Transforming Your Talent Acquisition Strategy in 2023

Transforming Your Talent Acquisition Strategy in 2023

Emerging trends in candidate expectations, competitive job advertising, and data-driven capabilities are creating new challenges and opportunities for employers. In this article, Textkernel’s CEO Gerard Mulder demonstrates how recruitment professionals can use data to engage talent more effectively and shares four tips to get your talent acquisition strategy on the path to lasting success in 2023 and beyond.

Talent acquisition professionals are facing mounting challenges as 2023 approaches. “HR leaders now work with unprecedented levels of uncertainty,” Gartner described in September 2022. “A new combination of economic pressures creates talent challenges that HR leaders must confront head on.”

Growing competition for talent is at the root of this uncertainty. Data from our Jobfeed shows the number of vacancies nearly doubled from Q3 2020 to Q3 2022, growing steadily from roughly 10 million to almost 20 million during that time.

Demand for recruiters grew more rapidly than all other jobs combined—with a peak of +200% in Q2 2021—also indicative of employers’ challenges in this area.

Amidst Labor Shortages, It’s a Job Seeker’s Market

Labor shortages represent the third-greatest concern among CEOs globally, second only to rising inflation and COVID-19-related disruptions, The Conference Board® reports. Now, candidates increasingly have their choice of job opportunities.

This challenge will become more pronounced as 2023 progresses. “More organizations (57%) expect increased talent competition over the next six months as of August 2022, compared to 50% in July 2022,” Gartner reports. That means job candidates are more likely to choose employers that are good at advertising their available roles. 

Employers Are Raising the Stakes with Better Benefits

Employers are creating more competitive job advertisements as a result. Jobfeed data shows that benefits such as tuition reimbursement, dental insurance, health insurance, and remote work opportunities are becoming more common in job advertisements across industries.

Even so, only 13% of job opportunities posted online offer some opportunity for remote work, according to Jobfeed. This is woefully insufficient given that 55% of employees who “would prefer to be remote at least three days a week once pandemic concerns recede,” as PwC describes.

Tuition reimbursement, dental insurance, and health insurance offers are growing more common in Healthcare, Technical, Science, and Food Service Roles job advertisements as well, Jobfeed reports. But even these traditional benefits apply to only 27% of all job advertisements, in each case.

Candidate and Employee Experiences Matter

Poor candidate experiences also are more likely to deter applicants from pursuing certain roles when similar opportunities present better ones. Poor employee experiences are more likely to drive existing employees—including yours—to seek out better opportunities, also. “The workforce demands more value from their current organization and expresses a willingness to find it elsewhere if they are not receiving it,” as SAP SuccessFactors describes.

Four Competitive Opportunities for Talent Leaders

Textkernel captures deep insights about job advertisements and employers’ talent acquisition strategies. Unfortunately, many companies continue to involve an outdated “post-and-pray” methodology. Meanwhile, competitive employers are becoming more proactive in how they find and secure key talent themselves.Here are four tips to get your talent acquisition strategy on the path to lasting success.

1. Reduce attrition so you can recruit more effectively

Simply put, there is not enough talent in the market—a problem even the most competitive benefits packages won’t solve. That’s why employers must focus on retaining talent before they invest in recruitment efforts.

As a solution, employers can “invest in a real-time internal talent marketplace” that “draws from existing talent to match employees with company needs in a way that benefits both parties,” as Oracle suggests. Employers who can recruit internally, upskill team members, and promote employees with mission-critical skills can reduce attrition, reduce recruitment costs, and relieve internal pressure as a result.

2. Become data-driven in your strategic approach

Successful recruitment today requires new data-driven tools and strategies. For example, the right candidate and talent data means recruiters can pinpoint the skills they have already in their companies, as well as the skills they actually need to find. With this knowledge, they can answer critical questions about talent acquisition, such as:

• How can we upskill our existing team members before we define the skills we need?
• Which tasks should we outsource instead of assigning them to new hires?
• How will we define new roles before we begin recruiting for them?
•  What are the positions or job titles we should bring to market in our advertising?

3. Be Responsive to Emerging Candidate Priorities

Candidate priorities are evolving in terms of the benefits employers provide. Today, “80% of candidates believe employers should reevaluate the benefits they provide post-pandemic”; but also, “61% are seeking remote work opportunities,” Forbes reports.

Recruiters can respond by highlighting these benefits and company attributes in discussions with candidates. More employers have eliminated location requirements from their job advertisements, for example, potentially opening opportunities to remote or partially remote employees. Employers can identify candidate priorities they should include in advertisements.

4. Improve the Candidate Experience

In addition to improving their companies’ appeal, recruiters can improve the candidate experience to maintain talent interest between the time of engagement and employment. New methods that include the use of automation, personalization, and remote interviews and assessments can help.

For example, matching solutions can integrate with employers’ career pages to automatically match applicants’ CVs with their relevant available jobs. Candidates who upload their CVs enjoy a more personalized and efficient experience, while HR teams spend more time on building relationships rather than on data entry and other manual tasks.

Data Has Become Critical to Successful Recruitment

No matter a recruitment professional’s circumstances, data is critical to success in each of these areas. “HR leaders can use data to more confidently manage these talent dilemmas, and carefully examine organizational values to make informed decisions,” says Gartner.

We offer recruitment professionals the industry’s most robust and accessible collection of labor market intelligence. Our solutions plug into employers systems to help them understand, connect, and analyze data, then standardize their job advertisements for the greatest possible engagement within their target audiences.
Contact us to learn more about how Textkernel can drive your future-focused recruitment strategy.