The Essential Guide to Talent Acquisition in 2022

Wondering what to expect this year?

In such a highly competitive talent market, here are my top tips for positioning your company as an employer of choice, along with my six predictions for what’s to come for talent acquisition in 2022, helping you stay ahead of your recruitment competition.?

Let’s start with some actions you can take to help you clearly articulate your employer value proposition, build a world-class recruitment program, and get more high quality candidates to the offer stage. Even if you’re a founder or leadership team spread too thin, I guarantee one or two of the following best practices will be low hanging fruit - things you can implement right away, for little cost and low time investment. This year, you simply cannot ignore the need to define your employer brand and level up your recruitment practices.

You need to stand out as an employer.

It's a fiercer recruiting market than ever before, so employers have to intentionally define their employer brands and do their best to stand out. The question is, how? Start by reviewing your careers page.?

A successful candidate focused careers page could include:

• Your key differentiators that highlight what makes your company and mission unique?
• What kinds of perks and benefits you are offering your team
• Employee testimonials to give candidates a glimpse into real employees and their experiences
• Your company's corporate culture showcased using photos, video and other rich content
• Stories to showcase how new hires' work will have an impact on your company's big picture
• Your commitment to DEI initiatives and being an equal opportunity employer (if this is authentic to you)
• Bonus tip! Even if your website to date has been entirely consumer-focused, move your careers page to the top navigation menu on your website's homepage. Your talent pool is also 'consuming' your brand just like your customers are. Your open jobs should be easy for candidates to locate quickly before they give up and move on to the next opportunity.

Be flexible - candidates have the luxury of being choosy.

With all the perks and benefits that companies are offering in order to attract the best talent, today's hiring process takes longer on average as candidates have more options to choose from.

We all know the pandemic gave us an opportunity to evaluate our priorities in life and in work. Some candidates may prefer remote work, others hybrid working arrangements or in office. Whether we like it or not, remote work is the future and it's here to stay. Employers who offer remote or hybrid will have a serious advantage in the hiring game.

Employers will need to think creatively about talent as they look to hire. Do you really need B2C and B2B SaaS experience or do you just think you do? What about domain expertise? Is hyper-growth experience a must? What can be trained and what's a must-have? Can someone else in your company fill in the gaps?

As you plan to hire, consider these points:?

• Once you've thought creatively about the role, get crystal clear about who you're looking for and what success will look like for them.
• Resist the urge to cast a wide net with your job ad. Instead, narrow your focus to attract highly qualified, values-aligned candidates, saving you time and energy.??
• Your job ad should reflect your key differentiators and a unique employer value proposition. Make sure to answer ‘what’s in it for them’.?
• Take time to source (list-build and sending highly customized reach outs to passive talent. No time? Talk to us or consider another flexible recruitment partner.

Establish a candidate-focused recruitment program.

At the time of writing this post, a quick LinkedIn search showed 1650 new Recruiter jobs posted in Canada in the previous 24 hour period, and 38,000 in the US. That’s a lot. With all those growing companies looking to expand their talent acquisition teams, you know you’re competing for A-players more than ever. Your recruitment program and candidate experience will make or break your ability to attract and hire this year.

Consider these best practices and #beaconbright tips:

• Use scorecards to enable better, less biased decision-making after interviews.?
• Ditch the countless rounds of interviews. Stop making candidates jump through hoops. Multiple rounds of interviews or technical assessments that take too long or are not relevant to the role should be nixed so that candidates' time feels valued. Instead, think about what you’re trying to assess and how you can do this in a market-appropriate way.??
• Schedule 15 minutes for post-interview debriefs with the hiring team or interviewers. Hold your hiring team accountable to make decisions on candidates within 24 hours at the latest so you can make lightning-fast hiring decisions. ?
• 48 hours before the final interview, start to think about offer details and prepare for onboarding a new team member. From start date to total rewards, to who will be preparing and delivering the offer - get organized now so you don’t lose time later.?
• If you’re super keen on a candidate, 24 hours before the final interview, prepare the offer letter and agreement.
• Consider dropping reference checks for highly competitive roles. Or, switch to a combo of online reference checks and social screens. We love Certn for both. Bonus - this tool now integrates into most ATS’.

#BeaconBright predictions for 2022.

Every new year brings new perspectives and a new way of living (and working). Here are six predictions and my talent acquisition forecast for 2022.

1. The right to disconnect. Should reaching out to your employees after hours be considered a crime? With the recent change in legislation in Ontario regarding the Working For Workers Act, employers and employees will need to contend with grey areas around what is and isn’t urgent. But who will define those parameters??If you're an Ontario-based employer with 25 employees or more, you'll need to outline a basic policy that aligns with your culture and the new guidelines, by June 2nd, 2022. Outside of Ontario, I predict more conversations around work-life integration, purposeful occupations, and flexible workplaces.
2. ‘Wokeness’ in the workplace. Political beliefs around vaccinations, truth and reconciliation and government policy will continue to be top of mind for employers and employees. Your choice to disclose your stance on topics like these will impact recruitment, retention and your employer brand. Millennials and Gen-Z candidates in particular tend to seek out employers who advocate for current social issues.
3. The rise of the fractional workforce. The world of HR and recruitment is changing, fast. Now more than ever, companies need support navigating an ever-changing talent marketplace in a cost-effective way. As recruitment and HR salaries have increased across North America by almost 7% in the past year, on-demand and fractional recruitment and HR will be one more tool for employers, allowing them to add to their team's capacity without adding to their overhead. At Beacon HR , we scale up or down as needed, plugging into your existing company infrastructure seamlessly.
4. Recruiters need to think more like marketers. Take your average 'time to hire' recruiting metric from 2021, and add at least 15 days to that. Your recruitment efforts will not only need to be more strategic, but you'll need to allow for a longer time to hire. Companies with employer branding or recruitment marketing initiatives will win, enjoying better talent pools and less time and money spent recruiting. Consider having someone in your company who's accountable for candidate experience and is responsible for reaching out and building relationships with potential team members. Passive candidates aren't necessarily the people you need today, they're the diverse, high-performing team you'll need tomorrow.
5. The upcoming workforce. Older generations will have to change their ways of working as Gen-Z takes over more of the workforce. Gen-Z sees the workplace as a place to be creative, have fun and make mistakes. The baby boomers lean more traditional and attach themselves emotionally to the impact they’re able to make in their job. Young generations often tend to believe that life is best lived through rich experiences, while older generations have been brought up to believe that money provides security. Be conscious of how these ideologies may manifest in the workplace and what it means for mentoring.
6. Flexible work weeks. Is the 40-hour workweek really of the times? It doesn’t seem as promising anymore for a workforce looking to improve their quality of life. Shorter workweeks, a four-day 32-hour workweek, or four work days up to 10 hours each, could help you attract more talent. Studies, from countries like Finland, have shown it may be possible without compromising productivity.

Here's to a great start to 2022 for you! Want to connect more on growing your company? I'd love to chat.