Talent acquisition is changing

Once upon a time, the search for talent was a highly manual, interpersonal activity. It relied on the recruiter’s knowledge of their network, online and offline ads, intuition and a little bit of luck. But this approach is increasingly outdated.   

Technology is having a huge impact on how businesses find and hire talent – making the process more efficient and cost effective. However, despite these benefits, research shows that half of employers do not use applicant tracking software.

Why is talent acquisition technology needed, and what can it do?

The approach to traditional talent acquisition follows a fairly standard process. The same approach is used for practically all positions and industries – whether a recruiter is searching for entry-level candidates or critical hires with complex skill requirements; 

• Client briefing on the required skills for the job 
• Search, both internally within the organisation, its network and a database of CVs 
• Advertising on the jobs market 
• Receiving and filtering applications 
• Creating a long list  
• Initial interviews conducted by the recruiter 
• Short list interviews with the Hiring Manager 

This process has served all types of industries around the world perfectly well for decades. In fact, in many industries, it is still perfectly suitable – especially when you are hiring for lower-skilled work.  

But for more professional positions, such as Software Development or Technology Sales, this traditional approach to talent acquisition has some serious drawbacks: 

• Time-consuming: Hunting down and creating a shortlist of employees with specialist skills is complex and time-consuming. 

• Expensive: A time-consuming search for talent will cost the business more money. 

• Diversity challenges: There is a real risk of failing to hire diversely in certain sectors particularly in the technology sector.  

• Missed opportunities: Reliance on a highly manual process means the recruiter may miss potential great hires. 

• Often geographically bound: Recruiters may only source candidates from a limited geographic area – which reduces the amount of talent available.  

• Generally passive: An over-reliance on posting job adverts online makes this approach relatively passive. It means that only people who are actively looking for work will come across the opportunity.  

These are, of course, just some of the limitations of the traditional search for talent. But technology is increasingly being used to address this issue.  

5 ways technology is revolutionising talent acquisition 

So how is technology changing how recruiters find and hire the best talent? Here are five ways technology helps attract the best people.  

1. Big Data analytics 

Recruiters and HR departments have access to vast troves of data on potential candidates in their networks. The problem is this is often very hard to sort through – especially if you have tens of thousands of potential candidates to consider. 

This is where Big Data analytics can help. These tools can intelligently filter through thousands of CV’s, social profiles and job applications to find individuals with the right skills and experience to meet your requirements.

2. Artificial Intelligence 

Recruiters rarely have the luxury of time to browse through hundreds of applications to find the right people for each job. This means that they sometimes need to rush through applications, sorting them by brief first impressions – and potentially missing great candidates. Artificial Intelligence can do this job for them, rapidly scanning many CVs to seek out the most appropriate people for each role.  

3. Bots 

Recruiters are increasingly using smart bots to take on mundane and repetitive communication tasks. Bots can contact potential applicants, respond to queries and reply to emails automatically. This saves recruiters many hours and means they can spend more time searching for the best people.  

4. Skills assessment 

How do you really know an applicant has the skills you need? For instance, a technology company that’s hiring for a software developer with Python skills may struggle to know if an applicant has the required skills – or if they are making exaggerated claims on their application.  

Talent acquisition technology can use skills assessment programmes to test the individual’s capabilities. This means you can filter out all your long list applicants and find people who truly have the skills they claim they do.  

5. Eliminating bias 

Unconscious bias has been a major challenge for recruitment in many industries. Recruiters and hiring managers may hold preconceived notions about what kinds of people typically succeed in specific kinds of jobs. This means that they may unfairly discount people who have the right skills but whose surname, gender, address or ethnicity means they’re ignored.  

Artificial intelligence can help eliminate unconscious bias in the recruitment process by purely searching for skills and experience. 

Ready for the talent acquisition revolution?

Is your business ready to adapt to the changing face of talent acquisition? With competition for talent hotter than ever – especially in the technology industry – using the most advanced tools to search for, identify and attract talent is vital.  

That will give your organisation the edge when it comes to seeking out your next hires and scaling your business!