In this Blast we wanted to take a look at the various challenges around recruiting recruiters including the changing focus from straightforward ‘recruiter’ to specialist in ‘talent acquisition’.
A shortage of recruiters?
Whilst the whole world is looking for tech staff, Amy Schultz, the global head of talent acquisition for the Australian software maker Canva, noted that perhaps one other specialism is in equal demand: “As of right now, there are 364,970 ‘Recruiter’ jobs advertised on LinkedIn worldwide. For comparison, there are 342,586 ‘Software Engineer’ roles open on LinkedIn worldwide.”
Another interesting fact is that there were 6.8x more recruitment positions posted on LinkedIn in June 2021 vs June 2020 in UK. At the same time salaries are increasing by 5-10% to meet demand.
But do you want a recruiter or a talent acquisition specialist?
Is there a growing view that filling vacancies as quickly and efficiently as possible isn’t enough anymore? Are organisations increasingly looking for some or all of their recruiters to be more holistic in their approach to recruitment … and more strategic too? We have seen that what many organisations now advertise for is a role that few have the existing skills to fulfil and that, in part, has created this huge shortage of the very people we need to help us recruit great talent.
Our overview
- Talent acquisition—defined as the process of identifying and acquiring skilled workers to meet your organizational needs—has been around for longer than you might think. Early forms of the profession date as far back as 2,000 BC.
- Wanting what many corporates already have, more and more small companies are looking for a full suite talent acquisition offering as they’re struggling to hire and retain talent in the current climate
- Responsibility for onboarding and early talent schemes often now sits with the recruitment team
- Organisations are having to work harder to secure top talent so pressure is on TA (talent acquisition) to create a great external company image (overlap here with CSR activities, diversity initiatives, gender pay gap stats, social media commentary on culture/leadership etc)
- Expected to create an EVP (employee value proposition) that attracts every generation – TOUGH ASK!
- Organisations are demanding more focus on metrics and MI (management information) than just typical ‘time to hire’, agency spend etc.
- Multi-skilled TA professionals with data manipulation skills are those who are most sought, alongside technical recruiters
- Demand forecasting and succession planning also key skills for TA professionals
Where are these new breed TA people coming from?
Ah! Here is the rub! Talent Acquisition skills needs to be trained in. You can’t just ask the Recruiter of yesterday to become your Talent Acquisition specialist of today. There really are different skills sets required and not every recruiter will have what it takes to become your new TA specialist.
Thinking about the differences you might see in the person specification? Here’s our take:
Recruitment
- Personable with strong communication skills
- Great organisation skills
- Great time management
- Able to manage priorities
- The ability to work both within a team and alone
Talent Acquisition
- Personable with strong communication and organisation skills
- Competent and confident with both tech and social media
- Strong numeracy skills and data literate (data analysis experience is desirable)
- Ability to think and work strategically and experienced in succession planning is desirable
- Great at problem solving and resilient (ie will persevere despite the situation being difficult at times)
- Creative thinking also a benefit (for example to source candidates in a challenging market)
- Social and emotional intelligence (an ability to form and maintain relationships with stakeholders across the organisation as well as the ability to understand the needs and expectations of candidates in today’s world)
- Diversity and culturally savvy to attract and recruit from the widest talent pool
Given these differences, be careful not to be complacent about both who can fulfil the TA role and what salary you will probably need to pay to recruit your TA.
We are also seeing many agency recruiters looking to move in-house for more stability and work-life balance post-pandemic however given our list above you can see that there are inevitably lots of common misconceptions and misunderstandings of the TA skillset when an agency employee moves to an internal role.
Past successes will not give you an indication of likely future success given the huge changes to the role.
Top Tips for moving from the Recruiter role to Talent Acquisition…
The Paperwork
- Redraft your person spec for your TA role then audit the skills of your existing recruiters. What is the skills gap?
- Redraft your job spec for your recruitment activity and talk to your recruiters about the evolution of the role and what that means for them. For some it will look like a great opportunity, for others it might appear to threaten the role they currently have.
Management Responsibilities
- Don’t overload your recruiters with roles that need filling – in order to think strategically they need the capacity/time to stop and think/plan ahead.
- Across the organisation, make sure you are retaining great hires once they start with you (this relates to the more holistic approach now being taken to recruitment.) We have seen too many new recruits resigning within 3 months across the past few years. At Jaluch we deliver a Motivating, Engaging and Retaining Skills Course for managers – why not give your managers some understanding about what they can do to create a workplace where new recruits fit in easily and want to stay?
Audit
- Audit your current position in external feedback platforms (Glassdoor and Fishbowl) and set some targets or SMART goals – this is about focussing on your employee value proposition and company branding
- Review your website with an eye on diversity, CSR, sustainability, environment etc. Applicants are looking at organisations more closely then ever before ahead of making job applicants (again this is about company branding). Does your leadership team featured on your website reflect the diversity of those you recruit? If not, it might be time for change in the top tier too!
Training and Tools
- Give your recruitment team the right tools for the job – a good ATS (applicant tracking system) is invaluable when building talent pipelines
- If you put your recruiters through a course entitled ‘developing stakeholder management skills’ what would you want that course to include? Effective communication and collaboration, social intelligence (developing relationships), influencing skills, negotiation skills? What would you want to do into the right course for your team of recruiters?
Jaluch supports hundreds of organisations with HR and L&D requirements.
We also support with fixed price Recruitment or Recruitment Packages (recruitment of a role, profiling and testing of candidates as part of recruitment process, training for managers in engagement and retention plus eLearning onboarding essentials for new recruits (data protection, D&I, microaggression, cyber security, and manual handling)
Popular at the moment are courses on D&I, Note taking, Effective staff representation, Respect in the workplace, Building confidence, Influencing Skills and, not surprisingly, Management and Supervisory Development Programmes.