Top tips to building an effective talent acquisition ecosystem
23 May 2022
It’s an exciting time for talent acquisition. According to Fosway Group’s latest report, trends show that the market is booming – more than half (59%) of European organisations are planning to increase their talent acquisition budgets this year. Hiring needs to be effective and sustainable, while speed and diversity matter too. It’s also a rapidly changing space with many new solutions on the market, so when it comes to making the right hiring decisions, make sure your talent acquisition tech is up for the job.
Here are our top eight take-aways from the Fosway report to get you started.
Tip 1 – Engage effectively
Freeing up recruiter time is still the best way to truly engage with candidates, so look out for tech that ticks this box. But keep in mind that while your technology is key, the process and people using the tech are just as important. At TalentSmith we're huge fans of a human-centric approach to talent acquisition and market research backs this: a fully automated approach is great for those easier-to-fill, high-volume roles, but for more specialist positions you need to get the small details right – such as nurturing unsuccessful candidates for another role, communicating constantly with candidates and reviewing your talent with hiring managers.
Tip 2 – Use who you already have
Sometimes your best people are right under your nose. The report highlights the importance of talent mobility and the need to maximise the potential value of existing staff in helping to solve recruitment challenges. Look inwards but think outside the box – internal career portals are now being replaced by opportunity marketplaces that connect candidates with the right roles and projects.
Tip 3 – Get your tech stack back on track
According to Fosway, the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is the most important piece in your TA technology stack, but ideally, all talent acquisition teams need a broad solution that encompasses talent mobility, CRM and onboarding functionalities as well. It's also important to look for self-segmentation capabilities when picking a new solution, as it provides options for self-segmentation based on the content and jobs a candidate has viewed as well as probing for their views on career preferences. This helps to train the AI and generate even better auto-recommendations in future.
Tip 4 – Automate your job ads
If you’re still creating and distributing job ads manually, stop! Ensure your tech has the ability to automatically review job ad text for biased language, pick the best ad template for your needs, and advertise (and delist) the ad on the most cost-effective and appropriate job boards, to the right communities. At the same time, also make sure your employee referral programme is up to scratch.
Tip 5 – One support team
Create an agile and empowered IT team that is able to meet both your HR and talent acquisition needs. In this way they can adapt faster and add more value for your hiring teams as well.
Tip 6 – Content is king
Personalisation is key to ensuring your approach to talent acquisition is as human-centred as possible. However, it's hard work to create meaningful, quality content to use on websites, blogs and the like – and to keep it updated. So make sure you call in the experts, such as talent intelligence providers, who will ensure your content is created, maintained, updated and scaled effectively.
Tip 7 – Maximise the interview experience
Covid-19 resulted in a massive rise of investment in virtual interviewing capabilities and this isn’t going to change. Nowadays for example, hiring managers can have the interview question on screen and capture live feedback during their conversation. So if you still haven’t got this right, now’s the time to fix it – or find another vendor to help you!
Tip 8 – Collaboration is key
The efficiency and effectiveness of the sourcing and hiring process depends heavily on the close collaboration between recruiters and hiring managers. Several solutions now maximise this, with the introduction of communication centres that bring together campaign histories, email trails, shared documents and more, for easy teamwork and shared working.
Finally, when it comes to talent acquisition, whether virtually or in-person, it’s critical to understand which provider best caters to your needs. At TalentSmith Technology we're here to help you navigate this journey with a number of globally recognised solutions. Please reach out if you want to know more about our awesome tech and services – visit www.talentsmith.com for more information or email Roxanne.creamer@talentsmith.com
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