Recruitment and talent acquisition occur at different times — recruitment strategies focus on quick fixes, while talent acquisition focuses on developing a longer-term approach. Both approaches are important to consider, but recruitment is more tactical, while talent acquisition is more strategic.

In this guide, we’ll review how a basic understanding of talent acquisition and recruitment can go a long way in improving your enterprise’s hiring outcomes. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Comparing employee recruitment and talent acquisition
• Should your company recruit or acquire talent?
• How to strengthen your talent acquisition approach

Comparing employee recruitment and talent acquisition

Recruitment is reactive, focusing on filling vacancies as efficiently as possible by selecting the best-fit candidate based on job requirements and the applicant’s skill set. 

Talent acquisition, on the other hand, is an ongoing approach to finding your company’s top specialists, individual contributors, leaders, or future executives. It focuses on long-term human resources planning by investing time and resources in building relationships with potential candidates, promoting employer branding, and developing a talent pipeline for future organizational needs. This approach considers not only applicant skills and competencies but also potential fit within the company’s culture and long-term growth goals.

Let’s explore some more characteristics of talent acquisition and recruitment:

• Talent Acquisition:
  • Is a strategic process
  • Focuses on long-term human resources planning
  • Includes workforce planning, employer branding, and building talent pools
  • Often involves internal mobility and succession planning
  • Seeks to attract and nurture candidates for future needs
• Recruitment:
  • Operational process
  • Focuses on filling current vacancies
  • Involves sourcing, interviewing, and hiring candidates
  • Typically concludes once a candidate accepts an offer
  • Aimed at meeting immediate hiring needs
• Talent Acquisition and Recruitment:
  • Are part of the broader hiring process
  • Involve engaging with candidates throughout the hiring process
  • Use job descriptions and postings
  • Require candidate assessment and selection

The bottom line is, to execute a talent acquisition strategy, you need to identify, attract, and nurture potential hires proactively for future positions often before these positions become available. Niche markets, technology skills, highly specific experience, and leadership roles call for a thoughtful, long-term approach to talent acquisition, so ask yourself which positions will be difficult to fill when a vacancy or need arises. 

Should your company recruit or acquire talent?

Some professionals may believe that every company in all industries should focus on talent acquisition rather than recruitment because acquiring talent typically builds a stronger company, fosters teamwork, and boosts productivity. 

But remember, as an enterprise, you likely have extremely diverse hiring needs across your company and within certain departments, so you shouldn’t use a one-sided approach. These strategies can both be used intentionally in different circumstances. 

Here are a few questions that can help your company decide whether to prioritize recruitment or talent acquisition:

• Do we have a turnover problem? If your enterprise experiences high turnover, you can transform hiring by building a more robust talent pool through strategic talent acquisition. But if you only hire a few people each year and have low turnover, your focus is likely more on recruitment. 
• Is our industry experiencing rapid growth or innovation? As markets evolve and new skills become more important, you’ll need to adapt your hiring practices to keep up. For example, in manufacturing, a push towards green technology leads to a greater need for reskilling and hiring non-traditional backgrounds, such as environmental science.
• What is the competitive landscape for talent in our industry? If top talent is scarce in your industry, taking a long-term talent acquisition approach can help you stand out as a leading employer.
• What are our business goals? If your most pressing goals are aligned with addressing immediate needs versus long-haul growth, perhaps recruitment should be your priority. 

Whether you prioritize recruitment or talent acquisition, having a passive talent pool ready will save you time and give you a leg up on your competition. Use your applicant tracking system (ATS) to note interested applicants who aren’t the best fit right now, but could be a promising candidate in the future. Then, when it comes time to fill roles, you have easy access to people who have already expressed interest in your enterprise.

How to strengthen your talent acquisition approach

Attracting the best and brightest employees to your company is a continuous process of networking and engaging top talent. Your talent acquisition function can be one of the drivers of candidate relationship management success, allowing your company to thrive.

If you’ve been focusing on recruitment, try these tips to help your talent team zoom out and look at the big picture:

• Upgrade your HR tech stack. Invest in an applicant tracking system (ATS) and a candidate relationship management system (CRM) to nurture candidates at scale and build a robust talent pool.
• Emphasize employer branding. Is your company known for its corporate social responsibility initiatives or social culture? Play to your unique strengths, while developing a talent acquisition strategy to stand out. 
• Implement a proactive talent sourcing strategy. As previously mentioned, keeping a passive talent pool ensures you always have candidates that you can engage to influence your long-term talent strategies.
• Assess your benefits. Whether it’s implementing DEI initiatives, offering competitive compensation and benefits, or examining your internal mobility programs, understand what makes applicants want to join your enterprise and what you can implement in the long term to improve your hiring potential.

As you start putting this information together, it can be helpful to structure important information in a SWOT format. By listing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you can understand the internal and external factors impacting your talent acquisition success. Take a look at this example template you can use to get started:

How to jumpstart your talent acquisition efforts

By taking a purposeful look into your enterprise’s strengths for potential candidates, you can craft a meaningful talent acquisition strategy to serve your entire organization and align to your business strategies. However, navigating such a big task can seem daunting. Don’t worry — we’re here to help you get started. 

Jobvite’s EVOLVE Talent Acquisition Framework assesses your organization’s maturity in 17 process areas across the three pillars of talent acquisition: recruitment marketing, applicant management, and talent acquisition operations. 

Our framework helps you optimize not just the process areas, but also the connection points between process areas to see real business results. Based on your current maturity level in the identified process areas, we’ll provide tailored action plans to evolve your processes, people, and technologies and track your progress.

The post Recruitment vs. Talent Acquisition: What Is the Difference? first appeared on Jobvite.

Evolve and adapt. Without regular assessment and constant optimization of your full-cycle recruiting process, you and your talent acquisition team won’t be able to minimize the person hours and resources spent on filling open roles and closing requisitions in an increasingly efficient manner.

It’s not just on your TA team to routinely make progress in terms of improving each part of its recruiting process, of course. It’s a twofold approach, really, to ensure your hiring team at large can consistently identify, engage, and convert your ideal candidate in a predictable and scalable way:

1. Your talent leader and operations manager need to have a constant eye on your recruitment analytics so they can share actionable insights with and recommend changes to each recruiter.
2. Once they have said data and suggestions, your recruiters and hiring managers can ensure each subsequent recruitment cycle (ones tied to future reqs) is faster and more efficient than the last.

In other words? Elevating the quality of your full-cycle recruiting is a true team effort — and a process that has many moving parts. Here’s how you can enhance your TA efforts in the long run.

Benefits of full-cycle recruiting

As with any business endeavor or initiative, there are pros and cons of full life cycle recruiting.

That said, the only “downsides” (if you can even call them that) of this talent acquisition method is not being able to keep up with hiring demand, due to insufficient in-house recruiting headcount, budget, and/or resources. Of course, that’s likely not a problem for enterprise TA teams like yours.

With that in mind, here are the (many) pros of implementing the popular recruitment approach.

A better-run recruiting cycle and hiring process

A well-coordinated full-cycle recruiting process fills open positions more quickly. Plain and simple.

By proactively building relationships with passive and active candidates across multiple channels (social media, job boards, etc.) and using data to assess and improve their efforts to execute standard TA tasks (nurturing top talent via email and/or text, conducting interviews and background checks), recruiters increase their chances of discovering qualified candidates.

This ensures hiring managers always have a sufficient pool of premier prospects to choose from. In turn, this reduces delays in filling job vacancies on their teams due to a lack of talent to engage.

A concerted team focus on candidate experience

When all hiring stakeholders know their distinct function within the full-cycle recruiting process, every part of it runs smoothly. Equally as important, though, it also ensures job seekers your team engages for openings have an enjoyable experience. (Something not all enterprise employers prioritize today.)

From the moment an active job seeker applies for an open role or sourced prospects engages with your nurture messaging, to when said candidate accepts a job offer (or otherwise sees their respective recruitment journey end), their experience with your hiring team must remain top of mind.

By doing so, your TA team can help alleviate any anxiety they might feel when speaking with your team regarding the role and ensure that, whatever the outcome, their content with their experience interacting with your recruiting staff, hiring managers, and other interview panelists is a fond one.

Streamlined, end-to-end recruitment operations

Arguably the biggest benefit of full-cycle recruiting is being able to tackle each TA task in a highly organized manner — and use data tied to your hiring team’s collective efforts after to “upgrade” hiring operations each requisition is closed (i.e., post-recruitment cycle, when a new hire is made.)

Improving your full-cycle recruiting process

Establishing a dedicated talent acquisition approach is one thing. But, it’s equally essential to keep your full-cycle recruiting process running smoothly. That means abiding by FCR best practices.

Here are four specific ways you can systematically strengthen your end-to-end recruitment efforts.

1) Pay close attention to the candidate journey

A critical aspect of attracting and hiring exceptional candidates is the ever-important candidate journey. This encompasses every interaction a potential hire has with your business early on.

From the initial discovery of a role, all the way to receiving an offer letter. (Or getting passed on.)

To refresh your recruiting process and enhance the candidate experience, start by examining your org’s online presence, application process (and ease), and structured interview procedures.

• What areas of your recruiting cycle can be improved (or even sped up)?
• Are you keeping leads informed and engaged during the hiring process?
• Do your job postings reflect your company values, culture, and mission? 

Evaluating and improving these aspects will lead to a more seamless and enjoyable journey for potential hires, further enhancing your company’s reputation and appeal.

2) Use analytics to make data-backed decisions

Data-driven decision-making is a key component of effective recruiting strategies. By utilizing analytics and data points in your recruitment process, you can gain valuable insights into your talent acquisition outcomes, identify trends, and make data-backed decisions to improve your approach.

Similarly, ensure your entire recruiting staff and TA team members evaluate the right set of recruitment metrics to gauge your success (and pinpoint areas for improvement) over time.

This can include tracking candidate source performance, time to fill, quality of hire, applicant conversion rates, and more. By combining data and creative problem-solving, you’ll be able to make informed decisions to continually refine your ways of working and better your results.

3) Keep your org’s DEI hiring objectives top of mind

Consider diversity and inclusion when refining your FCR process. To make strides in this facet of your TA strategy, investigate your company’s current diversity hiring practices and bias mitigation efforts.

Are you partnering with diverse job boards and networking groups to advertise active and upcoming roles? How about utilizing candidate assessment methods that minimize recruiting biases, such as implementing blind hiring techniques or providing standardized interviews? 

That way, you’ll more naturally attract a diverse range of talented candidates. Both active diverse job seekers and passive candidates of various backgrounds who express interest in job openings.

4) Gauge the effectiveness of your employer branding

Your employer branding is crucial for attracting top candidates and retaining talented employees. A strong employer brand helps potential hires understand the unique selling points of working for your company beyond just the job description and salary.

To optimize your employer brand, assess your current branding efforts and identify opportunities to create a more authentic and appealing narrative. Take the time to highlight the various facets of your company culture, values, and employee benefits.

Utilize social media and online platforms to showcase success stories, team achievements, and life behind the scenes. By refreshing your employer branding, you’ll be able to attract quality candidates that better align with your company values.

By adapting and evolving your full-cycle recruiting processes over time, you can help your org attract and retain top candidates, leading to increased productivity, innovation, and stability.

Find out how Jobvite can help you thrive in today’s hiring landscape. Schedule a demo to learn how our ATS can elevate the quality of your talent acquisition strategy.

The post Refreshing Your Full-Cycle Recruiting Process: A Guide first appeared on Jobvite.

The number of openings reported in July by the BLS is hovering between 9 and 10 million jobs as of May 2023, with open roles outnumbering job seekers around 1.6 to 1. Recruiters and hiring managers are the first to point out how challenging it is to fill open requisitions.

Of these individuals, 58% say it’s because they cannot find enough qualified candidates, and 1 in 2 indicate they have more open roles to fill despite the talent shortage.

A tight labor market demands a new approach

While there are plenty of opportunities available for job seekers, the imbalance in supply and demand makes it difficult for employers to find the right candidates for their open roles.

First, there are significantly more jobs available than workers. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3.5 million fewer people are in the workforce now than in February 2020.

The United States Department of Labor predicts this imbalance to last at least into the 2030s and likely longer, indicating the labor supply and demand imbalance is not a short-term phenomenon.

The second factor is the mismatch in skills demanded by employers and those possessed by the workforce. While this imbalance has been misaligned since before the pandemic, post-pandemic, the situation is expected to accelerate.

 According to the World Bank, over the next decade, the number of people of working age (between ages 15 and 65) will decline in the U.S. by more than three percent.

Opportunities for recruitment automation and AI

The need for innovative strategies, technology investment, and a data-driven approach in recruitment technology has never been more urgent.

With the current situation, it should come as no surprise that 47% of companies plan to increase spending on sourcing, including automated sourcing technology, according to Employ data.

Here are the top 9 ways recruitment automation and AI can help ease the burden on recruiters right now:

#1. Sourcing: Boost the recruiting capacity of your team with intelligent sourcing built to find high-quality candidates who match your open requisitions in just a single click.

#2. Job Advertising: Automated, programmatic advertising can optimize and personalize job ads or recruitment advertising campaigns. It can also maximize the reach of recruitment ads while minimizing costs.

#3. Resume Screening: Automate resume screening and shortlisting processes by scanning resumes for specified keywords and phrases.

#4. Chatbots and Messaging Platforms: Chatbots can automate communication with candidates, promptly responding to queries and questions via text or messaging platforms.

#5. Video Interviews: AI-powered video interviewing platforms can offer on-demand or live video interviews, allowing recruiters to prescreen, review and assess candidates quickly.

#6. Pre-Employment Assessments: Machine learning algorithms can support job-specific assessments, such as cognitive and technical assessments, to identify the best candidates for particular roles.

#7. Reference Checking: Artificial intelligence tools can streamline reference-checking tasks by contacting past employers in seconds.

#8. Candidate Relationship Management: AI-powered candidate relationship management platforms can enhance candidate engagement, including recruitment marketing,  personalized communications, and meeting scheduling.

#9. Improve Onboarding: AI can improve the onboarding experience by streamlining manual tasks, providing personalized communications, and generating employee performance reports.

The rewards of recruitment automation and AI

No matter how large or small your recruiting team may be, automation and AI lets you turn repetitive manual tasks into a more manageable workload that can easily scale up or down along with your hiring needs.

Let’s break down high-level rewards, benefits, and best practices of implementing automation and AI into your talent acquisition processes.

Free up valuable time

Recruiters spend countless hours on manual, repetitive tasks like posting job openings, screening applicants, and scheduling interviews.

Recruitment automation and AI-powered recruiting tools help to streamline these time-consuming tasks, so recruiters can focus on the critical, strategic elements of recruiting that require a human touch.

Source candidates faster

Competing on speed is one of the single most important areas recruiting organizations should seek to tackle.  Recruiters can reduce time spent on sourcing by around 30% using intelligent sourcing technology.

Enhance the candidate experience

When talent is tight, keeping candidates happy is critical — and communication is one of the key elements of a great candidate experience.

The human element is not removed from your hiring process; instead, it can create more space to devote to personalized, engaging experiences for candidates.

Improve hiring metrics

Performance metrics fall into two main categories: quantitative and qualitative. Recruitment automation tools and AI-powered solutions can help with both sides of the equation.

On the quantitative side, you can streamline the end-to-end hiring process, leading to improved measures like time-to-hire and conversion rate. On the qualitative side, you can reduce friction in the candidate experience, which can help to keep top talent engaged and lead to improved quality of hire.

Increase process visibility

Recruitment automation and AI tools can help to improve transparency throughout the hiring process, keeping teams aligned and ensuring that candidates never get lost in the shuffle.

Candidate profiles are managed in a single location and help give recruiters and hiring managers access to details about their current status, communications they’ve received, and next steps in the process.

Reduce unconscious bias

Eliminating bias from the hiring process is difficult because it’s seldom intentional. Recruitment automation and AI-powered technologies can help to reduce unconscious bias by taking human subjectivity out of tasks like resume review and candidate screening.

Some tools even hide personally identifiable information from a candidate’s profile, enabling an unbiased evaluation based entirely on relevant skills and experience.

Ready to begin?

The introduction of AI and automation in talent acquisition technology and recruiting software has helped talent teams speed up the hiring and recruiting process.  

And while there are an incredible amount of recruitment technology providers in the market, it’s important to know how to best leverage the right solutions for your business.

For more insight on how to deploy recruitment automation and AI to reach your hiring goals, download the comprehensive report: Automation and AI in Recruiting: Balancing the Risks and Rewards in a Modern Hiring Environment.

The post 9 Ways to Use Recruitment Automation and AI Right Now first appeared on Jobvite.

By Zac Amos, Features Editor at ReHack

Zac Amos serves as the Features Editor at ReHack, where he covers AI, big data, and automation. He is especially interested in how technological advancements can be applied to the HR sector.

For more of his work, follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can streamline the hiring process, making it easier for recruiting teams to acquire new talent. While AI can support better decision making and reduced hiring bias, it actually comes equipped with the same discriminations as the people who created it. So how can companies overcome this challenge?

What is AI bias?

There are numerous biases in the hiring, management and firing processes. Many are unconscious or subtle — for example, hiring slightly fewer women overall or letting go of older employees too soon.

About 50% of people think their race, gender or ethnicity has made it harder to land a job. Some companies have implemented AI in their TA functions to help make decisions without factoring in these protected classes.

The issue is that AI doesn’t work that way. It’s only as good as the data set programmers use to train it, and any errors or inherent biases will be reflected in the AI’s output. These aren’t emotional biases, but programming errors that lead to unwanted outcomes. Several common problems create biases in AI.

Why AI bias is a challenge in hiring

Talent teams are committed to treating candidates fairly in the hiring process. But, with significant workloads, many teams have turned to AI and automation software to help them sort through resumes or job applications.

Before COVID-19, the average job opening received 250 applications. Yet applicant flow for many roles has increased. For example, some entry-level jobs have received thousands of candidates, with one receiving an overwhelming 4,228 applications.

Many hiring teams use AI programs, but this software must be unbiased. It can mean the difference between automatically discarding an application and hiring the most qualified candidate.

The AI recruitment industry is worth over $500 million, and recruiting teams use it for everything from predicting job performance to assessing facial expressions during a video interview.

However, many applicants report these types of software rejecting them based on having foreign-sounding names or including certain words in their resumes. People’s names and word choices aren’t a protected class, but often indicate race, gender or age.

In 2018, Amazon scrapped a recruiting tool that automatically penalized resumes that included the word “women’s,” as in “women’s studies” or “women’s university.” That’s despite the fact that orgs in the top quartile for gender diversity are 25% more likely to make above-average profits than those in the lowest.

Reducing the effects of AI bias in hiring

How can well-meaning recruiting teams avoid these types of bias when using AI in their hiring process?

Look to create balance with AI in recruiting

AI is simply a tool that does what it was designed to do. Training it with biased data leads to skewed results.

Recruiting teams must scrutinize any software for hiring new employees. Above all, it’s always best to have a real person make the final decisions — because if a company wants to hire human beings, it should treat them as such.

Download our Automation and AI in Recruiting report today to learn more about the risks and rewards of leveraging artificial intelligence and automated workflows for talent acquisition.

The post How to Reduce the Effects of AI Bias in Hiring first appeared on Jobvite.

It’s become a key metric for success that it’s now an evaluation category for the Fortune 500 list, reminding companies just how important it is to consistently improve their organizational DEI — and proving that the best lead by example.

Diversity begins with recruiting: 8 things to consider with your enterprise’s DEI recruiting strategy

A diverse company begins with recruiting and focusing on its importance cannot be overstated.

Within talent acquisition, 80% of recruiting professionals said diversity hiring was a top priority last year. However, companies still struggle to build a diverse pipeline of talent to meet the standards job candidates expect.

But, the critical point to remember is that modern DEI makes considerations for much more than ever before. Here are the eight ways to look at DEI across recruiting:

1) Racial diversity

The phrase DEI usually evokes thoughts of racial diversity, a vital component of inclusion plans in any organization. Race refers to a person’s grouping based on physical traits despite races not being biologically defined. Examples of racial identifications include Caucasian, African, and Asian.

2) Cultural diversity

Cultural diversity can mean something different to everyone, but in this case, we’re using it to refer to culture in regard to ethnicity. There are a great many ethnic groups acknowledged worldwide, but examples include Black or African American, American Indian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander.

3) Gender diversity

Traditionally, gender has been depicted as either male or female. As the spectrum of gender is more inclusive, gender diversity can include cisgender, gender fluid, or agender individuals.

Companies considering gender inclusion in their company will avoid gender-specific language in job descriptions and other content to avoid accidental discrimination or alienation of any particular identification.

4) Generational diversity

Generational diversity is the concept of employing a wide range of generations within a company. Today there are likely four different generations in your talent pipeline: Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers.

5) Sexual orientation

Diversity in sexual orientation means making space for individuals using classifications gathered under the acronym LGBTQIA+. This stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual, with the ‘plus’ indicating this list continues for many more characterizations.

6) Familial status

Familial status refers to inclusion in the workplace regardless of a person’s role outside of the home. Supporting DEI regardless of familial status includes those with or without children and allows for multiple definitions of family.

7) Physical and mental disabilities

The disability community is diverse, but very often overlooked. Disability diversity may come in physical form, from wheelchair accommodations to audio aid for visually impaired people. But, disability inclusion also includes neurodivergence, which refers to cognitive functioning which is outside of what is considered ‘typical’.

This can include conditions such as Autism, ADHD, Down Syndrome, Dyslexia, and many more.

8) Work experience diversity

Diversity of experience encompasses the breadth and depth of work experience across many roles, functions, types of organizations, industries, and more. Similarly, educational diversity demonstrates an understanding that not every role requires a certain level of education.

Inclusion in this area means understanding the many different backgrounds and experiences that can make a person well-suited for a role, rather than a single line of promotions.

The state of DEI in the workplace

When it comes to securing a job, employees often feel their race, gender or ethnicity had a major impact on their employment. Half of employees believe their race, gender, or ethnicity has hindered them in securing a job.

Many employees have made an active effort to hide parts of their identity (e.g., removing profile pictures from LinkedIn; hiding their accent, physical disability, or natural hair) to increase their chances of getting hired.

Not only are candidates looking at what you say about DEI, but they’re also not shy about holding companies accountable. About 80% of job candidates have checked a company’s website for their stance on DEI before applying. And 57% of employees ask their employer about the culture of DEI at the company in the interview.

This data reveals that companies must clearly communicate their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but also execute these programs well to attract (and keep) top talent.

Where companies are hitting the mark with DEI recruiting and hiring efforts today

Drastic improvements have been made over the last year, ranging from DEI-centered hiring to increased training for onboarding experiences. Compared to last year, companies have improved communications around DEI efforts, shared their DEI stats publicly, and required DEI training as a part of their onboarding experience.

Looking forward with promise

Many thought leaders in the industry believe that progress within DEI efforts starts with a diverse pipeline.

While this is a major contributor to having a more diverse talent pool, the key to success is a strong culture of inclusivity and belonging. The improvement in these areas is a promising sign, as we look toward the future.

For deeper insight into DEI across recruiting, download the comprehensive report: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Spotlight: Examining DEI Across the Talent Lifecycle.

The post 8 Key Considerations for Your DEI Recruiting Strategy first appeared on Jobvite.

As an enterprise talent or HR leader, you know it’s important to look at recruiting trends from other, similar orgs today to determine how to prioritize talent acquisition investments in the years ahead.

Consider Jobvite customers. They use the industry benchmark data included in our regularly published reports to discover data points tied to other companies’ recruitment and hiring efforts.

Case in point:

• Employ data from more than 18,000 customers and a survey of more than 1,200 HR leaders reveals one-third (33%) expect their recruitment spending to remain the same over the next 12 months.
• More than half (54%) expect to increase recruitment spend in their company moving forward.
• And Spending increases are most expected in medium-sized businesses (66%), while 53% of large enterprises and 43% of small businesses anticipate increasing budgets for the years ahead.

It’s hard data like this that illuminates the state of talent acquisition at other businesses — including other large-scale orgs like yours — that can show you what recruiting trends have taken shape in recent months and how said trends will impact your company’s ability to attract and retain top talent.

The top-5 recruiting trends to know today

The rise of remote working and its impact on company culture. A focus on employee’s mental health and work-life balance. A renewed effort to improve the candidate experience.

There are countless recruiting trends we could spotlight here. However, there are five particular focus areas we’ve identified at orgs of all sizes and across industries that will affect everything from your data-driven hiring process, to how job seekers engage with your recruitment marketing.

When it comes to focused investment, here are the recruiting trends we will likely see in the coming years — ones that will impact large-scale companies’ (including yours) hiring plans and ROI.

1) DEI program upgrades a top priority

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives continue to have greater priority and focus for organizations of all sizes as companies realize their value for attracting higher quality candidates and contributing to workplace performance.

In the years ahead, 33% of HR decision-makers plan to increase their investments in DEI programs. This is an increase of five points since June 2022 for spending on these initiatives, and reflects the importance of creating a workforce that values a diversity of perspectives. 

Hiring managers, in particular, are taking a more hands-on approach to monitoring the pipeline progress of recruiters assigned to their requisitions to ensure they add a sizable number of qualified, diverse talent to their candidate pools.

2) Enterprises bolster employer branding

Investing in employer brand initiatives continues to be a priority this new year. In fact, more than one-third of employers (35%) plan to increase their budget in this area.

They want to see the employee experience in employer branding collateral (e.g., videos of your workforce on your “Careers” and “About Us” pages) that can give them a clear picture of what the average day in the life is like at your org — and if your work environment is to their liking.

Staying competitive in a tight labor market means continuously investing in your employer brand, and remains a top priority for companies today.

3) New recruiting roles added to TA teams

Employ data reveals 45% of TA teams plan to add new recruiting team roles in the coming years.

Investing in the recruiting function and the resources to help keep up with demand in finding high quality talent is widely seen as vital for companies of all sizes, especially during periods of growth.

Even in the midst of economic uncertainty, large and small businesses alike continue to invest in their teams, knowing they need the right people to meet the hiring demands of their business and to combat the tight labor market.

The meta-ness can’t be overlooked: Enterprise talent teams looking for … well … enterprise talent specialists across job boards and social media to join their teams and help them prepare their TA strategies for when the economy inevitably and eventually picks back up.

4) Orgs expand job advertising presence

In the years ahead, companies can anticipate increases in job advertising. Employ data reveals 57% of employers expect to increase ad budgets for open roles and to attract higher quality talent.

Posting open positions on job boards is a solid approach for broadening your company’s talent pool.

It also expands awareness of positions that passive or active candidates may not have previously had visibility to and enhances your employer brand online. Ensuring that you use targeted job advertising is imperative and can help find the right candidates who will best fit your open positions.

5) Many companies revamp TA tech stacks

As the labor market continues to see a high volume of open positions and the potential for recession continues, companies both large and small need to increase their hiring efficiencies and reliance on automation to streamline hiring efforts. That’s why it’s a top recruiting trend this year.

This includes an increase of more than 17 points since June 2022 for spending on applicant tracking systems, an increase of eight points for candidate texting solutions, and an increase of five points for candidate relationship management systems.

Scalability: An “evergreen” recruiting trend

Planning during times of uncertainty is one of the biggest challenges HR decision-makers, recruiting experts, and talent acquisition professionals face when guiding their organization’s future.

Now that your company has entered a new year of recruiting, pursuing a scalable hiring strategy will be essential to attracting, hiring, and onboarding quality talent to drive organizational performance and alleviate the pressures from market slowdowns.

As you begin to put your hiring programs into practice, remember to keep scalability at the forefront of your strategy. Ask the following questions:

• What must-haves should we focus on in our recruiting process?
• How can we find the right people in a challenging labor market faster?
• Where can we do more with less or the same with less?
• How can we become more efficient while improving outcomes?

The insights available in this article are only a starting point. For more data, key takeaways, and actionable insights, download the full Employ Quarterly Insights Report here.

Discover why our Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite is trusted by thousands of enterprise talent acquisition teams today. Schedule a demo to learn more about our advanced ATS.

The post 5 Recruiting Trends Impacting Enterprise Talent Teams first appeared on Jobvite.

Would you work with a company whose employer brand has been described by once-engaged job candidates as “deceptive,” “unethical,” or “poorly managed”? Most people wouldn’t. In fact, many enterprise business leaders would be terrified to hear their business described this way.

And yet, look at reviews of orgs on Glassdoor, Indeed, and similar online career communities, and you’ll find comments with adjectives like the above — ones that every job seeker looking for new work on said platforms (and others like them) can see when evaluating prospective employers.

The key to building your employer brand strategy and regularly enhancing your employer value proposition (EVP) in general is to work alongside other hiring stakeholders in your C-suite.

What is your employer brand?

Employer branding refers to the way orgs differentiate themselves from competitors in the market for employees and share distinct info about their business at large, company mission, and culture.

Conversely, companies with a bad employer brand struggle in these areas and, thus, tend to have a worse reputation than businesses that excel with good employer branding strategies.

To understand the current state of your employer brand perception, ask yourself:

• What is your company’s reputation among your workforce?
• What do candidates say about your brand after applying for a job and interviewing?
• How is it as a place to work? Is there a strong work-life balance?
• Do your employees feel cared for, seen, and heard by leadership?
• Would your employees recommend your company to their friends?

Examining the online real estate your business occupies — from your careers page, to your social media presence — can also help you discern whether your employer brand is enviable or dreadful.

Remember, though: No one person is intended to actively manage and enhance your employer brand. It’s a true team effort your executive team — including your HR and talent acquisition leaders — should be involved with. Even DEI committee members and ERG leaders can help.

4 ways to improve your employer brand

The biggest hurdle most leadership teams face with elevating their employer brand is determining how to best address and improve their candidate experience (and, in turn, their online reviews).

Here are four ways to approach your employer brand online to attract top talent.

1) Evaluate your digital presence

Uncover all reviews from current and former employees and previously engaged job candidates. Read each one of them to discover what’s being said — for better or worse — about your org.

Luckily, Glassdoor reports that the majority of their reviews are actually positive. Going through this process could be an insightful way to discover your strengths as a hiring company.

Moreover, you’ll be better prepared to lean into them when working to attract top talent.

• What do your online reviews reveal about your employer brand and workplace culture?
• Is it the brand description you hope to convey, or is it skewed slightly, in your opinion?

This process could only entail a minor pivot to align with your brand goals, or it could involve a more thoughtful conversation internally. Either way, the importance of this step can’t be overstated.

2) Respond with intention

Be gracious to those who took the time to leave positive feedback. This perpetuates your positive employer brand and encourages others to leave positive feedback as well.

Respond humbly and thank the reviewer for the message. Make a point to mention how you’ll look into their concerns or suggestions and then follow through.

The three critical steps to facing a negative review: thank the reviewer earnestly for their feedback, state how seriously you take their concerns and suggestions, and make the offer to continue the dialogue through a private medium.

3) Create a culture of responsive communication

Start laying the groundwork to avoid candidate complaints by improving your candidate experience. When seeking to create positive candidate experiences, communication is key.

Unfortunately, too many recruiters and employers treat the hiring process as a one-way street, requiring prompt answers and updates from candidates without offering the same thing in return.

Communicating details on next steps they must take or just acknowledging when their application has been received and reviewed leaves fewer unanswered Qs and room for competition to sneak in.

4) Share clear expectations with candidates

Hand-in-hand with keeping candidates in the loop during the hiring process, it’s equally important to let candidates know what to expect if they are hired. That means offering them a clear and detailed glimpse of their new role’s responsibilities and your company’s unique culture.

Ask most job seekers today, and they’ll tell you they believe that good company culture and overall work environment is essential to business success. So, demonstrate what makes your culture stand out from those of other employers, and you will be ahead of the game.

When does your candidate experience end? After you decide not to hire them, right? Wrong.

A good way to improve candidate experience is to keep in touch with all high-quality candidates, not just the ones you hire. Instead of starting over from scratch, you may already have dozens of prime candidates sitting in your recruitment pipeline.

Communication shouldn’t stop once the candidate has accepted an offer. To ensure a smooth onboarding process, ask yourself the following question:

• Is your onboarding experience seamlessly connected to your hiring experience?
• Are all of your new hire forms digital so that new hires don’t have to fill out forms by hand?
• Do you have an onboarding portal that prioritizes all of a new hire’s tasks?
• Does your onboarding portal work on mobile?
• Do you offer pre-boarding? In other words, is your onboarding portal available to candidates before they start, so they can get a headstart on the process?

At the end of the day, it’s the small interactions and personal touches that make candidates feel valued, respected, and appreciated. And those are the things they they’ll remember long after the recruitment process is over, even if they don’t end up joining your company.

Strengthen your employer brand and talent acquisition efforts at large with our Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite for enterprises. Schedule a one-on-one demo with our team today.

The post How Your Employer Brand Impacts Recruiting Results first appeared on Jobvite.

According to the Department of Defense, as reported by the GAO, around 200,000 service members move into civilian life every year, with many struggling to find employment. In fact, SHRM reported military veterans are 15.6% more likely than non-veteran job seekers to be underemployed.

With the record number of jobs currently open in the United States, previous service members represent a unique and untapped talent pool for enterprise employers.

To support this across organizations of all sizes, here are four recruitment strategies that can help you embrace, attract, engage, and hire military veterans in your business.

4 expert ways to recruit veterans today

1) Educate your hiring teams on military structure

Hiring from this strategic audience begins with training your hiring managers and teams to understand how military skill sets can transfer to your open roles.

Skills gained through military service, like dedication, teamwork, and communication, are invaluable in the workplace, but might not be apparent to the untrained recruiter from a resume alone.

By identifying veterans as a strategic audience, you’re making a commitment to getting to know this group and connecting with them through engaging, meaningful content.

You can then build personas based on your understanding of where veterans search for jobs, what motivates them, and what they’re looking for in an employer.

Talk with veterans from your current workforce and alumni to get real-life insight into the mind of veterans and bring your personas to life.

2) Partner with veteran advocacy organizations

There are currently over seven thousand non-profit organizations that specifically help veterans and military families. One company recently saw great success while partnering with the Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program to offer fellowships to transitioning service members.

This allows active duty service members within the last six months of their military contract to work for a company and gain hands-on training to help them ease into the civilian workforce.

Additional programs include MedTechVets, Biocom Veterans Initiative, and Candorful.

Identify someone at your org to act as the recruiting liaison between these groups and your company. Make these groups aware of your open roles, and let them know your interest in veteran job seekers specifically. They’ll be able to funnel relevant candidates into your recruitment pipeline.

3) Create messaging that resonates with veterans

Thanks to their military training, veterans are often inspired by causes bigger than themselves. Let them know about your brand’s mission and the positive impact you make to best align with their values.

If you have existing employees who have served in the military, include their stories in your messaging to show examples of successful veterans in your organization.

While veterans possess various valuable skills and experience, civilian recruiters may have difficulty decoding military jargon to understand how those skills match up with open roles.

There are numerous online tools available to help veterans translate their military skills for civilian resumes — it’s worthwhile for talent teams to also use these tools to improve their ability to spot desirable skills on a veteran’s resume.

By helping veterans to better understand how their experience translates to positions within your company, you’ll help to ease the transition and position yourself as a military-friendly employer.

4) Post to military-friendly job boards

Certain job boards cater exclusively to pairing veterans looking for work with relevant open roles. Target these niche boards to capture the attention of veterans specifically. Not sure where to start? Check out these resources:

JobTarget

JobTarget helps teams to find and attract relevant, diverse candidates. JobTarget’s OFCCP compliance product posts your jobs onto “state job banks and leading niche job sites that reach veterans, minorities, and individuals with disabilities.”

Hire a Hero

Hire a Hero helps you reach job seekers who have served. Posting jobs in all industries, this job board aims to “empower and recognize individuals who have sacrificed and/or given back to society.”

America’s Job Exchange

America’s Job Exchange (AJE) is an industry-leading compliance solution that optimizes your compliance and diversity recruiting efforts. AJE posts your job “across a highly-targeted network of diversity and niche industry sites” and provides the tools you need to facilitate outreach.

Other sources for locating, supporting, connecting with, and seeking out veterans include:

• Military.com
• Veterans Job Mission
• SHRM HireVets
• U.S. DOL HireVets

Refine your process for recruiting veterans

To ensure ongoing success with your efforts to recruit veterans, it’s important to know where veteran candidates are coming from and how they’re progressing through the hiring process

Over time, your recruitment software should be able to provide analytics and reporting for every source, program, and campaign to drive key insights like:

• The most consistent sources for military candidates
• Which content and campaigns are most effective in engaging veterans
• The sources that are most likely to result in veteran hires

Understanding these trends and data points can help to optimize your processes over time.

Learn how Evolve — our complete, unified Talent Acquisition Suite — can empower your talent team to better recruit veterans and other kinds of candidates. Schedule a demo today.

The post How to Recruit Veterans to Join Your Organization first appeared on Jobvite.

Distinct hiring needs require different recruiting strategies.

This isn’t “new news” for enterprise talent acquisition pros such as yourself. However, it can be difficult to forget sometimes. Especially given you have to search for and evaluate active and passive candidates all the time and determine which ones to advance to the interview process.

It may seem stressful to think about having to multiply your recruiting efforts, so to speak, simply to build connections with potential candidates needed to fill critical openings at your org.

The good news? It doesn’t have to be. All you need is alignment within your recruitment function.

In other words, each TA specialist must know their specific role when it comes to bolstering your candidate pool, engaging the right prospects, and streamlining the interview process.

10 proven recruiting strategies for enterprises

Testing out where you post jobs. The messaging used on your careers page. Experimenting with new nurture schedules and touchpoints. These are all granular talent acquisition tactics that certainly merit your attention for ongoing improvement and optimization.

But, if you truly want to elevate your recruiting and hiring performance, you need to think bigger.

Here are 10 high-level recruiting strategies that can help you make consistent progress with your core TA metrics and ensure you only engage and hire premier job candidates.

1) Regularly refine your employer brand

Every org has an employer brand. And it should be top of mind for recruiters and talent acquisition pros when thinking about the kind of impression they are making on candidates. (Not just external ones.)

How well you’re perceived by prospective hires is just as crucial as how your customers perceive you. So, it’s vital to market yourself to applicants just as you would market yourself to customers.

Communicate clearly and consistently why people should want to work for you. Explain what it’s like to work at your company. And differentiate yourself from competitors who are looking to hire top talent too.

2) Adjust job posting language and structure

When recruiting, one of the biggest mistakes any business can make is to put out incomplete or misrepresentative job postings. Some employers think it’s better to avoid being specific about what a position’s responsibilities entail or what kind of pay and benefits are offered.

Be thorough and intentional when creating job postings. Include all details about what the position you’re looking to fill involves and exactly what kind of candidates you’re seeking. That doesn’t mean you should be long-winded. Be as concise as possible. Just don’t sacrifice specificity for brevity.

3) Recruit at “proven” colleges and universities

Experience counts significantly when recruiting candidates, but it’s not the only thing that matters. Sometimes the best candidates are the ones who don’t have much experience, but are new to the job market and have recently graduated. 

Ambitious college graduates are one of the best resources a growing business has access to, especially when you’re looking to fill entry-level positions or internships.

Contact a school’s careers services office to create a steady pipeline of well-trained applicants.

4) Host and attend industry events

Campus recruitment events and job fairs are a great way to meet job-seekers, but they’re not the only networking opportunities you should be taking advantage of.

Non-recruitment industry meet-ups are where the most passionate members of your industry are likely to be found. They provide a great way for you to reinforce your employer brand and make connections.

Even better than attending industry events is hosting them. This not only brings candidates directly to your doorstep, it also positions you as a leading company within your sector.

5) Treat applicants like customers

Among the most important factors that determine if an applicant chooses to work for your business instead of a competitor is candidate experience.

Think of the recruitment process as an audition. Most job seekers believe that their experience during application, interviewing, and onboarding is indicative of what their experience will be as an employee.

That means being courteous, transparent, enthusiastic, and responsive. If an applicant has questions or concerns, hear them out and reply to them in a timely manner.

6) Take advantage of social media

Social media is an outstanding tool to communicate with job seekers. If the only place you’re putting the word out about open positions is on dedicated job posting boards and niche career communities, then you’re missing out on social recruiting opps.

(Particularly, as you likely already suspected, on LinkedIn.)

What’s more, social media is one of the best tools you have for showing off your company culture to attract new talent. Employee resource groups, brand awards and recognition, community volunteering efforts. These are all things worth promoting often on your social presence.

7) Create an employee referral program

Who knows better the specific needs, assets, and attributes of a company than the people who already work there? Your current employees don’t exist in a vacuum. Chances are, they know dozens of other industry pros (if not more) who would be a good fit for your business.

That’s because many job seekers want to see employers as more than just a place to collect a paycheck. They want a sense of community and belonging and a strong company culture.

8) Re-engage with past applicants

One of the most frustrating things about recruiting is that you’ll see several qualified individuals, but you’ll only be able to hire one or two at the time. Fortunately, this can actually work in your favor when it comes time to fill new job openings.

Reach out to past applicants you weren’t able to hire to see if they are still available and interested in working for you. Not only will they likely be happy and grateful that you remembered them, but this is also an exceptionally efficient use of your own time and resources.

9) Look to your current workforce

Sometimes you don’t have to look very far to find talented candidates. In fact, in many cases the right candidates to fill open roles are already working for you.

Promoting internal mobility or encouraging employees to apply from within your org can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to fill important positions.

Aside from onboarding top talent, saving time and money is another goal of just about every enterprise org’s hiring process today. With internal mobility, you have a highly effective recruitment strategy that lessens the need for sourcers to look externally for net-new leads.

By taking workers who have proven themselves and promoting them to higher or more specialized roles, you’re communicating to your workforce that hard work is rewarded.

10) Use the right talent acquisition technology 

If you still are using point solutions or are not considering leveraging a holistic approach to talent acquisition technology, then you should reevaluate the need to consolidate your tech stack.

The Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite is a unified recruiting solution for the entire TA lifecycle.

From screening and interviewing to onboarding and retention, Evolve is designed to streamline recruiting and help you deliver better results that improve your business outcomes.

Find out how you and your talent acquisition team can execute these recruiting strategies more effectively and efficiently with Jobvite’s powerful applicant tracking system.

The post 10 Recruiting Strategies for Hiring Great Employees first appeared on Jobvite.

As most anyone in talent acquisition can tell you, technology and recruiting go hand-in-hand. Aligning your recruitment process to your talent acquisition technology can help you find and hire talent faster, and ensure you have a steady supply of candidates to fill your open roles.

But, have you ever wondered how an RPO recruiting provider works with companies’ TA software?

Whether it’s recruiting software for SMBs or its full-suite talent acquisition technology for enterprise organizations, let’s dig into what RPO is and then examine how it can work with recruiting software today, like Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite.

RPO recruiting, explained: How recruitment process outsourcing firms help employers today

Recruitment process outsourcing, or RPO, occurs when an organization outsources or transfers some or all of its recruitment process to an external partner. This can include end-to-end recruitment, project recruitment, front-end recruitment, or recruiter augmentation solutions.

Leading RPO recruiting providers, like NXTThing RPO, offer expertise in finding talent across multiple roles and job families in various industries to help orgs better meet their hiring objectives.

And in the case of NXTThing RPO, one of the most strategic ways to approach recruitment process outsourcing is by blending recruiting technology and personal connection to find and hire the right talent for each organization.

By offering a dedicated, scalable team of highly skilled recruiters that can adapt effectively to fluctuating business conditions, RPO providers can support companies that find it challenging to keep up with these market shifts.

The RPO team works directly with the internal HR team, hiring managers, and the business to define recruitment success and executes against agreed upon objectives to achieve successful outcomes, including time-to-fill and quality of hire.

RPO recruiting teams and your TA tech stack: How they work with recruiters’ tools

Leading RPO providers leverage the latest tools and technologies to find the best talent for each position. They can work within your existing talent acquisition tech stack, while bringing their own innovative solutions, like candidate sourcing technologies.

Because they conform to your existing recruiting and hiring processes, RPO providers often work within the company’s existing applicant tracking system or candidate relationship management (CRM) solutions to automate the recruitment process and provide insights into talent flow, hiring data, and recruiting analytics.

Solutions from these talent acquisition technology providers enable companies to gain access to the latest in AI, automation, intelligent messaging, and zero-click sourcing, which the RPO team can then use to find and hire talent even faster for the client organization.

RPO providers can also scale their resources instantly to handle multiple parts of the recruitment process that leverage recruiting technology, including job posting, screening, interviewing, assessments, compliance, and reporting.

By bringing together the best in recruitment services with the best in recruiting technology, top RPO providers are able to accommodate your hiring needs, no matter how small or how big, to ensure your critical roles are filled in the timeframe you need them.

Working with RPO recruitment firms: A wise decision for enterprise organizations

When you rely upon an RPO provider to manage all or part of your recruitment process, and that process seamlessly integrates into your recruiting technology, your organization will see a higher quality of candidate, faster.

Through advanced recruiting tools, added resources, and high-end consultation, RPO and the right recruiting technology can enable you find the best talent for your open roles at the scale you need.

Instead, it allows your hiring managers to focus on the business, while your RPO partner handles the heavy lifting by managing the recruiting process and leveraging existing technology to help you make better hires.

And since the best RPO providers have access to and expertise in the latest recruiting technologies, you can be sure that they will help you yield larger talent pools, provide real-time hiring metrics, data, and benchmarks, and provide knowledge of how to get the most out of top recruiting technologies to enhance your employer brand in the market.

Learn how Jobvite customers benefit from working with NXTThing RPO, Employ’s expert recruitment process outsourcing firm. Schedule a chat with the Jobvite team today.

The post How Do RPO Recruiting Firms Work with Hiring Software? first appeared on Jobvite.