HR leaders know a recruitment strategy is pivotal to ensuring that the business remains competitive. But, despite all of the benefits such a strategy brings, the challenging and complex recruitment environment in which HR leaders operate can make straight forward strategic planning almost impossible. Demographic trends such as multi-generational, borderless and hyper-specialised workforces, combined with enterprise technology trends, are disrupting the status quo in the HR arena. Digital business is now a reality and cannot be ignored.

This new digital environment has created a 360 degree spectrum of recruitment needs, internally and externally, domestically and internationally. Together, these have created a perfect storm, made up of the growing need for HR leaders to identify the right potential internal candidates for new digital roles, share the right resources in a globalised work place and identify the right employer branding to help recruitment efforts.

To master the storm, HR leaders need to address both short term and long term recruitment issues by strategically planning L&D requirements to address immediate pain points and in the longer term, adopting tools and technologies that give them a competitive advantage when hiring external talent.

The story behind the storm

According to Oxford Economics, the growth of the college-educated talent pool between 2010 and 2021 is less than 1% in many Western European countries, and slightly over 1% in North America. This gives rise to a number of challenges for HR professionals to address.

And to make matters worse, a recent survey commissioned by Lumesse, a global leader in talent solutions, and undertaken by research specialists, Loudhouse found that over half of HR leaders (53%) believe that there is a shortage of talent quality, with 84% admitting that it is harder than ever before to attract and retain talent.

Further adding to HR pressures, leaders are dealing with empowered employees, due in part to macro issues driven by technology advancement and proliferation such as the increasing demand for digital skills and multi-generational workforces with digital expectancies.  In fact, according to the same survey of over 840 senior HR leaders, over three-quarters of HR leaders (78%) state that it is becoming increasingly difficult to balance the needs of the business against the demands of employees.

The result? Only one in ten (9%) HR leaders classify their approach to attracting and retaining talent as strategic and optimised.

The strategic path is no yellow brick road

Facing these challenges, many HR leaders would envy Dorothy her yellow brick road. There is no path all should follow – no same approach and tactics will work for every company.  That said, there are four considerations that should be addressed as part of every recruitment plan.

Pin point specific current and future recruitment pain points and needs that map to business objectives :

While there are no two companies alike there are often common recruitment objectives including; reducing time to hire, reducing cost per head and use better processes that reduce the admin burden. When recruitment strategies are created against these objectives they start well. But often, these overarching objectives are not granular enough to expose the real recruitment pain points and needs, how to overcome and move beyond them.

To pinpoint these, HR leaders need to map out both current and future requirements. A series of questions should be answered to understand these including:

– Which digital skills does the business currently need and will these skills change in a year, two or three years’ time?

– Which area is the business struggling to hire talent in specifically?

– In line with business growth goals which is the most important job role or field in which to hire?

– What are the learning and development needs of the business and can the internal talent pipeline be trained to fill future talent gaps?

Take an informed omni-channel approach

Once talent demands are identified then HR leaders should review the channels they are using to build a talent pipeline, engage with and promote jobs to prospects. Often this is difficult to do without some investment in the right technology platforms to ensure an analytical approach to inform the decision making process, measure and track against recruitment plans.

By compiling data from multiple sources; contact management technology systems, mobile platforms and HR systems including those that power career portals and application tracking systems (ATS), HR leaders can analyse and track candidate profiles and demographics. As a result, they are better able to spot any trends and patterns that help them to make better resourcing decisions.

For example, tracking hits to the website and recording visitor detail including demographics, specific interests and lead conversion rates, enable HR leaders to understand how effective they are at converting candidates through a process, and how effective the career website is at turning leads into potential candidates over a period of time. This is crucial to help spot what has worked, when and why.

Take a targeted millennial approach  using innovative, integrated technology

A targeted candidate and demographic approach is always best to fulfil immediate and future priority business needs as identified by the answers to the questions listed above. Due to shrinking talent pools, the digital era and a new wave of millennial in the work force, often HR leaders will find that their target candidates include those graduating from university in the right specialism or skills needed. Feedback from tracking and engagement systems will often show that this generation are not always to be found using the traditional platforms that HR has used in the past.

It’s therefore increasingly important to consider a supply chain extension within any recruitment strategy for both millennial but also highly skilled employees that may be found on niche platforms. New and innovative open recruitment platforms offer a new way to reach talent. For example, some allow brands to match an advertised job position to the right recruiter, with the right fee-level, location, and sector specialisms and should be considered as a recruitment tactic. Other HR platforms enable leaders to reach multiple channels at the same time, including many social channels, where millennials and highly skilled labour are traditionally found.

These technologies should be integrated with established talent management systems so that all data can be easily compiled and fed back to provide clear insight into the engagement process, as discussed above.

Strengthen internal learning and succession planning

Any good recruitment strategy should also identify where talent already sits in the business and how to grow it to fulfil future needs.  Strong L&D and succession planning ensures that the business can adapt skillsets quickly to changing business needs. But the Lumesse survey shows that only 41% of HR leaders feel confident in identifying potential internal candidates.By identifying high performers(those who are able to handle the largest workloads, get things done, both quickly and to a high standard) HR should create a plan to offer these employees tailored growth opportunities and learning with the view to filling expected and important future job roles. These growth opportunities should include a balance of digital/creative training and traditional business skills such as management of people, accounts and best process practice. 

Creating a tailored yellow brick road

A strategic recruitment plan that addresses the business priority pain points first and builds a talent pipeline for the future is a must.  This plan should address the full 360 spectrum of both external and internal talent needs and do so in a way that chooses the right technology and the right channels for the business. HR leaders can create their own tailored yellow brick road as long as they have these blocks in place.