Two high impact strategies for smart recruiters

Competition is fierce in the search for top talent. Unemployment currently hovers around 3%, and the most desirable candidates control the supply/demand equation. The pressure is on employers to leverage any advantage they can to land these high quality, finite resources. Two strategies that we at Baker Tilly are seeing employers seriously consider are, “changing the way we work” and “candidate-centric recruiting.”

Changing the way we work

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has dramatically altered consumers’ expectations and standards for connecting with an organization. For example, Netflix collects user data to provide recommendations and a personalized viewer experience for each accountholder, and Amazon does the same to market products relevant to its users’ interests. AI offers recruiters analogous opportunities to “change the way we work” with candidates and create personalized offerings. 

A recent Baker Tilly poll found that only 33% of HR professionals feel their career sites provide applicants (both internal and external) an effective consumer-grade experience. Technology in HR has caught up to our consumer-grade expectations, and it’s up to us as HR professionals to embrace it. In most cases, that means “changing the way we work” by rethinking how we add value to the organization, and by shifting our talent acquisition strategy from “managing requisitions” to “creating value.”

AI is revolutionizing the way all professions work. AI can manage – more efficiently than humans – the tedious and task-oriented work that tends to bog us down, such as information gathering, answering routine questions, logging and reporting, etc.  This enables us to maximize our valuable human skill set, attributes like creative and critical thinking, relationship building and cognitive flexibility. Specific to talent acquisition, this translates into more value to the organization from the recruiting team as they spend less time on screening, scheduling, ranking and reporting, and more time on gauging culture fit, understanding candidates’ needs, negotiating and getting high quality candidates to accept offers. 

Candidate-centric recruiting

A poor candidate experience can be detrimental to your organization’s brand, culture and reputation, and therefore its success.  Quality candidates who know their value will quickly move on from a clunky experience to prospective employers that provide an engaging consumer-based experience, leaving only more desperate, lower-quality candidates to slog through the inferior experience. Focusing on a “candidate-centric” journey creates the opportunity to drastically increase the quality of the pool of candidates.

Historically, organizations have taken a job-centric hiring pipeline approach: when a position is open, candidates apply and the one who fits the role best is offered the job. In fact, 77% of respondents Baker Tilly polled reported their organizations take a job-centric hiring pipeline approach. This antiquated approach is not nearly as sophisticated nor functional as the candidate-centric approach. Modern levels of automation like AI, specifically machine learning and chatbot technologies, are the driving forces behind candidate-centric recruiting, which allows for a more consumer-friendly candidate journey. Candidates can easily receive personalized updates, stay engaged in a community, receive guidance, as well as get answers to their questions in real-time.

Conclusion

Leveraging modern technology is a must when it comes to improving the effectiveness of an organization’s talent acquisition function. AI drives a candidate-centric experience and allows humans to pursue a more essential line of work. With AI technology, HR professionals can now build and deliver more personal experiences, gain insights, make decisions and add value to their organizations like never before. According to our Baker Tilly poll, only 14% of organizations are fully utilizing candidate experience and AI to maximize their talent acquisition process – it’s time to “changing the way we work” and build your “candidate-centric recruiting” approach.  Now is the time to take action! “Go BEGIN!”

For more information on this topic, or to learn how Baker Tilly human resources specialists can help, contact our team.