Hari Kolam is the CEO of Findem, a People Intelligence company that helps you search for talent like never before and make amazing hires.
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As I wrote about some months ago, hiring in America is in a state of flux. The push and pull of the labor market—which saw layoffs reach a two-year high in January despite unemployment being at a 50-year low—is adding to the stress felt by talent teams today.
What's causing burnout?
According to Gallup, burnout has been a problem for managers since the onset of Covid-19, and it’s only gotten worse. In a Deloitte survey of over 2,100 employees and C-suite executives, nearly 70% of leaders were seriously considering leaving their current roles for jobs that would let them focus more on their well-being.
Talent leaders are in a more difficult position than they’ve been in in years. After enjoying a period of growth and stability, they’ve now been told to reduce headcount, surpass the same benchmarks with less support and transform their approach to stay ahead of the competition.
Other problems I've observed in my work with talent leaders: Decisions are being made without the proper data. Bloated tech stacks are making work more difficult. Meeting DEIB hiring goals is challenging. Reactive approaches to sourcing extend lead times, compromise quality and fail to increase diversity.
Leaders may know the hallmarks of a successful talent organization, but achieving these goals is another matter.
Given the recent transition from a bull to a bear market for hiring, it’s time to take a more thoughtful, comprehensive and proactive approach to talent leadership. Here are three areas where we can start solving for burnout.
1. Align with hiring managers on quality using data.
In my company's survey of over 300 talent leaders, half pointed to recruiter-hiring manager misalignment as their top source of burnout. This prevailing issue is all too often swept under the rug.
Managers may not have access to data to define quality in their organizations, so they make assumptions about talent pools and where to find candidates with specific skills. Recruiters have no easy way to use dispersed people data, making it difficult to find candidates who can fulfill the need for quality talent.
Rather than addressing the issue head-on, talent teams may push forward with strategies that lead to dead ends and, oftentimes, missed hires. This creates tension: Hiring managers are unhappy with the quality of shortlisted candidates and recruiters struggle to meet unrealistically high expectations.
Leaders need to institute consistent processes and guardrails to prevent potential conflict. At the most effective talent organizations, recruiters and hiring managers make decisions together based on quarterly benchmarks and performance data. They set baseline goals around time-to-fill metrics, the size of the talent pool and cost-per-hire before beginning their search.
2. Eliminate tech stack bloat to unlock its full value.
In the past decade, increased budgets allowed leaders to build their dream tech stacks. A gap in sourcing could be filled with a one-off solution and integrated into the larger ecosystem. Now, as leaders look to do more with less, they’re faced with software overload, lower adoption rates and higher costs.
Manual, repeatable tasks were the second-leading cause of burnout among the group my company surveyed. It’s obvious that technology can potentially mitigate the stress leaders are feeling; however, it isn’t being used efficiently.
The problem isn’t the technology itself. There are plenty of solutions on the market that do what they promise. It’s that disparate tools don’t always work well together. According to 2019 research by analyst Josh Bersin, the average large company has more than 15 different recruiting technologies in its stack.
Trying to collate data, build dashboards and garner insights from a dozen different tools is a recipe for frustration. Talent teams need a tech stack that works for them, not one that makes them work through five different browser tabs. Everything from sourcing to candidate outreach should be centralized and integrated with the tools they already know and love. Consolidation must be the name of the game.
3. Make data visible to move the needle on your goals.
Now is the time to break your organization’s data from its siloes and move the needle on diversity. My company's survey found that just 39% of HR teams are using external dashboards to track their hiring and recruiting metrics, leaving them in the dark about performance and inefficiencies.
When data is hidden, you miss opportunities to nurture communities of talent, both in and outside of your organization. The right person for an opening could be working at your company today, but lacking the people intelligence to upskill them could lead your talent team on a wild goose chase for the perfect candidate.
A lack of clarity about diversity and hiring at your company—from the number of open reqs to target attainment by department—creates friction and inefficiency. There’s a better way to analyze hiring performance without wasted cycles and money, or confusion about mapping your resources to hiring goals.
The right technology connects data sources across the organization, including data about your relationships with candidates, your funnel and hidden pools of talent. Visibility into your talent acquisition team, your sourcing channels and the company’s job functions can help refine hiring processes and inform more strategic decision-making.
Don’t let this downturn go to waste.
As we exit a period of relative growth and success, it’s important to see the light amid the downturn. There’s a massive opportunity for talent leaders to adapt and answer questions around quality, technology and diversity.
We’ve all experienced the trauma that comes with unexpected layoffs and the frustration of being asked to do the same (or more) with less; now is the time to improve how our industry does business.
How can you work with recruiters and hiring managers to define quality and nurture stronger relationships? How can you clean up your tech stack and find more efficiency with what’s already under the hood? Which rocks can you look under within data to discover new talent pools for diversity and inclusion?
Answering these questions can help start addressing the stress and burnout you’re feeling.
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