The seven new rules of recruitment

(This article by Mary E. Collins is based on Chapter 1 of her book Recruiting Talented People, which is available to buy from our online store.)

The fundamentals of recruiting have changed in recent years, and a new set of principles have evolved:

1. Understand the balance of power
2. Respond quickly
3. ‘Graze’ for talent
4. Embrace technology and innovation
5. Network effectively
6. Understand candidates’ expectations
7. Embrace diverse skillsets

1. Understand the balance of power

The candidate and hiring manager have always been central to the talent-acquisition process; however, as hiring has grown in importance as a key strategic imperative for organisations, and as the number of people actively looking for new roles has reduced, the balance of power has shifted away from the hiring manager and towards the candidate.

Top talent now has numerous opportunities in the current market and employers need to attract desirable candidates with a compelling employer value proposition (EVP). This shift in the power dynamic requires organisations to:

• clearly identify what skills they need now and in the future;
• identify who has those skills and how to attract them;
• define their ‘employer brand’;
• innovate new ways to attract these candidates, embracing technology and new communication channels;
• treat candidates well – candidates now expect a ‘white glove’ level of service.

Recruiters have had to change the way they perceive talent itself. As a senior Irish recruiter has shared:

“Gone are the days when employers posted a role vacancy online to a job board, and a lengthy recruitment process ensued. There is a big difference between receiving CVs and finding talent.”

2. Respond quickly

The shift in the balance of power in favour of candidates has resulted in organisations needing to move quickly to secure skilled employees. Candidates surveyed have identified response time to applicants awaiting a hiring decision as most in need of improvement.

The days of multiple interviews and stages to a recruitment process are coming to an end. Top talent will not wait around! Hiring processes, therefore, need to be concise and focused. This ‘speed of play’ extends to how candidates will want to interact with you, rather than waiting for you to interact with them. Top talent, particularly among Millennials or Gen Zs, want to be ‘discovered’. Often referred to as ‘Generation Now’, they demand more speed from the recruitment tools used. As digital natives, they expect that technology will be embraced and used effectively in the hiring process. (Employers, of course, face a challenge in meeting this expectation as they have to balance it with the need to select the right candidate.)

3. ‘Graze’ for talent

While traditional talent recruitment methods such as graduate hiring, use of agencies and job advertising are still important, new approaches are to be embraced in a market of undersupply of key talent. Smart organisations continually ‘graze for talent’. They are always looking to meet and maintain contact with potential employees as they are being educated, and later, throughout their careers, through networking events, alumni groups, conferences, online forums, and so on.

Early contact: ‘co-ops’ and internships

Rather than waiting for the annual ‘talent war’ of graduate recruitment, a significant number of employers are identifying talent earlier in the education cycle, e.g. inviting first-year students to experience ‘a day in the life’. Many universities offer work placements in the third year of degree studies. Building these connections early on with potential employees creates a talent pipeline and avoids an over-reliance on the ‘graduate milk round’.

Keeping in touch

It is important to keep in touch with talented professionals at all stages of their careers. And career stages have expanded and sub-categories within, and in addition to, the pre-existing stages have now emerged:

• ‘Encore careers’: Older workers reinventing themselves and retraining/studying in new fields.
• ‘Returnships’: People returning to work following a career break (this can include women who exited the workforce earlier due to family commitments but who are now keen to return). Returnships – similar to internships – are for a defined period, usually six to 11 months with no obligations on either party to continue the contract.
• ‘Boomerang employees’: People who leave an organisation for a few years to travel, work abroad or in a different industry, but maintain a connection with the organisation and later return, bringing back greater levels of skills and experience.

Talent communities

Integral to ‘grazing for talent’ is building strong talent communities through which both alumni and potential employees can stay connected to the organisation.

Leveraging a network of alumni also requires ‘exiting’ talent in a more positive way. If an employee’s experience with the company is good at all stages of their employment cycle, this will increase the likelihood of their becoming a ‘boomerang employee’.

Talent communities are also a source of referrals, in that previous employees can refer candidates from their own networks. As roles become more technical and specialised, having existing or former employees refer candidates from their own networks is gaining in importance.

4. Embrace technology and innovation

Recruitment practices have changed rapidly with technology and social media. Organisations competing for talent embrace these innovations and maximise their recruitment potential.

Jobs boards

Online ‘job boards’ have developed exponentially to become services like ‘Indeed’, a jobs aggregator offering a service comparable to a ‘dating agency for recruitment’, providing jobseekers with access to millions of jobs from thousands of company websites.

Professional networking platforms

LinkedIn continues to be a major disruptor in the recruitment sector. Its CEO, Jeff Weiner, has announced a goal of “powering half of all hiring decisions” by 2024. LinkedIn’s success has been in breaking the traditional links between employers, recruitment agencies and employees. Previously, agencies had an ‘information hegemony’ over employers, due to their proprietary databases of candidates.

Now anyone can search for potential candidates, whether they had applied for a job or not, allowing hiring companies access to the ‘passive talent’ who were not actively searching for a role.

LinkedIn’s success is in how it caters for every stage of the recruitment cycle, including employer brand awareness, posting jobs, searching for candidates, making contact with and vetting candidates.

Recruitment marketing and solutions services

There is a growing number of innovative technology-driven recruitment companies offering to look after organisations’ entire talent-acquisition processes (e.g. Clinch, www.clinchtalent.com). These service providers offer online recruitment software, marketing and CRM to enable hiring organisations to revolutionise how they identify, attract, hire and nurture talent.

Disruptive technologies and talent acquisition

The effective use of new technologies not only adds to a compelling candidate experience, reflecting positively on the employer brand, but will help to access alternative talent sources. Some of the more disruptive uses of technology in talent acquisition will break down barriers around traditional interview formats, e.g. video conferencing allows hiring managers to conduct interviews with potential candidates who are geographically remote, and with robotic process automation and psychometric testing candidates can be identified who may excel in the role but do not ‘interview well’.

5. Network effectively

In my experience, around 80% of all positions in Ireland are filled via word-of-mouth and relationship-based contacts among different personal and professional networks in different sectors. Developing and maintaining a strong network for both employees and hiring managers is therefore more important than ever in an economy experiencing a talent shortage.

Of particular importance in networking are employee referrals, where current employees act as ambassadors for the organisation and are incentivised for recommending it to their friends and contacts.

Employee referrals are a cheaper, faster and generally more successful way to hire. A good in-house referral programme empowers all employees to help with the hiring challenge. Many firms offer generous incentives to encourage employees to do just that, thereby making considerable savings on expenses that would otherwise be incurred during the recruitment and selection process.

6. Understand candidates’ expectations

The younger generations in the workforce (Millennials/Gen Y, born 1980–1998, Centennials/Gen Z, born 1999+) hold the balance of power in recruitment, so employers must be aware of their expectations as candidates. A new approach is required to attract, engage and retain these generations, including providing:

• good work–life balance;
• work arrangements with flexible locations and hours;
• clear personal development routes;
• clear promotion opportunities;
• meaning and purpose in work (making a meaningful contribution to society);
• opportunity for travel;
• support around personal wellbeing;
• employability (working with the organisation will make the candidate more employable for future roles).

A feature of these groups is a preference for collaboration and a propensity to be heavily influenced by each other, which extends to making similar career choices. This can be particularly evident in large professional service firms where groups of graduates from the same degree programmes all join the same firm, creating ‘a continuation of college life’. Similarly, job seekers from this cohort place huge trust in peer reviews, often basing decisions about where to apply on reviews of companies on websites like Glassdoor (www.glassdoor.com), one of several platforms on which people can anonymously share their experiences of ‘what it’s really like to work here’. Smart recruiting organisations will keep a close eye on activity on these platforms, which continue to grow in popularity.

Job seekers from Gen Y and Gen Z say that they trust information on vacant positions in organisations in the order set out in Figure 1:

7. Embrace diverse skillsets

Employers are looking in new places for more diverse skillsets, away from the traditional sources of talent. Students from diverse disciplines such as data analytics, the sciences and engineering are being actively targeted by professional services firms for a range of roles typically filled by business graduates in the past. This shift is also reflective of the changing skillsets required by firms for their emerging service offerings, cybersecurity being an example of a high growth area.

Employers should consider whether their degree-entry requirements for roles and opportunities are valid. There is a growing number of apprenticeships in Ireland. Traditionally, apprenticeships were in craft areas, but the apprenticeship opportunities are growing in professional sectors, with school-leavers entering, for example accountancy, auctioneering and insurance, and working through flexible training programmes.

Dr Mary E. Collins
Chartered Psychologist,
Senior Executive Development Specialist at RCSI Institute of Leadership,
and author of Recruiting Talented People (Chartered Accountants Ireland, 2021)