As countries slowly reopen with vaccines ramping up, HR leaders are setting their sights on new talent acquisition strategies to ramp up their hiring efforts.
Two workforce trends are making headlines across a range of industries, suggesting that employees and employers may not be on the same page.
- Job hiring is projected to return to pre-pandemic levels in the second half of 2021.
- Employees are quitting instead of giving up working from home.
However, there’s a large amount of jobs that can’t accommodate remote work, from manufacturing to retail and other essential worker positions.
HR leaders are optimistic about hiring levels, across industries and globally. Tax data from this past May showed British companies had the largest single-month increase in new employees on the payroll since July 2014, a record number for employment levels.
What does it mean for HR leaders in the face of unpredictability with offices reopening? Great employers will always attract and retain great people. Reframe your team’s talent acquisition strategies and focus on what employees want to create an attractive job offer.
Interview with purpose
Before your talent search begins, get HR on the same page with the leadership team to develop clear objectives for the new role. Employees are invested in the positive impact of their work on their communities and social issues.
State how this new role supports the business strategy in your job posting. Mission statements are important but expand into talking about daily practice and reporting transparency. Companies that prioritize social responsibility have an advantage in attracting and retaining talent.
Speed up and capture top talent
Time to hire matters to recruiters, and also those teams currently running with a short bench. More companies are focusing on a faster hiring process to stop losing talent to other opportunities, with a sink or swim attitude.
Recruiters are tasked with more new roles to fill after a paused year but are struggling with losing engaged candidates for other opportunities.
Deloitte’s 2021 Global Human Capital Trends found that executives using technology not as an ‘either-or’ choice, but a ‘both-and’ partnership with their teams. Technological capability is just as critical as your team’s human capability in accelerating your processes.
AI recruitment tools screen faster and continuously, freeing up time for recruiters to focus on interviewing their most qualified candidates. This technology also helps reduce tedious tasks to help recruiting teams = pursue outcomes at speed and scale, otherwise impossible without the help of HR tech.
Address remote work questions with chat
Right on your Careers page, recruitment chatbots engage with applicants, gathering additional qualifying information to complete their application and make tailored job recommendations.
Save your recruiters from answering the same questions over the phone further along in the interview process. Recruitment chatbots have the ability to quickly qualify or disqualify a high volume of applicants based on their interest in working on site.
This saves recruiters time from interviewing otherwise qualified candidates who are only considering remote work options. With the assistance of AI, recruiting teams are able to more efficiently and accurately shortlist engaged candidates.
Create a positive candidate experience
Managing talent relationships can take up a lot of time and effort, especially for recruiters tasked with high-volume hiring. With the support of talent intelligence software, recruitment teams can streamline their hiring process by reducing their manual task load and focusing their attention on more strategic work.
One of the top complaints from job-seekers is the lack of communication from recruiters. AI for recruiting technology improves the candidate experience by increasing those touchpoints, keeping candidates engaged.
Candidates can receive automated calendar invites, triggered assessments, and are automatically moved through stages of the recruitment process in existing workflows.
Your ongoing retention effort
Retention is an ongoing effort, built on empathy and recognition. Build on your positive candidate strategy and check in with how your employees are feeling.
How have your employees excelled in the past year? Where have they struggled? Acknowledge the anxiety around returning to the office is the first step in understanding what your employees need to be successful in these transitional months.
HR leaders took an avalanche of new responsibilities during the pandemic, from supporting worker mental health, making caregiver accommodations, and assisting teams moving online in a short period of time.
Don’t lose that employee well-being momentum as offices reopen. Continue the same efforts that originally attracted your employees to your organization, including:
- Communicating strategic goals
- Employee appreciation programs
- Workplace flexibility and benefits
- Collaboration, mentorship, and succession planning
Over half of employees surveyed continuously in 2021 are not just looking for compensation, but a better work-life balance. How will your HR team frame the employee experience around these expectations?
Streamlining the recruitment process will ultimately save your team time and money, but your organization’s retention efforts will always be applicable to your talent acquisition strategies. Stay competitive in the fast-paced world of employee management by operating with empathy and purpose-driven leadership.
