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2021 Recruiting Outlook: Going From Quantity To Quality

Forbes Human Resources Council

Charles Hipps is the Founder and CEO of Oleeo, an award-winning provider of innovative talent acquisition technology. 

It's safe to say there will be plenty of articles reflecting on what happened in 2020, digging into the lessons learned and pontificating over what will happen next. But if we truly learned anything from the last year, it is that predictions will only take us so far: Few saw Covid-19 coming. 

As we tentatively approach the other side of this particular crisis, it is important to recognize that there will be other unexpected challenges ahead. To prepare for the unexpected, companies need to be able to quickly operationalize changing strategies. Recruiting provides a great example of this.

In the U.S. alone, there are nearly two unemployed people for every available job. As a result of high unemployment associated with pandemic conditions, recruiters here in the U.K. have reported a dramatic uptick in the number of applications with increases up to 1363% for certain roles. Given that some economists forecast that job recovery will take up to two years, talent supply will likely continue to exceed demand through 2021 at a minimum.

At the same time, many talent acquisition teams are running leaner and looking for new ways to manage the ongoing volume without sacrificing quality of hire, making this a natural focus for the new year. At times of greater uncertainty, fewer resources and more volume, I trust in intelligence and automation to restore the balance. With this in mind, here are several factors recruiting leaders should consider.

1. The Intelligence Of Data

Deloitte's 2020 Global Human Capital Trends Report shows that companies are "least likely to collect workforce metrics in areas most critical to the future of work." There's also evidence that most capture high-level information related to headcount, salary and workforce composition, but only in a descriptive manner. That presents an opportunity for improvement: Data-driven intelligence in recruiting is about more than knowing how long it takes to make a new hire. It is about effective job advertisements, reaching the right sources and recommending the best candidates.

As one might suspect and Deloitte confirms, this comes from the use of more intelligent technology, yet 52% of companies lack the information they need to understand the workforce moving forward. That's because data operationalizes strategy, and recruiters need to look at the data they are collecting and determine how it informs their hiring process. It is about delivering insights to the point of operation and giving recruiters actionable information that enables better decision-making. The deeper the insights, the better the results.  

2. The Force Of Automation

Helping recruiters not only access data-driven insights but also become comfortable with using them involves automation — not in the ominous, robot recruiter way, but in a practical sense where repetitive tasks are reduced to make space for value-add tasks that support quality decisions.  

Going back to the idea of operationalizing strategy, right now, when managing volume at speed and finding quality hires remain top of mind, recruiters should look to automation as a force multiplier. Automation enables processes and adds rigor to recruiting to ensure these efforts stay on track and timely, and can actually strengthen the candidate experience and deliver data to recruiters without creating extra work.

3. The Power Of Enablement

After a year marked by countless hours interacting behind screens, there might be a reticence to adopt additional technologies. For some time, recruiters have resisted automation, thinking it might supplant them, and used data more for reflection than action. 

Deloitte hypothesized that the gaps between where humans and technology converge have "much to do with the broader tendency to treat technology and humanity as distinct paths with their own programs, processes, and solutions." However, the boundaries have started to blur, and recruiters interested in moving forward will need to promote engagement and enablement. That means leveraging technology not only for organizational purposes but also to preserve and promote positive experiences for job seekers when so many are actively looking. The idea comes from sales enablement, which is aimed at reaching customers and hitting goals. For recruiting, it means building tactics that remove the guesswork and improve efficiency — precisely what's needed at this moment.

Though the pandemic's impact is likely to linger, we will make it through to the other side, and recruiting in 2021 is bound to look different than it did in 2020. The challenge for recruiters will be figuring out what that other side looks like and how utilizing data, automation and enablement can help them move from quantity to quality. Now is the time for recruiters to leverage data-driven intelligence and automation.


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