Use These Steps to Secure Talent Acquisition Success in 2020

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The overwhelming majority of recruiters and hiring managers agree that the recruiting landscape is more competitive than ever before.

Over the course of 2020, we’ll see the talent war intensify. Are you ready to abandon outdated practices, get creative and pull out all the stops to beat your competition to the best talent?

You’ll need to use cutting-edge techniques and strategies if you’re going to succeed.

Talent Acquisition Techniques for 2020

Let’s dig deeper into key techniques and strategies that you can use over the course of 2020 to get the best talent, slash your time to hire and reduce your talent acquisition costs.

Automate tasks to free up your time

2020 is the year to abandon manual processes using automation. This can help you to save time and even eliminate the potential for human error.

Here are three areas you can automate everyday talent acquisition tasks in 2020:

Schedule messages

In an underskilled landscape, the power now lies with skilled candidates who can take their pick of suitors. To put yourself at the top of their list and build a healthy relationship, you’ll want to develop an engagement strategy.

There are several email and messaging automation tools out there that you can use to automate communications. You could use those tools to send out a candidate newsletter, for instance, or divide your candidates into mailing lists according to department and supply them with relevant content.

Qualify using chatbots

Chatbots are very popular in the worlds of marketing and customer support, with an impressive 1.4 billion people using chatbots regularly.

It would help if you considered leveraging the power of those chatbots in the recruitment space, too. You could quickly spin up a chatbot solution to offer 24/7 guidance to your candidates and pre-qualify them.

Chatbots can easily collect core information and then automatically add them into your chosen Applicant Tracking System.

Organise meetings

Scheduling meetings is a tough task that takes up an unreasonable amount of time for lots of recruiters and hiring managers. There are lots of meeting scheduler tools out there that make it easy for other people to book meetings with you and sync those with your calendar.

Polish your employer brand

By now, 59% of recruiting leaders worldwide are investing more in their employer brand. Are you among them? A strong employer brand makes it easier for you to attract the best talent, and it can cut your time to hire.

Audit your reviews

The first step to reinvigorate your employer brand is to perform a preliminary audit. During this audit, you should go through your employer reviews on platforms like Glassdoor and Trustpilot.

Use those reviews as an opportunity to glean valuable insights and focus your efforts to develop a concerted strategy to improve those reviews.

Engage your employees as brand advocates

You might also want to engage your existing employees as brand advocates. You could ask them to leave reviews, for instance, or encourage them to refer their connections and network to your business.

Some businesses develop an influential company culture and an attractive referral system to make this step a reality – could 2020 be the year for you to join them?

Collect and leverage quality data

Each day, an estimated 1.7MB of data is created every second for every person on earth – it’s essential that you make the most of the data that you generate to give your business the competitive edge. Here’s how you can do that.

Record important candidate data

First things first, it’s crucial that you collect the appropriate data about your candidates and their experiences. You’ll want to use a range of software to track essential data, like your ATS and Google Analytics.

You should try to track common metrics such as:

  • Time-to-hire
  • Source of hire
  • Candidate feedback
  • Acceptance rates
  • Cost-per-hire

Dig into your data

Once you’ve collected the appropriate data, it’s vital that you sort through it to uncover essential insights.

You might be able to learn why your time-to-hire is so long, for instance, or which parts of the talent acquisition process you can expedite. Call upon marketing to get help sorting through Google Analytics, too, to understand better where your candidates come from and the path that they take through your website.

Use AI to assist with sourcing

AI sourcing gives recruiters the ability to sort through immense troves of data and collect valuable insights. This can help recruiters and hiring managers to find the perfect talent for their role and make the right decisions.

Not only does AI sourcing improve the quality of candidates, but it can also save significant amounts of time and give businesses the ability to cut their cost-of-hire.

Use Elevate

Elevate empowers some of the world’s leading talent acquisition teams to recruit faster and enjoy full visibility into the talent that they need. This helps those teams to spend more time focused on their recruiting strategy and candidate relationships.

If you’re ready to get started, book a demo to see Elevate in action today and speak with an expert.

Offer an unparalleled candidate experience

It’s more important than ever before that your potential candidates enjoy a seamless candidate experience. That means everything needs to flow smoothly together all the way from the job search and application process to the interview and onboarding.

Leverage programmatic job advertising

If you’re going to attract the best candidates, you’ve got to get your business and your role in front of them. To do this, you will want to consider leveraging the power of programmatic advertising. This can help you to purchase the right ads and get them in front of the right people at the right time without breaking the bank.

Use an ATS

An applicant tracking system can be used by recruiters to track and filter candidates. This makes it easier for recruiters to monitor the candidate as they pass through the hiring flow and collect essential data along the way.

Leverage marketing resources

It’s essential that you engage your candidates and build a relationship with them over time. To do this, you might want to repurpose your marketing content. If your marketing department maintains a blog, why not send essential pieces to your candidates on a regular basis?

This strategy could inspire your candidates to make an application, and your marketing team will be sure to appreciate the additional traffic that you generate for them.

Additional Resources to Prepare for 2020

We hope that those techniques help you to secure talent acquisition success this year. If you’re going to get the best results possible, it’s always essential to understand the industry and broader trends.

Here are four additional resources that you can use to better prepare for talent acquisition in 2020.

Why offer flexible working

Do you know that flexibility is the most in-demand perk for employees today? If you’re going to beat your competition to the best talent this year, you’ll need to develop your flexible working offering. There are also a number of potent benefits for your business, too.

Read our piece to learn more about the benefits of flexible working.

How to maintain a healthy talent pool

The typical hiring process is very long, and it can harm the productivity of your business while generating high costs. Talent pools are a powerful resource to ameliorate the hiring process.

Discover the benefits of talent pools and discover four actionable tips to maintain healthy talent pools.

What to expect from AI sourcing

Boolean searches are challenging to master, more complex to execute, and they return a more limited set of results. AI sourcing is here to take over and deliver superior results for recruiters and hiring managers.

Get to grips with the five key reasons AI sourcing is going to replace Boolean sourcing.

Why agile talent is growing more popular

Agile talent is on the rise, and it’s becoming the go-to choice for businesses around the world. Do you understand the benefits of agile talent?

Read this piece to understand what agile talent can offer your business.

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Talent Acquisition vs. Recruiting in 2020: The Key Differences

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Have you noticed that two of the broadest and most common terms in our industry – “talent acquisition” and “recruiting” – are often used interchangeably?

Talent acquisition and recruitment are two very distinct ideas. They have never been more different, either, given that they are being driven even further apart by new technologies and trends.

That tendency to confuse the two terms can make it difficult for recruiters and hiring managers to work accurately and make the most of both concepts.

Let’s fix that.

How Are Talent Acquisition and Recruitment Different?

Here’s a closer look at the definition of these two terms:

Recruitment

Recruitment is more of an action that’s all about filling vacancies. Recruitment is the process of identifying a vacancy within a business and then setting the wheels in motion to source, interview and eventually hire the appropriate candidate.

This is most often a short-term tactic that’s focused around finding the right talent as quickly and as cost-efficiently as possible.

Talent Acquisition

If recruitment is a short-term action, talent acquisition can be seen as more of a long-term strategy: talent acquisition is about identifying specific talent requirements in advance and using cutting-edge techniques to make it as simple, effective and inexpensive as possible to find specific talent.

This means that talent acquisition can give companies the ability to find the perfect candidates for complex roles.

What Are the Advantages of Talent Acquisition?

Recruitment is perhaps what most people think of when they imagine the day-to-day reality of the recruitment industry. Talent acquisition is becoming increasingly important, though, given that talent scarcity and the competition for that talent is more fierce than ever before.

You can expect to unlock the following benefits if you decide to invest in your talent acquisition strategy:

Find niche talent

The global talent shortage is a real issue. In fact, a study from Korn Ferry found that by 2030 there will be a universal human talent shortage of 85 million people – roughly the population of Germany.

The dearth of skilled candidates will put lots of pressure on businesses to compete for the few qualified and experienced candidates out there. A robust talent acquisition strategy can help companies to identify vacancies earlier than competitors, and keep tabs on the appropriate candidates.

In a context where the fight for the best talent is more fierce than ever before, it’s little wonder that more businesses are trying to develop robust talent acquisition strategies.

Develop your employer brand

Strong employer branding can help businesses to stand out from the crowd to attract and retain the best employees. That’s why figures from LinkedIn show that 72% of recruiting leaders around the world agree that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring.

Talent acquisition forces businesses to think carefully about their employer brand and incorporate it into their strategy. The act of developing and executing a talent acquisition strategy can help businesses to build strong employer brands that give them the edge over their competition.

Bring the talent to you

There are a number of figures around that try to define the average cost per hire in the UK. According to the HR review, that figure stands at around £30,614 per employee when accounting for the cost of lost output too.

A robust talent acquisition strategy can help you to slash those costs by bringing the talent to you. This can make the hiring process cheaper and faster. Those applicants are often very enthusiastic about your business, and they’ll become top performers for your company, too.

Key Talent Acquisition Trends for 2020

Talent acquisition is continually evolving. Here are the latest trends that are shaping talent acquisition strategies around the world.

AI-driven technology is growing in power – and popularity

Today, AI is helping recruiters around the world to execute ambitious talent acquisition strategies. According to LinkedIn, AI is helping recruiters and hiring managers save time (67%), remove human bias (43%) and deliver the best candidate matches (31%).

Over the course of 2020, we’ll see nascent AI platforms further augment the capabilities of recruiters and hiring managers.

Predictive analytics is starting to uncover talent needs

Sophisticated tools and platforms are now able to use troves of historical data to make accurate predictions about the future talent needs of organisations. Businesses around the world are making the most of these tools to inform their talent acquisition strategy.

This can help to expedite the hiring process and – paired with powerful AI-driven talent acquisition platforms like Elevate – give businesses the best chance of sourcing the right talent.

Teams are using AI to tackle unconscious bias

A number of studies have shone a light on the benefits of a diverse workforce. Those teams are often happier, more productive and more innovative.

Unconscious bias is sometimes a barrier to cultivating a genuinely diverse workplace; however this is why recruiters and hiring managers around the world are using AI-driven talent acquisition tools to fight against bias and discrimination.

These AI technologies are helping to surface the best candidates for the role, and they can empower businesses to engage in blind hiring.

Acquire the Right Talent with Elevate

Elevate offers an AI-driven platform that empowers talent acquisition teams to augment their abilities and bring out their full potential. Learn more about Elevate and how you can leverage our platform to move fast and recruit the talent you need.

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Half of All Employees Want Flexible Working in 2020. Are You Ready to Deliver?

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If you’re going to attract the best talent, you’ve got to monitor and meet the evolving needs of the workforce. That’s no easy task, though, given that the appetites and expectations of today’s workforce are changing rapidly.

Of all the perks you can offer – such as a diverse workplace and professional training – workplace flexibility has cemented itself as the most desirable among today’s workforce.

An Ernst & Young global survey discovered that more flexibility was the most crucial perk for 9,700 young respondents. Likewise, a 2018 Deloitte survey of 10,000 respondents revealed that a lack of workplace flexibility is the main reason millennials quit their job.

Let’s take a closer look at flexible working to help you develop your approach.

In this post, we’ll cover:

  • What flexible working means,
  • Why the demand for workplace flexibility is rising, and
  • Why you should consider offering it.

What Is Flexible Working?

Flexible working is a way of working that suits an employee’s needs.

With flexible working in place, employees can choose things like their schedule and whether or not they would like to work for home. Those employees use that additional flexibility and autonomy to enjoy a better work-life balance.

Many governments around the world are in the process of adjusting their labour laws and regulations to accommodate flexible working. In the UK, for instance, employees have a legal right to request flexible working from their employers.

Upon receiving that request, employers should handle it in a “reasonable manner”. This means that they should assess the viability of the application, organise a meeting with the employee and also offer an appeal process.

Why the Demand for Flexible Work is Rising

Today’s world is hectic and fast-paced. The pervasive reach of the internet also means that workers often have 24/7 connectivity to their workplace.

This new reality means that a healthy work-life balance has been disrupted. According to statistics from RescueTime, 26% of work is done outside of regular working hours. Meanwhile, another survey found that 33% of salaried workers in the US have to work on the weekend.

This dynamic isn’t sustainable, of course. The constant pressure can cause employees to develop a number of issues, including:

  • Fatigue
  • General unhappiness
  • Irritability
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Heart disease
  • High blood pressure

This is why a number of workers around the world are turning to flexible work to restore a viable work-life balance.

Why Offer Flexible Working

Some employers find that they are nervous about offering flexible working to their employees. That’s not necessary, though, given that employers can also benefit from offering flexible working.

Here are the main benefits of flexible working for employers:

  1. Reduce the risk of burnout

Burnout is caused by periods of prolonged stress and its characterised by emotional, physical and mental exhaustion. Burnout is on the rise in modern workplaces, given its hectic nature.

The human cost of burnout is awful, of course, and it can also eat into the profits of businesses. Employees with burnout lead to higher staff turnover rates, lost revenue, and the potential for expensive errors.

Flexible working can help your team members to manage their workload better and strike a more fulfilling work-life balance.

  1. A more productive workforce

Several studies suggest flexible working can help employees to boost their productivity. A recent report from HSBC discovered that 85% of respondents say flexible working gives them the motivation to improve their productivity, for instance.

If you offer flexible working options to your team members, there’s a good chance that you’ll see their productivity improve.

  1. Boost staff morale

Long hours and a lack of autonomy can cause your employees to feel undervalued and frustrated. Flexible working can help your employees to feel happier and more in control, though, which can boost their morale.

Higher morale can unlock several benefits for your business. You’ll find that your employees will elevate their productivity, produce better work and improve their attendance, for instance.

  1. Boost your employer brand

It’s more complicated than ever before for businesses to find the right talent. Not only is that talent scarce, but there’s also fierce competition between companies to secure the best candidates.

The more perks that you can offer, the easier you’ll find it to beat the competition to the best talent. Flexible working has been highlighted as important to today’s candidates: offer it and you’ll be sure to attract the best.

Leverage Your Employer Brand with Elevate

With your employer brand in check, you’ll be able to find the best candidates. Learn more about Elevate and how our platform can provide you with immediate visibility to the talent you need.

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