Talent acquisition is as much an art as it is a science. While you source candidates, you need to create the best strategy to ensure that you’re finding top talent from a diverse pool of applicants. Throughout 2021, experts saw priorities shift, including companies looking for a 24% increase in focus on employee retention, 22% on growing the employee pipeline, and 22% on diversity.
Consider the following to improve your talent acquisition strategy for years to come.
Develop an Effective Sourcing Strategy
Before moving on to the hiring process, an effective sourcing strategy is paramount. Today, there are about 1 million more job openings than candidates are looking for work. Simply posting jobs and expecting resumes isn’t going to result in quality candidates for filling open positions.
The most common recruiting resources are:
- Internal promotions
- Applicants
- Passive talent
- Employee referrals
- Applicant tracking systems
Internal candidates fill about 50% of open jobs. And, while companies with integrity aren’t posting phantom job openings, active job seekers only account for 30% of the available talent pool.
Developing an efficient recruiting strategy is just the tip of the iceberg.
Hire for Potential
In recruiting, there is a term known as “The Purple Squirrel.” It’s a term, like Unicorn, that means the requirements for the job are nearly impossible to meet. And in today’s employment marketplace, it may be much more challenging to find individuals who meet the exact requirements for any given job.
While potential is a nebulous word that not even employers agree about the meaning, it is one way to evaluate candidates without expecting a replica of the ideal job description. 66% of companies will hire and train candidates who lack the skills but have potential. However, there are alternatives. The key is figuring out your definition of potential and implementing a recruitment strategy to make the best hiring choices.
Emphasize Employee Retention
Hiring becomes less of a challenge if you’re not facing constant turnover. Some industries expect it, but others are caught off guard when employees leave en masse. 4 million Americans quit their jobs in July of 2021 as a part of The Great Resignation.
It’s essential to understand who is quitting and why. Turnover used to be more common among employees in their twenties, but this current wave is mostly thirty and forty-year-old mid-level professionals. It’s highest in tech and healthcare, but all industries have been affected. Burnout is often the reason among many departing employees, as well as concerns about safety and wages.
Improve Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity
One of the most compelling statistics to come out of the Jobvite Job Seeker Survey in 2021 was diversity in the workplace. 42% of candidates said they would not accept a position with a company that did not have a clear diversity, equity, and inclusion plan in place.
Companies making promises aren’t enough for today’s workers. 64% of entry-level workers are white, while they make up 85% of the top executive positions. Instead, organizations should assess their current culture and make critical changes for a positive impact.
Conclusion: Implement Talent Intelligence
In an era of Big Data and analytics, companies can take advantage of software, including AI, that can help improve recruiting and retention. Talent intelligence gives organizations a way to evaluate factors that can lead to success in the workplace.
Ethical talent intelligence is the gold standard to ensure that the AI doesn’t learn biases from its users. And it’s helpful to know how recruiters want to use this resource for their hiring strategies.
Working with Censia and our talent intelligence platform can give you the advantage you need across the board. Contact us for a demo today.
