New Survey Results Show Employees Back in Charge

Employees are back in charge, according to our first-ever “Talent Acquisition and Technology Survey.” Below are three key priorities and challenges according to nearly 250 HR and talent acquisition professionals from around the world:

External Sourcing

Nearly 75% of respondents indicated that External Sourcing was their top talent acquisition priority, which makes sense given the current economic climate. The economy appears to be slowly recovering with unemployment slowly decreasing, so workers are regaining confidence to leave jobs where they may not be happy, knowing that they have a better chance to find a new one now.

This shift in workforce attitude forces employers to react and refocus their talent strategy. Instead of accomplishing more with less (as some companies were forced to do because of layoffs), companies once again have the ability to find and hire new talent as needed. And with workers more willing to change jobs, HR and recruiters must replace outgoing employees with high-quality talent.

Whether it be through implementing new recruiting processes, new technology or better employer branding efforts, the best organizations will be able to take advantage of this new environment. Employees are back in charge, but the best employers will use that to improve their own organization.

Lack of Time for Sourcing

While the climate may be perfect to find new, high-quality talent, over half of the respondents said that not having enough time to source/screen all leads keeps them up at night. Social media has dramatically increased the size of the candidate pool, as well as the amount of easily available information about a given candidate. But all this new information can overwhelm and overload recruiters, especially those without the resources to handle a large volume of potential candidates.

The pile of résumés doesn’t get smaller by itself, and usually that means recruiters have to take shortcuts or only glance for a few seconds at each. Recruiters then must find new ways to tackle the new high volume of data and candidates. Some firms are using big data analytics to better target their sourcing efforts and attract higher-quality leads in a more focused way, while others are utilizing new technology — such as replacing phone screens with pre-recorded video screening — to help save recruiters time and sort through more leads in a day. Whatever the case, talent acquisition must change rapidly to match how quickly the workforce is evolving.

Finding STEM Talent

An equally important issue, respondents indicated that Finding STEM Talent from a shrinking pool also keeps them up at night. Not only are there too few graduates from STEM fields to fill all the available data-driven or technical positions, but smaller organizations must compete with well-established behemoths that have dominated the talent war in this sector for years.

Big employer brands such as Google and Microsoft can easily recruit some of the best tech talent due to their name and reputation, so organizations that want top tech talent must find ways to compete with these big companies. A good start can be employer branding efforts (such as investing in the user experience on the company career site) which can attract recent college graduates and other skilled candidates.