Facing Recruitment Challenges in 2020: Internal and External Strategies for Success
It’s 2020, and intensive hiring climates in the US show no sign of cooling. U.S. employers posted 7.6 million open jobs at the beginning of 2019, meaning many job applicants have more offers than ever before.
Those hiring organizations stuck in reactive recruitment have never been at more of a disadvantage than they are today. Top companies have learned that proactive application of data to drive change and inform progress is a foundational element of any effective talent acquisition and retention strategy. From creating a relevant and compelling employer brand, developing and pipelining key talent personas, and engaging active and passive candidates—modern best practices all hinge on an organization’s ability to capture and analyze data.
To better understand how the most successful businesses are driving change in talent acquisition and attraction practices, Beamery developed the Talent Attraction Index. We analyzed the current practices of the Fortune 500 across 35 data points spanning four specific core facets: Employer brand presence, employee activation and ambassadorship, team specialization, and candidate conversion. What we learned is that there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Among the companies being lauded as the gold standard of business success, many are still relying on traditional, passive practices for attracting talent: Post, pray, process, repeat. And whilst many of these businesses are praised for their tight operational control and shareholder value, our findings indicate that there’s much to be done when it comes to talent operations transformation.
From our perspective, the lack of progressive recruiting practices among the majority of the Fortune 500 represents more than a few missed opportunities in 2019. Considering the top performers in the Talent Attraction Index are actually passing by their peers in business results, we believe that optimizing talent acquisition strategies are a critical business objective for 2020.
But top performers in our Index didn’t get where they are by accident. Indeed, some practices proved to be more impactful than others:
Differentiating Employer Brand with a Modern Value Proposition
To acquire top talent, start with step one: distinguish your employer brand with an authentic and compelling value proposition. Helping candidates discover why they should invest in a particular organization—and what kind of impact their role has—is fundamental, yet few companies take the time to develop talent personas, identify sources of influence, and personalize outreach.
In some cases, optimizing employer brand can be as simple as curating your LinkedIn page to feed readers job postings, company culture articles, and other key insights to elevate existing collateral and encourage prospects to stay engaged with what your company is doing.
For those organizations with tight recruiting budgets, there’s good news: One of the most effective ways to build a solid employer brand and engage top talent is by identifying and engaging current employees. Activating current employees is a great way to engage and promote positive stories of your company on a larger scale. Current employees most often appreciate the recognition of seeing their stories on employer branding channels, and a strong referral program demonstrates their value to their employer.