, many workers who’ve been on the sidelines since the beginning of the pandemic may start exploring their options to return to the workforce. Your company should get a head start by finding these future employees now. 

Although the unemployment rate is hovering around 3.5 percent, it’s clear that this figure is undercounting how many Americans are out of work. Instead of writing these workers off, hiring managers should be doing everything possible to bring them back into the fold. 

The post How Hiring Managers Can Find Millions of Overlooked Workers appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

In other words, hiring managers face a series of structural challenges that will make recruitment and retention difficult for the foreseeable future. This is why HR teams are increasingly using innovative strategies to reduce hiring costs and identify more promising candidates. Talent rediscovery is among the most effective of these strategies, as it allows hiring managers to narrow their candidate search to potential employees who have applied previously, which means they’re choosing from talent pools that are more likely to be aligned with their needs. 

Companies are now using AI to dramatically improve cumbersome applicant tracking systems (ATS) – a process which filters candidates much more efficiently, improves time-to-hire, and helps companies find the right people for open positions. Let’s take a closer look at how AI-powered talent rediscovery is changing hiring, as well as several strategies for using this approach to build a stronger workforce as cost-effectively as possible. 

New Technologies Can Facilitate Talent Rediscovery

One of the most difficult aspects of talent rediscovery is gathering and processing the full range of data that exists on all former applicants. Even if that information is technically available, hiring managers aren’t capable of manually analyzing it quickly and thoroughly. Considering the fact that just 55% of HR leaders say they “effectively surface past applicants to fill open roles,” it’s clear that the methods of talent rediscovery could use an update. 

Hiring managers can use tools based on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to rapidly review all relevant applicant information: resumes, cover letters, references, previous interactions with the company and so on. AI-powered talent rediscovery can also enable personalized engagement with candidates on the basis of their unique backgrounds and professional aspirations. Over three-quarters of senior candidates say the recruitment process affects their perception of a company, while 62% of these candidates report that they’ve abandoned this process because it was taking too long. 

AI-powered talent rediscovery attempts to address all these issues concurrently by making the hiring process more data-driven and predictive, creating a candidate-focused hiring experience and improving efficiency for companies and future employees. 

How Companies Can Fully Leverage Technology to Rediscover Talent

Companies can use AI-powered talent rediscovery software in conjunction with their existing ATS, which will provide the raw data necessary to assess candidates and communicate with them productively. These tools make it possible to evaluate whether candidates have the skills, experience and even personal characteristics for a specific role.

If a company used a pre-employment assessment when the candidate applied, this will provide even more data to analyze such as cognitive aptitude, emotional intelligence and other relevant traits. 

One of the main reasons many companies are failing to rediscover talent with their existing ATS is the fact that these systems are incapable of providing qualitative data about candidates. They warehouse basic information, but can’t use that information to generate actionable insights.

When HR teams use AI to rediscover talent, they won’t just search a much wider array of candidates than they could with manual ATS solutions, they’ll also determine which candidates are suited for which roles, overall cultural fit and the likelihood of successful outreach. 

AI-Powered Talent Rediscovery Offers a Critical Competitive Edge

A crucial aspect of any hiring process is its ability to predict which candidates will perform well on the job. Traditional hiring methods such as resumes and unstructured interviews have a poor record of predicting job performance when compared to objective measures such as general cognitive ability. These methods are also prone to bias, which leads some candidates to conceal certain aspects of their identities (such as race) when they apply.  

By reevaluating former candidates and applicants with more advanced, less bias-prone tools, it’s possible to surface overlooked talent. While AI is limited to existing data about candidates, it can make connections and predictions that other forms of analysis cannot.

AI-powered talent rediscovery can mitigate bias by impartially evaluating candidates on the basis of their suitability for each job, a process that will simultaneously make more predictive decisions by focusing on the abilities and traits that actually matter. Even if the candidate in question applied for a position that’s no longer available, the same approach will work in novel situations. 

At a time when the competition for talent is intense and candidate experience matters more than ever, AI-powered talent rediscovery can help companies reduce hiring and onboarding costs, take full advantage of their existing talent networks and hire exceptional employees. 

The post How AI-Powered Talent Rediscovery is Transforming Hiring appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Don’t want to wait? We have an event for you this week, Wednesday and Thursday to be exact.  Save your spot for HRTX December today!

January 

• Talent Acquisition Week, January 31 – February 2, Coronado, CA 

February

• Training 2023 Conference & Expo, February 13 – 15, Orlando, FL
• State of Human Experience in the Workplace, February 15 -16 
• SHRM Employment Law and Compliance Conference, February 26 – 28, Washington D.C.
• HR Tech Virtual, February 28 – March 2 

March 

• InspireHR West & EmpowerHR Tech Americas, March 6 – 8, Oakland, CA
• TalentNet Live Austin, March 10
• HRTX Virtual: Beginners’ Sourcing Playbook, March 23
• Transform 2023, March 27 – 29, Las Vegas, NV
• i4CP 2023, March 27 – 30, Scottsdale, AZ
• I AM Phenom, March 28 – 30, Philadelphia, PA 
• 2023 Annual Employee Healthcare Conference, March 29 – 30, San Diego, CA

April

• SHRM Talent Conference & Expo 2023, April 16 – 19, Orlando, FL & Virtual
• Wormhuman Live, April 17 – 20, San Diego, CA
• RecBuzz Berlin, April 20 – 21, Berlin, Germany
• Tri-State SHRM Conference, April 23 – 35, Uncasville, CT
• #HRTX Live, April 26, Boston, MA
• Unleash America, April 26 – 27, Las Vegas, NV

May

• Health & Benefits Leadership Conference 2023, May 3 – 5, Las Vegas, NV
• Montana SHRM 2023, May 3 – 5, Billings, MT
• California HR Conference 2023, May 8 – 10, Long Beach, CA
• iCIMS INSPIRE 2023, May 9 – 10, San Diego, CA
• TAtech North America, May 22 – 24, Austin, TX
• MoveFWD, May 25, Halifax, NS Canda

June 

• Future of Work USA, June 6 – 7, Chicago, IL 
• SHRM23, June 11-14, Las Vegas, NV
• HRTX Virtual Q2, June 22
• #HRTX Live, June 2023, Johannesburg, South Africa

July 

• Future of Performance Management by HR.com, July 12 – 13

August 

• HR Florida Conference & Expo, August 27 – 30, Orlando, FL

September 

• Future of Talent Acquisition by HR.com, September 6 – 7
• #HRTX Live, September 12, Dallas, TX
• Ohio SHRM 2023 HR Conference, September 20 – 22, Sandusky, OH
• HRTX Virtual Q3, September 28

October 

• Maryland SHRM State Conference, October 1 – 3, Cambridge, MD
• HR Technology Conference & Expo, October 10-13, Las Vegas, NV 
• HR Southwest 2023, October 15 – 18, Fort Worth, TX
• SHRM Inclusion 2023, October 30 – November 1, Savannah, GA

November 

• #HRTX Live, San Francisco, November 6
• Future of Employee Engagement by HR.com, November 8 – 9
• Future of Recruitment Technologies by HR.com, November 15 – 16

December 

• HRTX Virtual Q4, December 1
• 12 Days of Sourcing, December 2023 (Also, don’t miss this year! Register now.)

Attending any of these events in the coming year can give you the new perspective you’ve been seeking. But, more importantly, it will allow you to learn from industry-leading experts and get familiarized with the latest in HR tech and vendors.

See you out there!

The post Your 2023 Recruiting & HR Events List appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

The Great Rehire is termed the natural culmination of the Great Resignation and will work in favor of prospective candidates. More job alternatives, faster hiring processes and flexible work options are some of the benefits job seekers will get. However, challenges are stacked up against organizations as they have to hire from shrinking talent pools and face cutthroat competition to snatch top talent.

The answer to this war for talent is to tap into the existing talent pool. But organizations are ill-equipped to do so because accessing past candidate data from the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is simply too cumbersome, and the information is outdated and inaccurate.

A potential answer to this is to combine the power of people analytics and talent rediscovery – an intelligent feature that scans your ATS to find the right talent for the job role.

Why Leveraging Talent Rediscovery Is a Competitive Advantage

One concept HR can steal from marketing is remarketing – a form of online advertising that targets ads to visitors who have visited the company’s website or a specific webpage. For instance, you may have viewed a product on Amazon and seen ads featuring the same product while scrolling through your social media feed later. Marketers swear by remarketing because it’s an efficient way of acquiring new customers.

Talent rediscovery helps talent acquisition achieve the same. By tapping into the existing candidate repository, organizations can hire faster while reducing hiring costs. Considering the talent shortage, the organization with the most efficient hiring process earns the competitive advantage. Here are three ways talent rediscovery benefits an organization:

Reduces Time to Fill

Hiring for any new role usually begins by posting ads on job boards to attract talent. With talent rediscovery, you already have a list of candidates who fit the criteria and have shown a prior interest. Instead of screening thousands of inbound applications, recruiters can shortlist candidates from the ATS.

Since these candidates are already acquainted with the organization, the hiring process can progress faster, reducing the time required to fill the position.

Slashes Candidate Acquisition Cost

The Great Resignation has pulled a double whammy on organizations. At one end, they are losing their best talent; at the other end, finding their replacement has become more expensive and time consuming.

The hiring equation gets more expensive with the involvement of third-party staffing or recruitment agencies. Similar to reducing the time to hire, talent rediscovery identifies job-ready candidates and cuts down significant costs.

Reduces Hiring Bias

Talent acquisition platforms can integrate with various ATS and enable recruiters to find suitable candidates with intelligent, AI-powered search features. While performing the search, platforms like SeekOut can optionally hide names, photos, schools, social profiles, salary history and other identifiable information. To meet diversity goals, recruiters can also search for candidates from underrepresented groups.

These features allow recruiters to take a data-driven approach to diversity hiring and prevent unconscious biases from kicking in.

How People Analytics Can Boost Talent Rediscovery

People analytics can significantly impact talent acquisition by introducing critical data to the talent rediscovery process in the following ways:

Identify Silver Medalist Applicants

Silver medalist applicants are the ones who came close to receiving an offer but were outshined by other candidates. Engaging with them is one of  the fastest ways to speed up talent rediscovery. Here is how you can do it:

1. 1. Segment your silver medalist candidates in your ATS.
   2. Import their data from ATS into the talent acquisition platform and build comprehensive candidate profiles that outline their experience, skills, projects, proofs of concept and published material.
   3. Whenever you have new job openings, you can quickly filter out silver candidates that fit those roles like a glove and reach out to them immediately to start the hiring process.

Analyze Successful Employees

Successful employees in each role have specific traits and skills that empower them to thrive at their work. Tap into your people analytics data and identify these skills and attributes. It is also necessary to track their KPIs, work quality, efficiency and performance metrics to form a holistic picture.

Combining this data with their resume, social profiles, previous experience, etc., builds an ideal persona for each role. You can now clone these employees in your talent acquisition software, which will fetch candidates with similar characteristics from the ATS.

Turbocharge Rediscovery Through AI

AI-powered talent acquisition platforms have sophisticated search functionalities that ATS lacks. Organizations can import ATS data into a talent acquisition platform to find the right candidates. For instance, basic keyword search, boolean search and power filters can help you rediscover talent that fits job requirements.

Furthermore, organizations can upload job descriptions, and the algorithm will find past applicants that are suitable for the job. The algorithm doesn’t screen resumes exclusively on verbatim keywords. The natural language processing (NLP) technology scans resumes and looks for semantically or thematically similar keywords. So, candidates with a qualified skillset are shortlisted.

Based on accepted and rejected candidate profiles, the algorithm identifies patterns and refines itself to return more accurate results.

Establish the Right Metrics

People analytics helps organizations track crucial talent acquisition metrics such as time to hire, time to fill, quality of hire, sources of hire and cost per hire. These metrics applied to the talent rediscovery aspect of hiring can provide vital insights. However, combining two or more metrics can get even more extensive insights into talent rediscovery. For instance, time to fill and quality of hire combined can help you understand current hiring practices’ effectiveness.

While combining two or more metrics, it is necessary to remember that correlation isn’t causation. Just because a correlation between two metrics is established doesn’t mean that time to fill impacts the quality of hire.

Build Funnel Insights

The real strength of people analytics and talent rediscovery can be experienced by tapping into the native insights section of the talent acquisition platform. Organizations can get insights about their competitors, specific roles in a city, diversity and job roles.

For example, suppose organizations are facing difficulties hiring for a specific role. In that case, they can map talent based on the city they currently live in, the organization they work at and the schools they attended. So, if the talent acquisition team finds that candidates for the specified role are available in other cities, they can take the strategic decision of allowing remote work to the candidate.

Closing Thoughts

Data-driven talent rediscovery can deliver unique insights into hiring, enabling organizations to win during the Great Rehire. The Talent analytics data can help HR leaders identify and quickly re-engage with qualified talent instead of starting a traditional, more costly candidate search from scratch.

Since this will be an ever-evolving process, organizations that are willing to harness the combined power of both systems are most likely to lead the way in the coming age of data-driven HR.

The post Talent Analytics and Talent Rediscovery: A Match Made in Data-Driven Heaven? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

With the possibility of a looming recession, the current market situation doesn’t seem too optimistic. However, in certain sectors the demand for talent continues to grow – as evidenced by low unemployment rates across economies like the U.S., Japan and EU. 

The Great Resignation and layoffs will fade out as the market eventually stabilizes. Organizations will get ready again to scale up their hiring process at a rapid pace. This hiring trend is termed the Great Rehire, and while it has been in use since COVID-19 struck, we will experience it in its full capacity as the job market returns to normal.

To prepare for this transition, organizations must implement a robust enterprise talent optimization framework to ensure that their talent is equipped to meet their business objectives. This article explains how to use the framework precisely. Let’s dive in!

What Is Enterprise Talent Optimization?

Enterprise talent optimization is a four-step framework that leverages people data to help organizations meet their business objectives.

The foundation of enterprise talent optimization lies in collecting and analyzing people data to identify current problems within the workforce, design better team dynamics, hire or promote top talent and keep them motivated.

In the coming sections, we will explore each stage of talent optimization.

1. Diagnose

In the diagnose stage, you take stock of the existing situation, identify the causes, verify the evidence and run a talent audit. Here is how you can do it in the current context of the evolving hiring landscape.

• Reasons Behind the Great Resignation

Organizations either laid off or furloughed talent in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the tables turned in early 2021 as employees started quitting jobs. While it may seem that the pandemic was the factor, it was merely an impetus. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the top three reasons employees quit were:

1. 1. Low pay (63%)
   2. No opportunities for advancement (63%)
   3. Feeling disrespected at work (57%)

Identifying the causes behind employee dissatisfaction and attrition is necessary to address this issue at its root. This can be done by collecting and analyzing employee engagement and job performance data. Identifying common sentiments or perceptions of employees toward the job and company will lead to a better understanding.

• The Great Rehire

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the number of employees who quit their jobs was 4.4 million, whereas the number of new hires was 6.6 million in April 2022. 

As organizations gear up for the Great Rehire, they must identify what employees and job applicants expect and prioritize those expectations accordingly. The Greenhouse 2021 Employer Hiring Sentiment report states the following expectations laid out by candidates:

• Perform a Talent Audit

The talent audit helps organizations evaluate performance standards against the benchmarks, identify gaps in the talent acquisition process and find ways to improve both.

The talent audit is not about individual performance. Rather, it focuses on the competency and skills of various teams and how well they are poised to meet business objectives.

2. Design

When choosing managers and leaders for teams and departments, it’s necessary to separate an individual’s work competency from their leadership capabilities. Just because someone is excellent at their core responsibilities doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll succeed in a managerial position. The design phase focuses on evaluating the organizational structure, talent-culture fit and how to address gaps, if any.

• Identify Talent-Culture Fit

While the talent audit assesses the competency of various teams, talent-culture fit tries to unveil implicit performance drivers. It helps organizations understand how well the employees are aligned with the organizational culture. It does so by gathering following the information from employees:

Values: Personal beliefs and values and how they support the organization’s ethos and objectives.

Work: How empowered do employees feel about their work? What common nuisances prevent them from performing optimally?

Leadership: How well do the leaders enable employees to perform optimally? Do they micromanage each step or do they trust employees to use their best judgement?

Compensation: Does the organization’s strategy help retain employees while attracting new talent? Where does the organization stand among its competitors in terms of compensation?

• Address Culture Gaps

After reevaluating the organization’s structure and assessing talent-culture fit, the organization will find culture gaps. It must proactively address them and communicate them with its employees. Here is how organizations can do it:

1. 1. Talk about the gaps, the plan to address them and the impact it may have on the culture and the organization.
   2. If any issues or friction were to arise during the implementation, how would they be resolved?
   3. Host training sessions or workshops across the organization to help employees get acquainted with the values.

• Revisit Your Departmental/Team Organization’s Structure

Enterprise talent optimization is focused on building high-performing teams. Therefore, organizations must evaluate their hierarchy and see how they can reorganize it to meet their business goals.

Let’s consider what a software development team at a bootstrapped startup can look like:

1. 1. Full-stack developers
   2. Designers or generalist UI/UX professionals
   3. Product Manager

If the company raises funding and scales its operations, it must expand the team as follows:

1. 1. Business analyst
   2. Project manager
   3. Front-end developers
   4. Back-end developers
   5. DevOps
   6. Quality assurance
   7. Technical writers
   8. Technical support
   9. IT Operations
   10. Security

After evaluating how to structure their teams to meet business goals, organizations should work on the following steps:

1. 1. Define new job roles.
   2. Identify how each role relates to one another in the hierarchy.
   3. Define processes to enable teams to work productively.

3. Hire

The talent optimization insights derived during the previous two stages will help organizations plan their hiring strategies. In this stage, organizations must define new job openings, promote internal mobility, and empower recruiters and hiring managers with the proper training to onboard top talent.

• Define New Job Roles

The talent acquisition team should begin by interacting with the leaders across various departments to learn what new job roles they plan to add.

Considering the shift talent optimization will bring to the organization, it’s necessary to consider the ideal talent’s skills, experience and competency along with their behavioural and cognitive abilities.

The key is writing job descriptions that use precise words to explain the job. Hiring managers need to speak with team members who will work with the new talent to understand their exact requirements. They can also consult with top performers in similar roles to learn their responsibilities. Hiring managers can also look into top performers’ talent-culture fit data to identify implicit factors that help them thrive.

The talent acquisition team can compile all this information and write a comprehensive job description.

• Evaluate Internal Mobility Opportunities

Internal mobility enables employees to move laterally or vertically within the organization. A crucial part of talent optimization, internal mobility lets employees work in areas they can truly excel at. Talent mobility helps organizations retain top talent.

Organizations can combine talent analytics data from talent acquisition and HRIS platforms like SeekOut Grow to get a clear view of their employees. This information can help them identify how each employee fits within different roles based on their capabilities, skills and experience.

• Train Hiring Managers to Hire Top Talent

Hiring right  means paying special attention to ensure that prospective employees are fit for the organization’s culture.

The talent acquisition team should put special emphasis on the interview structure. Along with questions related to job-specific skills, it should train hiring managers in interviewing candidates to learn about their values, behavioral traits and attitudes.

For instance, if the organization values collaboration, hiring managers must ask questions to determine if the candidate is a team player, how well they communicate and how open they are to receiving feedback. The hiring managers must also convey the value during the interview by assuring that the organization values the candidate’s opinions.

4. Inspire

In the inspire phase, the organization prioritizes talent strategy, developing career paths for employees and strengthening relationships with its employees. It is imperative for organizations to address the factors that caused the Great Resignation.

• Build a Talent Strategy

The talent strategy is responsible for hiring, developing and retaining top talent. Here are the critical steps to building a successful talent strategy:

1. 1. Set stretch goals that are just challenging enough to get the employees out of their comfort zone but not set them up for failure. The feeling of accomplishment is crucial for growth.
   2. Ensure that the organizational culture follows top-down. The leadership must lead by example by following the organization’s values.
   3. Introduce talent development programs that support the overarching stretch goals.
   4. Let employees experiment with the latest technology and processes to experience the novelty factor.
   5. Have periodic talent reviews to let them know how they are performing.

• Create New Career Paths

As the organization grows, it should identify the need for new job roles necessary to meet the business objectives. Keeping this in mind, the organization should first create new career paths that offer growth opportunities to in-house talent.

Having a centralized career hub for internal opportunities allows employees to explore their future options at the company. The company can also introduce assessments to help employees identify the skills they need to learn to grow in their desired roles. A mentorship program will also enable employees to speak with experts to know how they can work towards their goals.

• Provide Psychological Safety to the Employees

The root cause behind the Great Resignation can be distilled down to the lack of psychological safety among employees. This situation will get amplified with the rising market volatility.

Organizations need to make employees feel safe about their jobs in such scenarios. This can be done in the following ways:

1. 1. Proactively communicate the growth and future plans of the organization.
   2. Set employees up for success by creating an environment that complements their behavioral and cognitive traits.
   3. Implement employee recognition programs.

Closing Thoughts

As organizations scale up on their hiring efforts again, they need to ensure that the talent they onboard is aligned with their values and objectives.

The present situation brings the perfect opportunity to implement the talent optimization framework so that they can address the current problems and prepare for the Great Rehire.

The post Why Now is the Time to Double Down on Enterprise Talent Optimization appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

However, this shift has been in the works for a while. Employees have become accustomed to sophisticated interactions with brands in their consumer lives (think smart assistants, predictive texts, instant deliveries and more) and this has accelerated over the last two years and transformed their approach to jobs.

Now, as organizations look to build on the economic momentum of the past few months, they are dealing with a whole new set of challenges. Fortunately, enterprise technology has evolved to provide HR leaders with the data and tools they need to support their employees’ journey.  

How Talent Insights Power the Employee Journey in 2022

With the powerful combination of people science and technology, HR leaders now have the ability to match consumer-grade expectations, create more personalized and inclusive workplace experiences. Using talent insights from employee and enterprise data, organizations have begun diagnosing and managing inefficiencies in their talent management strategies.

A recent survey found that 90% of HR leaders believe having more relevant talent insights could transform their talent management approach. As the world of work continues to evolve, talent insights will be critical for leaders to design bespoke experiences for their employees and drive continuous improvement. 

For employees, a job is much more than a way to make money. It is about the culture, fulfillment and career growth. Forward-thinking talent leaders understand that they need to measure data that support these expectations and offer insights into employees’ individual journeys within the organization.

Many organizations already have these processes in place for measuring this type of information on their people, but a common challenge is connecting this data to business strategy. Talent leaders must have clarity on what they want to achieve. 

Talent insights shed light on how new talent policies and existing processes impact employee motivations and performance. They also reveal how human connections and networks operate in the organizational context to build resilience, agility and adaptability, all crucial concepts to thriving in the current environment. 

To understand how talent insights influence the employee journey, let’s look at how organizations typically deliver their talent strategy.

Understanding Talent Architecture and Key Touch Points

Organizations need talent architecture to define the structures, frameworks, systems and processes that support employee journeys. Talent architecture operates on three levels:

Solutions like SeekOut help HR leaders gather talent insights to create relevant interventions across these factors that make up an organization’s talent architecture and impact employee journeys. 

Talent strategies connect to many other organizational processes and need a unifying foundation, which in this case, is provided by talent insights, common systems and analytics. 

Some of the key sources for talent intelligence include:

• • Employer branding activities
  • Talent acquisition
  • L&D
  • Succession planning
  • Internal mobility
  • Retention initiatives

Talent insights also reveal the importance of the cultural, value-driven measures that can determine job-fit, employees’ likely career path and success within the organization.

The Future of Talent Insights and the Employee Journey

As more HR leaders discover the potential of talent insights and their impact on employee journeys, they will be able to establish relationships between factors like personality and motivation, and identify areas of analytics that will enable them to understand their people and performance drivers better.

Talent insights are also foundational to enabling leaders to predict future talent needs rather than just focusing on the current state of affairs, leading to a more data-driven strategy and a seat at the table.

The post Supporting Your Employee Journey With Talent Insights appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Do you see what I did there?

To be absolutely fair, the writer does state that they aren’t mutually exclusive at the end, but what bothered me the most is that I don’t think aggregation or location is the future. They’re the present. The now. And, even “megatrends” some say. And, they for darn sure are already working together.

So, what is the future of recruiting?

Well, if anyone is certain, I suggest they build, market, and sell it, or find who has started to build it and give them your life savings as the first, and the only investor of that round and pray to the heavens they execute. Because, any entrepreneur or “wantrepreneur” will tell you they have the idea, but many forget to execute it.

That’s why I want to share the future of recruiting with you. Thanks for asking, and you’re welcome. #BTW

Predictive Analytics: The Future of Recruiting

Recruiting analytics has been worked on for some time, and it’s why I believe that aggregators and others with data may have the edge. Many are producing some level of analytics. But, to my knowledge nobody has pieced together the “money shot.”

And, that money shot is predictive analytics. That’s the future of recruiting.

Specifically, I’m talking about identifying those that are job seekers with no experience in a role, but will do the job well and become autonomous in that role faster than others, thus reducing the onboarding and training time and producing faster. That is a game-changer for both candidate and company.

How amazing will it be for a CPA to find out that due to her years in that world, running her own small, business, and being the Chair of the local Rotary Club she’s ideal for this new role travelling for a company to promote their software around the globe, and she’s in the office at 11PM past 1AM because she had to deal with a personnel issue… AGAIN… and now she’s been trying to determine how she’s going to make it all the way to tax season without folding and she gets the most wonderful message that says it doesn’t have to be this way anymore?

How amazing will it be when big companies and small business alike are at war for the next shortage of software developers that are a rare breed that know the new “Passionteascript” that will solve the world’s thirst for really bad flavors of tea only to find out that there is this percentage of salespeople that have the ability and the patience to learn how to program and they don’t have to worry about quotas, dials, talk time, and making a commission check before Christmas so Santa can come to their house?

The Future of Recruiting: Never Too Late To Start Over

I could go on in my Faulkner/Burroughs-esque stream of consciousness… and I will… oh, alright, I’ll stop because the point hopefully is made.

Companies want to save money and will do whatever will cut costs whenever it whenever it’s feasible. And most try to determine reasonableness as well.

The amount of cost saved due to not having positions filled or even candidates coming through the door will be astronomical when the industry gets there.

The real highlight to me is at the jobseeker level. In film, books, TV, and certainly music we’ve seen and heard the theme of it’s never too late.

“It’s never too late to start over.”

(Cue Kevin Spacey smoking a joint and listening to Hendrix while bench pressing in his garage with his brand new classic sports car parked just outside.)

That’s what predictive analytics can bring. That’s a dream that’s easy to sell. And, I can’t wait to watch it. And hopefully, be a part of the future of recruiting.

About the Author: Matt Ekstrom currently serves as the Chief Revenue Officer at HiringSolved, a sourcing and recruiting startup which is doing for Talent Search what Google did for general web search, helping individuals and companies find everyone, everywhere and making that information easy to find.

In his role, Matt is responsible for helping HiringSolved grow new business, taking HiringSolved from under $2k a month in recurring revenue in May 2013 to being one of the most sought after recruiting technologies by some of the largest and most advanced firms in the world.

Matt has an extensive background in the recruiting and sourcing industry, having previously held leadership roles at companies like Monster Worldwide and TweetMyJobs. Follow Matt on Twitter @504Matt or connect with him on LinkedIn.

The post Location vs. Aggregation: Why Predictive Analytics Are the Future of Recruiting appeared first on RecruitingDaily.