So, what does the year ahead look like for talent attraction? What are the priorities and trends? And how are talent teams going to meet them? This year we’re working very closely with The Firm and their members, so we were very interested to read their annual report entitled ‘Understanding priorities and trends in talent attraction’. A very interesting piece of work and we thought we’d share our thoughts around some of their headline findings.
If you work in a talent role, we are pretty sure you’ll know all about The Firm. If not, it has been providing support to thousands of in-house recruiters since 2007. Their research is based on asking thousands of resourcing professionals for their opinion, which makes what they have to say so valuable.
We’re not going to divulge too much from the report. It’s for The Firm members after all. But, when it comes to priorities for the year ahead, their findings are all areas where we can add to the conversation. So, this is written to help you – our friends in resourcing and talent – tackle those priorities.
A focus on the foundations
We are still in a climate of skills shortages where hiring volumes and vacancy levels remain fairly consistent. But, The Firm sense that more employers are in the process of refining their attraction strategies. We are in a more considered period – but resourcing needs to be proactive and plan ahead.
“Employers are channelling their energies into getting the foundations
right as opposed to simply increasing spend.”
The Firm, 2022.
Of the many findings in the full report, we are going to look at what they consider to be the top three priorities.
Employer proposition and employer brand
50% of respondents see the employer brand as their top priority. The report found that employer brands are being launched more quickly, and more regularly. This is perhaps not surprising. So much has changed with organisations over the past two years that any employer brand and EVP still in place since pre-pandemic, will be almost unrecognisable now.
Resourcing teams are right to make the employer brand a priority. LinkedIn found that 75% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job. Like it or not, all organisations have an employer brand and candidates will have an opinion – good or bad. The challenge and opportunity for resourcing teams is how they’ll influence the perceptions of that brand. It’s not just knowing why they want to work for you – it’s about knowing why they STILL do, and what would help them want to stay.
According to The Firm report, 35% of employer brands were refreshed last year. This suggests there’s a still a number to go. We wrote an article to help with doing exactly this. It’s not about ripping up your employer brand and starting again – it’s more about making sure the good points are still there and valid, while identifying where work needs to be done.
We explored this in our blog, “10 things to consider when refreshing your employer brand.”
Diversity and inclusion
This was last year’s top priority; it’s fallen back slightly but is still a key focus for many recruiters. The Firm report found that 66% of organisations had ED&I commitments in place, up from 53% last year. These tended to be larger employers who are now showing a more rounded offer to potential employees.
Again, the focus on ED&I is bang on with what matters to candidates and employees. From the many headline stats from the Glassdoor Diversity Hiring Survey from 2020 was that more than 3 out of 4 job seekers and employees (76%) report that a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers.
This won’t be a surprise to anyone working in talent acquisition of course. But, as we covered in our recent blog on DE&I, while many are helping to build organisations with much more of an inclusive appeal, the challenge is often how to communicate the progress they’ve made in their employer brand messaging. If this is something you are also experiencing, the blog contains a number of tactics to embed and communicate DE&I.
Candidate experience
Once again, an important aspect for many. 37% of respondents put candidate experience in their top three priorities. This is good to see. In our opinion, a poor candidate experience is likely to undo all the work you’ve done in attracting candidates and engaging their interest in the first place.
And here’s another stat to make our point. Research by hiring software providers Talos360 found that 40% of job applicants will lose interest if they don’t hear back from employers within 48 hours of applying.
This is hardly a surprise but demonstrates why candidate experience needs to be a priority this year. If they have 2-3 other applications in the pipeline it’s no surprise when the slowest recruiter off the blocks loses out.
Candidates are increasingly expecting a well run recruitment process end to end. And, in our opinion, much of this focuses on the careers website itself. If they don’t like this part of the experience, you’ve lost them before they even apply. So, what can you do to keep them engaged with your hiring process – all the way to applying?
It’s often the extra thought that goes into careers website design that creates the best candidate experience. As we build award winning careers websites, you’d expect us to focus on this. Our blog does what it says – it’ll help your careers website enhance their candidate experience.
The big question … is there going to be a recession?
This isn’t in the Firm report but we think it’s worth covering as the potential storm cloud hovering over 2023. Traditionally in a recession, recruitment falls, redundancies soar, it’s especially hard for new entrants to get their first break, graduate unemployment goes up and older workers leave the jobs market.
But… will it be so bad this time – if indeed a recession happens? This new report from ING seems to suggest the impact of a recession on the jobs market may be more modest than in past recessions.
But should a potential recession affect your focus on any of the priorities we’ve discussed from The Firm report? We’d say no. The priorities all are about getting the foundations of a future resourcing and talent strategy right. As an architect would tell you, it’s never a good idea to remove any foundations – or risk greater damage later on.
We’ll finish with another quote from the report,
“Having effective foundations in place – from Employer Brand to ED&I, from attraction metrics to
a great careers site – means talent acquisition teams can keep pace with whatever the future brings.”
The Firm, 2022.
And so say all of us!
More about The Firm
The Firm is the leading global membership organisation for talent acquisition professionals and works with sole recruiters right through to large corporate teams. With over 60+ years combined experience in recruitment, TA and talent management, they are here to ensure you get the support you need, when you need it. This includes resources, training, awards and events.
Find out more about The Firm and membership options.
Need a little help?
If you feel that you’d like some help, support or even a little chat around building your employer brand and next careers website or any aspect of your talent attraction strategy just drop us a line. After all, much of our best work has started with a cup of tea and a Zoom call.
