Mon, Dec 5, 2011
Future of Talent Acquisition: Why Partnerships Are the New Recruiting Reality
Posted by Scott Santoro
The future isn’t coming; it’s here.
As advances in social media and emerging technologies like cloud computing, mobile media and online recruiting reshape the fundamentals of human capital management, organizations whose own headcount was negatively impacted by the recession have to start thinking more nimbly.
Beyond buzzwords lies the new recruiting reality: talent organizations must do more with less.
As the economy rebounds, the good news is that according to a recent SHRM survey, 73% of organizations are currently hiring full time employees.
The bad news? The same survey finds that the majority (58%) were “hiring direct replacements of jobs lost since the recession began.” Only 30% of companies, by contrast, were hiring for completely new positions.
For today’s talent management or HR practitioners, most with limited bandwidth and resources, being forced to concentrate primarily on backfilling rather than focusing on the critical new hires that drive innovation only underscores the importance of workforce planning and talent strategy.
Most talent organizations need only look in a mirror to understand how profound these changes truly are. The “first hired, first fired” aphorism often rings true for talent practitioners, and as companies look to realign recruiting resources, they have an opportunity to prepare for success today – and tomorrow.
The key lies in partnerships – the partners companies already have are more critical than ever. So too is demonstrating recruiting ROI. With changes in the job market and the larger employment picture, building a business case for recruiting success depends on striking a happy medium between these two seemingly competing concepts.
I look at it in a couple different ways. On the one hand, you’ve got your employers of choice, companies like Google and Facebook, or other technical organizations like Microsoft or Amazon, that simply always have a demand for IT talent.
While the recruiters would probably say something different, the truth is these companies have hordes of recruiters that are in there simply to build networks and talent communities for positions like engineers or developers where unemployment is virtually non-existent.
Other areas suffering a talent shortage include global experience, interactive or online programming expertise and graphic design.
On the other hand, you’ve got this middle sector that, while still hiring, probably doesn’t have the same resources or reach as these global talent organizations, not to mention cache or compensation. Then, you’ve got a whole other set of companies for whom hiring is so sporadic that strategic planning becomes a specious exercise. After all, it’s impossible to predict the unpredictable.
If you look at this, you’re going to see a couple different obvious outcomes. The first is that you’re going to see temp hiring come back, big time. Today’s business environment creates a great case study to see how there’s a lot of animosity, a lot of trepidation, that’s created for companies in this marketplace.
Many of them are afraid to commit to hiring full time due to the need to meet arbitrary, but necessary, outcomes. These same companies, while experiencing growth to their business and bottom line, are still charged with juggling the dueling responsibilities of controlling expenses to keep hitting those targets set by analysts and continuing to grow revenue through new business.
The only real way that companies are going to be able to find this balance is through leveraging a partnership model. Building relationships with strategically selected vendors creates an outlet for turning on or turning off a talent pipeline.
It’s really about the timing. Employers are, of course, going to look at temps to fill those short term, non-critical roles.
The real question is, what do those talent organizations need to do to maximize their recruiting resources and rebuild those teams for those roles which are harder to fill or more specialized?
By utilizing the external expertise and specialty skill sets through a third-party, employers can seamlessly integrate their infrastructure with those real relationships. A true partnership allows vendors to manage the ‘front end’ of the talent acquisition process, allowing internal resources to focus more strategically on selection, offer and on-boarding.
The days of recruiting administration are quickly evaporating, with HR leadership abandoning the traditional recruitment hierarchy for a more streamlined approach.
The demand for contract recruiters or recruiting coordinators really rises and falls with the market, but most organizations already have a significant investment in infrastructure, an ongoing partnership that’s already aligned with your systems and processes.
Building on an existing relationship creates a seamless, fully scalable hiring model which seamlessly integrates with that infrastructure and preempts the need for contract recruiters with the bench strength and hands-on experience an engaged vendor provides.
Creating an external center of excellence for the front end of the talent acquisition process means streamlined processes and vendor management, allowing HR leaders and practitioners to really focus on the skill which matters most: being a true business partner.
The more recruiters are connected to the business, the more managers are going to involve them in helping to build the company’s overall strategy and goal. That creates a real advantage for HR in being able to accurately articulate and align the wants, needs and desires of candidates with those of the company.
The rumors of the death of corporate recruiting are greatly exaggerated. On the contrary, I see corporate recruiters having the internal experience and expertise to really be able to look beyond the process and having the ability to effectively evolve along with business strategy or demand.
Being able to juggle shifting variables or priorities for recruiting frees up HR to focus on other areas like workforce management and planning by creating funnels where the right candidate is introduced at the right level, at the right time, every time.
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About the Author
Scott Santoro serves as the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition for Monster.com, where he is responsible for the strategy, policy and processes of Monster’s in-house talent acquisition function, a role which includes oversight of Monster’s employer brand, processes and recruitment programs. Prior to joining Monster, Scott spent four years leading the Talent Acquisition function at Biogen Idec, a global leader in the biotechnology industry, as well as 14 years in a variety of talent acquisition and HR roles at Keane Incorporated, a global consulting firm focused on Information Technologies. Scott holds a B.A. in Business Administration from the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY.
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