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Dealing with a Talent Shortage? Then Liberate Your Talent Strategy

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Organizations everywhere are facing a tightening talent shortage. A recent study noted that seven computer- or math-related jobs go unfilled for every unemployed, high-skilled STEM worker in America. Moreover, these jobs represent a disproportionate amount of immigrants, suggesting that the global IT workforce is substantial, skilled, and in high demand. But it’s not just high-skilled work either. Low-skilled, low-wage jobs go unfilled due to high demand and low supply, giving more power to workers.

These trends lead employers to expand their horizons when it comes to sourcing and securing the talent they need. They’re looking wider and deeper into their talent pools, Whether they’re looking for more diverse hires than traditionally expected or in new pockets around the world, they need the right tools.

In-house talent acquisition teams are still burdened with stringing together hiring programs that create rigid, dizzying experiences for everyone involved.

At best, time to hire is too slow. At worst, valuable company time and costs are sunk into a bad fit. In addition, the more inclusive hiring future will only increase the complexities of finding talent efficiently while providing a great candidate and employer experience.

The problem lies in overly complicated processes and disconnected systems leaving hiring teams with just as much work to do and no time to do it. Leaders need a way to simplify the process. Removing this bloat—and meeting hiring needs with efficiency—will depend on leveraging technology that integrates an entire platform to find, vet, and hire global, qualified talent from a single source.

In short, as the business landscape becomes more flexible, organizations need more capable technology to support the increasing variety and variance in hiring. But how? Here are three ways to revamp your talent strategy to keep up with growth.

Liberate your talent acquisition strategy.

The first thing I recommend to talent leaders is to think bigger, liberating the notion of “this is the way we’ve always done it.” Clearly, the old game isn’t going to work. Granted, that’s easier said than done. But the reality is that workers have increasing leverage, demanding that they have more flexibility regarding where and when they work, and, importantly, whom they work for. Labor market data shows that quit rates are at the highest level since 2000. The talent landscape has changed dramatically, and employers need to rethink their approaches.

So, get creative about your talent strategy. Think outside the box when it comes to where and how you look for talent.

Perhaps you could lower artificial barriers to qualified talent. For instance, some large tech firms have rid their job descriptions of bachelor’s degrees, seeking only the skills required to actually do the work. Or maybe you can search alternative talent marketplaces for vetted job seekers from around the world. For example, you may not have the same tools to qualify talent from other countries. However, there are ways to ensure you’re getting the right person with the right skills for the job no matter where they live.

Liquidate the pipeline.

Too many apps and outdated processes stand in the way of a great candidate experience. This results in a slower time to hire and slower growth. It doesn’t have to be like this. You should be able to find any talent for any job anywhere in the world without having to cobble together half a dozen siloed systems. There should be a flood of talent for your open positions, so you just need to liquidate the pipeline by removing its barriers.

Consider this common situation: You have a talented developer who suddenly quit for another firm and you need to fill that vacancy as fast as possible. Traditionally, you’d post job descriptions to a bunch of job boards only to hope you’ll get someone equally talented. It takes weeks—even months sometimes. Communication takes forever, interviewing goes on even longer, and vetting candidates’ qualifications is a crash course in project management.

Now consider an alternative experience. That talented developer leaves and you search through a database of thousands of already vetted, qualified candidates ready for the picking. They’re from anywhere in the world, for any role you need. Communication is a breeze, and you cut interview time in half because of the pre-qualification standards in place. Plus, you move the candidate through the hiring process in a fraction of the time. No barriers, no silos, everything taken care of.

With a good talent strategy in place, that’s the way it should be.

Lower the floodgates.

Finally, with a wider focus on your talent pool and a more streamlined approach to talent strategy, you’re ready to absorb the rising demand, increase the supply, and propel business growth.

We’ve been witnessing and driving a fundamental shift away from traditional recruiting and staffing. We know that those who go all-in on total talent gain a sustainable advantage over market competitors. Now you’re ready to liberate your workforce.

Image by Matthew Henry

HR Lessons Learned: Hiring Takeaways from 5 Different Industries

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Talent acquisition is one of the most critical yet challenging undertakings for any business. Companies in many sectors face a shortage of workers today; they face stiff competition to hire applicants—any applicant. At the same time, hiring managers in other sectors must sift through a surplus of applications to find the best candidate.

In 2020, 74 percent of CEOs globally were concerned about the availability of key skills, with 32 percent being “extremely concerned.” There’s sufficient reason behind these concerns, too. A successful hire can extend a business’s value, while a poor selection can represent a considerable waste of resources.

As you can imagine, HR teams and recruiters are looking for ways to solve this problem. And many look for help in this area by turning to other industries. For example, what are companies in tech doing to improve efficiencies in hiring practices? How are organizations in the manufacturing sector, many of which are struggling through a long-term labor shortage, meeting this challenge?

To answer those questions, let’s look at standard hiring practices in five sectors at both ends of the labor spectrum. Perhaps by reviewing the HR lessons learned in each, your company can learn how to optimize your talent acquisition strategy.

1. Technology: Pre-employment Testing

The technology industry is one of the most rapidly growing sectors today. It also involves a high level of specialization and expertise, and as such, has had to develop similarly specialized hiring methods. Most notably, tech companies frequently rely on pre-employment tests.

In the tech sector, an applicant’s education and occupational background isn’t always the most reliable evidence of their skills or aptitude. The tech industry has recognized this, and so businesses frequently require applicants to take a skills assessment. These tests offer more conclusive proof of a candidate’s aptitude in a company’s specific needed skills.

The downside to pre-employment testing is that it’s time-consuming. The more in-depth the assessment, the longer it will delay the hiring process. If companies can afford that time, though, borrowing this practice from the tech sector can produce impressive results.

2. Healthcare: Artificial Intelligence

The medical sector has an 18.7 percent turnover rate, so healthcare companies need to recruit new workers quickly. Consequently, many organizations have turned to artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline the hiring process.

The healthcare industry has a history of using AI to increase medication adherence and more, so applying it to hiring was a natural step. Hospitals use it to automate tedious, repetitive tasks like interview scheduling and application screening. One of the HR lessons learned here is that automation gets promising applicants to the interview stage of hiring quicker, helping speed the journey from application to onboarding.

AI hiring tools are relatively new, but their impact is snowballing in many hiring sectors. With AI, larger businesses in various industries have found solutions that streamline their hiring processes by automating several recruiter and candidate tasks. As technology advances, these tools will be able to do even more to help the hiring process–and they’ll also be more available (and affordable) to smaller businesses.

3. Manufacturing: Passive Candidate Search

Manufacturing companies have had to work with an ongoing labor shortage for years. With fewer people entering the industry, manufacturers have had to find new avenues for recruiting workers. One of the most effective of these strategies has been searching for passive candidates.

Businesses have found that many manufacturing professionals are hard to find because they’re not actively looking for a new job. These workers don’t often apply independently. Given the right opportunity, however, they could be willing to switch careers or positions. Scouring databases of nearby workers, industry-related forums, and other data sources to find these employees helps manufacturers find ideal candidates.

Other industries facing labor shortages can employ the same tactic. After all, sometimes the best employees aren’t actively looking for new work. Until a better offer comes along, that is.

4. Real Estate: Mentorship

Success in the real estate sector often requires experience and intimate industry knowledge. While many companies’ reaction to this hiring environment would be to look for outside, experienced hires, many brokerages take a different approach. Instead of finding already-knowledgeable employees, real estate companies create them through inside hiring and mentorship programs.

The theory behind this approach: It’s easier to find an eager but inexperienced new hire than to poach an experienced outside worker. Real estate brokerages understand that by pairing recruits with their veteran employees, they can cultivate expertise.

By the time these once-inexperienced recruits become eligible for higher-level positions, they’ll be more qualified for it than anyone else. In fact, research shows that outside hires take three years to perform as well as internal hires doing the same job. So, rather than having to find employees in a competitive marketplace, one of the HR lessons learned here is that investing in better training through mentors helps companies more organically build the best workforce.

5. Education: Internships

The hiring process in the education industry is unique. Teaching at a K-12 level requires years of experience through hands-on education programs and passing certification tests. Not all industries have such high requirements, but they can still learn from these pipelines.

College students pursuing education degrees finish their programs by student-teaching at a school. More often than not, the school systems where they student-teach will later hire them as full-time teachers when they graduate. Businesses and other industries can mimic this process by instituting intern programs that act as pipelines to employment.

Universities frequently involve faculty in interviewing and hiring their colleagues. Other industries can benefit from this same practice. In this longer-term hiring approach, employees already have intimate, hands-on knowledge about a position’s actual demands. So they can help spot ideal or unideal candidates and advise hiring decision-makers accordingly.

Businesses Can Learn a Lot from Other Industries

In a labor shortage, hiring companies must look further than their competitors for ideas about how to improve their hiring process. There are many HR lessons learned when taking inspiration from other industries like those mentioned above. These industries can provide practical, novel insights that businesses may not have gained otherwise.

These five industries are not perfect examples of ideal hiring processes, of course, but they all feature useful takeaways. Learning from each, then combining methods as necessary, can help create the optimal talent acquisition system for your company.

 

A New Study Reveals the Top 3 Barriers to Efficient Recruitment

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Recruiting is High Stakes

Individuals charged with hiring employees face big challenges today: time pressure from hiring managers who need positions filled quickly, shrinking and highly competitive labor pools, interview processes that require collaboration among numerous people, lack of tools to facilitate the process. But it’s also a time of great opportunity: many companies are hiring due to growth or expansion and evolving job requirements, and companies know employees are their most important asset and that cultural fit is critical.

To meet the demands in today’s business environment, recruitment efforts need to be nimble, synchronized, and expansive. But a new independent study conducted by WideOpen set to release this month reveals there are key obstacles and common challenges among recruiters and hiring managers that threaten the ability to meet these demands. This global study of 2,341 recruiters and hiring managers in the US, UK, and France representing companies with fewer than 500 employees indicates the following for US respondents (n=841):

Obstacle 1: Candidate’s Market

The primary factor influencing the level of difficulty of filling an open job is related to supply and demand. There simply is a shortage of qualified, available candidates.

Candidate’s Market

Obstacle 2: Managing Job Postings

To reach as many candidates as possible, recruiters typically post their job postings to multiple online job boards. With the ongoing proliferation and fragmentation of job boards and communities, this has become a burdensome, time-consuming task.

Job Posting ChallengeObstacle 3: Candidate Management

Once candidates have been identified, the work of scheduling interviews, tracking applicants, and managing the interview process creates a different layer of obstacles among recruiters and hiring managers.

Candidate Management

A Better Way

Given the understandable and relatable challenges faced by those tasked with hiring new employees, recruiters and hiring managers have specific thoughts on how to facilitate a better set of tools and processes for a smoother process.

* Easier way to manage job posts. 94% of recruiters want greater access to more candidates. Expanding access to candidates means expanding access to various candidate pools, necessitating more job boards, more postings to manage. Already 58% of respondents currently post to four or more online job boards. It’s no surprise, then, that 87% of respondents want it to be easier to manage this flurry of activity.

* Better way to track applicants. With increasing candidates coming into the funnel, recruiters need a better way to manage that volume. Among other requirements, they need to be able to quickly filter those candidates they are interested in pursuing, whether that’s a phone interview or an in-person interview. 84% indicate selecting and categorizing suitable candidates is a challenge; 86% would like better applicant tracking software.

* Better tools to facilitate overall management. While there are myriad quality online job boards, recruiters still use a lot of manual tools to manage and track the overall process: spreadsheets, word processors, printouts, emails are all used by the majority of respondents to track and manage online job posting activity, and to collaborate with colleagues and aggregate their feedback on applicants. 84% of respondents indicate the need for more automation and less paper in the process.

As the stakes for effective recruiting increase and the activities required to manage recruitment efforts multiply, companies need to enable these efforts with automation and modern digital tools. In the age of customer experience where every business is a people business, a company’s most critical asset requires a commensurate degree of attention and support.

Stay tuned for more detailed findings, including those from the UK and France.

This post was written by Jeff Rosenberg, Co-Founder and Partner at WideOpen, and was originally published on WorkConnect by SAP.