So far, it’s been a remarkable year for the talent acquisition space--and for talent acquisition technology providers, in particular.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the results from Talent Tech Labs’ (TTL) “2017 Talent Acquisition Technology” survey.
The annual survey, taken by 189 senior talent acquisition and HR leaders from around the globe this year, aims to “gather and analyze the thoughts and insights” of industry leaders who can shed light on the “changing economic and political trends that are shaping the wider talent pool and the strategies to acquire it.”
In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the most important trends that are shaping the talent acquisition technology space and roundup the four most important insights you can take away from the data in this survey.
What trends are driving talent acquisition professionals’ needs and activity?
Nearly 80 percent of respondents to the TTL survey report that they are C-Level, VP or Director of talent acquisition at their respective organizations, which is important because many of those responding to these questions are actual decision makers. But more importantly, even though this survey is targeted at high-level talent acquisition professionals, these professionals come from a wide range of businesses.
To elaborate, 64 percent of survey contributors are responsible for making at least 50 hires per year. Nearly half of those respondents work for organizations that fill 1,000 or more roles a year and a full quarter of all 189 respondents work at organizations that make more than 2,500 hires per year.
That said, despite the diversity of respondents, many of their pain points and anxieties are coming from the same places within the industry.
First and foremost, the skills gap is top of mind for these talent acquisition professionals, with nearly 70 percent of respondents agreeing that shortages in specific kinds of talent is their biggest obstacle in talent acquisition today.
That said, a new trend is emerging. As the skills gap persists and talent markets tighten, many businesses are looking for new and creative ways to hire the talent they need--specifically, they’re looking outside of the US.
That said, the ebbs and flows of this year’s legislative calendar, and the often inflammatory headlines that emerge from the news cycle, are all having a significant effect on talent acquisition professionals. In fact, 80 percent of respondents said they believe a shortage of work visas will make their jobs more difficult moving forward.
Outside factors aside, there are a number of more granular issues talent acquisition professionals are facing that technology can help solve. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the biggest takeaways from this year’s survey.
Key Takeaways From the 2017 Talent Acquisition Tech Survey
Finding and Retaining Candidates Through to Hire is Still Difficult
The trends described above are important because they help frame the insights TTL was able to pull from their respondents. The combination of a skills gap, talent shortages and an uncertain political climate have created more hard-to-fill jobs for talent acquisition professionals to address.
As a result, more than 60 percent say they are now leveraging social media to cast wider sourcing nets. Unfortunately, as TTL points out in their report, there’s little evidence to suggest that many are using more than just LinkedIn as a social sourcing tool, proving there’s plenty of room for automated social job distribution tools to grow.
Finally, there’s a growing need for recruitment marketing analytics, as TTL reports that the “the sector is being disrupted by consolidation and acquisitions by new power players who dominate internet search.” No doubt, TTL here is referring to the news of Google’s entry into the recruitment space (you can read our most recent coverage here, here and here). Recruitment marketing analytics, of course, can help talent acquisition professionals better monitor their job ad performance to identify any impacts these new players might have on their budget.
Speed and Efficiency, Then Money, Are Most Important for Proving Success
Many talent acquisition professionals believe that they can produce even greater results for their efforts, if they could just bring in the proper tools to do it. However, tools in most cases will only be invested in when success can be proven--a challenge in and of itself.
Time-to-hire (62 percent) and budget issues (58 percent) were the two metrics respondents said were most likely to impede their ability to purchase and implement new talent acquisition tools.
Therefore, talent acquisition technology providers need to focus on giving their users platforms that can increase the ROI of their job ads by both increasing efficiency while simultaneously lowering costs.
This, of course, makes programmatic job advertising especially appealing to talent acquisition professionals. With a programmatic job advertising platform, talent acquisition professionals can distribute their job ads, monitor their day-to-day performance and automate much of their more manual responsibilities, such as reallocating budgets. All of this together, done through a single platform, can help talent acquisition professionals increase the speed and efficiency of making hires, while also saving important budget dollars.
Staffing Agencies See Their Need for Talent Acquisition Technology Growing
One of the biggest takeaways from this year’s survey is the rapidly growing market of staffing agencies.
According to TTL’s findings, nearly 80 percent of talent acquisition professionals believe their responsibilities around hiring and retaining freelance talent and contingent workforces will only increase in the weeks and months ahead.
And this is largely consistent with what we’re seeing from the staffing industry, itself. According to the most recent figures from the American Staffing Association (ASA), the industry has grown 1.8 percent year-over-year, to an astounding $150 Billion space. That’s eight straight years of growth for staffing agencies as a whole, beginning in 2009 when the industry totaled only $81 Billion in revenue.
With this in mind, we can see the growing need for End-to-End Recruitment (E2E) Marketing Analytics for talent acquisition professionals in this space. E2E Recruitment Marketing Analytics are critical, for staffing agencies especially, because they help connect top-of-funnel sourcing metrics with bottom-funnel ATS data to give users a complete picture of their hiring funnel.
This allows talent acquisition professional to get access to important insights like cost-per-quality-applicant and cost-per-hire. And, since staffing agencies primarily make their profits off of placements (i.e. when one of their freelancers lands a new gig), E2E analytics gives staffing agencies the ability to understand how much it costs generate a placement. This level of data can help tighten processes and allow agencies to optimize their recruitment marketing spend to produce a higher gross margin.
Want more info on the 2017 Talent Acquisition Tech Survey?
To learn more about the results from this year’s survey, you can read TTL’s full report here.
However, If you’re ready to take action against the trends described in this post, you can get started by contacting a Recruitics recruitment marketing expert today.
